Delaney snickers as I step out of the SUV and slide on an icy patch of asphalt. I fumble with my violin case, wondering why I even brought the dang thing. I must look like a doofus (Mama’s word for me). I wonder what word Delaney would use—something different, perhaps, but meaning the same. I barely have time to give Ness a hug and kiss, what with Delaney tugging on my arm and bossing me around.
“You’ll be right fine, Ness. Remember what I told you. Be a good girl. Have fun.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” Delaney says, waving at Melissa as she pulls out. “If you don’t get moving, we’ll both be late.”
I watch the SUV until it disappears, almost jumping out of my skin when a car horn blares behind me. I scurry up onto the sidewalk. Delaney pokes me in the chest.
“And don’t forget—you’re Carey Blackburn, not Benskin. Got it?”
Easy enough. Ever since the woods, I’ve been Carey Blackburn.
Saint Joseph, look out for my little sister today. Let the other girls be nice to her and let her make some friends. Please let it be a day of smiles. Her life’s been hard enough.
On beans I pray.
I take a deep breath and shift the knapsack strap so it’s no longer biting into my shoulder. My violin has a strap, too, superglued onto its case by Mama. I turn to Delaney, all prepared for her mocking words and breathy look of annoyance.
But she’s already gone.
I tug off the wool hat with the tassel on top (the tassel reminds me of saplings sprouting early) and stuff it into my coat pocket. I can only imagine what my hair looks like. I think of Delaney, hatless this morning, her hair perfectly swooped and curled.
Surreptitiously, I wipe the moisture from my upper lip. Flat hair (but clean), face glistening, lugging a scuffed violin case that screams secondhand . . . Delaney’s right. It’s hopeless.
Get a grip. All you have to do is ask someone where to go. What’s wrong with you? The woods at night were worse than this.
I follow a group of boys who are laughing and elbowing one another through the front doors, swept up like muskie in a strong current. Against the wall stands a formidable glass case filled with statues—trophies—and plaques. The glass is as clean as a mirror, and I catch myself, cheeks pinked, mouth frozen in an O like the choral mouths of Renaissance angels—or fish face. I press my lips together, swallow hard.
The hallway stretches infinitely to the left and right, with a staircase on either side of the glass case, the polished banisters curving up to the second floor.
“Move it. You’re blocking the way.”
A guy who must be a senior, going by his size and voice, pushes through the throng. I step backward as the river of faces whitewater by. I could kill Delaney on the spot, for two reasons: First, because she’s “ditched” me (her word) on my first ever day of school, and, second, because I’m actually scanning faces for a glimpse of her Barbie-doll good looks and peacock strut, since, whether I like it or not, she’s all I’ve got.
Pathetic. (My word.) But I’m sure she’d agree.
So many strange faces.
We gawk at one another like wild animals and humans, only I’m not sure who’s who.
Too many faces.
I swallow down the breakfast threatening to rise, pleading with myself, only in Mama’s voice.
That’s all you need, child, to be known forevermore as Puke Girl. Buck up! Life ain’t no picnic!
“Are you lost?”
I concentrate on his face as it slips from two back into one. I will myself to breathe.
A boy! I’m talking to a boy.
“Do-dooo I look lost?”
He cracks a smile.
“Actually, yeah. You have that befuddled, new-girl look on your face.”
I think of the girl in the glass case, her eyes wider than a cornered pheasant’s. His voice is steady as a handle, so I hold on to it, and he grins at me, holding my arm at the elbow to steady me.
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m a sophomore,” I manage to say, “and I have no idea where to go.”
“Do you know your homeroom number?”
I shake my head no.
“The teacher’s name?”
That I do know.
“Mrs. Hadley,” I say. “Do you know where she is?”
“I had her for homeroom last year. C’mon. I’ll take you.”
“Won’t I make you late?”
“You,” he says, eyes shining like Nessa’s when she’s up to no good, “will be my excuse. A decent one, for a change.”
