“No,” I said. “I’m going in.”
Getting inside wasn’t a problem. There was a separate parking lot and entrance for students that was well away from the main entrance where the reporters were camped out. Nicholas and I waited in the car until Asher came out to meet us, and I walked into the school flanked by Asher’s bulk and Nicholas’s lethal glare. Heads turned, whispers were exchanged behind hands, but no one approached. The stares still made me itch, but at least the expression in many of the eyes was now one of sympathy instead of naked curiosity. In the movies, people always say they don’t want to be pitied when something bad happens to them, but I’m here to tell you that’s bullshit. Pity can be very nice. It feels a lot like concern or even affection. I could live with pity.
But it didn’t last. When first period began, Principal Clemmons came on over the loudspeaker to address what the whole school was already buzzing about.
“One of our students has had their privacy breached in an inexcusable fashion,” he said. “Until further notice all students will turn over their cell phones and other devices to their first-period teacher to be collected again after the final bell. CHS is a place for learning, not the distractions of texting and social media.”
Mr. Vaughn had a box ready to go. He walked up and down the rows of seats, collecting phones and tablets. I stared down at my desk. I could feel people looking at me, knowing this was because of me, resenting me for it. The silent indignation became audible grumbles when I tried to hand Vaughn my phone and he told me to keep it.
“Cool it, guys,” Vaughn said. “Let’s talk Jane Eyre.”
? ? ?
Reporters showed up every day for the rest of the week. A couple even tried to get inside. But the school stepped up security, and they lost interest. None of them got my picture and the original video of me put up on YouTube was distant and blurry, so I thought I was safe.
Finding the press camped outside of Calabasas High had been a harsh but necessary wake-up call. I’d gotten too comfortable. Whatever Patrick was doing to keep me from having to go and tell my stories to the cops wouldn’t last forever, and I needed to be ready. I started to go over the story in my head whenever I had a quiet moment, embellishing and fine-tuning it based on what I was learning, trying to prepare myself.
It was sunny overcast the day it happened. I was walking beside my bike, because the chain had come off and I didn’t know how to fix it. I was taking it home to my father big brother because he would know. Dad Patrick knew everything.
A white van turned the corner and pulled up beside me. I was too naive to be scared. The door slid open and hands emerged from the darkness. Ten seconds and I was gone, with no one having seen a thing. A kidnapping can happen that quickly and that invisibly, even on a sunny cloudy street in a safe gated neighborhood.
Hopefully, I would be ready.
? ? ?
On Tuesday someone came to the door of my art class with a note for me. Everyone stared at me while I read it. It was from Nicholas; he was going to be late to lunch. Luckily, I’d been living on the streets on my own for years, so I was pretty confident in my ability to make it to the cafeteria without his assistance. I was less sure, though, of what I’d do when I got there.
After class I headed toward the cafeteria and spotted Dr. Singh at the other end of the hallway, headed right for me.
“Danny,” she said with a nod as she passed me. I was relieved that she hadn’t wanted to talk to me, but then I turned and watched her enter Ms. Scofield’s classroom.
She was checking up on me.
Dammit.
People were not forgetting about me as quickly as I’d thought they would. I guess I should have said good-bye to that naive hope when I got everyone’s phones confiscated for the foreseeable future. Now Singh was asking my teachers about me, and everywhere I went the looks and whispers and abruptly halted conversations followed. I was not blending in, and that was the one thing I’d always been able to do, the one ability I’d depended on more than any other.
I bought a sandwich and a piece of pizza because dammit I could and hurried outside. The table Nicholas and I usually sat at was empty; I had hoped Asher would be there already. I noticed the movie girl at her usual table, eating alone once more. I wondered again how in the hell she managed to look like she didn’t care—if it was for real or just a front so convincing even I couldn’t see through it. I could feel eyes lingering on me already and imagined how much worse it would get if I sat at my usual table eating by myself, and suddenly I was bombarded with memories of all the meals I’d ever eaten alone, sitting on the floor with a microwave dinner watching Frosty the Snowman as a kid or scarfing a package of chips and a candy bar on a bus stop bench. I kept walking past the empty table, out of the courtyard, and around the side of one of the buildings. I sat down with my back against the bricks and looked out over the empty athletic fields.
I instantly felt better. And worse at the same time. The whole point of being Danny Tate was the chance for a new life, a real one, not just a repeat of my shitty old one.
Something had to change.
? ? ?
The next day I told Nicholas I didn’t need him to escort me to my classes anymore. I could tell he hated it, and it was only drawing more attention to me. He agreed.
I beat him and Asher to lunch again, and this time I walked up to the table where the movie girl was sitting alone. I’d been thinking about this all morning. This was how I was going to change things.
“Mind if I sit?” I asked when she looked up from her book. I was new Danny. Cool, collected, above it.
“Oh sure, if you can find some space,” she said, gesturing to the empty table. “I’m Ren.”
“Danny.”
“Yeah,” she said with a half smile. “I’d picked up on that.”
“Right.”
We were silent for a long time. Maybe this was a terrible mistake.
“So, if you don’t mind my asking,” she finally said, “why are you sitting with me?”
It was a good question. This was how I was going to change things, but why had I picked her? She always sat alone, which made her a low risk target, and I’d talked to her once before, but it was more than that. Most people I could figure out with one look, but she was hard to read. She was either an actor like me, or she was something else entirely that I didn’t understand. She was interesting to me.
I lifted one shoulder in a weak shrug. “My brother’s not here yet. I thought we could keep each other company.”
She smiled, but I couldn’t tell if it was from gratitude or amusement or embarrassment.
“Okay,” she said, folding down the page in her book and setting it aside. “How do you like Scofield’s class?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You?”
“I hate it. I’m hopeless at drawing,” she said. “I never would have signed up, but it was one of the only classes with any space left when I transferred.”