A Girl Called Dust (6 page)

A shadow loomed over me as I bit into my
grilled cheese sandwich. “Go away.”

Fletcher sat beside me. “Are you mad?”

“Yes, I’m mad. Why do you think I don’t
want to talk to you?”

“What did I do?”

“I’m tired of your riddles and you telling
me things that make no sense. You treated me like crap yesterday. I’m over it
and I’m over you. Why do you even want to be my friend if you think I do such
horrible things?”

Fletcher was quiet for a moment. “Because
the bad part of you is just a small part, and you can’t help it. I’ll tell you.
I’ll tell you the truth very soon. The time has to be just right. You have to
be ready.”

“What does that mean?”

Fletcher gazed off into the field, where a
group of boys played Frisbee. “It’s going to make you sad, and once you know,
you can’t unknow it.”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me. What’s going
to make me sad?” I wanted to know then more than ever.

 “Please don’t be mad at me. You’ll
understand one day why I had to keep some things from you until a certain
time.”

I looked into his large amber eyes, and I
couldn’t be mad at him anymore. Whatever it was, he really felt like he
couldn’t tell me. If it was going to depress me, maybe I didn’t want to know.
Maybe he was only trying to protect me.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

I took another bite out of my sandwich.
“Yeah? How?”

He bit his bottom lip and stared across
the schoolyard again. “What do you want me to do?”

I thought for a moment. “I want you to
come to my house. Actually come inside. Come to dinner one night. It’s about
time you meet my family.”

He stared at me for a moment, and I
thought he was about to turn me down. Fletcher sighed deeply as if I’d just
asked him to do the most difficult thing in the world. “Okay. I can do that, I
guess.”

“Thanks.”

He stood up and smoothed out his pants.
“Bye. I have to pee.”

I
shook my head, watching him disappear into the school building.

The tone around school had been quiet and
somber. Mary-Kate said the school was planning to plant a tree in Mr.
Thompson’s honor as well as implement a scholarship for performing arts
students. Other than that, everything was the same.

Ways to die in Mrs. Martin’s class:

There could be an explosion from the
chemistry lab next door.

The copy machine in the teachers’ workroom
above us could come crashing through the ceiling..

The storm outside could send a tree
crashing through the window.

Embarrassment. I could die of
embarrassment.

Speech class had gone from horrible to
torturous. I guessed it was mostly my fault. My first conversation with Mrs.
Martin had gone like this:

“Arden, why are you taking this class?”
she asked after she’d caught me doodling instead of taking notes on the differences
between informative, demonstrative, and argumentative speeches. I just didn’t
care enough to be bothered.

The whole class had turned around to look
at me, so I just shrugged.

Mrs. Martin folded her arms across her
chest, which was never a good sign. She’d even taught us that on the first day
of class. When a person folds their arms across their chest, it signals
defensiveness, so we shouldn’t do it.

“Arden, this is Speech class, so speak.”

I sat up straight and waited for everyone
to stop snickering. “I’m taking this class because my mother made me,” I
mumbled.

More snickering.

Mrs. Martin’s narrowed eyes and pursed
lips told me that I had given the wrong answer, but it was the truth. Maybe I
should have said, “I’m taking this class to conquer my fear of public
speaking,” but that would have been a lie. Mrs. Martin and her stupid class
were only making my fear worse.

Ever since then, she had nothing nice to
say to me.         

On the fourth week of school I delivered
my third speech. The other two had been disastrous, and I hadn’t expected the
third to be any different. I was already in a bad mood. I had woken up that
morning with red, swollen fingers. That had been happening a lot lately. When I
went to sleep, my hands were fine, but when I woke up, my fingers were sore and
throbbing. I was afraid to tell my parents because they would send me to a
doctor, and who knew what they would find. Hopefully it would just go away on
its own. According to WebMD
,
I had either arthritis or lupus, but I
didn’t think that was right.

 I took my time making my way to the
podium. My throat had constricted so tightly I couldn’t swallow. Holding my
index cards with shaky hands, I took a quick glance around the room, which was
a huge mistake. Mary-Kate gave me a quick reassuring nod, but even her
encouragement was no match for the twenty other kids smirking at me, waiting
for me to fail . . . again.

 At the rate I was going, I was
undoubtedly going to fail the class. Who failed an elective class they didn’t
even have to take in the first place? There were no tests to study for, nothing
to memorize. Basically the class was just talking without making an idiot of
yourself. Leave it to me to fail at talking.

I peeked over my cards to where Mrs.
Martin sat at the back of the room. Another mistake. Unlike other teachers, her
desk was placed in the back so she could accurately judge us on our posture and
eye contact. I sucked at both.

Mrs. Martin raised her eyebrows and tapped
her pen on her desk. I understood her impatience. I had been standing in front
of the class for thirty seconds clearing my throat, yet to utter one word.

“Sometime today, Ms. Moss. We need to get
through ten other students before the bell rings.”

Nodding, I checked my body language. I was
already doing everything wrong—moving from one foot to the other, leaning
against the lectern, and holding my cards in front of my face. I planted my
feet, stepped back from the lectern (treat it like a hot stove, Mrs. Martin
said), and lowered my index cards to chest level.

Taking a deep breath, I looked down at my
cards. My speech suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing in the world. We
weren’t allowed to write the entire speech out, only the bullet points we
wanted to hit. Mrs. Martin usually gave us a topic to discuss, but this time
she had given us free choice. I chose to write about my favorite animal as if I
were in second grade. Other kids had talked about the ozone layer, the unfair
treatment of minorities by law enforcement, and the war on immigration, but I had
chosen to speak about my favorite animal. It seemed like a good idea the night
before.

