7
We ran from Clifton on a Thursday night. That means when I got to my new school, the Francine school, on Wednesday morning, it still hadn’t been a week. Not even a full week with three schools, half a dozen policemen, two lawyers, two caseworkers, the emergency witch, and Francine.
The second day of school, Francine didn’t drive me. I followed the kids off my bus into the thick August air, then into the cafeteria for breakfast. I was hungry, but I couldn’t eat. The breakfast was chicken biscuits, cereal, fruit, and juice. A whole pile of food. I stared at my tray. My stomach rumbled. My mouth felt too tight to swallow.
“Hey,” some kid next to me said, pointing to my biscuit. “You gonna eat that?”
I shook my head.
“Can I have it?”
I’d been thinking of wrapping it up in a napkin in case I felt better later. “Sure,” I whispered.
“Thanks!” He ate it fast, three bites. I thought about asking his name, or telling him mine, but before I could say anything, he’d jumped off the bench and was gone.
* * *
■ ■ ■
Trevor got three strikes by ten a.m. It was an improvement over yesterday, but Ms. Davonte didn’t seem to see it that way.
Trevor said, “It was the new girl’s fault.”
I said, “Nobody made you tie my shoelaces to your chair.” Which he’d done. And I’d seen him do it, though he hadn’t realized I had, so that the moment he started to get up from his chair, I yanked my foot sideways and the chair skidded out from under him and startled him so much he fell over. I yelled, “Who tied my shoes to your chair?” and that was strike three. No recess for Trevor.
Nevaeh, the girl sitting next to me, looked at me with her soft brown eyes. She whispered, “You could have just untied your shoes.”
I said, “I don’t take snow from anybody.”
She nodded. I wish I knew what she was thinking. Sure couldn’t tell.
At recess I talked to nobody. Again.
* * *
■ ■ ■
I took the bus home from school, and there was Suki dancing on the sidewalk, a smile on her face as wide as the sky. I got off the bus and she grabbed me and swung me around. “Food City called!” she said. “I got a job!”
“Great,” Francine said, when she got home and heard the news. She popped us into her car and took us right back to Old Navy, because Suki had to have a pair of plain boring brown pants as part of her work uniform. They cost $21.94, counting tax. She was going to have to buy a Food City shirt too—$20. “No problem,” Francine said, getting out her wallet.
Suki said, “I’ll pay you back.”
She was starting right away. They wanted her to go in for training on the long shift, Friday night, the very next day. Six p.m. until midnight. “They’re short of help Friday nights,” she said. “Most high school kids don’t want to work then. I wrote on my application I always could.”
Francine nodded. “We can make it work,” she said. “Usually on Fridays I go out with my friends. There’s a good band at O’Maillin’s this week. Bluegrass. But I’ll come pick you up at midnight. That’s too late for you to walk home. Once I get the car insurance sorted, you can drive me instead.”
Suki said, “What about Della?”
“What about me?” I asked.
“She can’t stay by herself,” Suki said.
“Sure I can,” I said. “I’m ten.”
“No way,” Suki said.
“Yes, way. You did before—”
“And look what happened—”
“I’ll keep the doors locked,” I said.
Suki said, “On a Friday night.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Suki was right. I didn’t want to be alone on a Friday night. Suki and me, we pretty much hated Fridays.
Francine sighed. “This is why I mostly don’t take ten-year-olds,” she said. “I don’t even know any babysitters.”
“BABYSITTERS?” Could you imagine, me and some thirteen-year-old being paid to watch me? That’d go well. “I’ll go hang out with Teena,” I said.
“No,” said Suki.
There was a funny kind of stillness. Francine said, “They did the right thing.”
Suki said “Yep” in a way that let me know she didn’t believe that at all. “But anyway, Teena’s got a new boyfriend.”
“Oh, who?” I asked. Suki rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“She can come listen to the band with me,” Francine said. “My friends won’t mind.”
“No way,” I said. “Hang out in some skank bar with a bunch of old ladies?”
Suki sighed. “I guess she can come with me. Sit in the deli. They’ve got tables there.” She looked at me. “Just behave. The whole night. Don’t you dare get me in trouble.”
“You’re kidding me. Right?”
“Your choice,” Suki said. “Come with me or go with Francine.”
That’s how I ended up at Food City for six hours on a Friday night.
8
Suki made me stand out on the sidewalk of Food City and count to a hundred before I followed her in, so no one would know we were together. I took the dollar she’d given me and bought a Coke at the deli, from a black woman behind the counter who gave me the stink eye. I was allowed to sit at a deli table while drinking a Coke I bought and paid for, so there was nothing she could say, but she looked like she wanted to say plenty. Don’t know why. I was wearing my glitter hoodie again and my new blue jeans and purple velvet high-tops. I looked nice. Wasn’t trashing up the place.
Suki’d given me a pen and one of her school notebooks, to draw in to pass the time. Drawing was Suki’s thing, not mine. Francine had given me an old magazine with a princess on its cover. I didn’t know whether princesses were Francine’s thing. They sure weren’t mine. I took the pen and drew a mustache and devil horns on the princess. I sipped my Coke. I needed it to last a long time.
The grocery store was loads busier than I thought it would be. Since Clifton almost always came back from long hauls on Friday nights, he saved grocery shopping for Saturdays. But just now at Food City there were people everywhere, all the checkout lanes going at once.
Then I saw her—the girl who sat next to me at school. Nevaeh. She was walking through the deli with someone who looked like her mom. I waved, and she came right over and slid into the seat across from me.