Without asking, he untangles me from my knapsack and hefts it over his shoulder. “Don’t forget your violin.”
I grab the handle tighter and he leads the way, parting the sea of students, some of whom smile or wave at him.
“Watch where you’re going!” a girl with glasses says as the neck of the violin case pokes her in the side.
“Sorry,” I mumble. Why did I bring this clunky thing with me? The hallway trickles down to a few stragglers, and I jump higher than a rabbit when a bell explodes above us.
“That’s the warning bell. No worries. We’re almost there.”
I follow him like Shorty follows Nessa, and realizing this, I feel the heat creeping into my cheeks. Get a grip! I almost walk past the door, but he grabs my upper arm.
“This is your door. Second one from the end, that’s how you remember. Mrs. Hadley will assign you a student buddy to get you to your classes. That’s how she rolls.”
He sticks out his hand. “Ryan Shipley, vice prez of the junior class and all-around shepherd of the lost and befuddled.”
I shake his hand, and he looks at me like he’s waiting for something.
“Hey, Ry!”
“Hey, Travis.”
I stand there like a bump on a log.
“Carey,” he says for me, “Blackburn. Right?”
It’s as if a gust of Hundred Acre wind set the trees rattling in their skins of ice, only it’s my bones rattling. Gran called the feeling “someone walking over your grave”.
And then it’s gone. He drops my hand. I want to ask him how he knew. But the words won’t come.
“Good luck, Carey,” he says, turning to grin at the woman who appears in the doorway, her lips pursed like Nessa’s after her first-ever sip of grapefruit juice. (Pink, of course. But still.)
“Aren’t you late for class, Mr. Shipley?”
“I sure am, but for good reason: I took it upon myself to deliver this new girl into your capable hands.” He winks at me.
I listen to the exchange, note the begrudging affection in her voice, and, his attention diverted, I stare at him openly. He’s the first boy I’ve ever touched, let alone talked to. I want to reach out and touch his hair. Does boy hair feel different from girl hair? I like his face. I see both clouds and suns.
“Well, that’s a valid excuse, although I do believe you find too many of them, Mr. Shipley,” she says, giving me a sidelong glance and then looking longer, like people have ever since I got here, like they can’t stop looking. She pulls her eyes from mine and tilts her head at Ryan. Her chalky finger stabs the air.
“I’m sure there’s more than chivalry going on here. You’d better skedaddle.”
She strides to her desk and returns with a yellow slip of paper. “Now, shoo.”
“You’re a hard woman, Mrs. Hadley,” he says, winking at her this time.
“Oh, shoo!”
He sprints down the hallway, slides to a stop at the staircase, then takes the stairs two at a time.
“And you are?” Mrs. Hadley peers down at me, her face all business.
“Carey Blackburn.”
“Ah, Carey. We’ve been expecting you.”
I peer through the doorway, where a gaggle of girls giggle and whisper. Delaney scowls from their midst.
“Nice boy, Ryan Shipley,” Mrs. Hadley says, watching my face.
The heat creeps up my neck as I nod in agreement.
“Del
aney Benskin would agree.”
I glance back at Delaney, who shoots me the evil eye.
“Come on in and find a seat.” Mrs. Hadley guides me through the door with her hand on my back. My elbow still feels warm where Ryan held it. “When you’re seated, I’ll make the introductions.”
I keep my head low as I walk the aisle farthest from Delaney. I feel like I’m walking the gauntlet. More giggles when my violin case bumps between my thighs and I trip, catching myself on the end of the desk of a skinny girl with metal things on her teeth.
I choose the desk in the back corner, safe as a key in a hollow tree. I stash the violin case behind my chair and drop my knapsack on the floor next to me, not even remembering that Ryan gave it back to me.
“Delaney liked Ryan all last year. And he doesn’t even hang out with the pops.”
She’s small, like the girls who dance on beams and do backflips on weekend television.
“The pops?”
