Allison, not so much.
Allison was plain. In and of itself, that wasn’t a complete disaster; Deb was plain as well. But Deb could do all the other things; she knew how to work a crowd. She had the sharpest tongue in the school. Allison didn’t. Allison also hated to shop for anything that wasn’t a book, so after-school mall excursions weren’t social time for Allison; she would simply vanish from the tail end of the pack when the pack passed a bookstore en route to something more interesting, and frequently fail to emerge.
But Allison, like Nathan, was a quiet space. She didn’t natter and she didn’t gossip. She could be beside you for half an afternoon without saying two words, but if you needed to talk, she could listen. She could also ask questions that proved that she was, in fact, listening—not that Emma ever tested her. They’d been friends since the first grade. Emma knew there was a time when they hadn’t been, but she couldn’t honestly remember it.
Emma didn’t always understand what Allison saw in her, because Emma was none of those things, even when she tried. “Do you want me to go?”
“Not if you don’t want.” Which wasn’t a no.
“I’ll go. Friday when?”
“I don’t think it matters.”
Emma laughed.
There was a substitute teacher alert, which passed by Emma while she was pulling textbooks from her locker. Why they had to have textbooks, instead of e-texts, Emma didn’t know.
She dropped one an inch to the left of her foot but managed to catch the messenger, Philipa, by the shoulder. “Substitute teacher? Which class?”
“Twelve math.”
“Ugh. Did you tell Michael?”
“I couldn’t find him. You want to check on him on the way to English?”
Emma nodded. “Who’s the teacher, did you catch the name?”
“Ms. Hampton, I think. Or Hampstead. Something like that.” Philipa cringed at the look on Emma’s face. “Sorry, I tried, but it wasn’t clearer.”
“Never mind; good enough.” It wasn’t, but it would have to do. Emma scooped up the offending book and headed down the hall and to the left, where the lockers disappeared from walls in favor of the usual corkboards and glass cabinets. She narrowly avoided dropping the books again when she ran into another student.
Eric.
“Hey,” he said, as she stepped to one side of him and started to walk again.
“Can’t talk now,” she replied, without looking back. Had she had the time, she would have admitted that she didn’t particularly want to talk to him, because he reminded her of the graveyard, and she didn’t want to think about that right now. Or ever.
He fell in beside her. “Where are you headed?”
“Mr. Burke’s math class.”
“That’s a twelve, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “But Michael’s in that one. I need to reach him before the teacher does, or at least as soon as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she said, cursing silently, “Mr. Burke is not actually teaching the class today.”
“Who is?”
“A substitute teacher. Ms. Hampton or Ms. Hampstead.” She reached the math twelve door and peered through the glass. Michael was standing beside a desk that already contained another student. It was, unfortunately, the desk that Michael always sat at, and Emma could tell the student—Nick something-or-other—knew this and had no intention of moving. Grinding her teeth, Emma pushed the door open.
Michael was not—yet—upset.
Emma reached his side, handed him her pack, and then dropped a book on Nick’s head.
“What the fuck—”
“Get your butt out of the chair or I’ll upend the desk on you,” Emma said tersely. She would have asked politely if she’d had more time. Or if she felt like it, and honestly? At this moment she so did not feel polite.
He opened his mouth to say something and then stopped. Eric had joined Emma. He hadn’t said a word, and from a brief glance at his face, he didn’t look particularly threatening, but Nick shoved the chair back from the desk and rose. He added a few single and double syllable words as he did.
“Michael,” Emma said, ignoring Nick as she pushed the chair back in a bit, “Mr. Burke’s not here today. He’s ill. Ms. Hampton or Ms. Hampstead—I didn’t hear her name clearly, but it’s only one person—will be teaching the class today. I don’t know if she has Mr. Burke’s notes, so she might not be covering the same material.”
“What type of illness?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask.”
Michael nodded. Emma was very afraid that he was going to ask her what Ms. Hampton or Ms. Hampstead actually looked like. “You shouldn’t have dropped the book on Nick’s head,” he said instead.
Emma said, “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have.” She did not add, I would have slugged him across his big, smug face, because when Michael gave a lecture, it generally lasted a while, and it was hard to interrupt him. “I was in a hurry, and the book slipped. I’ve dropped it once today already.”
Michael nodded, because he could parse the words and they made sense. As a general rule, Emma did not go around the school dropping books on people’s heads.
“I’ll see you at lunch?”
He nodded, and she said, “The substitute teacher probably doesn’t understand everything about you.”
“No one understands everything about anyone, Emma.”
“No, but she probably understands much less than Mr. Burke. If she does the wrong things, remember that. She doesn’t know any better. She hasn’t had time to learn.”
He nodded again and sat down, putting his own textbook on the table and arranging his laptop with care so it was in the exact center of the desk. She left him to it, because it could take him ten minutes.
Eric followed her out. He hadn’t said a word.
“What was all that about?”
