Begrudgingly, I picked up my backpack and walked over to his desk. “Yeah?”
His eyebrows were so thick and twisted that they looked like two very angry caterpillars had taken residence on his face. When he raised them, the caterpillars looked even angrier. “Here is the packet of classwork and homework that you missed during your absence. I expect it completed within two weeks.”
He handed me a stack of papers and I stuffed them inside my bag. Two weeks. Right. That was totally going to happen. (Insert sarcasm here.) “Okay.”
Once I left Mr. Rober and his angry caterpillars behind, I moved down the hall, ignoring the whispers and stares. Most came from the kids in Mr. Rober’s class, but too many didn’t. Let them talk. Let them gossip. Let them judge. It made no difference.
My next class was a Shakespeare elective with Mrs. Carnes. She was a nice-enough teacher, so I wasn’t dreading her class too much. She didn’t put up with rudeness and insisted that everyone only engage in class discussions if we were comfortable. I moved to the back of the room and sat, waiting for class to begin and finish as quickly as possible. The bell rang again and Mrs. Carnes walked in, dressed in a pretty yellow dress that swished around her calves when she turned. “Good morning, everyone.”
Several people returned her greeting. Most just sat and stared at the front of the room, likely willing the school day to hurry up and end already. I was right there with them.
Mrs. Carnes looked at me and smiled gently. “Brooke, could I see you up here for a minute, please?”
All eyes were on me as I approached her desk. I didn’t see them, but I could sense them.
“I didn’t get a chance to swing by during visitors’ hours, but Karen and I got you a gift to wish you well on your recovery. I hope you don’t mind.” Karen was Mrs. Carnes’s wife. Everybody in the school knew and most people didn’t care. I’d once met Karen at the mall. She looked like Mrs. Carnes’s polar opposite: tall, tan, short hair. But they were a nice couple. When they got married a few months ago, Duckie and I gave them a congratulations card. Them getting me a gift was thoughtful, and I appreciated it before I even knew what it was. She handed me a journal that looked like an old suitcase covered in travel labels on the outside.
I smiled and said, “Thank you. And thank Karen for me too.”
The air felt a tad lighter as I returned to my desk, but any lightness that I felt was erased the moment I spied the new graffiti that had been written on my notebook while I’d been at the front of the room. In bold, black Sharpie, it read “RIP.”
I stared at it a moment before taking my seat again, wondering which one of these assholes was responsible for it. Was it the same person who’d written it on my locker? The rest of the class blurred into the background, with only one point of clarity—the graffiti on my notebook.
They would never let me forget. But the joke was on them, because cruel pranks—as far as I knew—didn’t follow you into oblivion. I was untouchable.
After the bell rang, I shoved my stuff inside my backpack. The cranes scurried away from the notebook, not wanting to go anywhere near it. I couldn’t blame them.
Duckie was waiting for me outside the lunchroom. I decided not to tell him about the new graffiti. He’d just want to fix it by hunting down whoever did it and turning them in. But that wouldn’t help. It couldn’t be helped.
After I stepped up to him, I straightened his bow tie. “You’re crooked.”
The corner of his mouth tugged up in a small smirk. “Well, I’m certainly not straight.”
I smoothed out the fabric of his bow tie with my fingers, marveling at Duckie’s original sense of style. I always aimed for comfort. He always aimed for unique. “You hungry?”
“Extremely. A shame we have to eat here. I don’t care what the cafeteria lady says. Whatever they’re serving on trays in the cafeteria doesn’t qualify as food.” As we made our way to our usual table, he said, “How’s today been so far?”
I could hear the whispers around us and wondered if they were about me. Maybe I was just being paranoid. And even if they were gossiping about me, what difference did it make to tell them to stop? People would talk. It’s what people did.
I dropped my backpack on the floor beside the table and sank into my seat, shrugging and wondering if my dad had anything in the garage that would serve my life-ending purposes. Had they been that thorough? “Kinda quiet, I guess. Better than I expected.”
Duckie gauged my eyes for several seconds, as if reading me, looking closely for any sign that I might not be telling the truth. After a moment, he said, “Wait here. I’ll grab your food. You save my spot.”
He wedged his way into the middle of the lunch line. If it had been anyone but Tucker standing there, he wouldn’t have had a chance at cutting in. But I had a feeling that Tucker was as into Duckie as Duckie was into him. If only Duckie could see it. But then, Duckie was a gay boy in a small town. His options here were limited, and his experiences had made him more than a little gun shy.
I wanted Duckie to find happiness. No. I needed him to. Because I was never getting out of this darkness, and I just had to know that when it was over, when I was gone, at least one of us would find a life worth living.
I swept my eyes across the lunchroom, feeling like an alien who’d only just recently landed here on Earth. As usual, Jake Taylor was entertaining the other kids on the robotics team with jokes about sex—not that he had any personal experience in that department, from what I’d heard. Sarah Emberson and Kristah Neil were tossing french fries from where they sat over at quiet, mousy, not-always-clean Milly Sims, who was too immersed in her paperback to even notice. Sarah glanced my way and declared a cease-fire as she whispered something into Kristah’s ear, eliciting a burst of laughter. Scott Melbur was wandering the cafeteria with his camera, snapping random photos for the yearbook. It was nice to see the once most-reviled person in our entire school find his niche and stop being the butt of nearly everyone’s jokes. Various cliques gathered together at separate tables, and those who weren’t in any particular clique filled in the blanks of the room. For the moment, it was business as usual at Eleos High. All around me was a sea of familiar faces . . . but for one.
He wore blue-black jeans and a faded gray V-neck T-shirt. The short chain around his neck was dull silver, and the heavy black boots on his feet said he rode a motorcycle. Or at least that he looked like he did. His eyes were aqua blue and reminded me of the pictures my mom and dad had brought back from their vacation to the Caribbean last fall. His eyes were like the ocean. Warm, but cool. Dangerous, but appealing. I found it difficult not to look at them. At him.
His hair was dirty blond and disheveled, but short. There was a slight natural curl to it, and I couldn’t help but think what it might feel like to run my fingers through it.
As the thought passed through my mind, he lifted his gaze to mine. Our eyes met, and I wondered if he could tell by my expression what I had been thinking about him.
Maybe I should have smiled at him, or nodded, or waved like a normal person. But instead, I just stared at him awkwardly until he looked away again. I couldn’t help it. It just kind of happened that way. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered now but my plan and the fact that my time here was ticking away.