“I’m new here?”
“I meant something that’s not obvious, but that will have to do, as we’ve already been extremely derailed by your arrival,” said Mr. Ratner.
Tidbit lifted her wrist off the table, a tiny, genuine hello, and I relaxed. On my way to the only empty spot, in the middle of the third row, I tripped on an unzipped backpack, catching my balance on the shoulder of a boy with his collar popped. “Careful,” he whispered, unnecessarily loud. Heads swiveled. I sank into the seat next to him.
I spent class muffled in a cocoon of self-awareness, emerging only when people began to shift in their seats, slide textbooks into backpacks. The guy next to me zipped his pen into a foam hotdog, packed the rest of his bag, and then hugged the whole thing on his lap like it was an animal that needed to be restrained. At Concord, you were awarded a demerit for anticipating the bell. When it finally did go off, Mr. Ratner pointed at me and then pointed at the floor near his desk.
He slid a weary copy of Fundamentals of Ecology: GRADES 9–10 in my direction. Inside the yawning mouth of a neon frog some now middle-aged student had written: NEVER AGAIN!!!! “If you are late tomorrow, please do not bother coming to my class.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. Before I’d known he was Mr. Ratner, I’d planned on apologizing. But Marlena’s best friend was not sorry and she was not wrong and she did not give two shits what Mr. Ratner thought about her.
He made a red mark in his notebook and said, musingly, “It never is, is it?” He picked up my cell phone and ran his thumb over the words on the back—What a thrill—before turning it over in his hands.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Certain things are. Abusing a position of power, I would say, for example.” I grabbed the textbook off his desk. “Can I have my phone back, please?”
“Do you deserve it?”
“It’s mine.”
He clicked the call button, and the screen glowed. I snatched the phone from him and left, hating myself for not saying something about what I knew.
Tidbit was slumped against the lockers outside, Greg standing very close to her, hands cupping her hips. “I’m so glad you’re in our class,” Tidbit said, twisting away from him.
“That guy is the worst,” I said, though Tidbit had automatically made me feel better.
“Mr. Ratner sucks a fat one,” said Greg. “He grades based on, like, the weather. Or what he had for lunch.” Tidbit hooked her arm in mine. Marlena hadn’t told them about Mr. Ratner, I realized, with a surge of pride.
“Or like, how he’s just feeling,” said Tidbit.
“That’s what I meant,” Greg said, snappishly, to her. Then, to me, “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Little Miss Library.” He squeezed me against his side, a one-armed hug that went on too long. I tried to relax. Cat, a girl with male friends galore, a girl for whom touching was no big deal. Tidbit’s scrawny biceps tightened against my own, territorial. She asked to see my schedule, and I pulled it from my back pocket. Greg let me go.
“Yay, lunch you’ll have with all of us,” she said. “Choir and French III you’ll have with Mar, and history, no clue, I didn’t even know that was an option.” French III?
They’d walked me down to the school’s main artery. The girls here wore faded jeans with intentional tears and pastel eye shadow—they moved through the halls in clusters. “Want to smoke a cig with us?” Tidbit asked. I told her no, still rattled from my brush with Mr. Ratner. “Your funeral,” Tidbit said, and dragged Greg toward the auditorium. Before they disappeared into the crowd, he looked back at me once, and that’s when I knew that he liked me more than he should. I didn’t yet have words for that knowledge—the awareness of a boy’s awareness.
In Algebra II, I recognized the snub-faced blond giggler and Hotdog Pencil Case guy. I took an empty desk in the back. Pencil Case moved from the front corner to a seat next to me. Near the end of class, Pencil Case, whose name turned out to be Micah, leaned across the aisle and placed a piece of paper onto my open book. On it was a drawing of hand, a plus sign, and a penis, followed by an equals sign and a bunch of jagged lines that I could only presume represented sperm. LESSON NUMBER ONE, he’d written, surrounded by a bunch of tiny hearts.
I was out the door and halfway to choir before the bell stopped ringing. I still hadn’t found my locker. Ms. Low, the choir director, had me sing a quick major scale before handing me a stack of sheet music and relegating me to the front row with the rest of the harmony-bearing altos. Tidbit was a Soprano II. Snubby Blonde, my schedule-twin, sat two seats to my left. “No one’s seen Marlena today, I take it,” said Ms. Low. She pointed at Snub Blonde, who scooted to the edge of her chair and sang the Ezekiel solo, her voice high and pitchy, squeezed through a tube.
The carnival in the cafeteria—a couple of guys playing catch with a carton of chocolate milk, a chain of girls straddling the table bench and French-braiding each other’s hair, four geeks cheering on one enraptured by a retro Game Boy, a wraparound line for the pizza station—about summed up the KHS universe. You could tell the popular kids by how rich they looked. I felt a stab of belated gratefulness for Concord, where your clothes couldn’t betray your financial status, and where everyone assumed everyone was rich, and if not rich then smart enough to be a scholarship student and therefore worthy of a kind of benevolent indifference. Marlena was sitting alone at a round table in the far corner. We sat with her, and a few minutes later Greg joined us, choosing the seat next to me.
“Chelsea sang Ezekiel today,” Tidbit said. So that was her name.
“Ew,” said Marlena, and then sang a perfect imitation of Chelsea’s nasal soprano.
We all got in line for the concession booth, where the school sold Yoo-hoos and blueberry muffins and cookies from a wholesale box to kids who didn’t bring packed lunches or feel like eating Salisbury steaks or the doughy pizza. “I’d recommend the Pop-Tarts,” said Marlena, which for some reason made us howl. Marlena was counting change out into the palm of my hand, trying to see if she had enough money for a Pop-Tart and a Yoo-hoo, when Snub Blonde bumped lightly into my back. A few dimes fell onto the floor. I glanced back at her and she met my eyes innocently, holding hands with Micah, the guy who’d left the drawing on my textbook in Algebra.
Marlena bent over to pick up the coins I’d dropped. Behind me, I heard Chelsea say, distinctly, “Junkie whore has a new girlfriend.”