“The popular kids. Ryan does his own thing. I know he’s into astronomy. Last year, he built his very own telescope! Just in time to see the Geminid meteor shower. He said it was ah-mazing”
I note her rosy cheeks, the caramel freckles, the screaming red hair, and the whitest skin I’ve ever seen on a living person. She can’t be much older than Jenessa, and yet there she sits in the desk next to mine.
“You’re Carey, obviously,” she says. “Mrs. Hadley told us you’d be joining the class. I’m Courtney Macleod, your student buddy. But they call me ‘Pixie’ ”—she makes a sweeping gesture that encompasses her elfin stature—“because of my particular situation. I also have the misfortune of being the smartest twelve-year-old in the state of Tennessee—or maybe it’s the shortest. I can never remember, exactly.”
I giggle, liking her instantly.
“Carey Blackburn,” I whisper, offering my hand like Ryan offered his. “I’m fourteen and I tested as a seventeen-year-old. They skipped me a year.”
I don’t tell her that I’m feeling right better about it, after meeting her.
Courtney grins. “Us geeks need to stick together. Of course, I mean geeks in the nicest way. Another plus is that Delaney despises me,” she says wickedly.
“An added bonus.”
“For sure . . .”
Pixie’s voice trails off as she all-out stares at me.
Is there something on my face? Am I doing something uncool without realizing it?
“What?” I whisper.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. But you have to be the most beautiful girl I’ve seen outside of a magazine. It’s hard not to stare. Look. Everyone’s doing it.”
I look up and into so many pairs of eyes, I want to shrink myself into a river mink and hide at the bottom of my knapsack. Delaney’s friends quickly look away. She fumes.
“You must be used to it. I bet people have been doing it your entire life.”
I smile weakly.
“Not that I’m gay or anything,” Pixie adds quickly. “It’s just impossible not to notice.”
Gay? Does she mean happy? I make a mental note to ask Melissa later.
Mrs. Hadley clears her throat loudly in our direction and then addresses the students.
“People, please welcome Carey Blackburn to the sophomore class.”
All eyes stare at me openly now. Delaney and her friends feign disinterest, busying themselves with textbooks, notebooks, and pens.
“Class will come to order. Carey, this is both your homeroom and first-period English. Do you have your book with you?”
I ignore the whispers as I dig through my knapsack for The Winter’s Tale, my nervous hands sending other texts skating across the floor. The girls titter. Pixie uses her foot to herd the wayward books, pushing them next to my chair. I hold up my copy, the front cover pressed with the dusty tread of Pixie’s combat boot.
“Good,” Mrs. Hadley says. “Delaney, please read aloud from where we left off.”
“ ‘Now, my fairest friend, I would I had some flowers of the spring that might become your time of day . . .’ ”
Her voice betrays none of the drama and angst she subjects us to at home. As she reads, I pick up the spilled books and shove them back into my knapsack, squishing my bag lunch, but I don’t care. Pixie juts her head toward the knapsack.
“Didn’t anyone point out your locker?”
I shake my head no. I don’t tell her that I don’t know what a locker is. I bet Delaney and her ladies-in-waiting would get a good laugh out of that.
“I’ll show you after class,” she says.
I pick up my book and hide behind it, pretending to follow along, but the words just blur across the page. I try to adjust to the yellowish light humming from the long overhead bulbs. I feel the walls pressing in, the manufactured quiet stifling. I can smell the human animal: breath, hair, perfume, gum, and even cigarette smoke. I can’t breathe. I feel like one of Nessa’s chipmunks pressed to the back of the rusty birdcage while healing from puncture wounds or a snapped leg.
I peek at Pixie. She mouths the words of The Winter’s Tale by heart, eyes closed, her love for someone named Shakespeare more than obvious. Shakespeare’s words sound like a foreign language to me, a language everyone seems to know except me.
“Don’t you just love Perdita,” she says, opening one eye. “Have you ever seen the painting by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys? She has flaming red hair, just like mine.”
I shake my head no.