“Michael’s a high-functioning autistic,” she replied. She had slowed down slightly, and while she didn’t have the time to have this conversation unless she wanted to add to her late-slip collection, she felt that she owed it to him. “I’ve known him since kindergarten. He does really, really well here,” she added, half defensively, “and he hasn’t needed a permanent Ed. Aide since junior high. But he’s very particular about his routine, and he doesn’t react well to unexpected changes.”
“And the person you dropped the book on?”
“He’s an asshole.”
“You go around dropping books on every asshole in the school, you’re not going to make many classes.”
In spite of herself, Emma smiled. “Michael always sits at the same desk in any class he’s taking. Everyone who’s in his classes knows this. All the teachers too,” she added. “But substitute teachers might not know. If Nick had stayed in that chair, Michael would have probably blown a fuse before the teacher showed up, and a strange teacher on top of that interruption—” she shook her head. “It would have been bad. And Nick knew it.”
“And you really would have upended the desk on him?”
“I would have tried. Which, to be fair, would probably have upset Michael just as much. He’s not a big fan of violence.” She added, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For coming in. I’m not sure Nick would have moved if you hadn’t been there.”
It was Eric’s turn to shrug. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No. You didn’t have to.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m not always this…aggressive. Michael doesn’t sit in on all of the normal classes. He has trouble with the less academic subjects, but he also hates English.”
“Hates?”
“There’s too much that’s based on opinion, and he has to make too many choices. Nothing is concrete enough, and choice always causes him stress. You should have seen him in art classes. On the other hand,” she added, as she stopped in front of a door, “I’m expected to attend all the regular classes.”
“So am I,” he told her,
and he opened the door to the English class.
“Emma, are you okay?”
Emma blinked. Half of English had just passed her by. Normally, anything that made English go by faster was a good thing. But she’d missed the good thing—whatever it was—and was left looking at a clock that was twenty minutes ahead of where it was supposed to be.
“Emma?”
She turned to look at Allison, who was watching her with those slightly narrowed brown eyes, which her glasses made look enormous. “I’m fine.”
Allison glanced at the computer on Emma’s desk. The screen on which notes were in theory being typed was a lovely, blank white. “I’ll e-mail you what you missed.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can read up on it.” She put her fingers on the home row of her keyboard and listened to Ms. Evan’s voice. It was, as always, strong, but some of the syllables and some of the words seemed to be running together in a blur of noise that was not entirely unlike buzzing. This, Emma thought, was why the word droning had been invented.
She tried to concentrate on the words, to separate them, to make enough sense of them that she could type something.
“Em?” Allison went from expressing minor concern to the depths of worry by losing a single syllable—but that was Allison; she never wasted words in a pinch.
Emma looked at her friend and saw that Allison was not, in fact, looking at her. She was looking at Emma’s laptop screen. Drawn there by Ally’s gaze, Emma looked at it as well. She lifted her hands off the keyboard as if it had burned her.
She had typed: Oh my god Drew help me help me Drew fire god no
Reaching out, she pushed the laptop screen down. “E-mail me your notes.”
“Emma?” Allison was worried enough that she almost walked into the edge of a bank of lockers in the crowded between-classes hall.
Emma shook her head. “I’m—I’m fine.” Nothing had happened in art, and nothing had happened in math; her computer hadn’t suddenly sprouted new words that had nothing to do with either her class or her. But she felt cold.
“Emma?” Great. Stereo. She glanced up as Eric approached. “You okay?”
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, made sure she had her laptop, and made double sure it was closed. “Yeah. Allison,” Emma said, “this is Eric. He helped me out when Nick was being a jerk in Michael’s math class this morning. Eric, my best friend, Allison.”
Allison smiled at Eric, but she would—he was new, and he’d helped Michael. Which, Emma had to admit, was part of the reason she found him less scary. She started to walk more quickly. “We’ve got to hurry,” she told him. “We meet Michael for lunch.”
The cafeteria, with its noise and its constant press of people, wasn’t Michael’s favorite room. It was also not a room in which a table could easily be marked out as his. The first day he’d come to Emery, Emma had found him loitering near the doors. He hadn’t been waiting for her. He’d been walking in tight little circles.
Shouting in his ear when he was like that did nothing. Touching him, on the other hand, always got his attention; she’d put a hand very firmly on his shoulder, and when he said, “Oh, hi, Emma,” she had steered him into the cafeteria. Philipa and Allison had pulled up the rear, and Amy had gone on ahead, clearing a path by simply, well, telling everyone to get out of the way. They had found a table with enough space, deposited Michael at one end, and had taken turns braving the lunch line.
The big advantage to having Amy as the unofficial spokesperson on that first day? It made clear that she, too, was watching out for Michael, and anyone who chose to pick on his strangeness was going to have social difficulties that lasted pretty much until they died, which would probably not be that far in the future. And it worked reasonably well, at least where the grade nines had been concerned.
It was harder to control the other grades, though, and they had made Michael’s life a little less smooth.
