CHAPTER 4

I quickly pull my backpack closer to me and start drawing a cloud in the window’s condensation. One circle. Two circles. Make it puffy. Puffier. Puffier. This cloud needs to be so big I can disappear inside it. Someplace where I can’t hear Kaylee’s voice.

The bus pulls away from the trailer park and starts heading down the street, where practically every house has a big yard, and some even have a swing set in back. I keep running my tentacle along the window, making the cloud bigger and bigger until there isn’t any condensation left to draw in. It still isn’t big enough.

The bus slows down for its next stop, and I peer through the wet window to see Matt Hubbard waiting up ahead. His bus stop is magically right in front of his house. No need to cross a whole trailer park. Instead, he gets to strut down his perfectly snowblown walk, probably after having waffles, an omelet, and several strips of bacon for breakfast, and probably after his mom gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to “Have a good day, dear.”

And certainly after he checked his backpack to make sure he had his homework.

I’ve seen his family before because they go out for pizza at the restaurant where my mom works—and they do that every single Saturday night. Every single one! It’s like it doesn’t matter if it’s a payday week or not. Like they never run out of gas in the car and can’t fill it up. Like it’s easy for them all to be together at the same time with no one working or sick or totally stressed out or screaming or naked (that’d be Aurora).

It’s like he lives on a beautiful tropical island, and I can see it and smell the pizza, but no matter how hard I swim I can’t get there.

Matt gets on the bus, holds his trumpet case out in front of him so it can fit between the seats, and makes his way toward the back.

Even though we’re in the same homeroom, he doesn’t look my way. That’s one of the things about the people on that beautiful tropical island: they can’t see who’s floating about in the ocean around them. Or maybe they can and they just choose not to look. I don’t know.

I’ve never been there.

Fuchsia is waiting for me at my locker when I arrive. Fuchsia isn’t her real name, but she wasn’t a fan of the name McKenna, and she’s even less a fan of her mom. She found out about the color fuchsia in second grade, and since all of first grade was kids coming up to her to order a McKenna and fries like she was a drive-thru window, she didn’t look back.

Now she’s leaning against the locker next to mine, her pink hair splayed out behind her. “I want you to know that I destroyed that white team yesterday.”

“White team?” I drop my backpack and start opening my locker. “Are you talking about foosball? At the rec?”

She nods. “Destroyed.”

“Who were you playing against?” I carefully tuck the edges of my winter jacket inside my locker so the sleeves don’t get pinched. I love my jacket. Lenny gave it to me—it was this random present one day because it’s my mom who buys our clothes, not him—and it’s one of those camo jackets with the sleeves that look like leather but aren’t really, and it’s pink. It’s awesome.

“I told you: the white team.”

I eye her.

“And I destroyed them,” she says. “Nine to nothing.”

“You mean, you scored against a team of little plastic men who were frozen in place with no one to spin their handles,” I say.

“Nine times, baby.”

I bite back a smile and shut my locker. “How long did that take?”

She shrugs. “Just a few hours, but I was persistent. And I had promised Jane Kitty I would bring home a victory.”

Jane Kitty is a little scruffy ball of fur who followed Fuchsia home this past fall. I had been going on about Jane Goodall at lunch that day, and Fuchsia—who felt like living in the jungle would be way better than living with her mom—adopted the wild kitten as her own piece of jungle. I haven’t gotten to meet Jane Kitty yet because my mom and Fuchsia’s mom had a big blowup around the time we moved into Lenny’s trailer, and we haven’t been able to go to each other’s places since. But Fuchsia talks about her all the time.

“Jane Kitty might be more proud of you if you could score against an actual opponent,” I say. “How many points did I score against you last time?”

Fuchsia puts on a fake thinking face. “Hmm … I can’t remember because it was so long ago.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I can remember your score. It started with a z, and—”

Fuchsia puts her finger to my mouth to stop me. “Sorry, you only get to talk smack if you’re going to show up.”

“I couldn’t yesterday,” I start to say. But Fuchsia is already heading down the hall.

“No show? No smack!” she calls.

Elementary school goes through sixth grade here, so this is our first year in middle school, and even though we’re already halfway through the school year, I still haven’t figured out the point of homeroom. Yeah, Mr. Bontaff takes attendance, but they take attendance during classes, too. And there’s the morning announcements over the loud speaker about all the activities the good kids do like drama and jazz band, but that still leaves us eight and a half minutes of awkwardness. There aren’t assigned seats, so I usually just try to find a seat in the back where no one will bother me. Unfortunately, I can’t get there without walking past some girls who are going on about the animals they chose for the debate, and of course have their perfectly filled-out packets with them. The chromatophores right under my octopus skin switch to camouflage. When I slide into the seat, I might as well be made of the same colors as the desk and the metal chair legs.

I close my eyes. All I had to do was put the debate packet into my backpack. I could have done it last night when I finished it. I could have done it this morning before I woke up Bryce and Aurora. I should have thought about it on my way to the bus stop. I still could have run back to get it. So what if Frank had woken up and yelled at me?

Most of the boys in my homeroom are bunched together like bees swarming an open jar of grape jelly. They’re all buzzing—mostly about the Patriots’ game yesterday—and it’s like the jar of jelly is moving because soon the swarm is in the back corner right next to my desk. They’re oblivious to me, of course, and I shift my backpack out of the way before it gets stepped on. The last thing I need is to be walking around with a giant footprint on my bag. I’d rather pretend that I’m not sure what people think of me instead of being forced to carry around physical proof of it.

“Come on,” Brendan Farley is saying, “that was definitely the best play of the game. Did you see the look on that receiver’s face when he dropped the ball? Priceless!”

Calvin Umbatoor shakes his head. “No way, man. It was the Pats’ hurry-up offense in the third quarter. The Colts’ defensive line didn’t know what was coming at them.”

Matt, with his trumpet-playing lungs, quiets them all down. “You’re all wrong. The best play of the game was clearly the fumble on that third down in the first quarter and that’s because … ” He pauses for dramatic effect.

“Because the Colts were in field goal position,” I mumble to my desk.

The sudden silence around me is the kind that makes me lift my head without thinking. And there is Matt Hubbard looking right at me.

“Exactly,” he says.

He’s still looking at me.

My octopus chromatophores don’t always listen to me. Suddenly, that oh-so-awesome camouflage skin has turned bright red and pimply all over.