I shake it off and Jamie rattles on while we move toward Spanish. We’re nearly the same height today because I’m in high boots, but she walks taller, with confidence, and meets the eyes of passing students. I watch their shoes as they go by, imagining who might be wearing them.
White cross-trainers with laces and swoosh that exactly match the school’s crimson?
Too easy.
Cheerleader.
Adidas tennis shoes with athletic socks?
Male soccer player in the off-season (noticed the hairy legs).
Are those bedroom slippers? Come on.
Ooh, here come some cute red boots. They’re Western meets modern, and I want to borrow them. Who could it be? Maybe next year’s homecoming queen, Lisa Something? She’s trendy.
Unable to stand the suspense, I look up to find that I’m wrong. The girl in the boots is Hannah Wright. I can’t help but smile, because Hannah’s future is bright: in just a few years, she’ll be a country superstar.
Too bad I can’t tell her.
Back to my game, I see brown Converse All Stars coming toward me—actually head-on toward me—but before impact or identification, Jamie tugs me out of the way. We’ve made it to the Spanish corridor.
“Were you playing that stupid foot game again?” she asks, dropping my arm.
I shrug in response.
“Well, you should watch where you’re going. You almost got run down by that weirdo,” she says as we walk into Ms. Garcia’s classroom.
“What weirdo?” I ask, intrigued. This morning’s note mentioned nothing about a weirdo.
“That weird guy you were talking to during the fire drill. Jake. No, Jack. Lance? Whatever. You know, the guy who just moved here. He looked like he wanted to talk to you just now, but you were too busy looking at his feet. It doesn’t matter, because you shouldn’t be associating with weirdos. You’re already weird enough as is.”
Jamie turns and gives me a silly grin before the bell rings and ends our conversation.
When Ms. Garcia grabs a dry-erase marker and begins writing today’s class agenda, I lean over and whisper gently to my best friend.
“Jamie, you look pretty today.”
“Thanks, London,” she says with a soft smile before turning in her seat toward Anthony Olsen, who is very openly eyeballing her legs.
5
It wasn’t a dream: I wasn’t asleep.
Almost, but not quite.
There, in that space between resting and REM, the image slammed into my head like a freight train. Now I’m sitting up straight, blinking furiously as if that will make my eyes adjust more quickly, breathing heavily, and sweating even though the heater’s turned down low, as it will be every night for as long as I live here.
Like that gory photo in my Anatomy book that I’ll encounter in a few months and can’t stop thinking about already, the memory won’t go away.
I want to walk down the hall and crawl into bed with my mom.
Instead, I try to self-soothe.
I take at least five deep, calming breaths, maybe more. I identify every dark shape in the room as nonthreatening. Finally, I burrow back inside the still-warm cocoon between two oversized pillows that form an upside-down V at the top of my bed.
Feeling a little better, I trick my brain into thinking about other things. The annoying doctor this morning; Jamie flirting with Jason; Jamie flirting with Anthony. White shoes, red boots, silly slippers, black shoes, brown sneakers…