A Whole Lot of Lucky (9 page)

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Ox.

Ox who?

Ox, you moron.

You can use that joke if you want to. I just made it up.

The bell rings and all across the grounds girls lift up their backpacks, straighten their white shirts, and flock to the cobblestones. I go with the flow, easing around building 1 to building 2, only it's not 2, it's 4. A little square building sits in the shadow—that
must
be 2—but as I hurry across the path, slinking through obstacles as if I'm at a skating rink, I discover this is building 3.

I spin around. I see 1, 4, and 3. Where's 2? I swing my backpack off for the map, but it's not there. It must have fallen out when I bumped into that girl. Blinking wide, I take in quick breaths heavy with the scent of magnolia trees.

“Do you know where building two is?” I ask a girl rushing by.

She points without stopping. “That way, past four.” Past 4 is 5, and past 5 is 6. The tardy bell rings and I am alone in the yard, about to cry.

GIRLS.

Of course the restroom is for girls. It's a girls-only school.

Pushing the door open, I let my tears fall because the last thing I'm expecting to see is a girl leaning against the tiled walls smoking. And not just any girl, either—she's the girl from the yellow house, the girl who didn't want to come to school today, the girl who pranced back into her house with her tan legs.

She's even prettier up close. Her dark hair is short, but cut in long layers with bangs that nearly hide her huge blue eyes. She raises the cigarette to her lips, and the fiery end lights up as she inhales.

“This bathroom's reserved.” Her words are smoke. She flicks ashes into a sink.

Stupid, stupid, stupid me. “I'm sorry.” My voice quavers. “I didn't see the sign.” She pushes off the wall.

I've read where a character in a book says their blood drained in moments like this and I can tell you that's exactly what it feels like.
Whoosh,
from my arms, then,
whoosh,
from my legs. She's going to cremate me. I sniff back a whole morning full of tears and the sound bounces off the tile walls. I'm more than a doofus—I'm a snotty doofus.

Instead of hitting me, she cracks a grin. “You must be new here.”

“I'm supposed to be in building two.”

She takes another drag off the cigarette and exhales the smoke in a stream toward the ceiling. Then she runs her fingers under the faucet, pinches the lit end of the cigarette, and slides it into a makeup case from her backpack.

“C'mon,” she says.

Obediently, I follow her out of the restroom and along the fenced perimeter of the yard. She stops at the far corner and points straight across.

“That's the library and behind it's the theater—seven and eight.” She gestures to a building down from the library. “That's two.”

“Oh, my gosh, thank you.” For helping me. For not beating me up. “Thank you so much!”

She gives me that lopsided smile again. “Just stay out
of that bathroom.” I nod vigorously. She takes a few steps backward. “Better get to class,” she says. “Try not to smell like smoke!” She flashes a big smile and disappears.

* * *

The hardest part of being a new student is the five minutes between classes. While other girls joke around with one another, I pretend to be fascinated with my folders. You might remember me telling you about how Amanda and I came up with this idea. I wish Amanda were here right now. I'd be laughing and talking, too. I can't wait till after school to see her.

Business technology is my next class and it's in building 1. You'd think that's close to my first class in building 2, but American history is in the farthest end of building 2 and, I discover, business technology is in the farthest end of building 1. Even though I know where building 1 is, I'm still looking for room 118 when the bell rings.

Searching for my class, I realize the mark I will leave here will be the worn-out trail I make on the wood floor as I tread back and forth looking for 118. It's like my mother numbered this place.

Finally, I stop in front of a classroom with the door propped open. It's darker than the other classrooms. The metallic smell of hardware and electricity hums under my nose. Students at every desk sit behind open
laptops, their faces reflecting bluish white light from the monitors.

“Oh, my gosh,” I accidentally say out loud.

A few of the girls glance over and I shrink back. Then I spot Emily DeCamp, who sees me at the same time. Her eyes widen behind her glasses and her mouth makes a little O; I swear I hear her gasp. She straightens up in her chair. A kind of excitement takes over her expression, and she looks down at her desk with a wisp of a smile.

