Freddy nodded as gently as she could. Something about what Josiah had just said didn’t seem quite right, but she felt too ill to think about it much.
Science passed in a blur, and the bell rang for lunch. She thought Josiah must have been feeling genuinely bad about what had happened to her, as instead of stalking off on his own and going to raise havoc somewhere during the lunch break, he walked to her locker with her, then to the cafeteria. Freddy wondered afterwards whether she would have let him if she hadn’t been distracted by the thudding in her head. She didn’t think she would have sat at his table, which was where he steered her. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing in the cafeteria; she didn’t feel well enough to eat.
Freddy laid her head down on the table as Josiah went off to get his lunch. When she raised it again, Roland was there, glaring. “You’re crazy.”
She stared at him through the thudding.
“Are you doing it just because I told you not to?” demanded Roland. “Because that’s so stupid of you.”
“Am I doing what?” Freddy knew she was mad at Roland, but she wasn’t sure why just now. She was starting to wonder if that nurse had really understood what she was doing.
“Eating lunch with him,” said Roland, nodding at Josiah, who was just returning to the table.
“Oh, give her a break, Growly,” said Josiah. “She hit her head on the wall in gym class. Torture her when her headache’s gone, which, from the looks of it, won’t be for a week or so.”
Roland’s expression changed a bit. Freddy saw the contempt shift away, replaced by grudging concern. After a pause, he said, “Are you okay?”
All the pariahs at this school are asking me that, thought Freddy. “I think so.”
“I could take you home,” he said, grimacing.
“How happy you sound,” she said. “No. I don’t have band today, so I should be all right as long as no one screams in my ear.”
“Fine,” said Roland, but he stopped nagging her about Josiah. He did eat lunch with the two of them, though. Freddy could feel what a bad idea this was. All sorts of invisible lines were being crossed. She even saw Todd and Marcus, over in the section of the cafeteria frequented by the Deaf kids, watching Roland in what looked like surprise. Rochelle was here, too. Freddy thought Rochelle was biding her time.
The day should really have got better after that. It shouldn’t have been possible for things to worsen after she had been thrown into a wall and planted at the weird table during lunch. But it seemed to be turning into what Mel called a Murphy’s day: a day on which whatever could go wrong not only did go wrong but went wrong in descending levels of horror.
She, Roland, and Josiah arrived at math class together. It was a coincidence, as they had separated after lunch, but word had got around. The class’s hostility wasn’t aimed only at Josiah this time. When Ms. Liu asked Roland to work out a problem on the whiteboard, Jumbo Jim said loudly, “Do us some impossible math!” and almost everybody laughed. Cathy was practically in hysterics. Freddy couldn’t see what was so funny. Roland, in the meantime, had been facing away from the class and hadn’t even noticed the laughter. “Settle down,” said Ms. Liu ineffectually. Someone threw a balled-up piece of paper at Roland; another landed on Freddy’s desk. Cathy, still laughing, leaned over towards Freddy and said in her usual piercing voice, “Your stepbrother is a spaz, isn’t he?” Freddy could only blink at her in incomprehension. Roland hadn’t done anything weird at all.
It was as if the whole school had caught some kind of airborne malevolence. Freddy was bombarded with balls of paper all through the class. So were Josiah and Roland, but most of them seemed to be aimed at Freddy. Drama should have been a relief, and Freddy thought it would be, right up until the moment Mr. Singh said, “All right, guys, we’re still working on improv today. We’re going to play a game called ‘Freeze.’ Freddy and Josiah, why don’t you come start us off?”
She would have wondered how on earth he had come to pick the two of them, but it was a Murphy’s day, so he couldn’t have picked anybody else. Freddy felt the class’s focus narrow, become more pure. When Mr. Singh called for a location and a situation, Freddy wasn’t surprised when someone sang out immediately, “A romantic dinner at a restaurant.”
“Perfect!” said Mr. Singh, ignoring the snickers.
“Freeze” involved two people acting out a scene. Eventually, someone would call, “Freeze,” and replace one of the actors, then continue with a different situation. Freddy had played the game last year; it could be fun. It wasn’t going to be fun today. Trying to ignore her pounding head, Freddy began to saw at an imaginary steak. “My,” she said stiffly, “how romantic this is.”
Josiah took his cue from her, not quite in the way she had expected. “Indeed,” he said, his voice completely without tone. “How happy I am that we, two sentient robots, are enjoying this meal of circuit boards and fibre in each other’s presence. We are very much in love.”
“I concur,” said Freddy. “We are teaching each other about emotion. Oh, joy. Oh, bliss.”
“Kiss her,” said someone from near the back of the group, and the others laughed. Freddy wasn’t expecting a “freeze” any time soon.
“There is a thing called kissing of which I have heard,” said Josiah. “I was thinking of trying it with you. However, I feel there is no need. We can express our feelings for each other in a much more useful way.”
“Do tell me about this more useful way,” said Freddy.
“We can kill all the humans,” said Josiah. “Let us start with the other people in this restaurant.”
He stood up, cradling an imaginary machine gun, and began to mow down the members of the class. Oh well, thought Freddy. Everything had gone terrible, anyway. “I have grenades,” she announced, and lobbed one directly at the teacher.
*
Ten minutes later, as the two of them sat on plastic chairs outside the vice principal’s office, Freddy wished her ice hadn’t all melted hours ago. The thumping in her head had reached epic proportions.
“Do you think that was enough for a suspension?” asked Josiah. “I’ve been angling for a suspension since the first day of school.”
“I think we shouldn’t have pretended to kill the entire class,” said Freddy, but she was finding it hard to care.
The vice principal, Mr. Daniels, gave them a lecture on appropriate behaviour. Freddy wasn’t listening. At some point, the lecture stopped, and the nurse was called into the office. There were more flicking lights. “She’s still tracking okay,” said the nurse. “I think she’d better go home. Will your mum be able to come pick you up, honey?”
Freddy heard herself grate out a laugh. She couldn’t remember the last time her mum had arrived home from work before she had gone to bed.