“Mr. Lachance and Miss Duchamp,” said Mr. Dillon after a lengthy pause, “a word outside.”
Freddy didn’t dare look at the other students as she shuffled out into the hallway. The giggling was starting again, though it may have counted as tittering now. It didn’t sound very friendly.
Mr. Dillon closed the door firmly on the sneering class and looked down his nose at Freddy and Josiah. “Miss Duchamp,” he said, “I’m surprised at you. You were a model student last year.”
Josiah gave a quiet but audible snort, drawing Mr. Dillon’s gaze. “Are you going to be a disruptive influence?”
“No,” said Josiah.
“Then your behaviour today won’t be repeated?” said Mr. Dillon.
“No,” said Josiah.
“I’m willing to put it down to start-of-semester high spirits,” Mr. Dillon told them with a condescending generosity that made Freddy cringe. “As long as it doesn’t happen again. And it won’t, will it? Miss Duchamp?”
Freddy shook her head. She knew her face was burning. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the other two had felt the heat radiating from her.
“Mr. Lachance?” said Mr. Dillon.
“It won’t happen again,” said Josiah.
“Then let’s return to the class,” their teacher said. He opened the door.
As they moved back to their seats, Freddy sneaked a glance at Josiah. He was, to her dismay, making the same face Mel made when she had just told an outrageous lie and got away with it. He was going to keep on doing it. I’ll just keep my mouth shut, thought Freddy. This was an accident. Everybody knows I don’t say things like that. She covered her face with her hands and pretended not to notice that as Mr. Dillon continued his lecture, Josiah was sniggering at almost every sentence. There were twenty-five minutes left in the class. Freddy was reasonably certain they wouldn’t pass for years.
*
When the bell rang several agonising decades later, Freddy gathered up her books and rushed out of the room before most of the students had a chance to rise to their feet. Science was next. After English, she expected to find it soothing. She took a seat at the end of one of the lab benches and tried to look inconspicuous. No one sat next to her, not even Rochelle, who had managed to get a seat at a bench already occupied by three boys. That was fine with Freddy.
The teacher, Ms. Treadwell, was in the middle of handing out textbooks when the classroom door opened. “Sorry,” said Josiah. “Got turned around in the hallway.”
Knowing what was coming, Freddy slowly lifted her notebook until it hid her face. There were only five open seats in the classroom, and four were at a completely unoccupied bench front and centre.
“Is this teacher as hopeless as the last one?” asked Josiah as he slid onto the stool next to hers. “She looks as if she may be. It’s the general lack of chin.”
Heads were turning again. Freddy said as quietly as she could, “Don’t you ever whisper?”
“What for?” said Josiah. “These aren’t state secrets. Besides, I need some way of distracting myself from the unbearable excitement of rolling marbles down an inclined plane.”
A textbook soared over Josiah’s shoulder and thumped onto the lab bench in front of him. He turned in time to see Ms. Treadwell smiling innocently as she handed Freddy her own book. “How brave of you to volunteer for the first presentation of the year,” she said to Josiah. “Due next Monday. Be sure there are marbles and an inclined plane in it somewhere. As for the rest … surprise me.”
Freddy decided that she wanted to be Ms. Treadwell when she grew up. It was too bad about the chin.
She thought Ms. Treadwell had found the key to dealing with Josiah. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the period, though he did cast their teacher the occasional respectful glance. It was possible Freddy was going to be able to get through the day without breaking camouflage again. No one could say it was her fault Josiah was sitting next to her.
At the bell, she shot out into the hallway once more. She wasn’t fast enough this time. “I think you’re trying to avoid me,” said Josiah, who was taller than she was and could walk faster as well.
“No,” Freddy lied.
He cast his eyes to the heavens. “Yesterday, you were a duckling; I couldn’t get rid of you. Now I have the plague, do I? What’s changed?”
Freddy quickened her pace as they headed up the stairs to the third floor. “Haven’t you ever been to high school before?”
“Five or six hundred thousand times,” said Josiah.
“Oh, obviously,” said Freddy, practically running out into the hallway once more. “Stop following me.”
“I’m not,” said Josiah. “You’re following me.”
“I’m not—” Freddy was starting when the hideous truth hit her. They came to a stop together at the door to their math classroom.
“I think someone’s given me your schedule,” said Josiah. “It’s worrying.”
She made sure to let him sit down first so she could take a seat on the other side of the classroom. She couldn’t look at him as she did. It’s not really his fault. He didn’t make me say that thing in English.
Yes, he did, said another part of her brain. Freddy sometimes worried about the fact that her brain tended to argue with itself.
No, he didn’t. You said it yourself, and now you’re taking it out on him, aren’t you? You weren’t falling all over yourself to hide from him yesterday.
Yesterday wasn’t school, the rebellious bit of Freddy’s brain said in agony, and that really seemed to be it. All the rules were different at school.
She liked math. It seemed unfair when Roland turned up in the class for the second year in a row, and even more unfair when Cathy came in behind him. Neither of them looked at her, though she noticed Roland cast Josiah a startled glance. She was a little surprised to see Roland pick a seat nearly as far from Josiah’s as hers was. It could have been that he was just looking for somewhere he and his interpreter could sit together, but she didn’t think so. There was plenty of space around Josiah.
Ms. Liu was a new teacher; she looked almost too young to be out of high school herself. She stammered through her introductory remarks, then set them two pages of problems and went to hide behind her desk. The problems were basic algebra. Freddy found them so easy that she forgot to be cautious and finished them in ten minutes. Then she had to spend twenty more pretending she was still working. She didn’t want to be like Renata Williams, who got A’s in everything and was always waving her arm in the air whenever a teacher asked a question. The year before, Freddy had seen a bunch of boys trail Renata home from school, throwing pebbles at her and awarding themselves points when they hit her butt.
“The last time I was in grade nine,” said Josiah, who had to have studied projection at some point, “we spent three blessed months on this nonsense. If that happens here, there’s going to be blood.”