Mr. Valk called on him just before the bell rang. “Samir,” he said.
Half his teachers called him Samir even when no one else did. Maybe they thought it was more formal. Or they meant to command his attention, like calling a child by both first and middle names. Or they wanted to be sure he never forgot that he was different from his classmates. The Henrys and Christophers. The Lilys and Julias.
Mr. Valk tipped his pen in the direction of the empty desk next to Sam’s. “Where’s Miel this morning?” he asked, as though Sam was responsible for whether she showed up to class.
Sam opened his book to the page chalked on the board. “I don’t know.”
At the end of the fifty minutes, Ivy Bonner ducked into the classroom, saying Miel was sick and that she was picking up her assignments.
So now Ivy was Miel’s best friend. That hadn’t taken long. That made sense though. Miel was their kind of pretty. Not perfect and polished, not like Nina Chan, one of the girls who knew as well as Sam that if they wanted this town to love them, they’d have to give themselves nicknames; Nina had been crowned Pumpkin Queen last year, her curls so coated in hairspray they looked varnished. Or even like Adair Lewis, who always danced the part of the sugar plum fairy at the community theater each Christmas; she stood up straight as a cypress tree, and had her hair, almost as pale as her skin, always rolled into a bun with no stray pieces.
No, Miel was like the Bonner girls. She was dark where they were pale, her hair brown-black while theirs came in all shades of red. But they were both a little careless, unpolished, half the time without their shoes and half the time wearing their good shoes into the dirt. No makeup except for some brushstroke of bright color, the Bonner sisters’ pine-green eyeshadow or the plum-colored lipstick Miel sometimes wore.
It made him wonder how many other best friends Miel had on standby. Maybe it’d been all four of the Bonner sisters the whole time, and he’d just been too dense to notice.
Outside Mr. Valk’s room, his classmates lined the hallway, boys mostly, watching Ivy and probably trying to work out if she’d gone up one or two cup sizes since she’d gone to this school.
That was a difference between Miel and the Bonner girls. Miel had shed her baby fat a little at a time, like each season was water, wearing her down, cutting her into a different shape. But the Bonner girls started out bony, all jutting elbows and knees so skinny the sharp round of the cap showed, and each year filled out a little more. Boys had already been looking at Ivy when she left school, but those who hadn’t seen her up close since then wore their wonder on their faces, their shock at how her hips and her breasts now seemed as round and soft as her face.
Two seniors—Sam thought one had the last name Reese, but the second was a transfer he didn’t know—stood against the lockers. They didn’t hide their survey of Ivy’s sweater and skirt and tights as she made her slow walk down the hall.
“Is she registering?” the transfer asked Reese.
“She’s picking up stuff for another girl,” Reese said.
“Another girl who looks like that?”
That. Sam felt the first flick of anger clawing its way down his arms.
“No,” Reese said. “Miel.”
“Who?”
“You pay attention to anything I say?” Reese asked. “Miel. The girl with the wet skirt.”
“Huh?”
“Her skirt,” Reese said. “It’s always wet.”
For the first time since Sam noticed them, the transfer looked away from Ivy and at Reese.
“Look sometime,” Reese said. “Been that way since she came out of the water tower.”
The transfer held his tongue against his bottom teeth, and Sam looked away. The gesture repulsed him, and at the same time seeing it felt like the breach of some rule, like walking in on a guy masturbating and then not backing right out of the room.
Reese’s laugh was low, a half-grunt.
“What?” the transfer asked.
“Nothing,” Reese said. “Just makes you wonder if she’s always wet anywhere else, doesn’t it?”
Sam felt the part of him trying to hold him back. He registered it, like the brush of fingers on his shoulder. But it couldn’t stand up to that clawing feeling that now made its way up to the back of his neck.
He grabbed Reese by his jacket, shoved him against the locker hard enough that the back of his head hit the metal.
“What the hell?” the transfer said, grabbing at the back of Sam’s shirt.
Sam jerked out of his hold.
Reese looked scared for a second. Then his lip drew back, and he looked more offended that Sam was touching him.
Sam pressed his forearm against Reese’s throat, and the fear rushed back into his face.
“Take it back,” Sam said.
The transfer caught the back of Sam’s collar and pulled him off Reese. Then there was the shout of a teacher, pulling them all apart, and then walking them to the vice principal’s office with everyone watching.