Ashanti didn’t ride the bus on Monday, but Nikolas sat with me. I hoped he didn’t expect me to talk to him or anything because I have a hard enough time remembering to breathe at seven in the morning. In the mornings I just sit like a blob on the bus. Ashanti wasn’t in class, so I went to the library and checked to see if she e-mailed me.
To: Albright
From: TI22
I tried to call you this morning, but you had already left. I’m sick and my dad’s taking me to the doctor. Call me when you get home… if I’m still alive :(
Ashanti
To: TI22
From: Albright
Sorry you’re not feeling well. I’ll get your homework for you. Hope you feel better.
Landry
I asked Jay if he would call her with the English assignment since she likes him. Then I walked to the cafeteria by myself and went to sit at Ashanti’s table with Maggie and Halle.
“Ashanti’s sick today,” Maggie said, flipping her dishwater blonde ponytail. I didn’t know if she was trying to say, “So you don’t need to sit with us,” but I sat down anyway. Halle was busy reading an article in Seventeen on how to make your eye color stand out.
“It says lavender shadow makes brown eyes pop, but I think my azure liner works better,” she said. “It also recommends slate and pewter.” She moved the magazine closer to Maggie, making it impossible for me to see, so I got up to get a cookie. I asked if either of them wanted anything and they both looked up like, “You’re still here?” Devon got in line behind me and reached over for a brownie.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Not much. I just listened to a fascinating conversation on eye shadow.”
“Learn anything?” she asked.
Yeah, to skip lunch when your friend was out sick. The bell rang, and she stuffed the brownie in her mouth as she paid the cashier. I walked back to class with my cookie in my pocket.
When I got to science, Mrs. Tamar said she was going to change our seats. I said a prayer I wouldn’t be moved near Tori or Ericka. My understanding teacher decided to make a game out of it and had us draw numbers out of a hat to assign our seats. I had number twenty-four, and the first table had four spots. Even if both of them wound up at a table there would still be a chance I’d have one person there who didn’t hate my guts. Ericka ended up with Arianna, Anthony, and Tad. One down. The next set of seats had three desks in a row. Okay it would suck, especially if I was stuck in the middle with Tori on one side. I prayed as Mrs. Tamar’s hand went into the hat.
“Twenty…” Please Lord, I won’t spend all my money on celebrity tabloids, I won’t think about boys, I’ll devote my life to homework, and—“two. Who has number twenty-two?” she asked. There were still a couple of other people I didn’t want to sit by, like Stuart or Yasmin.
Seat after seat was taken until we got to the last table. I had been so busy going over whom I didn’t want to sit next to, and I hadn’t paid attention to whose name hadn’t been called. We were down to the last table of four desks. This was it… the moment of truth.
“Twenty-four and fifteen. Okay, you may pick up your things and move in an orderly fashion to your desks. Quietly people,” Mrs. Tamar said.
No one else had raised their hand when she called the last two numbers so all I knew was there were only two of us at the table. It would either be amazing if it was someone I liked or awful if it was somebody stupid who couldn’t help me with the lab work. I took the desk facing the windows, but no one was moving in my direction. Oh no, what if they saw me sitting here and were trying to plea bargain with Mrs. Tamar to sit somewhere else. I’d have to spend the whole quarter without a lab partner.
“Cool, we’ll be partners.” I looked up as Devon slid into the seat across from me. “I was worried I’d end up sitting with Stuart,” she said. “I gotta warn you, science is not my thing.”
****
I went over to Ashanti’s house after school to drop off her homework.
“Hi, Landry. How are you doing?” Mr. Russell asked. “I’d invite you in, but the doctor said she’s got mono. She slept all afternoon, and she’s going to be out of school for a while,” he said.
“Tell her I hope she feels better. I picked up all of her assignments for her. Oh, and tell her Jay Crane might call her about the English assignment,” I said.
His eyebrows flew up. “You mean the Jay might call my house? I better prepare my answering voice. ‘Ashanti, a gentleman caller for you,’” he said in a British accent. He thanked me for getting her assignments and said he’d have her call me when she woke up.
I went home and looked up the symptoms of mono and how you caught it. Since Ashanti and I hadn’t shared a drink and she hadn’t spit on me, I figured I was safe and I went to hang out on the couch. Might as well get comfy since I had no place else to go as long as Ashanti was sick. Yup, Mr. Couch and I were going to become real close pals for the next couple of weeks. I sat there watching Simpsons reruns until Ashanti called a few hours later.
“Jay called me. You are the greatest person since the inventor of Super Yummy Scrummy snack cakes, and you know how much I love those things,” Ashanti said. “And the homework thing — it gave him a reason to call without looking like, you know, a boy calling a girl thing.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“He told me you were worried about me getting the directions for our paper—”
“Your grades are my first concern,” I said.
“Of course, so then he asked how I was feeling, and I told him I’d be out for a while so he offered to get my English assignments. Now my dad talked to all my teachers this afternoon who said they’d e-mail the work to me, but Jay doesn’t have to know about it.”
“Great,” I said.
“Yeah, except my dad said the words ‘gentleman caller’ with an English accent. I died.”
“Maybe he’ll think you have a butler,” I said.
“Well, my dad is going to be working from home part time while I’m sick, but I don’t think he’ll pretend to be the butler. Anyway, will you miss me?” she asked.
She had no idea. Ashanti had made it easier to get up in the morning. I had found a friend who liked the same things I did, and we had a lot of fun together the last couple of weeks. In fact, getting to know her was the one good thing which came out of the fight. If Ericka and Tori hadn’t stopped speaking to me, then Ashanti and I wouldn’t have gotten to know each another so well. I could tell she was getting tired, so we got off the phone and I decided to start my history homework. I was completely friendless with Ashanti out sick, but maybe my grades would go up with all the extra homework time. However, I forgot to write down the assignments, so I called India for the homework, and we talked until her mom called her for dinner. She was nice to me, but she wasn’t in my lunch hour so I was stuck sitting at Maggie and Halle’s table or hiding out in the library. Still, I wondered if I’d ever be able to break into India’s group of friends.