I try to calm myself down. They’re not here. They weren’t in homeroom or first or second period. It’s almost lunch now. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I shouldn’t have even thought about them. I should have come in ready to float through my first day back. I just thought . . . since they called . . .
I’ve successfully avoided most people by plowing through the halls with my head down. If I knock into someone, they don’t get mad, they just whisper in my wake. When I’m at my locker, a few people come up to tell me they’re sorry about what happened. They either try to look me in the face or avoid looking at me at all.
Third period ends with the lunch bell, and I decide to go to the nurse and call Mom to come get me. It’s my first day back, so they have to give me some slack. I cut through the cafeteria on the way to the nurse’s office, head down, ready to knock over anyone in my way. I tell myself it’s a shortcut, I don’t let myself feel the spark of hope that they will be there.
“Donnie! Over here!”
Sheila and Rodney are sitting by themselves at a round table, both waving wildly at me. Ha. When I walk up to the table, Rodney says, “We had to go to the dentist this morning. We’d forgotten. Sit down.”
I sit down.
“I’m Sheila and this Rodney. We’ve never properly met.”
“Hi,” I say, and open up my lunch bag. Sheila smiles and nods at me for a long time, then purses her lips and looks at Rodney, trying to tell him something with her eyes. He shrugs his shoulders at her, almost frantically. I see her mouth, Talk to him!
I let them off the hook. “So what’s it like to live in London? Do you miss it?”
“Yes and yes!” Rodney almost shouts with relief. A few people close by turn their heads. I smile at him. “We were born in India but lived in London with our mum and dad.”
“How long have you been here?” This is what it is to have a conversation.
“We’ve been in the states two years and in this town for one month.”
“Two years?” Their accents are so thick I thought they’d just moved here. Rodney leans forward conspiratorially.
“We watch a lot of British telly. Sheila doesn’t want us to lose our accents.”
“We’re not American, so why should we sound like Americans?” Sheila says. “Besides, when Mum has us go live with her, we want to blend. We’re going to live with our mum.”
Rodney rolls his eyes at Sheila and tells me, “We have dual citizenship. Dad’s American. And we’re not going to live with Mum in the UK anytime soon.” He looks at Sheila. “Where would she put us? Her suitcase?” He quotes someone, I’m guessing his mom, “‘The road is no place for a child.’”
Sheila thinks about that for a moment, and then says triumphantly, “Well, for university, then.”
She and Rodney are staring at something behind me.
“Donnie,” Sheila says in an accent that’s thicker than the one she had just a second ago, “there’s a strange looking boy standing behind you opening and closing his mouth like a guppy out of water.”
I turn around and there’s Chris, leaning awkwardly and trying to look unconcerned. He opens his mouth.
“Shut up,” I say before he can make a sound, and I turn back around to Sheila and Rodney. I hear Chris walk away.
“Well, then. No more guppy,” Sheila says.
After lunch I find a note from Chris and Bean in my locker.
“Sorry about your sister.”
I crumple it up and clench it in my fist. I turn to where Chris and Bean watch me from their lockers, and drop the note on the floor.
I eat lunch with Sheila and Rodney every day for two weeks, until it feels almost normal. Almost like a pattern. Almost like friends. I still go to lunch a few minutes late and walk almost straight through the cafeteria, planning every day to walk right on to the nurse’s office if I don’t see them, or if I do see them and they ignore me. They never do, though. They always smile when they see me. I smile back.
They don’t say anything about me walking home from school now. I pretend that it’s not strange that I opt to walk home every day. I just don’t want them to think that they have to be my friends. If we ride the bus together, there’ll be that awkward moment when I stand up to get off and they don’t want to invite me over to their house, so they don’t.