I don’t want to go back toward the subway. The cops might be looking for me. So I take the long way to school. I know I need to ditch MTA guy’s jacket as soon as I can, but I can’t bear to part with it.
I sing to keep warm, using the rhythm of my slippers slap-slap-slapping on the sidewalk.
I used to go to high school across town, on First Avenue. It was fine, I guess. I had friends there, but not many, and we weren’t that close. I used to count them, my friends, and it always felt like a light handful, a number with enough room to shake around in your palm. Seemy, though, she filled my hands, both of them. And I didn’t need anybody else.
Mom didn’t know I was skipping school last year until after the Nanapocalypse. She called the school to tell them I was going to rehab and would be out, and they told her I couldn’t come back even if I made up the work because I’d missed too many days already. It wasn’t even that many days. Five, tops. Two in the fall, and three in the spring, after we’d found the carriage house.
Tick goes to kindergarten next door to my old school now, which I feel bad about because Mom was so excited when he got assigned to that school because it meant I could take him every day. So Mom has to rush there in the morning for drop-off and pay someone else to bring him back home at the end of the day.
But not today, not this week. He’s staying with Dad while Mom’s away, so he’s bringing Tick into the city every morning and picking him up in the afternoon. Dad asked if I wanted to stay with him too, but I said no.
Mom was on the phone all summer, getting me into a new high school on Eighteenth Street. It’s not as good of a school as my old one, but we were lucky to find a place close to home that would take me. There is a set of black double doors at the top of the school’s front steps. And when I turn the corner, I see they’re already closed. That means I’ll have to ring the buzzer and get the security guard to let me in. That means I may have missed homeroom, maybe even first period, and that means they’ll report me to my mom, and that means everything is going to split open again.
I scuff up the stairs as fast as my slippers will allow and jam my finger on the buzzer. There’s no response.
“Oh, come on!” I groan aloud, buzzing again.
Finally a youngish guy in a blue security guard uniform and hat opens the door but blocks me as I try to hurry through. “ID?” he asks.
Realization floods me with panic.
“Where’s my bag?” I ask him and myself at the same time. He snorts at me. I spin in a circle, like maybe I’ve been wearing my backpack the whole time and just didn’t notice. “Please. Please, this can’t be happening.” My voice is shaking, and I feel like I’m going to scream myself to pieces right here on the front steps.
My backpack has everything in it. My cell phone, my wallet, my school ID, my textbooks. If I lost my backpack, I can’t just walk into school right now, change my clothes, and pretend like this morning never happened. Even if I try to replace everything, my mom will find out. I know she will. And everything will unravel. That stupid backpack is the only thing standing between me moving on with my life and everything going to shit.
“No,” I say. My voice is too loud. “It’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll go inside and get a day pass at the front office. Then I’ll go home at lunch and get my ID, because I’m sure that’s where my backpack is. Right? Right.”
The security guard smirks. “ID?” he says again.
“I’m late, man, can you please just let me in?” I ask, standing awkwardly with one foot on the front step and one foot inside the door.
I can feel a patch of darkness coming, like a blanket being pulled over my scalp and over my eyes. I shake my head, hard, but it does nothing. I come to and it’s only been a moment, because the guard is saying, “Don’t call me ‘man’. You need an ID to come inside.” He looks down at my feet. “And shoes.”
“Sorry, lady,” I answer, “but my ID is at home and I am wearing shoes.”
He snorts in reply. “You can’t come in without an ID.”
I can see over his shoulder into the front hall; the clock says 7:42, and that means I have exactly twenty-three minutes, until 8:05 a.m., to get to the front office without being marked late before first period starts.
“Don’t lie, you know I can get a day pass.”
“You can’t come in without—”
“Seriously”—my voice gets all whispery and high-pitched like it does right before I’m going to cry—“I’m having a really, really crummy morning, and if I don’t get into school before the next bell rings, I’m going to catch all kinds of hellfire.”
He’s not impressed, doesn’t move aside.
“Weren’t you ever a kid?” I ask.
He snorts. “Once. A lifetime and five minutes ago.”
“Good,” I say. “Then you remember how shit like being late for school can snowball. I’m just trying not to get buried, you know?” He keeps watching me, and something changes in his face, softens a little. “I’m freezing out here, man,” I whisper. “I just want to come in and go to school. How can you punish a kid for wanting to go to school?”
“Fine,” he says, moving aside, and I push past him into the warmth of the building. “Find your ID!” he calls after me.