“Today is September twenty-seventh,” said Mel, hanging nearly upside down over the bannister. “Cuerva Lachance mentioned the date. Something is supposedly happening today.”
Freddy had forgotten. Lately, she had forgotten most things besides how angry she was at Roland. “We don’t know what.”
“I’m going to keep my eyeballs peeled,” Mel told her, “but not right now, since there’s a math test I have to ace first.”
Shrugging, Freddy opened the door. Roland was standing on the porch, doing his thundercloud act.
When Roland had trailed her to school on Friday, Freddy had thought it was just because he’d got up late and coincidentally set off at the same time she had. It was annoying, but they did live in the same house. When he’d followed her home on the same day, she’d begun to suspect something, and when he’d cancelled his RPG on Sunday so he could keep track of her every move, she’d known: he was tagging after her to prevent her from talking to Josiah. She had been choked silent by the anger again. What the hell was his problem? He was watching Mel as well, but when Mel’s friends Clara and Jonathan had come over and the three of them had started devising ways to drop an egg from the school roof without breaking it, Roland had shifted his attention entirely to Freddy. If he’d liked her, she could almost have forgiven him, but he so clearly didn’t that she’d spent the weekend getting more and more impotently furious with him. It didn’t help that he was doing his usual neat/messy thing as he followed her around, tidying up everywhere he went but also causing things to sag and fall over and get mixed together hopelessly. There was no distraction from him. Mum and Jordan were out, and Mel and her friends were busy.
On Monday, he’d followed her to school again. He’d sat next to her in math class. He’d followed her home. She’d tried to slip away before he was out of his afternoon social studies class, but he’d found her anyway. All evening, he had watched her.
Josiah had noticed. He was rolling his eyes a lot in Roland’s presence. At one point on Monday, he’d approached Freddy in the hallway, looked both ways in an exaggerated fashion, and whispered so loudly that everybody within twenty feet of him had stopped to listen, “I would ask you what we’re doing today in science, but I’m afraid of the fiery glower of doom.” Then he’d stalked away, making little circles around his right ear with his index finger. Freddy had seen Rochelle staring and gone off to hide in a bathroom stall for a bit.
So to find Roland waiting for her on the porch this morning was pretty close to being the last straw. Fleetingly, she thought, If Mum weren’t gone again, I would tell her about this, but that was beside the point, wasn’t it? She jammed a hand into her pocket, wrapped it around her key, briefly wished she had some mysterious lock to try it in, and pushed past Roland. She heard him fall in behind her as she crossed the yard.
It all became even more fun when Josiah joined them. “Oh, hello,” he said. “Will you look at this? I walk to school the same way you do, plus at the same time. You’d think I would be sensitive to Mr. Growly’s feelings and arrange things otherwise, but no.”
“Who’s a duckling now?” said Freddy, though she wasn’t unhappy to see him. Listening to Josiah abuse the world was better than just feeling Roland hate her silently.
Roland dealt with it by pretending Josiah wasn’t there. Freddy did notice, however, that he kept arranging to walk between them. Her anger at him ratcheted up another notch.
She should have known from its beginning that the day would keep getting steadily worse. Rochelle and Cathy were out in front of the school, surrounded by boys, when Freddy turned up with Roland and Josiah. She thought she heard at least one “Oh my God!” from Cathy. Keith managed to bump into both Josiah and Roland as they moved towards the doors. Then, generously, he punched Freddy’s backpack, sending her staggering into the side of the school. She had to stand for quite a while with her hand wrapped around the key. I’m not under the radar any more, I don’t think. When did that happen?
Mr. Dillon’s class would have given her a chance to shrink into a corner and disappear for a bit, but this was one of her PE days. It was still volleyball this week. Freddy hated volleyball. She cringed every time someone spiked the ball over the net at her. The other kids groaned when she was assigned to their team. Today, one of the teams ended up with both her and Josiah, and Michelle, who was five foot seven and athletic, complained loudly to Mr. Lim.
“You know,” said Josiah to her as they watched their teammate abusing them, “I’m pretty good at volleyball.”
“Maybe if you played it properly instead of trying to sabotage every game,” said Freddy sadly. She might as well talk to him. The damage had already been done.
The class took on the texture of a nightmare. Keith was on her team. Every time the rotation put her in front of him, she squirmed. She could feel him watching her. But when he finally knocked her down, she wasn’t expecting it; he was supposed to be all the way across the court. All she remembered afterwards was seeing the ball coming straight for her head and, instead of bringing her hands up to meet it, ducking. She thought there had been a squeal from Michelle. Then she had been thumped off her feet, backwards into the wall.
There were flashing lights dancing all around the gym. Somewhere, someone was saying, “Sorry, Mr. Lim … I didn’t see her! She’s so teeny.” Someone else barked, “Will you shut up laughing? There’s something wrong with Freddy.” She thought Josiah was there behind the dancing lights, and perhaps Chin and Jane. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. The room was coming more into focus, and the voices were starting to make sense again.
“Just hang on, Freddy. The nurse is on her way,” said Mr. Lim.
Freddy shook her head. “I’m okay.”
But she ended up in the nurse’s office anyway. The nurse flicked a light into and out of her eyes and made her track a finger as she moved it briskly back and forth in front of Freddy’s face. “I think you’ve escaped a concussion this time,” she said, “but if you feel sleepy or dizzy, come back here right away, understand?” She gave Freddy a plastic bag with lumps of ice in it and told her to hold it against the bump on the back of her head. Then she made Freddy take a painkiller and sent her to science class. Freddy’s head was throbbing sickly as she slipped onto her stool.
For the first time since she had met him, Josiah looked worried. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “I should have rem—I should have known Keith was going to do that.”