A girl not in uniform walks up to me and introduces herself. “Hi, you must be Hailee. I'm Ms. Reilly. Yes, I'm the teacher. I know I look young, but, class, how old am I?”

“A hundred and ninety-seven,” they say in unison. I feel like an outsider as they giggle together at the class joke.

“Okay, okay,” Ms. Reilly says. “Hailee, we need to get you up to speed on the project we're doing now. I've gone through your transcripts—you've got a pretty good background, but I'd still like to buddy you up with someone.” She sweeps over the class.

Emily DeCamp raises her hand.

At least I know her. Ms. Reilly rearranges a few people so Emily and I can sit next to each other in the back, where a desk and laptop have already been set up for me.

“You
are
going to school here,” she whispers as Ms. Reilly explains today's goals.

I shrug. I don't want to catch her enthusiasm.

The first thing Emily has me do is set up an e-mail address under the school's program. Then she sends me an e-mail: Want to sit with me at lunch? She doesn't look at me. I send her an e-mail back: Okay. She's sitting two feet away from me. I hear my e-mail ding her computer and I see her smile at her screen when she reads my answer.

Leaning toward me, she says, “We're making Web pages. Scoot your desk over, and I'll take you through mine.”

Emily's Web page is for a fake business called Eat, Drink, and Read Books. Pretty good name and I tell her so. She clicks through the pages, one being Staff Favorites, in which the fake staff have picked their favorite books. Robert deGillyhoppy has selected
The City of Ember.
I point at the book cover on the screen. “I've read that!”

“Robert's read the whole series,” she says.

“Me, too!” I forget for a second that Robert is really Emily.

Island of the Blue Dolphins,
selected by Molly Toad. (Molly
Toad
!) “I love that book!”

Emily smiles.

Found,
and the entire Missing series by Margaret Peterson Haddix—“Are you kidding me?” I can't believe this. “SHE'S MY FAVORITE AUTHOR!”

“Ahem,” Ms. Reilly says. She doesn't clear her throat;
she says “ahem.” “Girls? Let's try to contain our excitement for programming, okay?”

A quiet laughter bobs through the class, but it's okay because they're laughing with us, not at us, and Emily likes my favorite author and, “Have you read
Double Identity?”
I ask her.

Emily blinks with surprise. “I
own
that book!”

“Ahem.” Except this time, it's a real throat clearing.

Emily buttons her mouth and faces forward.

* * *

I love you.
I told you Mom's note would say that.

A girl named Cynthia sits with Emily and me at lunch. I ask Cyndi a few questions and she acts like I'm a mosquito buzzing around her ears. When she goes to get some napkins, Emily leans forward. “Don't call her Cyndi—she hates that.”

Well, excuse me.

When Amanda and I sit at lunch, our conversation explodes like a bag of popcorn in the microwave, bursting and popping all over the place until the bag is puffy and fat. Cynthia, Emily, and I are cold fish on a plate—flat, quiet, and no one wants us.

Emily eats rice rolls with soy sauce she's brought from home. Dunk, bite, chew; dunk, bite, chew. Cynthia has a different method for her school pizza. She eats like a wood chipper, feeding one slice into her mouth and then another.

I eat my peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. I swish my legs back and forth, developing a rhythm:
Swish, swisha. Swish, swisha.
I swing my shoulders to match my feet. In my head, a little song starts. Bo-ri-ring. Bo-ri-ring.

Cynthia lowers her pizza. “Can you sit still?”

“Can you speak Klingon?” I divide the fingers on one hand. “‘Live long and prosper.'”

Cynthia goes, “That's not Klingon; that's Vulcan.”

Well!

The girl who was smoking in the bathroom cuts through the lunchroom with a couple of friends. People scoot their chairs or backpacks out of her way, and girls walking in the opposite direction pause to let her pass. She doesn't do anything to make this happen—it just does.

