Before I can explain, Mama says, “A boy?” She sounds suspicious.
“Not like that, Mama. We just talked in class. . . .” I shut my mouth because I was going to say we had lunch together, but that seems like saying way too much.
“Guess I should be happy you talked to somebody,” Mama mumbles.
Her phone buzzes, and when she pulls it out, I realize now’s my chance to talk to her about getting out of my English class.
“Mama,” I start. Sometimes my mouth begins talking before my brain has totally figured out what I want to say. “Our English teacher is making us do speeches.”
“What’s the matter with that?” she asks, but she’s tapping out a message, so I know she’s only partway listening.
“I think I should get into a different English class. One that focuses on writing, like English is supposed to.”
“Hmmm.”
I can’t tell if Mama is hmming something on her phone or me. “Will you write a note to the school?”
Mama sets down her phone.
Uh-oh.
“Jenae.”
“Yes?”
“What’s really going on?”
I can feel sweat sprouting. “I should have the better English teacher, and instead I got stuck with Mr. Humphries. If you tell them I should be in Ms. Garcia’s class, they’ll have to switch me.”
“Is that boy you were talking to in Ms. Garcia’s class?” Mama asks. “Is that why you really want to switch?”
“No! We’re in the same class now. It doesn’t have anything to do with him.”
“Wait a minute. You want me to get you out of a class that has the one person at the school you actually talked to? Now you know that’s not going to happen.” Mama goes back to her phone, her judgment served, but then she adds one last dig. “Besides, Mr. Humphries is the best English teacher they got at that school. And he’s Black? Girl, stop playing.”
Shoot. I should’ve known Mama already knew all about Mr. Humphries.
14
The Uninvited
When Mama drops me off at school the next day, I see the people with fliers again, but there seem to be more of them. I scurry past the crowd, not wanting any of them to try and talk to me.
I’m surprised when I get to first period—Aubrey is waiting outside the class—and even more surprised when I realize he’s waiting for me.
“Hi, Jenae!” he says, with so much enthusiasm I almost turn around to see if there is another Jenae behind me. “I’ve been waiting forever for you!”
“Uh, hi,” I say, but I don’t stop to talk. I just keep walking into the class, and he follows close behind me, and he keeps yipping and yapping, talking about Astrid Dane and how cool she is and how great our bags are and whether I’ve seen every single episode and read every single graphic novel.
People who are already in their seats look at him like he’s from a different planet. Actually, they are looking at both of us that way. That’s not fair. Even I know you’re not supposed to act like a caffeinated puppy dog at school. I rush to my seat, trying to make it clear I’m not really with him, but he sticks to me like duct tape.
When I sit down, Geoffrey shifts in his seat as if to put as much distance as possible between me and Aubrey.
I don’t like loud. Being loud gets you seen.
I could never be friends with someone like Aubrey.
Unfortunately, Aubrey doesn’t seem to understand this fact, because even though I ignored him in history and hustled out of class without stopping to talk, he still shows up at my lunch spot again.
“Hey,” I say, with not much enthusiasm, staring at his fiery-red hair. Why would anyone choose such a loud color?
“Hi! I woke up late today and didn’t have time to make a good lunch! Just two-day-old chicken and rice, but my mom is a really good cook, so it’s good, right? Just not all that school-friendly.” All while he’s talking, he sits down, takes out his container of chicken and rice, shows it to me, takes out a fork. Then he shovels in a mouthful of food and chews and stares at me, waiting for me to say something, I guess.
It’s not as if I’ve never had a friend in my entire life. From, like, kindergarten all the way through second grade, the girls at school hung together in a big clump. I guess we were friends? We played hopscotch together, and then two square and tetherball. If you didn’t want to play, you still hung around the people who did. But then Emory Cooper had a birthday party and she only invited five girls. And suddenly, we weren’t all one big group anymore. There were the girls who had gotten invited and the ones who hadn’t. I didn’t mind not getting invited, because it was a horse-riding party and I’m scared of horses. But other girls felt bad and left out. And they didn’t like that I didn’t feel bad. And so I didn’t fit in with the invited or the uninvited. And the next birthday party (Shondra Welch’s), she only invited the girls who didn’t get invited to Emory’s, but she didn’t invite me either.
From then on, there were the popular girls, the regular girls, and me. It was sort of a relief. I didn’t like the recess games. I didn’t like running around and getting sweaty. I really just wanted to sit in the library and read, and so that’s what I started doing, and the only person I think was bothered by any of it was Mama. You’d think she would’ve been happy she didn’t have to drop me off for playdates or anything anymore, but instead she would poke and poke, asking me, “What happened to so-and-so?” I never had a good answer, and eventually she stopped asking, but I overheard her on the phone talking to one of her sisters saying how strange it was that I didn’t hang out with anyone. How odd it seemed. I wanted to tell Mama right then that I was okay being odd. It just means being different from what is expected, and what’s wrong with that?
“You know,” I say to Aubrey, “it’s fine with me if you want to sit somewhere else.” I don’t want him to think he’s stuck sitting with me just because he ended up here yesterday.
Aubrey looks around, glances across the field at the large lunch table area. “You want to go over there?”
I shake my head. “No, I meant . . .” But I don’t finish because there doesn’t seem to be a way to finish that sentence without making things awkward. I decide to talk about something else. “What’s Chicago like?”
Aubrey tells me about a museum with a huge dinosaur skeleton, and the train that’s like a subway but is aboveground, and a lake so big it’s like an ocean, and winters so cold it freezes the snot to your face.
“So none of your friends like Astrid Dane?” I cut him off to ask.
Aubrey’s face gets weird. Uncomfortable. Like I asked him something too personal.
But then he smiles. “Nah, they weren’t into stuff like that.” He shovels some chicken into his mouth and then gulps it down. “That’s why it was so sway meeting you!”
“What’s sway?” I ask, even though I think I know.
Aubrey rocks back and forth and gets a goofy look on his face. “It’s good. It’s going with the flow. You know? Sway!”
How can I not smile?
I get worried on the way to English, but today, Mr. Humphries sticks to normal stuff and doesn’t mention speeches at all. He talks about the book we’re going to read. Coraline. It sounds creepy, and I can’t wait to start it. If Mr. Humphries would just stick to reading and writing, I think I’d love his class.