“In a hurry?” Henne asks.
“Nope,” I say, trying another smile. She frowns again.
Finally, Ms. Fassbinder finishes typing and shoves back in her swivel chair. She opens a cabinet and easily locates the file with my name on it and then inserts the note my mom wrote just minutes ago.
I assume that Ms. Fassbinder will wait until I’m gone to compare today’s handwriting with that from previous days.
Turning around, I check the industrial clock mounted on the wall behind me. It’s 9:52 AM. The bell will ring in three minutes, and I’m nervous about that, for some reason. I’ve missed PE, study hall, and Pre-calc. Not bad.
Finally, the secretary offers me a hall pass and I take it, but not before noticing the tiny decorative cats affixed to her nails. It looks like they were innocently walking through bright red cement when it set and trapped them forever.
Poor cats.
I hoist my bag onto my right shoulder and bolt from the office. I speed walk across the commons—ignoring the “badly bruised” ankle noted on my doctor’s excuse—and start up the main hallway bordering the library. Halfway there, the end-of-third-period bell rings and I’m swimming upstream through distracted students, hand-holding couples, and ironclad cliques.
I try to avoid eye contact with everyone, but sometimes it’s impossible. Page Thomas, looking like a D-list celebrity on her stylist’s day off, approaches from the opposite direction and waves at me with what I consider to be a little too much enthusiasm. For a beat, I have no idea why she’s so happy to see me. I shift my bag to my left arm so that I can cordially wave back as we pass.
Then I remember.
Soon she will corner me and ask me to set her up with Brad, from math. Ugh. Who am I, Cupid?
Where the main hall intersects with the pathways to the math and science wings, Carley Lynch and her circle have the hallway blocked. They’re all in black and red uniforms, and a few squad members are actually taking notes as Carley speaks.
As I pass by, I notice a little Tigers mascot temporary tattoo high on Carley’s perfect right cheekbone. I imagine her staring in her mirror this morning before school, trying to get the tattoo just so, which makes me giggle to myself.
Carley sees my expression and her eyes narrow. She makes a show of scrutinizing my outfit, then proclaims, “Hey, loser, props on getting yourself into a semidecent outfit today. Did you buy it at Kmart?”
Clueless as to where my clothes come from or why Carley hates me so much, I feel a lump rise in my throat. Even though I have the benefit of knowing that I’ll grow more beautiful each day—and that Carley will never look better than she does right now—the comment stings. Just when I think I might lose it in front of the cheerleader cult, someone grabs my hand.
“Let’s go,” Jamie says softly before pulling me around the squad to my locker.
“I don’t get it,” I say quietly. Jamie shakes her head as she opens my locker door for me. I unload my book bag and take deep breaths in an effort to brush it off. While I do, Jamie leans against the locker next to mine, looking alarmingly like a hooker.
“Hey, Ma,” Jason Rodriguez says to Jamie as he passes. “Nice legs.”
“Thanks,” she says back with a twinkle in her eyes.
I look at my friend, thinking that I both admire her and worry about her, despite knowing how things will turn out. Jamie is effortlessly surfer-girl pretty, even though she’ll never hit the waves. Her chin-length dark blonde hair looks like she washed it in salt water and then let it dry in the warm sun, and her eyes are ocean green. She’s stick-model thin, tanned, and sporting bare legs under a very short skirt with no tights. In October.
Down the hall, Jason high-fives his friend; I don’t even want to know if it was about Jamie.
Jamie will always be that girl: the one boys love to flirt with—not date—and girls love to hate. And I will always be that girl’s only friend.
“How did it go at the doctor?” Jamie asks. “I can’t believe you fell again. You’re such a klutz.”
“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically. “The doctor was fine. He didn’t ask much so I didn’t have to lie.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah,” I say, retrieving my Spanish book. “How’s your day?”
“The worst!” Jamie begins as I slam my locker shut. “I got detention.”
“What for?”
“We had a History test and I didn’t study, so I gave Ryan Greene’s paper a tiny peek, and all of a sudden, Mr. Burgess was standing over me. Anyway, detention starts at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning, and I have to go for like two weeks. Doesn’t that seem a little unfair to you?”