I couldn’t help it—I burst out laughing.
The room went deadly silent, and Toby grinned like he’d just won the Ping-Pong world championship. Ms. Weng frowned at me. I quickly turned my laughter into a fake coughing fit, and Cassidy leaned over and helpfully whacked me on the back. To my deepest shame, this made me actually start coughing in earnest.
By the time I got it under control, it had sort of become an event.
“Sorry,” Cassidy whispered.
I shrugged like it didn’t matter, but when she wasn’t looking, I scribbled her name onto the sign-up sheet in payback and then passed it forward. For the remainder of class, we worked in pairs structuring a parliamentary debate. Cassidy and I partnered together.
“What’s a picket fencer?” I pressed, when she made no move to start the assignment.
“It’s, well, it’s when you place first in every round at a tournament.” She sighed, fiddling with her still-capped pen. “Your cumulative’s a row of ones, like a little picket fence.”
I considered this, the idea not just of winning, but doing so without a single defeat, as Toby wandered over and pulled up a chair.
“Yeah, hi,” he said. “In case you were wondering, you’re not going to have to turn that in.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I swear it on the grave of my sweet dead hamster Petunia,” he said, which wasn’t exactly reassuring since, to my knowledge, Toby had never owned a hamster. “Ms. Weng asked me to come up with a random topic during break as an exercise. Technically, I’m not in this class. I’m her student aide.”
“So you’re her Weng-man?” Cassidy asked.
The three of us laughed, and it struck me that Cassidy and Toby knew each other. That, if anyone was an outsider, it wasn’t the new girl, it was me.
When the bell rang, Ms. Weng told us to hold on to our debates, and Toby mouthed, “Told you so.”
The classroom began to clear out, and I watched Cassidy fasten the buckles on her satchel. Her hair was half pinned up into this crown of braids, and with the sharp planes of her cheekbones and her pale skin, she looked as though she’d stepped out of a different era, one where people bought war bonds and decamped to the countryside to avoid air raids. I’d never seen anyone like her, and I couldn’t help but stare.
“Come on,” Toby said, and Cassidy glanced up, nearly catching me staring. “Join me for lunch. You’re coming too, Faulkner. I could use a new sidekick.”
“Actually, I’m going to Chipotle,” I said. “With Evan and Jimmy and them.”
But it sounded ridiculous, and even as I said it, I knew I wasn’t really going.
“Sure you are.” Toby laughed. “I’m not taking no for an answer. Now let’s go, for my harem does not eat before I have graced them with my magnificence.”
7
THE MOMENT I entered the quad, I realized I’d made a grand miscalculation: Jimmy and Evan hadn’t gone to Chipotle after all. All of my old friends had stayed on campus. I could see them there, at the choice table near the wall that divided the upper and lower quads. The water polo and tennis guys were squished around the too-small table, balancing girlfriends on their laps. Charlotte’s Song Squad crowd sat on the wall, drinking Diet Cokes and swinging their bare legs. It wasn’t quite the same crew as last year, but the composition didn’t matter. It was still that table, the one where the laughter carried across the quad and everyone who heard it wished they were in on the joke.
“Yo, Captain!” Luke Sheppard called, catching sight of Toby and waving.
I could feel everyone watching as we crossed the quad: Toby in his bow tie, Cassidy in her crown of braids, and me, with the sleeve of my black hoodie pulled low over my wrist brace, trying to look as though I needed my cane less than I actually did.
Toby ushered us over to one of the better-placed tables in the upper quad, an eight-seater with a gray beach umbrella, half full of our year’s resident eccentrics. “Meet the rest of our school’s illustrious debate team,” he said, and for a moment I thought he was joking.
There was Luke Sheppard, the president of the film club, with his hipster glasses and signature smirk. The year before, our whole school had followed this blog called Auto-Tune the Principal, and while Luke had never outright claimed credit, everyone knew it was him. Sitting next to Luke was Sam Mayfield, looking like he’d gotten lost on his way home from the country club. Sam smacked of future lawyer, and even though he was a junior, he’d been head of the Campus Republicans for as long as I could remember. Across from Sam, drinking a can of Red Bull and playing some game on his iPad, was Austin Covelli, our school’s resident graphic designer. Austin was the guy who whipped up the yearbook cover and designed the school sweatshirts. Back during sophomore year, he’d launched an online T-shirt store.
Mostly, I’d been picturing Toby’s friends as a bunch of obscure honor-roll students, the sort who clubbed together out of social necessity and made it through high school largely unnoticed. Not these guys.
“Look who I found,” Toby said gleefully.
Luke’s jaw dropped. Sam let out an incredulous laugh.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Cassidy Thorpe,” Austin said, flicking his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes without looking away from his game. “What the heck are you doing here?”
Cassidy smiled hugely. “Waiting to graduate and move on with my life, same as y’all. Now how come none of you ever mentioned that your school has a coffee cart?”
Cassidy slid onto the bench next to Toby, pulled out a packet of peanut butter crackers, and patted the seat next to her. It was the end of the bench, thank God, and I wondered if she’d left it for me on purpose, so I wouldn’t have to ask anyone to shift down.
“Oh, right,” Toby said a little too theatrically, pretending he’d only just remembered. “You all know Faulkner.”
“Hey,” I said sheepishly, taking the proffered seat. I guess they’d thought I was just passing by, showing the new student around, but when I sat down, Luke gave Toby a significant look, as though my joining the table needed to be preceded by his approval.
I put on my sunglasses and watched everyone pick at their food (lunch starts at 11:30, which is ridiculous, on account of how some nearby food chains are still serving breakfast sandwiches). I hadn’t brought anything, and I glanced toward the lunch line in the lower quad, which was an endless stretch of underclassmen.
“Quick, eat these.” Phoebe Chang slid a plastic container of grocery store cupcakes onto the table, her nose stud sparkling in the sunlight. There was a pink stripe in her hair that I didn’t remember. “I just swiped them from the front office. It’s the school nurse’s birthday.”
She glanced over her shoulder, as though expecting to be apprehended at any moment, and Toby grabbed for one of the vanilla cupcakes.
“Fifty points for irony if we get food poisoning,” he said. “By the way, Phoebe, this is Cassidy. And you know Ezra.”
Phoebe, who was still basking in the glory of her cupcake heist, glanced at me and nearly dropped her iced tea. “Holy crap. I’m five minutes late and I miss the most historic lunch-table switch in the annals of the upper quad.”
“I thought you didn’t do annals, Phoebs,” Luke said with a wink.
Phoebe picked up a cupcake, smashed the frosting down with her tongue, and offered it to Luke with an evil grin. “I don’t know about that. How about some sloppy seconds, Sheppard?”
Luke took the cupcake and bit into it with relish, antagonizing her. I wondered how long they’d been dating. Phoebe, who was not, in fact, a notorious cupcake thief, was actually the editor of the school paper.
“So Ezra,” Phoebe said, sliding onto the bench next to Luke. “How’s life as a teenage vampire?”
Toby snorted, and Cassidy snickered through a mouthful of cupcake.