After the first day, Allison and Emma explained that if Michael found a space at a table and sat there, they would get lunch and join him. He did that, although he always chose the empty table closest to the door.
Michael brought a bagged lunch from home. Given the food in the cafeteria, this was probably for the best. He would sometimes eat other food if it was offered to him, but he was—no surprise—enormously picky. He would also join in a conversation if the topic interested him. Given that it was the cafeteria that was seldom. But he had made a few more friends since ninth grade, and one of the things that fascinated him was Dungeons and Dragons. He also liked computers, computer games, and web comics, and by tenth grade, Oliver and Connell frequently took up spots beside or facing Michael.
This had continued into the eleventh grade, and a long and tortuous discussion—to those who were not interested in D&D—was well under way by the time Emma reached their table. She frowned because there was someone sitting beside Michael, and she didn’t recognize the student. He wasn’t in their year, but she knew most of the grade twelves on sight. Maybe he was new?
But he was sitting beside Michael, he was a total stranger, and Michael didn’t even seem to be concerned. One glance at the table made clear he hadn’t braved the cafeteria lines for what passed for food, either.
“Emma?” Allison asked. Emma stood holding her tray, and Allison shrugged and sat down.
She sat down on top of the stranger—and passed right through him.
For a moment the strange student and her best friend were superimposed over each other. Emma blinked rapidly as the lines of the stranger’s face blended with Allison’s, the cafeteria tray listing forward in her hands. Eric caught it before she lost her grip completely.
“Emma?”
She shook her head as the stranger stood. Allison’s expression slowly untangled from his as he moved. His eyes widened as he met Emma’s, and then he smiled and waved. She opened her mouth; he shook his head, and as she watched, he faded from sight.
ERIC SET EMMA’S RESCUED TRAY down across from Allison’s and took a seat himself.
Emma stared at her food. There was no way she was now up to eating any of it.
“Em?”
She smiled across the table at Allison; it was a forced smile, and it obviously didn’t make Ally feel any better. “I’m fine. Honest, I’m fine—I have a headache, that’s all.”
Michael turned to her. “You have a headache?”
This was not exactly what Emma needed. She could lie to Allison in a pinch. She could lie to Eric, because she didn’t know him and didn’t need a near stranger’s obvious concern. Lying to Michael, however, was different. She could tell Eric—or Allison—that she had headaches all the time, and they’d pretend to believe her; Michael would call her on it, and if she argued, it would upset him because what he knew and what she was claiming was true weren’t the same.
“I tripped when I was walking Petal last night. I hit my head on something.”
Allison’s brows rose, but she said nothing.
Michael, Dungeons and Dragons forgotten, frowned. To no one’s surprise except Eric’s, he began to question her about possible symptoms. Emma interrupted to ask what, exactly, these might be symptoms of, and he very seriously replied, “Concussion. I think you should go to the doctor, Emma.”
Emma didn’t particularly like visiting the doctor. Neither, if it came down to it, did Michael—but Michael persisted in being logical. And if you wanted him to persist in being calm, you had to toe the same logic line.
Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. “Hey, don’t waste your time on Emma,” said the clear and annoyingly perky voice of Deb McAllister, who, accompanied by Amy and Nan, had paused in her walk to the exit.
“Oh?” Eric asked, turning on the bench.
“She’s not looking for anyone.”
Eric glanced at Emma, who shrugged and nodded. “It’s true. I’m not.”
Eric returned the shrug. “Neither am I.” He smiled politely at Deb and Nan, smiled in an entirely different way at Amy
, and turned back to what was left of his lunch. He was not, unlike most of the guys, a fast eater.
“Too bad.” Deb’s voice was friendly. In fact, given Deb, she was probably trying to be helpful. In her own special way.
Nan smiled shyly and introduced herself to Eric, who—as if he were someone’s grandfather and not their classmate—actually got up from the table to shake her hand. This caused a little ripple of silence, but it was a pleased silence. Nan was not, in the classical sense of the word, beautiful, but she had long, thick, straight black hair that was the envy of every girl in the school who wasn’t Amy, and her eyes were a perfect brown in equally perfect skin. She could speak Mandarin, but she hated doing it unless she was with her cousins, five of whom attended Emery. Emma had asked her why once, and Nan had said, “I’m not someone’s exotic pet seal. I don’t want to bark on command.”
And Amy?
“Eric, what are you doing Friday night?”
“Why?”
“I have a big—I mean big—open house planned at my place. Pretty much everyone in our year should be there, if you want to meet them all. I would have invited you by e-mail,” she added, “but you’re new enough here that I don’t have yours yet.
“Are you coming, Emma?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Can you tell Eric where and when, and send me his e-mail address if he has one? I have to go to the yearbook committee meeting—I’m running late.”
“Sure.” She watched Amy head out the cafeteria doors and then said, “Pull your tongue back in. You’re drooling.”
Eric laughed. “That obvious?”
“Well, you’re male. And at least you didn’t try to eat and miss your mouth.”