I cleared my throat for the thirtieth
time. “If I could be any animal, I would be a bird. To me, birds are the eighth
wonder of the world. I’d be a blue jay specifically—”

“Arden, a little louder,” Mrs. Martin
croaked.

I tried to force myself to look up from my
cards, but the stares from my classmates would make everything worse. Maybe if
I focused on a point on the back wall, that would help.

I glanced up briefly at the wall,
straightened my shoulders, and looked back down at my cards. “If I could be any
animal I would be a blue jay. The main reason I’d like to be a blue jay would
be their ability to fly. Sometimes I wish I could fly. When things get bad or
people make me angry, I could just fly away and leave it all behind.”

Time to look up again, Arden. I forced my
eyes up. Mrs. Martin stared at me intently. Margo Reese laughed behind one of
her hands. Charlie Tate leaned over and whispered to the boy next to him, then
they both looked at me grinning.

Anger rose in my chest. I couldn’t win. No
matter what I did or said, they would find a reason to laugh. I never laughed
at them no matter how lame or boring their speeches were. No matter what, I
watched them respectfully and at least pretended to be interested. Setting my
cards down on the lectern, I forgot about my bullet points. “I wish I could fly
away right now. I’d fly away from this stupid school and all you idiots who
treat people like crap for no reason!”

Mrs. Martin sat up straighter.

“I’d fly to another country and start all
over. Maybe Europe. I’m sure I’d meet better people there, because you guys
suck!” By that time, I was yelling, but I didn’t care. I’d made my point. I
needed them to know how awful they were. Half the class stared at me wide eyed
while the other half looked as if they couldn’t decide whether to laugh or be
offended. Mary-Kate shook her head. She was probably the only person in the
room my speech didn’t apply to, but I was sure she felt just as insulted.

Mrs. Martin marched to the front of the
room. “That’s enough, Arden. Thank you.”

I couldn’t ignore the intense looks of
hatred as I made my way back to my seat. Charlie Tate, who sat directly in
front of me, swiveled in his chair to face me. “Damn, Dust. Angry much?”

“Shut up!” I shouted. He flinched and
turned right back around.

Everyone stared at me including Mrs.
Martin. “Ms. Moss, I’m going to ask you to control yourself, or do you need to
be excused?”

I shook my head. Settle down, Arden.

Mrs. Martin called for the next student to
go up and probably had written a big fat F next to my name. Mom was going to be
so proud.

Home was better than school. Thursday
nights we always ordered pizza because Mom and Dad went to a couples’ book club
meeting at a friend’s house. That left me in charge of Paige and Quinn.

Mom rattled off a few last-minute
instructions as my sisters and I filled our paper plates with pizza slices. No
one wanted to do dishes on Thursday nights, so we used paper and plastic
everything. “Set the alarm. Do not open the door for anyone. Don’t post on
social media that you’re home alone. No friends over.”

She said the same things every time they
left us alone. “Got it, girls?”

“Yes, Mom,” we moaned simultaneously.

“Let’s go. We’re going to be late,” Dad
called from the front door.

Mom took one last look at the three of us.
“Spend some time together. Maybe play a game or something.”

Mom was always trying to get the three of
us to get closer, but we weren’t those types of sisters. My younger sisters
didn’t look to me for advice or to teach them about boys and makeup. They knew
more about those things than I did. My sisters were everything Mom thought
girls were supposed to be—sugar, spice, everything nice. I, on the other hand
was trail mix, meds, death, and dread.

Paige and Quinn grabbed juice pouches from
the fridge. “Later, loser,” Paige said as the two of them pounded up the
stairs. They weren’t supposed to be eating up there, but I didn’t bother
telling them to come back down. It wasn’t worth the fight.

A door slammed upstairs. My sisters wanted
to spend as little time with me as possible, and I didn’t object. We had
nothing in common. They were what Mom wanted me to be—normal.

Mom had been the homecoming queen, voted
class beauty, most popular girl, and she claimed she would have been prom queen
too if she hadn’t come down with that case of mono. I could see Paige becoming
all those things. She was the next Lacey Chapman.

I took my dinner into the living room and
flipped on the news to hear what they were saying about Mr. Thompson. At
school, no one really gave us any other details, but they must have known
something else by then.

Brooke Mayfield, the local reporter, stood
in front of the woods, and from what I could see, the area had been roped off
with bright-yellow police tape. The tape was useless in my opinion. It might
warn people to stay away, but it wouldn’t keep what was killing people from
coming out.

“The death of Theodore Thompson is being
ruled an accidental death. The coroner has yet to determine what type of animal
killed the forty-two-year-old husband and father of two, but it was likely a
coyote or wolf. Residents are being warned to stay away from wooded areas,
especially at night.”

Nothing new.

I changed the channel to some
silly-looking cartoon once they started showing pictures of Mr. Thompson. I
felt for his family. How would I feel if it were my father they had been
talking about? What would it be like to know someone you loved had literally
been torn apart? I prayed I would never find out.

In my room, I noticed fresh scratches in
my hardwood floor. The scratches on my floor were a normal occurrence. Mom
freaked when she first saw them, but since then she didn’t seem to care. The
scratches were always in the same area, there were just more of them each time.

Music blared from Paige’s room so I had to
pound on the door for her to hear me. At first I got no response, so I knocked
harder. The music cut off abruptly and the door flew open. “What?” Paige
demanded.

“Keep your stupid cat out of my room.
She’s still clawing my floor.” I closed my bedroom door every day before I left
for school, but somehow Sheba was still getting in.