“How did you know my name?” I asked Heather.
She’ireen checking her phone, and now looked up at me, squinting in the sunlight. “You told me at that party, before it got busted.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
She and Riley exchanged a look. Now I was acting like a cult member. Heather said, “Then I guess Dave must have mentioned it.”
“Dave? ”
“Dave Wade? Your neighbor? You did meet him on Saturday, didn’t you?” she asked. “He’s not exactly forgettable.”
“He’s not as weird as he seems,” Riley said to me.
“He’s weirder,” Heather added. When Riley shot her a look, she said, “What? The boy hangs out in the basement of an abandoned house. That’s not normal.”
“It’s a storm shelter. It’s not like he built it, or something.”
“Do you even hear what you’re saying?” Heather sighed loudly. “Look, you know I love Dave. But he is kind of a freak.”
“Isn’t everybody?” Riley said, picking out another pretzel.
“No.” Heather adjusted her bosom again. “I, for instance, am completely normal in every way.”
Riley snorted, eating another pretzel, and they were both quiet for a moment. Now, I thought. Now is when I introduce myself as Liz Sweet, clear this whole thing up. Then I’d just have to do it again in homeroom tomorrow and I’d be all set, just where I needed to be for all this to work the way I wanted it to. But for some reason, standing there, I couldn’t. Because despite my best efforts otherwise, Mclean already had a story here. She was the girl who’d discovered Dave on the back porch, then taken refuge in his hideout. The girl at the party, the girl Deb welcomed in her own spazzy freaker style. She was not the same Mclean I’d been for the first fourteen years of my life. But she was Mclean. And not even a new name could change that, now.
Heather looked at Riley. “So, speaking of Eggbert, what’s the story? Did his parents yank him out of here for good, or what? ”
Riley shook her head. “I saw him after homeroom. He said they were letting him stay, but he had tons of hoops to jump through. They’ve been meeting about it with Mrs. Moriarity all morning.”
“God, that sounds miserable,” Heather groaned. To me she added, “Mrs. Moriarity is the principal. She hates me.”
“She does not,” Riley said.
“Actually, she does. Ever since that whole, you know . . . incident when I backed into the guardhouse. Remember?”
Riley thought for a second. “Oh, right, that was bad,” she said. Then she looked at me and added, “She’s a horrible driver. She never looks when she merges.”
“Why should I always have to do the looking? ” Heather asked. “Why can’t other people look out for me?”
“The guardhouse is an object. It’s defenseless.”
“Tell that to my bumper. I’m still paying off the money I owe my dad for the damn body shop.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “I thought we were talking about Dave.”
“Right. Dave.” Heather turned to me. “My point is, he’s, like, an administrator’s wet dream. Boy genius who skipped, like, all of junior high and was taking college courses, then came to this hellhole by choice. Which is something I’ll never understand.”
“He wanted to be normal,” Riley said quietly, picking out another pretzel. Then, glancing at me, she explained, “Dave had never been in public school. He was actually going to go to college early, because he’s so smart and got moved up so much. But then he decided he wanted to, you know, live like a regular teenager. So he got this after-school job making smoothies at Frazier Bakery, where my boyfriend at the time was working.”
“Nicolas,” Heather said. She sighed. “Man, that boy could blend. You should have seen his biceps.”
Riley ignored this, continuing, “Dave and I had actually known each other when we were kids, but we’d fallen out of touch. Once he was working with Nic, though, we picked right back up where we’d left off and started hanging out.”
“At which point he fell totally in love with her,” Heather told her. Riley shook her head. “What? It’s the truth. I mean, he’s supposedly over it now, but there was a time—”
“He’s like a brother to me,” Riley said. “I could never think of him that way.”
“Also, she only dates dirtbags,” Heather told me.
Riley sighed. “True. It’s a sickness.”
Heather gave her a sympathetic look before reaching over, patting her back the same way I’d watched her do earlier from a distance. Then she looked at me. “So, you going to sit down or what? You’re making me nervous, just standing there.”
I glanced back at Deb, alone under her tree, and then the random groups, as intricately divided as genuses in the animal kingdom, spread out between us. “Sure,” I said, stuffing my welcome bag into my backpack. “Why not.”