I SKIMMED the dense blocks of text in The Grapes of Wrath, hoping to get something down about it in my overdue reading journal before class started. Focus never came easily for me, and that book, full of dust and farms and a hundred different characters, was especially hard to follow. But Mr. Bergstrom often reminded me how important it was to graduate, so I tried.
My feet rested on my backpack under my desk; I tapped my pen against my notebook. I wrote two sentences about how confusing the story was, then got distracted by wondering if Mom had gotten up yet. She’d still been in bed when I left, and Dixie had been in the shower.
Helena Mafi came in and hung her jacket on the back of her chair. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but if I had to stare at the back of someone’s head for an hour every day, hers was better than most. Her hair was black and always shiny, with a slight wave to it.
“Hey,” I said.
She turned, with raised eyebrows.
“Did you do the reading?” I asked, holding up the book.
“Yeah.” She sat down and got out her own copy.
Mrs. Cantrell had gone to the door to call in stragglers.
“What happens?” I asked Helena.
“It’s a little complicated to explain in two seconds.”
“Where are we even supposed to be? In the reading?”
Flipping pages, I jiggled my leg up and down. What if Dixie was telling Mom about the money right now? I knew it was a risk to leave her there, but I hadn’t wanted to be late, hadn’t wanted to do anything that would call attention to me, and most of all hadn’t wanted to have to see Mom, myself, before I got out.
“Here,” Helena said, annoyed. She took my book and found the page. “Your leg is bumping my chair.” She handed the book back to me. “It’s annoying.”
I stopped. “Sorry.” I tried three deep breaths. It helped slightly. I read the page Helena opened to. There were children in this chapter, children barefoot—in dust, always dust—and watching a man eat a sandwich, wanting it.
I tapped Helena’s shoulder.
“Yes?”
“I’m really sorry,” I whispered. Cantrell had started class. “About jiggling your chair.”
“I know. You just said that.”
“I am.” I wanted her to remember me in a nice way.
She tilted her head toward me. Her hair touched my desk. “It’s okay, Gem. It’s not a big deal.”
The ragged children on the page ate fried dough and listened to poor men talk about being poor and how they wanted to kill the other men, who were making them poor.
I pushed my feet against my backpack, reassuring myself it was still there.
On my way to lunch I stopped by Mr. Bergstrom’s office. Mostly I wanted to show him everything was fine, like I’d said when Dad came. And to see his face again. His door was open but he was on the phone. He covered the mouthpiece with one hand and said, “Hey, Gem, if you come back later, I’ve got some time.”
“It’s okay.” I stood there while he listened to whoever was on the phone, cradling it against his shoulder. I imagined never coming into his office again, never sitting down across from him.
He looked at me over his glasses. “Hang on, sorry,” he said to the person on the phone. Then, to me, “I need to talk to this guy about something I should keep confidential.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Come back after lunch?”
“I can’t . . . I shouldn’t miss class.”
“Not even PE?” He smiled that smile, the one that made me think I could be all right.
“Not today.” I left his office, waving a small good-bye. Maybe if he hadn’t been on the phone, I would have told him more, asked him a question or something, but it didn’t work out that way.
In the cafeteria, I picked up a brownie along with a turkey burger. I held a five-dollar bill in my hand. When I got to Luca, he said, “Burger’s on the program, but I do gotta charge you for the brownie.”
“I know,” I said. I gave him the money.
“You seem better today. You’re not yelling at me.”
“I didn’t yell at you.” My face got warm. Like with Helena, I wanted him to remember me well.
“Okay, your voice didn’t yell but your words did.” He caught my eye while making change and smiled. “Hey, don’t get upset. I’m kidding you, sort of. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks for talking to Mr. Bergstrom. I know you didn’t have to do that.”
He waved my thanks away. “No problem.”
I pushed the change back at him. “Here.”
He laughed. “I can’t take that.”
“Give it to Lucia.” I pointed to the pictures of his kids taped to the register.
“I can’t.” He put the change on my tray. “You have a good afternoon, Gem.”
I looked around the cafeteria, nervous. Every minute that passed was a minute Dad could be back at the apartment, looking for what he’d left, a minute Dixie could be calling him, a minute she could be talking to Mom. Still, I didn’t want to rush anything. And I wasn’t sure, not completely, of what I was doing or going to do.
I wanted to see Dixie first.
I took my tray over to Denny and Adam’s table, empty except for them, and sat right next to Denny and across from Adam with my backpack on. I picked up a dollar from the change Luca wouldn’t take and held it out to Denny. “Thanks again.”
“You already paid me back.”
I pretended I’d forgotten, shrugging the shrug of people who are never short of dollar bills to see what it felt like. “Do you want a dollar?” I asked Adam.
“Um, no.” He glanced at Denny and then cleared his throat. “Dude, let’s go sit with Martin and those guys.”
Denny’s zits got extra red. I met his eyes and ate my turkey burger. He muttered something to Adam that I couldn’t hear. Adam had put one hand on either side of his tray and made like he was going to stand up to go when we all heard my name shouted across the cafeteria.
“Gem!”
Dixie was striding over, her phone in her hand. Something had happened, I could tell. Maybe I’d already waited too long.
“That’s my sister,” I told Adam.
“Yeah, you said.” He stared at Dixie, at the way her body moved every time she put a foot down on the linoleum—her unique tough-soft bounce. His neck flushed.
“What are you looking at, Johnson?” Dixie said when she got to the table. Adam got up with his tray and disappeared. Then Dixie widened her eyes at Denny like, Go away, and he left, too.
Dixie stuck her phone in front of my face. There was a text from Dad.
hey I left something at the apartment and mom won’t let me in. text me when you get home and coast is clear so i can pick up
“What should I say?” she asked, sitting next to me. “I’ll just say okay and pretend I don’t know, right? Like we said?”
I took a bite of my brownie. It was gluey and too sweet. What I’d eaten of the burger was already cement in my stomach. Sweat trickled down my back even though the cafeteria was chilly, as usual.
“Did you tell Mom?”