“In a dream, Hermione appears to Antigonus and says, ‘Name your child Perdita.’ It means ‘loss,’ or ‘the lost she.’ They leave the infant on a seacoast, but a shepherd takes her in and raises her. Later in life, it turns out she’s the princess of Sicily. Can you believe it? She grew up thinking she was one person, only to find out she’s another.”
The princess of Beans. Just like me.
“The painting’s in my art book at home. I’ll bring it in so you can see.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.”
No one told me it could happen when you least expect it, without a plan, a map, or a prayer to Saint Joseph.
A friend. I’ve actually made a friend.
This time, it’s Melissa’s voice I hear.
Good things come to those who let them in. All you have to do is take a chance.
After class, I follow Pixie to the office, where she stands on her tiptoes in an attempt to see over the counter, banging her palm three times on a round metal bell. She turns to me, sighing.
“You can see why I nag my mother to let me wear heels. She thinks I’m trying to grow up too fast. I just want to see over counters.”
She’s a piece of work, as Mama would say.
“Courtney Macleod. What can I do for you?”
A sleek woman approaches, looking like what Delaney would call “superhip.” I immediately covet her coal black boots, formfitting and zipped to her thighs.
I’d love to have me a pair of them boots.
Pixie gestures toward me. “This is Carey Blackburn. She needs a lock and a locker assignment.”
The woman stares at me for a moment, before she catches herself and clears her throat.
“Ah, the new girl. Mr. Alpert told me to be on the lookout for you, Carey. Nice to meet you.”
She extends her hand, and now I’m the one staring. Her nails look like jewelry, they’re so fine: long, perfectly square, pale pink nails, with a thick white line drawn across the tip of each.
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I say, carefully taking her hand and shaking it.
“Mr. Alpert is the principal, and he’s not too scary, as long as you’re not in trouble,” Pixie explains matter-of-factly, and the woman behind the counter smiles. It’s obvious she knows Courtney and likes her, too.
“That would be correct,” the woman agrees. “But neither of you girls strikes me as the troublemaking sort.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Girl, I stand out enough,” Pixie says with a wave of her hand.<
br />
“I’m Ms. Phillips, by the way. Mr. Alpert’s secretary. If you have any questions, or if you need anything, I’m your go-to person.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Isn’t she so polite? Not like some of the girls in our class. Not like Del—”
Ms. Phillips’s face folds into a frown, but Pixie stands defiant.
“I’m just sayin’—” She catches sight of the wall clock. “Dang. I’m going to be late for AP physics, again. Later, ladies!”
She rushes out the door in a blur of striped leggings and a knapsack almost as big as she is.
“Here’s your locker number, your lock, and your combination.” Ms. Phillips places a slip of paper and a cold metal lock in my hand. “No contraband, or we’ll have the authority to search your locker. That means no meds without a prescription, no weapons, no illegal drugs, paraphernalia, or objectionable materials.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looks me over, satisfied. I still don’t know what a locker is.
“You’re going to do fine here, Carey. Just get to your classes on time and mind your teachers.”
She hands me one of those half slips of yellow paper.
“It’s your late pass. You’re late for second period.”
She gestures for my schedule, which I give to her.
“Economics. First door on the right, second floor. Go up the big staircase and make a right.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t worry,” she says as she ushers me into the hallway. “Most of us don’t bite.”
Even a backwoods girl like me knows better than to be the new girl in a large gathering of teen folk. Food smells waft out from under the glass doors as I peer down at the round tables, the people milling about, hear the clatter of dishes tangled up in words, music, laughter. It reminds me of a pack of wolves celebrating a kill.
I reckon the talk with Delaney this morning didn’t help matters, none.
“You’re brown-bagging it?”
“Why?” I say.
“You’re such a goober.”
I listen through the window as Melissa warms up the SUV. A goober is slang for peanut, according to a book I’d read on Georgia, USA, exports. But I’d probably sound like a goober, telling her so.
Delaneys waves a twenty-dollar bill in my face.