Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (3 page)

I felt my mouth drop open and then close again. Or more like clench than close. I was no fan of stealing. Stealing had landed Mama in jail more than once, and it seemed like such a stupid crime to risk your freedom for, especially when the goal was usually to turn the loot into something powdery and white that was gone the second you sniffed it up your nose. At least, that was always Mama's endgame, back when she was using.

I looked down at the violin one last time.
Next year, then.
It would make a better five-year anniversary gift anyway. I returned the violin to the rack, but no sooner had I set it down than Andi snatched it up. She spun it carelessly between her hands, keeping it just out of my reach.

“Put it back,” I said.

Instead, she dangled it between two fingers from the end of the neck, letting it swing dangerously back and forth above the tile floor. “You said it belongs to your family?”

“No.” I held my breath as the violin slipped from her fingers, and she caught it silently with her other hand. “I said it
used to
belong to my family.”

“It still does,” Andi said. She gripped the neck firmly now and held it out to me. “This place was just borrowing it. Take it home now.”

“I don't have enough money.”

Andi didn't answer; instead she held the violin steady in the air between us, daring me to do what she'd done with the snow globe. But even if I'd wanted to, I didn't have a giant green jacket like she had, and if I did, the jacket still wouldn't have pockets big enough to hide a violin.

As if reading my mind, Andi tugged with her free hand at a black strap running diagonally across her chest, and an oversize messenger bag attached to the strap swung out from behind her. The next thing I knew, Mama's violin was disappearing into the messenger bag, the neck poking awkwardly out one side.

“You could have had it for free,” she said. “Now you'll have to buy it off me.”

Then she spun on her heel and ran for the door before I could even breathe.

 

3

FULL DARK HAD now fallen on the street outside Pete's Pawn, which was steaming with summer humidity and glowing with the light from neon signs. The green glare of a beer advertisement and the flickering pink neon of a dancing lady lit my path as I pounded down the sidewalk after Andi.

I could see her just ahead, skirting a group of guys headed into a bar, her dreadlocks sailing behind her and the messenger bag with its violin handle bouncing dangerously against her back. Behind me, the pawnshop clerk shouted “Hey! Hey!” over and over again, but I could tell by the way his shouts got thinner and quieter as I ran that he wasn't coming after us. I wished he would. He probably had a better chance of catching Andi than I did. My short legs were pumping double-time compared with her long, easy strides, and already my chest was starting to ache. I was wheezing by the time Andi reached the end of the street and took a hard left toward the river. I skidded to a stop at the corner and bent over, my hands on my knees.

The road Andi had turned down was empty and quiet, all the shops shuttered for the night, in contrast to the party just picking up on the street behind me, and next to every other storefront, alley after alley opened up dozens of paths she could have taken.

I stood to stretch out a cramp in my side and was about to turn back when movement under one of the shop awnings caught my eye. I darted into a doorway and peeked around the edge, holding my breath.

Andi crept slowly out from the shadow of the awning, twisting her head in my direction. I ducked back into the doorway, and when I dared to peek again, she was walking away down the street, clearly in no hurry now. I moved on my tiptoes and used the cover of the yawning alleys and deep doorways to creep behind her.

I followed her all the way across the wide road that ran along the river into the vast expanse of River City Park—a tangle of trees, sloping hills, and dirt paths so sprawling you couldn't even see the river from the road that followed its banks. The park was the perfect place to disappear.

River City liked to pretend this place was its emerald jewel, a shiny stretch of green along the famous Mississippi. But the only part of the park that really fit that bill was the bit I was pounding across right now. The city kept the lawn between the road and the woods perfectly groomed, and it was always installing fancy new water fountains and the latest playground equipment. But beyond the tree line, River City Park became wild, and I don't just mean the landscape. Dirt roads cut narrow paths through the woods, where you were as likely to run into a fallen tree as you
were a group of homeless people making camp for the night. The shadows of the park hid all kinds of things, from hookers with their clients to druggies looking for a quiet place to shoot up. Grandma had found Mama passed out in the woods more than once.

