WHEN I RETURNED TO SCHOOL the next day, I chose not to eat lunch at my secret table beneath the arched windows of the empty library. Instead, I walked into the cafeteria, found an empty table as far away from my former friends as I could get, and sat down. Kenzie and Sapphire and Emily didn’t follow me this time, but I knew they were watching me. Everybody was. I didn’t even need my tattoo to tell me that. At first, I was tempted to take out my books and pretend to do my homework. Or to read A Farewell to Arms. Or to play around on my phone when the lunch monitors’ backs were turned. But I didn’t do any of these things. I simply sat down, unpacked my lunch, and ate it quietly. I didn’t want to hide behind anything anymore. I was a junior in high school, and I had no friends. I had started over once at the beginning of freshman year, and again when my dad went to jail and we lost our house, and I was starting over again now, only this time, I knew it was going to be okay. I had nothing to be ashamed of, not anymore. Maybe it sounds sort of pathetic, but that day, as I sat eating my lunch in complete solitude, I knew that when I looked back on it, I would remember this as one of my proudest moments of high school.
One morning, a couple days later, I was sitting in chapel, working on my physics homework and waiting for prayers to start when Alexis and Ola Kaminski walked past me on the way to their seats.
“Hey, Wendy,” Ola said, stopping in front of me as Alexis continued down the aisle, “can I ask you a homework question?”
“Sure,” I said. I was more flattered than surprised: Physics was one of my best subjects, but Ola was the smartest girl in school. Word was she’d already been offered an academic scholarship to Northwestern. She put her bag down, sat in the empty seat next to me, and pulled out her homework.
Desiree is riding the Giant Drop at Great America. If Desiree free falls for 2.60 seconds, what will be her final velocity and how far will she fall?
I took out my calculator and began to explain the kinematic equation to Ola while she scribbled notes and furrowed her brow in concentration.
Once we had figured out the answer, Ola stood up.
“You know, Wendy,” she said, “you could always come sit with me and Alexis and Marlo at lunch. We usually just do homework anyway.”
I could feel myself redden.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m all right, though. It’s kind of nice to just, you know, relax in the middle of the day sometimes.”
“Is it because of you and Alexis?” Ola leveled me with those clear, Northwestern-bound eyes.
“No,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just . . .”
“Because, you know, she’s not like them. We’re not like them. We forgive. We move on.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
Prayers began then, but I didn’t really listen.
All I could think about was the final part of the physics problem.
What will be her final velocity?
And how far will she fall?
The following Monday, I went down to lunch and sat at my usual table for one. I was just taking that first delicious fizzy sip of my Dr Pepper when I saw Ola get up from her table, pick up her tray, and walk across the cafeteria in my direction. Without so much as a hello, she put her tray down at my table, sat across from me, and bit into her spicy chicken patty as if it was totally normal to start eating lunch out of the blue with a girl you’ve barely spoken to in your entire life. A couple minutes later, Marlo joined us, chomping on an apple and carrying a heavily annotated copy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. And finally, Alexis, my old beloved friend, stood up, crossed the cafeteria, and sat down right next to me. The three of them worked on their homework for the rest of the period and chatted among themselves as if nothing had changed. They didn’t engage me in conversation, and I didn’t try to talk to them.
For now it was enough that they were there.