When the girl strolls past our table, her mouth hints at the lopsided grin she'd given me earlier. “Hey,” she says, and she and her group keep walking, push open the doors, and go outside.

“You
know
her?” Cynthia holds a halfway buzzed slice of pizza in the air. Admiration colors her voice.

“Sort of.” I don't want to say anything else about the girl, like how I caught her smoking or how she had a fight with her mom.

Emily lays a hand on her cheek. “That's Nikki Simms. She's popposite.”

“What?”

“Popposite. Popular in the opposite way—like she's popular for being kind of bad.” She dips her rice roll into the soy sauce, two hands up to her mouth, and munches it like a squirrel. “I submitted that word to Merriam-Webster.”

“You can do that?”

“Right on their website.”

I am amazed. Never before have I known a person who officially makes words for the dictionary. But she's more amazed with me.

“I can't believe she said hi to you. She's like …”

“Topular?”

“What's that?”

“Like, top of the popular people.”

Emily DeCamp stares at me in wonder. “You just made up a word.”

* * *

“And then Emily goes, ‘You just made up a word.'” I've been on the phone for about forty-five minutes telling Amanda about my first day as a Magnolia girl. “So tomorrow in business technology, she's going to show me how to submit it to the dictionary.”

“I didn't know you could—”

“Oh, my gosh, and did I tell you about the library—it's two stories and they have a Starbucks in it!”

“But you don't drink—”

“They would never have a Starbucks at Palm Middle!

Remember when the principal said no to a soda machine? And you should see the food in the cafeteria; it looked so good. Not like Palm Middle Worm Corn.” This girl we don't really know sat down with her hot lunch and the grayish yellow corn niblets tumbled as a skinny dark worm climbed through them. The girl puked, probably the most exciting thing that happened that month, next to the worm, which became bigger and fatter each time we told the story.

Amanda doesn't laugh. She always laughs at Worm Corn.

“How to Eat Fried Worms!”
I laugh, because that line's an inside joke for Amanda and me because we both read the book and saw the movie.

Silence.

“Hello-o?”

Amanda says in a small voice, “I kind of feel like you're insulting Palm Middle.”

“No, I'm not! I'm telling you about Magnolia.” The red-shouldered hawk does not destroy her nest.

Pause.

“They really have a Starbucks?”

“Yes!”

“That's so cool.”

Together, we marvel over the outdoor Olympic-sized pool that I'll get to swim in for PE and then we debate the merits of having to wear a uniform and not having any boys in class.

“Speaking of boys,” Amanda says, “I'm not supposed to tell you something.”

“What? What is it?” I curl the phone closer to my face.

“Someone likes you but was afraid to tell you.”

Someone
likes
me. Adrenaline races through me like a lightning strike. “Who?”

“I promised I wouldn't tell,” Amanda says, “but it wouldn't be my fault if you guessed.”

“Someone at our school?” I ask.

“Yessss.” She drags it out.

A movie plays in my head of the boys crowding around me at lunch after the news got out about the lottery. I look at each of their faces, smiling at first, then sneering. I hope it's not one of them.

“I don't know. Just tell me.”

“I can't!”

Squishing my eyes shut, I line the boys up and review my mental notes for them. I throw out a few names, including a couple of popular boys even though I know it can't be them, but I thought I would check just in case, but for every name I throw out, Amanda says nope.

“C'mon! Think! You always act like you don't notice him, but he has really pretty eyes, and he's funny … curly hair … people think he's cute … funny … curly hair—oh, my gosh, I can't believe you aren't guessing this—
Rabbit!”

I gasp. “Tanner Law?”

“Finally!” she roars. “Just remember, you guessed; I didn't tell you.”

She talks about other stuff and I say “uh-huh” and “oh” when her voice tells me to, but I'm stuck at
Tanner Law likes me.

“What did he say about me?” I interrupt whatever she's saying that I wasn't exactly listening to.

“He sat with me at lunch today and said he always thought you were pretty, but he never said anything to you because he thought you didn't like him that way.”

Even though she can't see me, I nod. “What did you say?”