“He’s, uh, really cute,” I said. This lying thing was getting easier and easier, wasn’t it? I’d slayed monsters in Oz—she’d just given birth to one.
She smiled, and weirdly, it wasn’t her usual cat-about-to-chomp-down-on-the-canary grin. It was a real smile—almost tender. She looked down at Dustin Jr. and stroked the top of his bald head gently with one finger. “I know,” she said blissfully. “It’s kind of crazy how much stuff can change in a month.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. I looked back at my locker. “Thanks for, uh, all this,” I said. For some reason, Madison was not moving.
She shrugged. “I mean, it was the least I could do, you know? I know we didn’t always get along, but I didn’t want for you to, like, die. Honestly . . .” She trailed off, chewing at one pink-manicured nail. I raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, I guess I was kind of a bitch to you sometimes,” she said in a rush. “I mean, you made it easy, you know? You were pretty shitty to me, too. And you kept going after my boyfriend.”
“I did not!” I protested.
She rolled her eyes. “Please,” she said. Her voice took on a high-pitched note. “‘Oh, Dustin, of course I’ll do your algebra. Oh, Dustin, let me tutor you.’ You weren’t even trying to be subtle.”
“He kept asking,” I said.
“Dustin’s not very smart,” Madison said. “But he knows a sucker when he sees one.”
I stared at her, not sure whether to laugh or hit her. Was Madison—in her own weird, mean, Madison way—trying to be friends with me? By making fun of her jock boyfriend? I’d always had a soft spot for Dustin—she was right about that. But she was also right that he wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
“Look,” she said, shrugging again. “When you disappeared like that I realized that you’re, like, one of the only interesting people around here. It was boring without you, Sal—Amy.” She popped her finger back in her mouth again, chewing away at her nail and grinning at me. “Gonna be late for homeroom. See you around,” she said, and sauntered away as Dustin Jr. trailed spit down her shoulder.
So that was pretty weird. But it was nowhere close to the weirdest thing that would happen to me that day.
NINE
Mr. Strachan had given my mom my old schedule, and in each classroom, the story was the same. A loud buzz of chatter would die down immediately as soon as I walked in the door. Everyone—and I mean everyone—would turn to look at me as I slunk toward my seat, doing my best to pretend I was invisible. A few seconds later, the talk would start again—this time, low whispers I wasn’t meant to hear, although I couldn’t help catching some of it. “Went crazy and . . .” “Totally ran away with some guy, just like her mom . . .” “Was blackout drunk for, like, the entire month and then lied about being in a hospital . . .” Okay, so nobody bought the hospital story. Too damn bad. I sat with my back straight and my eyes fixed on the front of the room, I wrote down my homework assignments, and I spoke when I was spoken to—which was never, conveniently leaving me plenty of time to think about how I was going to start my search for the shoes. Even my teachers wouldn’t meet my eyes. Whatever, I thought. It’s not like I had friends before either. At least this time no one was throwing food at me, or yelling “Get those shoes at Kmart, Salvation Amy?” as I tried to slink by. Being a total pariah had its definite advantages.
At lunch, I made my way through a cloud of silence that followed me across the room and exploded into hissing whispers the moment I passed. I kept my head high and my back straight, pretending I was walking across Dorothy’s banquet hall. I found an empty table by the window at the far corner of the cafeteria and pulled my sandwich out of the paper lunch bag my mom had packed for me. A scrap of paper fluttered to the floor, and I recognized my mom’s loopy cursive when I bent down to pick it up. I love you, Amy. I’m so glad you’re home.
Notes in my bag lunch? She was working her way up to Oscar material for her new role as Concerned and Caring Mom. But even as I tried to shrug off her effort, some part of me was seriously touched. I remembered the mom who’d baked a cake for my ninth birthday party and poured me a bucketful of Sprite to drown my sorrows when no one showed up. But I couldn’t think like that, I reminded myself. I couldn’t. I tucked the note in my jeans pocket.
And then, to my total surprise, two figures sank down into chairs on either side of me. “Hi, Amy,” Dustin said shyly. “Hi, again,” Madison said. “Lrrbbble,” added Dustin Jr.