I’m not even out of bed yet, but I can tell it’s warmer out this morning. My bed is on the outside wall of the building, and the past few days it’s been ice-cold to the touch despite my having the baseboard heaters turned up high. I’m sure Emily has been nice and toasty down on the bottom bunk, on the few nights she’s actually been home, but somehow the warmth just doesn’t reach all the way up to my bunk.
I ignore the alarm for a few minutes, but I can’t fall back asleep; the clock radio is across the room, and I have to go all the way down the ladder to turn it off. I keep it set to a multilingual station, turned up loud. I don’t know what language the announcers are speaking this morning, but I guess Italian. The DJ sounds like Giuseppe, the plumber Simon calls when there’s a mess he can’t fix. Some days it sounds like people speaking Arabic, or whatever language the terrorists speak in the war movies Simon likes to watch.
I take a shower, make a futile attempt to tame my shock of hair and head out the door, wondering if I’ll have any friends left when I get to school. I decide to skip breakfast—there’s still a knot in my stomach after my falling-out with Katie and Griffin last night, and somehow I’m just not in the mood to put anything else in there.
I don’t see any of them when I get to school, but that’s not unusual. Griffin and Katie have history first thing, and I have art. Marie-Claire’s in art class with me, but she’s not here this morning. Again, that’s not unusual: she’s late half the time anyway.
We sit at big tables like in kindergarten and wait for the morning announcements. The basketball team is on a winning streak. The hockey team lost its game on Friday. The math club—the only kids at school more bizarre than my little group—is meeting after school, new members are welcome. Mr. Hogan tells the boys at the table next to mine to take off their baseball caps while “O Canada” plays, but Nate Burke whines about hat head and Quinn Ross takes his off for “our home and native land” and then slips it back on again in time for the first “stand on guard for thee.” Mr. Hogan lets it slide. Teachers let a lot of things slide with those two. It’s got to be easier than actually trying to control them.
Marie-Claire slips in on the last notes of the anthem and takes her seat at my table—not beside me, where she usually sits, but kitty-corner, in the seat that usually sits empty.
“What’s the matter, Frenchy, you don’t want to be Canadian? Skipping ‘O Canada’?” Nate throws an eraser at her, catching her in the shoulder. “You should just go back to Quebec and separate.”
Without a thought, I jump to her defense. “She’s from New Brunswick, you dumbass, not Quebec.”
“What’s the difference?”
I open my mouth to point out that New Brunswick is an entirely different province, but Mr. Hogan catches my eye and shakes his head before I can says anything.
After class Marie-Claire takes off like a greased pig, dodging through the hallways like she’s trying to get away from an ax-wielding farmer. I’m not sure why; our lockers are side by side and we both have to stop at them before second period. I catch up to her as she’s working the combination on her lock: 20-43-16, for the record.
“So nobody’s speaking to me now?”
Marie-Claire shrugs. “Look, Jenna, I just don’t want to choose sides. I don’t have so many friends at this school to start with, and if half of them suddenly don’t want to talk to me—”
“So the majority rules, then?”
“I guess so. Look, I’m sorry. Maybe if you just apologized to Griffin and Katie…he says you told his dad Griffin’s an asshole.”
“Well, he was being one, so I guess I’m not sorry for saying it. Not much point in apologizing if I’m not sorry.” I unlock my locker and pull out the embroidered drawstring bag I keep my gym clothes in. Marie-Claire grabs her math book and goes upstairs to her next class, her head tucked into her chest as she hustles toward the stairs.
I sling the gym bag over my shoulder and head off to phys ed. Apologize to Griffin and Katie? Not a chance. I’m not even completely sure what we’re fighting about, but I do know for sure I’m nowhere near done being mad.
I’m sure most of the kids who don’t fit in spend their days in fear of phys ed class. It can be a scary ordeal if you’re not one of the skinny, athletic, popular kids. I was one of the first kids in my class to need a bra, so I’ve always gotten my fair share of snide comments and rude stares, but now that most of the other girls have caught up to me, it’s less of a big deal. Gym in general has always been ten times worse for Katie than it is for me—not just the changeroom and, worse, the showers, but the whole process: getting picked last for teams, getting laughed at when she runs, standing in the corner when we’re doing gymnastics, hoping nobody will notice she hasn’t taken her turn to do a somersault because she can’t make her body roll up in a little ball.
Today we’re practicing basketball shots, which would be tolerable if I was partnered with Katie. There are six basketball hoops in the gym and twenty-four of us in the class, which means four people practicing shots on each hoop. Ordinarily, Katie and I would just pair up with a couple of the other losers and hide in a corner for the entire class, pretending to take shots while we talked about whatever we were going to do after school. It would be the perfect day in gym class, really. We wouldn’t even have to work up enough of a sweat to have to deal with the showers afterward, which is its own special kind of hell.
But today Katie pairs up with Imogene, a special-needs kid who takes gym with us. She’s a nice kid, I guess, although her conversational subjects are pretty much limited to whatever shows are popular on the Disney Channel this month. I doubt whether even the six-year-olds in Wex’s class still think Miley Cyrus is cool, but Imogene sure does. She’s got about ten different Hannah Montana T-shirts, not to mention an assortment of bracelets, earrings and pins that she’s not allowed to wear in gym class. I guess Katie prefers hearing about what happened on Disney yesterday to talking with me today. I don’t even try to make conversation; she’s clearly trying to freeze me out.
