“It’s a nice little city,” Quinn said about Philly. It was the same attitude she would have taken if she were talking to a tourist, some opposing volleyball player in from New York who just said her hometown was “better than expected.” But putting it that way to Rust made Quinn feel like Philly was somewhere she’d visited once, not the place she’d lived for seventeen years.
“Going to be a big adjustment here . . . ,” Rust said. He was right—the intersection they were passing had white picket fences on either side. The houses closer to the school were nicer, looked less neglected.
“Yeah, well, I’ve decided a change will do me good,” Quinn said, not realizing that was the attitude she wanted to take until she’d said it.
Rust nodded in agreement and they lapsed into silence for a block until they crossed the street in front of the school.
Up ahead, kids were milling, taking a last moment outside before they’d be inside all day. Quinn watched one car, then another, turn into what must’ve been the school’s parking lot, a cracked expanse of blacktop ringed in chain-link fencing.
One of the boys near the handrail was spitting into a water bottle of . . . Quinn felt her gorge rise. Gross, chewing tobacco.
“It will take some getting used to, I’m guessing,” Rust said, picking up where they’d left off, probably seeing her turning green. “But I think you’ll learn to like it. Don’t judge it from how it looks.” He smiled, seeming to indicate himself, then added: “Not totally.”
“What’s there to do around here?” Quinn asked. “I mean, for fun?”
He considered. “I’m probably not the best guy to ask. There’s great fishing and hunting, if you like that sort of thing.”
She blinked at him. She’d fished once on a family trip to Florida, but hunting? Never. Not in a million—
“Ducks’re in season . . . ,” he fumbled.
Quinn blinked again and tried not to wince, but something in her expression must’ve given her away.
“Oh. Right. I’m probably not helping any stereotypes with that answer,” Rust said. “Yeah. Well, there’s also a movie theater on Main Street. The Eureka. Mostly old stuff, but sometimes they get newer flicks. Color even.” He widened his eyes to show he was joking. “There was a frozen yogurt place, too, before Baypen closed down, but that’s gone. You can drive to Jamestown if you want to go to the mall. It’s only about twenty miles, once you get to the highway. It’s a good place for a hang—or so I’ve heard.”
Quinn remembered the window, the dilapidated factory, and the clown. “Baypen, what is that? I saw the factory from my window. What’d they make there . . . clowns?”
“Ha! No, that’s just Frendo, the mascot. Baypen made corn syrup, but, uh, the refinery burned down . . .” Rust trailed off as he looked up ahead at the school building, where crowds of kids had all gathered to wait for the bell but where no one seemed to be waiting for him.
“It’s a long story—”
“Oh yeah?”
“They shipped their product out all across the country. You probably had our syrup and didn’t even know.” He said that last part with a weird amount of pride, like it was his corn syrup. “My father used to work security there. Started when he was my age, actually.”
“Until the fire?”
“No, it closed before that,” Rust said, climbing the stairs two at a time. She moved to catch up, then realized Rust was cutting ahead not to outrun her, but to hold the door.
“The fire happened recently, actually,” Rust said.
“Well, I’ll have to get the long version of that story out of you later,” Quinn said. She pointed a thumb at the front office. “I have to go get set up.”
“For sure,” Rust said, smiling before offering his hand to shake again. Somehow, shaking hands with Rust felt less like she’d made a new friend and more like her first job interview. “Maybe I’ll see ya in class. But probably not unless you signed up for metal shop?”
She gave him a shrug, tried for her best irrepressible smile: “Who knows? Maybe I did.”
Turning, she nodded goodbye and pushed into the front office.
The woman behind the desk was squinting at an old computer screen, the colors warped and faded. Quinn cleared her throat and the woman looked up, haggard and unhappy.
“How can I help you, young lady?” the woman asked. A friendly statement rendered somehow . . . not friendly.
“Hi. Quinn Maybrook. My dad called. I’m new.”
The woman didn’t speak; instead she plucked a manila envelope from her desk. “Here’s your schedule. Good luck,” she said. Looking Quinn up and down, she gave a scoff that said You’re going to need it and turned back to her emails.
Oooookay. Quinn picked up the envelope and hurried out of the office to open it.
Her locker wasn’t hard to locate, but the combination inside the envelope didn’t seem to work.
29 . . . 6 . . . and . . .
“Did you hear?” someone said as they walked her way.
Oh no. She was already being gossiped about as the new kid. The new kid from the city. Which—and she didn’t want to sound conceited here—was probably big news.
“Of course, I heard!” someone yelled in response. “Everybody’s heard.”
“I can’t believe they let him back!”
Wait. Him?
“I can’t believe he came back, but I’m glad he did.” The first voice returned, settling at a locker across from hers. “I mean, it’s not like anyone can prove he did anything.”
“I’m sure there’s evidence. But my dad says who’s going to press charges? I mean, his dad owned the place. More than anythin’, I’m pissed that he only got a three-day suspension.”
“Yeah. I got two days once for a shoving match.”
Quinn was so engrossed in eavesdropping she didn’t realize she was staring into her locker door, motionless like a lunatic, until a voice beside her said:
“You have to start at zero.”
“Huh?” Quinn turned to the speaker.
A girl with close-cropped hair, dark at the roots and light at the top, and a hoop nose ring—the septum, not the nostril—was suddenly in Quinn’s personal space. The girl snatched the combination from Quinn’s hand and began to read.
“They all start at zero for some reason, but they don’t put instructions on the printout,” the girl said. She was wearing a Thrasher Magazine sweatshirt and cargo shorts, the kind built for function rather than fashion, but on her, they seemed somehow fashionable.
“There you go,” the girl said, pulling down with a sharp CLACK and letting gravity swing Quinn’s locker open.
“Oh. Thanks,” Quinn said, realizing that she didn’t have anything to put into the locker, not yet. She’d been opening it to make sure she could, to give her something to do before the bell. But now she felt too self-conscious to just close it up again.
“I’m Quinn,” Quinn offered lamely. The punk girl seemed content to let the interaction be over, but Quinn wasn’t sure she wanted it to be.
“People call me Ginger.” And before Quinn could ask why, she added: “My hair used to be lighter.”