“I almost ran you down, remember? I have to be nice to you, so you don’t have me arrested.”
It was a lame joke. But there it was, the smallest smile I have possibly ever seen in my life. “It’s right up at the top of my list. I’ll report you to that fat guy who sits in front of the supermarket all day.” She looked back up at the sky. I watched her.
“Give them a chance. They’re not all bad. I mean, they are, right now. They’re just jealous. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“They are.” I looked at her, through the tall grass. “I am.”
She shook her head. “Then you’re crazy. There’s nothing to be jealous of, unless you’re really into eating lunch alone.”
“You’ve lived all over.”
She looked blank. “So? You’ve probably gotten to go to the same school and live in the same house your whole life.”
“I have, that’s the problem.”
“Trust me, it’s not a problem. I know about problems.”
“You’ve gone places, seen things. I’d kill to do that.”
“Yeah, all by myself. You have a best friend. I have a dog.”
“But you’re not scared of anyone. You act the way you want and say whatever you want. Everyone else around here is scared to be themselves.”
Lena picked at the black polish on her index finger. “Sometimes I wish I could act like everyone else, but I can’t change who I am. I’ve tried. But I never wear the right clothes or say the right thing, and something always goes wrong. I just wish I could be myself and still have friends who noticed whether I’m in school or not.”
“Believe me, they notice. At least, they did today.” She almost laughed—almost. “I mean, in a good way.” I looked away.
I notice.
What?
Whether you’re in school or not.
“Then I guess you are crazy.” But when she said the words, it sounded like she was smiling.
Looking at her, it didn’t seem to matter anymore if I had a lunch table to sit at or not. I couldn’t explain it, but she was, this was, bigger than that. I couldn’t sit by and watch them try to take her down. Not her.
“You know, it’s always like this.” She was talking to the sky. A cloud floated into the darkening grayblue.
“Cloudy?”
“At school, for me.” She held up her hand and waved it. The cloud seemed to swirl in the direction her hand was moving. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“It’s not like I really care if they like me. I just don’t want them to automatically hate me.” Now the cloud was a circle.
“Those idiots? In a few months, Emily will get a new car and Savannah will get a new crown and Eden will dye her hair a new color and Charlotte will get, I don’t know, a baby or a tattoo or something, and this will all be ancient history.” I was lying, and she knew it. Lena waved her hand again. Now the cloud looked more like a slightly dented circle, and then maybe a moon.
“I know they’re idiots. Of course they’re idiots. All that dyed blond hair and those stupid little matching metallic bags.”
“Exactly. They’re stupid. Who cares?”
“I care. They bother me. And that’s why I’m stupid. That makes me exponentially more stupid than stupid. I’m stupid to the power of stupid.” She waved her hand. The moon blew away.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She tried not to smile. We both just lay there for a minute.
“You know what’s stupid? I have books under my bed.” I just said it, like it was something I said all the time.
“What?”
“Novels. Tolstoy. Salinger. Vonnegut. And I read them. You know, because I want to.”
She rolled over, propping her head on her elbow. “Yeah? What do your jock buddies think of that?”
“Let’s just say I keep it to myself and stick to my jump shot.”
“Yeah, well. At school, I noticed you stick to comics.” She tried to sound casual. “Silver Surfer. I saw you reading it. Right before everything happened.”
You noticed?
I might have noticed.
I didn’t know if we were speaking, or if I was just imagining the whole thing, except I wasn’t that crazy —yet.
She changed the subject, or more accurately, she changed it back. “I read, too. Poetry mostly.”
I could imagine her stretched out on her bed reading a poem, although I had trouble imagining that bed in Ravenwood Manor. “Yeah? I’ve read that guy, Bukowski.” Which was true, if two poems counted.
“I have all his books.”
I knew she didn’t want to talk about what had happened, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to know.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“What happened back there?”
There was a long silence. She sat up and pulled at the grass around her. She flopped around on her stomach and looked me in the eye. She was only a few inches away from my face. I lay there, frozen, trying to focus on what she was saying. “I really don’t know. Things like that just happen to me, sometimes. I can’t control it.”
“Like the dreams.” I watched her face, looking for even a flicker of recognition.