“Or I’ll tell . . .” Allie realized she didn’t even remember the name of the woman who ran the place.
A movement caught Allie’s eye. The door to the bedroom was standing open, and another girl was walking by on her way to the bathroom, a towel clutched to her chest, a toothbrush in one hand. She was lanky and tall. Pretty, with butt-length brown hair. There was a gentleness to her. Allie had been searching for gentleness since leaving home. She just hadn’t realized it yet.
“You’ll tell?” Allie’s roommate was on her expensively socked feet now, moving in Allie’s direction. Her face had hardened further—if such a thing were possible—her icy eyes drilling into Allie’s brain. “You’ll tell?”
Allie looked past her to the girl in the hall, hoping for some help. The dark-haired girl shook her head carefully, and Allie could tell how she meant it. She was suggesting an answer to Lisa’s question. She was clearly feeding Allie the right line.
“Well, no,” Allie said. “I won’t tell.”
The girl in the hall nodded. Breathed visibly.
“Glad to hear that. For a minute there I thought you were so new and so spoiled and so stupid that you honestly don’t know what happens to girls who tell.”
“No,” Allie said. “But I want my socks back.”
“I want a lot of things. A Ferrari. A house by the beach. But I don’t expect to get any of them from you. And you shouldn’t be looking to me for socks.”
“But they’re my socks.”
“They were.”
Finally, finally, the icy eyes cut away. Lisa Brickell turned and walked out of the room.
Allie looked up at the girl in the hall.
“Hey,” the girl said.
“Hey.”
Allie envied the girl the silky straightness of her hair. Allie’s hair, a sort of long, thick, wild bird’s nest of curls—quick to turn into frizz at the slightest hint of humidity—had always felt like quite a burden to bear.
“You’re new.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Jasmine.”
“Allie.”
“Be careful of Brick. I mean, really careful. She can be crazy, and I don’t just mean it the way people usually say ‘crazy.’ I mean seriously. She can be dangerous.”
Allie tried to breathe around the chest girdle of fear. She only barely succeeded.
“Just my luck to get her as a roommate,” she said, trying to keep her voice artificially light.
“Oh, there’s no luck about it. So long as there’s any space in any room, no girl’s gonna room with Brick. Has to be a thing where the last girl in the last space gets her because there’s no other choice.”
They stood a moment, awkwardly. Saying nothing.
Then Allie asked, “How do I get my socks back?”
“Depends on whether they’re worth risking your life for.” Another awkward silence fell. “I better get in line for the bathroom. You know. While the hot water holds.”
Allie sat at the breakfast table looking at the nine other girls’ faces. Preferably when they weren’t looking back. She wanted to memorize the residents. Size them up in some way that might be useful. But she wasn’t entirely sure what useful would mean in this context.
The table was clearly built to accommodate six comfortably, eight at the reasonable max. The other girls seemed to have perfected the tucking of elbows. Allie was learning the talent the hard way.
She poked her spoon into her plain oatmeal. Her choices of toppings had been butter, milk, sugar, or syrup. Pass, pass, pass, pass. If this had been Allie’s home, there would have been almond milk. Golden raisins. Dried dates. Toasted pecans.
In case I needed a reminder that this is not home, she thought.
The Elf wandered off into the living room, and Allie stared directly at Brick, who was seated diagonally across the table.
“What?” Brick asked. Playacting extreme innocence.
“I want my socks back.”
Suddenly every other girl at the table found a new place to look. All at once. Under better circumstances it might have been comical. One began inspecting the ceiling plaster, another the back of her hand. A heavy girl with thin, stringy hair pulled a cereal box close and began reading its ingredient list in fascination.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Brick said.
Allie set down her spoon. Her heart pounded, and she was afraid the fear would leak out into her voice. But sometimes you can’t back up. It’s the principle of the thing.
“So you’re just going to go through the world like this? Your whole life? Just bullying people out of anything you want and threatening them with violence if they mind? This is your contribution to society? Seriously? You’ve thought it over, and this is the best plan for living you could think of?”
Brick changed her grip on her knife. Held it more the way you’d hold a knife going into a fight. It was only a dull butter knife but the message came through.
“Yeah. It’s working out fine. Thanks for asking. For example, my feet are really comfy.”
“I’m not just letting this go. I don’t care what happens to me.” She did care. Actually. It would have been more accurate to say that all her caring about what would happen to her—which was quite a lot of caring—was unable to slow her forward progress. Allie felt like a person trying to stop a speeding freight train by dragging her foot. “Because wrong is just wrong. What you’re doing is wrong. And if I shut up and walk away because you’re the threatening type, then I’m just part of that terrible system. And it’s all just wrong.”
Allie could see Jasmine desperately trying to catch her eye. Finally Jasmine’s efforts burst out into words. Well . . . word.
“Allie!”
“I don’t care, Jasmine. It’s just not right. It’s the principle of the thing.”
Brick laughed a snorting, sneezing laugh. Then she got up and walked away from the table.
“So, new person,” the big girl with the cereal box said. “Your days are numbered.”
Allie tried to pick up her spoon again, but her hands were shaking, and she didn’t want the other girls to see. It wasn’t because of the comment about her numbered days. That had been a tossed-off sort of thing, whether there was any truth behind it or not. The deep upset was more about the courage it had taken to directly confront someone. Allie had marginally held it together while it was happening but, now that it was over, the stitching was disintegrating at all of her seams.
She looked up to see Polyester Lady standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Alberta?”
Which seemed strange. Because she was looking right at Allie. So what was the point that needed clarifying?
“Um. Yes.”
“You ready?”
“For what?”
“We have to get you registered for school. And then I’m going to try to arrange a phone call with one of your parents.”
Chapter Eleven
Define Okay