The question is odd enough that I stop what I’m doing to look at him.
It’s a normal yet pointless reaction. Connor seldom looks at anyone directly, regardless of whether they’re strangers, friends, or ex-friends. Right now he’s looking somewhere off to my left. His straight red hair hangs over his forehead.
“She’s been sick all week,” he says, still not looking at me. “But she won’t let us come over. Zumi tried and Annie’s mom wouldn’t let her in.”
Zumi and Annie were the other two friends I lost last year—I only had the three. The fact that he’s asking me about them now makes this conversation stranger than anything Annie might be up to.
“And, what, you want my recipe for chicken soup to leave on her porch?”
“She texted us today that she’s flying out to see her uncle, I guess the one in Connecticut. That’s weird for someone who’s been sick a whole week.”
“Maybe she’s pregnant.”
Connor doesn’t react to this. “Zumi’s really worried about her.”
I notice the shield I’m holding up when I feel it start to drop.
He’s concerned about Zumi being worried, not about Annie being sick or acting weird. He and I had that in common. Zumi was the best friend I’ve ever had, and Connor by association. Then Annie and I fought, sides were chosen, and I retreated. I don’t blame Zumi or Connor—they had been friends with Annie first, and it was my fault. Though Annie slandering me afterward wasn’t.
A car slows to a stop beside us. It’s Holly and Declan on their way from the parking lot out to the street.
“Everything okay?” Holly asks.
“Yep,” I say.
She peers at me, so I smile and wave. “See you tomorrow.”
“Call me later.” She drives slowly away.
Holly’s protective intervention reminds me that while I still miss Zumi and Connor as much as ever, him talking to me now doesn’t mean we’re suddenly friends again.
“Did Zumi put you up to this?” I say. “Or did you already ask the second-to-last person on earth?”
He glances at me for the briefest possible moment. His wet green eyes look sadder than I remember, but I don’t have much to draw from; he’s not an eye-contact kind of guy. Some people say it’s me, though, that I’m way too much of an eye-contact person.
I say, “You can’t really think I’ve been talking to Annie.”
He shrugs. “There’s no one else to ask.”
I watch Connor walk away toward the parking lot. Someone pushes off from the retaining wall ahead and joins him. It’s Zumi: long black hair, pale jeans, and the same black hoodie she was wearing the day I met her.
The first day of freshman year is hard enough. It’s harder starting in a new town, like joining a game of musical chairs after the music’s already stopped when you don’t even want to play. For me, it’s even worse than that. I’m still deep in my hole, hardly speaking, a month after moving here, four months after the divorce, and less than a year after losing Nolan.
Despite begging Mom to let me bring my lunch, so I could eat whatever I want and not wait in the cafeteria line, I’m the disappointed owner of a lunch card. For more variety of healthier food, according to Mom. I think she’s just afraid I’d sit alone outside if I brought my lunch, and I totally would.
On the first day, I get to the cafeteria ahead of most everyone; my previous class and locker are right around the corner. I’m already halfway through my grilled cheese with apple slices—the messy spaghetti was out of the question—before the room starts filling up. Then a group of four girls lines up in front of me.
“This is our table.”
She says it without emotion, not snotty or falsely sympathetic. I’m not even worth a sneer. They look like freshmen, too, so they can’t possibly have a regular table. There’s plenty of room for all of us but I know the score. I grab my tray and scuttle off, silently cursing my mother.
The same girls chase me from a different table the next day. Again I scurry away. This is the next level of harassment. I’ve been elevated from a random nobody to a specific target.
I hang out in a bathroom stall the third day until I think my oppressors must be sitting down, and then I wait another few minutes, just in case. From the lunch line, I see them at a different table than either of the days before.
As soon as I sit, wondering what Mom would think of the corn dog on my tray, the four girls appear again.
“This is our table.”
They actually got up and came over this time.
I start to stand but get stopped by a hand on my shoulder. I look up and see a blond with a French braid beside me.
“Scooch,” she says, pushing me sideways hard enough that I instinctively move over.
She plops down and clatters her tray on the table. Another girl sits on my right, close enough that I’m squeezed between them, shoulder to shoulder. All I can see of this other girl is a wall of straight black hair draped down to her black hoodie.