I knew all the ugly that lay beyond those pretty trees, and I wanted nothing to do with it. But across the green space, Andi was disappearing into the woods with Mama's violin, so I hesitated only a second before diving in after her. Flickers of light flashed through the dense forest, and I could hear the distant thumping bass line of a familiar song.

Well, at least I knew where she was headed. I raced through the trees and exploded into a clearing full of bonfires and a sea of people.

People I recognized.

All around me, kids from Jefferson were clutching red cups with liquid sloshing over the sides as they grinded against each other in time with the music. To my right, four guys held a fifth one upside down over a keg as he sucked beer straight out of the tap, while a crowd around them cheered him on.

I leaned against a tree to catch my breath and peered through the haze of bonfire smoke. So this was what a high school party looked like. I usually tried not to think about the stupid small-town parties I wasn't invited to and focused instead on the great big cities where I would someday live. But now that the scene was laid out in front of me, it wasn't as lame as I'd hoped. In fact, once you got used to the stink of sweat and beer, it almost seemed kind of cool.

Not that I spent a lot of time
woe-is-me
ing over my lack of invitations. I'd been to a slumber party or two, even made a few friends over the years—mostly other kids from family support groups, where it was pretty much impossible to be invisible. But those friendships were fleeting. Sometimes kids moved away to get a “fresh start” or went into their own downward spirals, but mostly we eventually discovered we just didn't have anything in common outside of our screwed-up parents.

Besides, Mama seemed more friend than family most days. Sure, we weren't doing any keg stands together, but we shopped in each other's closets and laughed at each other's dumb jokes, and she was the only other person on earth who understood that ramen noodles and ketchup was a gourmet meal. As long as she was sober, she was all the friend I needed. Or at least that's what I told myself whenever I saw kids my age clustered together.

The thought of Mama reminded me of exactly what I was doing lurking at the edge of this end-of-summer bash, and I peeled myself away from the tree, determined to find Andi. I squinted at the crowd, searching for a head full of dreadlocks.

Before the dreads, Andi's hair had been a mass of lush brown waves, the kind of thick and shiny you usually only see in magazines. It had made her stand out, even among the rest of the Barbies who were always bobbing along in her wake. The Barbies all still had their perfect hair, but sometime freshman year, they started following someone else around. I wondered whether Andi had violated some pretty-girl code when she twisted her hair and started sporting that green army jacket. In
any case, I hadn't seen her with her former clique since freshman year.

And I couldn't see her at all now. Either she had a chameleon's knack for blending in, or she had skipped past the party and run deeper into the woods. Which meant the violin was gone, too.

“Attention, upperclassmen!” someone over by the keg bellowed. He was answered with a few cheers and whistles. “Junior year is going to ROCK!”

I sighed.
If you say so, dude.

A hand touched my shoulder then, and the stink of beer breath blew across my face.

For one irrational moment, I was five years old again, and Mama was drunk and trying to kiss me good night, but all I wanted to do was pull the comforter over my face so I wouldn't have to smell whatever she'd been drinking.

“Why susha waffle?” the beer breather said in my ear.

I leaned away from the voice, from the smell, and felt the hand slip off my shoulder.

The girl attached to the hand wobbled for a second on long, thin legs, but managed to stay standing. She smiled down at me, waiting for my answer to whatever question she thought she had asked.

“I don't—I didn't hear you right,” I said.

She leaned close to me again, her breath now hitting me smack in the face. “Why. Such. A. Wall. Flower?”

The smell. The
smell
.

I reached up to grab her forearms and push her away. Once I got her upright and out of my personal space, I could see she was
one of Andi's former followers—the Barbies who controlled what was cool and what wasn't at Jefferson. I was pretty sure you weren't supposed to touch the Barbies. I braced myself for her wrath.

But she only smiled as though I'd done her a favor. “Thanks,” she said. “I'm tipsy.”

