“I don’t know why he’s even here. Mom must’ve told him. I’m going to throttle her. Do you think if I asked the principal, she would make him leave? Everyone’s going to think he’s my dad.”
I follow her gaze across the rows to Sunil and Chris’s project. Mr. Carter has disappeared, replaced by the man in the golf shirt.
“Wait, that’s your stepdad?”
“Ex-stepdad.”
He’s past Sunil and Chris’s project now, meandering down the aisle. His shirt is tucked into his shorts, but the back tail has escaped and hangs lazily behind him. It never even crossed my mind that he might be here.
“Screw him,” Meg says, taking my arm and turning us both away from him. “I’m not going to let him ruin my day. Did you notice that teachers keep going by to look at our project? Like, not our judges. Other ones. We are so going to win this.”
If we did win this—which we won’t—maybe instead of telling her, I could just suck it up and get on the plane like a normal person. The thought makes my heart drop straight through my stomach to my feet, like an airplane spiraling out of the sky. Seventeen Amelia Earhart . . . eighteen seat belts . . . nineteen life vests . . .
Of course, then I’d still have to tell her LotSCON’s sold out. We can’t win. We can’t. “I don’t know,” I say. “There are some other good projects. Sunil’s—”
“None as good as ours!”
“You haven’t even looked at any—”
“I don’t need to. We’ve got this. I just know it.”
I hope she’s wrong.
It doesn’t take that long to find out. We head back over to the far end of the gym, where Meg chatters away to Emily and Kayla from my English class while I try not to look at any other projects. Then Mrs. Naidoo, one of the science teachers, climbs up onto the stage and takes the microphone.
As she delivers her introduction, greeting to the parents, and thank-yous, all the students and parents and teachers wind their way through the rows to clump up near the stage, as if the floor is tilted in that direction. I stick out my elbows to preserve as much room around me as possible. People are too close. If there was a stampede, we would all die for sure.
Eighty-seven suffocation . . .
Mrs. Naidoo finishes with her pleasantries, having skipped entirely over the part where she should have warned people not to cluster together so deathly close, and moves on to the actual awards announcements.
She reads out six honorable-mention projects first. Ours is not one of them. Meg grabs my arm. “LotSCON’s sold out and I don’t fly!” I want to scream at her. I pinch my lips together so the words don’t come tumbling out.
Third place goes to some project about lasers that must have been down the final row that I never got to. Maybe that was the genius row, lined with project after project of sheer brilliance.
“Our next project,” Mrs. Naidoo continues, “took a unique look at technology and nutrition. With a clever topic and top marks for presentation, second place goes to Megan Winters and Katherine Daley!”
Oh, thank goodness.
Relief floods through my body like water through a collapsed dam. Followed immediately by a wave of worry. Meg will probably need consoling.
I turn toward her. “I know you were—” I stop when I see her face. I expected disappointment, but it’s worse than that. That eerie deadness is back in her eyes, like it never left. Ha-ha, you’ll never banish me. I know where to hide.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. She doesn’t say anything, just stares straight ahead, like a lifeless corpse.
Mrs. Naidoo begins announcing the winning project, drawing my gaze in her direction. First place goes to Sunil and Chris. They must have kept it together after I left.
“The winning team,” Mrs. Naidoo reminds us, “will travel to Toronto in just two weeks’ time to represent our school at the national science fair. Let’s all give them a big round of applause!”
“I’ve gotta go,” Meg says, not even bothering to whisper. I turn to follow her, but she’s already slipped halfway through the still-clapping crowd. Before I can take more than a couple of steps, the crowd breaks up, and it’s as if the room doesn’t know which way to tilt, with some people pushing past me to the doors, others bumping my shoulders as they wind back down the aisles to their projects.
Some people start packing up their poster boards, and I glance down the long aisle at ours. Are we supposed to pack them up now? Is that a rule?
It doesn’t matter; I’ll get it later. Meg first.
I push through the crowd, to the door, and out into the hallway. But by the time I get there, Meg is long gone.
CHAPTER 21
MEG
I’VE NEVER WALKED ALL THE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL BEFORE, WHICH IS weird. I mean, I’ve been going there almost a year; you’d think I’d have walked home at least once, no matter how far away it is.
I count the buses that rumble past, losing count around five or seven or maybe fifteen, hating every single people-filled one. I’m never speaking to anyone but Legs ever again, which means I’m never speaking to anyone ever, because I’ll never get to meet Legs. Ever. I shiver, then realize I left my coat and my backpack and my wallet at school, so I couldn’t hop on one of those stupid buses even if I wanted to.
My phone rings from my back pocket, and I jab the volume button until it goes silent. Didn’t you hear me, world? I’m too germufflebuddoned to talk to anyone right now, too germufflebuddoned to even think of the right words for how I feel! I scream the words only in my head, not out loud, because talking feels like too much—
Wait.
Wait!
I have a brilliant idea.
If Sunny and his freckle-faced partner couldn’t talk, well then . . . I grab a handful of dripping snow off someone’s heaping lawn and press it to the back of my neck, then gasp. It may be melting in the warmer March weather, but it’s still darn cold. Which is good. I’ll get sick, then I’ll breathe all over their faces, then they’ll get sick and will get whatever that thing’s called where they can’t talk, then they won’t be able to go and the second-place winners will get to go, which means Kat and I will get to go, except I guess then I’d be sick, too, so . . . never mind.
I drop the snow back on the ground, rub the cold out of my neck.
Still, maybe there’s another way. I can’t let one stupid project stand in the way of meeting LumberLegs—the only person in the world worth talking to.
Maybe allergies? They’ve got to be allergic to something. Feeding them accidental peanuts would be a lot easier than breathing all over their pimply faces anyway. To get that close, I’d probably have to try to make out with them, and I mean, freckle-face is not bad looking for a white guy, but Sunny has that big nose that juts out of his face like a sword. Except swords don’t usually stick out of faces. Well, maybe if there’s just been a battle, but then he’d be lying dead on the dirty ground, in which case, I really don’t want to make out with him. And besides, I’m not making out with anyone but LumberLegs anyway.