If by “tipsy” she meant about to tip
over
, then yeah, I had to agree.

“I'm not a wallflower,” I said.

“No?”

“Can't be a wallflower without walls. I'm a . . . a . . .” My eyes landed on the tree I'd been leaning against. “I'm a tree flower.”

Oh my God, please let the earth open up now and suck me and the tree both down a big black hole.

“I mean—”

“A treeflur,” she slurred. “That's pretty. You're pretty.”

“Oh. Um . . . thanks.”

This Barbie wasn't so bad.

“Tess, if you think that's pretty, I'm cutting you off.”

The Barbie—Tess—and I spun at the sound of the voice, but the spin was too much for Tess, and she sidestepped into the tree behind me.

“Whoa,” she said. “Tree.”

“Yes, Tess, tree. See tree stand. See Tess stumble.” The voice belonged to a blond ponytail and comically high cheekbones. Georgia Jones—the new Andi, after Andi became . . . something else. Maybe there was always a new Barbie waiting in the wings to step up if the chief B went AWOL.

“Do I know you?”

It took me a second to realize Georgia was talking to me. How do you answer a question like that? How should I know whether she knew me? We were in some of the same classes, and I certainly knew
of
her, so maybe she knew of me, too—but did that mean she
knew
me?

“You look familiar,” she said.

“She's a tree flower.” Tess reached an unsteady hand out to pet the curls spilling out from under my hat and fixed an unfocused gaze on me. “Look at her eyes. Pretty green. Pretty flower. Can we keep her?”

“Tess! Go puke,” Georgia ordered.

Someone snickered, and I realized that Georgia had backup—two more unfairly pretty girls at her flanks.

“Okay.” Tess obediently stumbled away, already half-bent into hurling position. Her clumsy fingers had tangled in my hair, skewing my hat. I hurried to jam it back down, but Georgia's eyes had already snagged on the few jagged edges of scars that crept past my hairline onto my forehead.

“What's your name?” she asked.

One of the backup Barbies answered for me. “They call her Worms.”

I choked. Did people still call me that? No one had said it to my face in years, but then, since I'd started high school, nobody had really talked to me much at all. That was the upshot of being invisible. It was lonely, but at least it was safe.

“Gross.” Georgia flinched. “Worms? Why?”

The backup Barbie shrugged as if it didn't matter why, and I pulled my hat down tighter on my head. Kids didn't need a
reason to call you names. You could cover up your secrets with hats until a boy teased that you only wore them to hide your greasy hair. You could pull the hat off to prove he was wrong, exposing your orange curls, until another boy laughed and covered his eyes, shouting, “Ugh! Put it back on!”

I'd learned all that back in seventh grade. Junior high meant a new wave of students who didn't know about Mama or my scars or that my hair used to be as straight and blond as Georgia's. So I had opened myself up just an inch, making eye contact in hopes of making friends. Once I realized that I would be a target with or without my scars, I crawled back under my hats and embraced invisibility for good.

Georgia lifted her chin. “Well, no offense,
Worms
, but if you weren't invited, you really shouldn't—”

“I invited her.” A body filled the space where Tess had been, and it was much more imposing, with all those crazy dreadlocks and that hard stare.

Georgia's voice turned to acid. “Well, I
know
nobody invited
you
, Andi.”

“I'm pretty sure I have a standing invitation to these shindigs,” Andi said.

“Not this one. This ‘shindig' was my idea, and—”

“Your idea?” Andi interrupted. “Is that why it's so lame?”

One of the Barbies next to Georgia made a choking noise, and I couldn't tell whether it was a gasp or a stifled laugh.

Georgia's cheeks flushed, and her hands flailed for a moment before landing on her hips, as if she was trying to make herself look bigger. “The only lame thing I see here is you and your . . .” Her eyes slid to me. “Friend?”

There was something in the way she said the word “friend”—some echo of pain, or even jealousy. Whatever it was, Andi caught it, too.