“I guess I’m stuck with you, huh?”
I feel my stomach tie itself in a little knot. I recognize that voice even without turning around: Ashley Walsh. She went out with Ned Street for a while last year, which is bad enough on its own, but she’s been pretty nasty to me in her own right as far back as I can remember. In third grade, she used to climb up on the toilets in the school bathrooms and look at me over the stall walls while I was peeing. Last semester, when I’d finished reading a poem out loud in English class, she tripped me on the way back to my seat, then giggled and gave this big-eyed, innocent stare to the teacher, who looked up from his desk long enough to tell me to watch where I was walking. I guess it’s easier to blame the weird kid than yell at the cool one.
I look Ashley over. She’s wearing Lululemon pants and a tank top two sizes too small that shows off her cleavage. I’m pretty sure the next hour will be filled with snide comments about my old running shoes and worn-out Walmart sweatpants, and Ashley “accidentally” firing the ball at my head when I’m not looking.
I shake my head. “No thanks.”
Ashley’s neatly plucked eyebrows shoot up under her carefully fluffed bangs. “Excuse me?”
“I’m okay, thanks. I don’t really want to be your partner.”
I can actually see her getting mad. She starts turning pink around the ears, and her chest puffs out even farther.
“Well, I don’t know who you’re going to be partners with then. Your fat friend is all cozy with the retard over there, and we’re the only two left.”
It hits me then: something is amiss. Like there’s a disturbance in The Force. Why isn’t Ashley off with the rest of her crowd? Megan and Jessica and Emily, her usual gang, are off in a corner with Victoria Harper, who is usually nothing more than a hanger-on but today looks like a full-fledged member of the club. They’re standing around the hoop in the middle of the gym, shoulder to shoulder, with Megan and Emily each clutching a basketball like they’re about to take a shot, but it’s mostly a ruse in case Ms. Robbins looks over while they’re chatting. Every once in a while Victoria glances back over her shoulder to see if Ashley’s still talking to me. Then she gives me a creepy little sneer and turns back to the rest of the gang.
“Miss Walsh, Miss Cooper: mixing it up today, are we?” Ms. Robbins was born to be a gym teacher. She has about fifteen different tracksuits in every color of the rainbow, and an office wall full of motivational posters with pictures of sweaty people making great tennis serves, running across finish lines, sinking baskets. She’s the kind of person who actually says things like “No pain, no gain” and “Winners never quit, quitters never win” with a straight face.
As soon as she comes over, Ashley plasters on her big, fake, doe-eyed smile. “Ms. Robbins, it looks like Jenna and I are the last two without partners.”
“There’s an easy solution to that, don’t you think?” She claps us both on the shoulders like we’re all good buddies. “Come on, girls. Let’s work up a sweat here.”
“Whatever you say, Ms. Robbins,” Ashley says.
I trudge over to the wire bin that has a few lifeless basketballs left at the bottom and retrieve the one that has the least amount of give when I poke it. Ashley examines her fingernails, chewed to the quick, while I make my way back across the gym.
“So, what’s going on with you and Fatty?” She takes the ball from me, gives it a bounce.
“Her name’s Katie.” She and I may be on the outs, but it’s still pretty low to pick on Katie’s weight.
“Whatever. What’s going on? I thought you two were besties.”
I shrug. “A difference of opinion, I guess. What’s the story with your little club?”
Ashley’s right eye twitches a little, like she’s irked that I noticed. “The same thing, I guess.”
“All right. So I guess that makes us partners.”
She passes me the ball, a little harder than she really needs to, and I toss it halfheartedly at the basket. It goes right through the middle of the hoop, nothing but net, like I’m some kind of athlete.
Ashley’s carefully waxed eyebrows rise in surprise. “Not bad,” she says.
After class I shower in about thirty seconds flat, then race to the cafeteria to sit at our regular table before everybody else gets there. Katie always finds some reason to hang back in gym class until everyone else has gone before she gets in the shower, and Griffin is in biology class, upstairs at the other end of the school. Marie-Claire gets there a few minutes after I do, shoots me a peeved look and finds another table. Everybody else shows up shortly afterward, glancing at me before they join her.
I dig my English book out of my satchel and pretend to read. Every once in a while I look over at my so-called friends. Griffin is laughing too loud, like he wants to make sure I notice how much fun they’re having without me. I’m sure they’re making plans for later and talking about what a loser I am, sitting over here by myself.
So this is what it’s like to get frozen out. I can’t say I recommend it.
After school it starts to snow a little—big fluffy globs that look pretty drifting through the air but start to look dingy and slushy the second they hit the ground. It’s warm enough for me to take the kids to the park and let them run off some steam while I sit on the picnic bench and make sure nobody falls off the top of the climber.
Wex sits beside me, watching the other kids play. I don’t bother asking him why he doesn’t join in; the other kids are about as keen on him as my peers are on me. We sit for an hour or so, Wex up on the picnic table and me on the bench, neither one of us saying much of anything, until my butt is frozen from the cold metal. Finally I stand up and do a little wiggle to get the feeling back in my upper thighs.
“All right, guys. Time to go.”
There’s some moaning and whining from Xavier, the oldest of my charges, but most of them are starting to get a little chilled. The snow isn’t really sticking around, and the sun is starting to sink behind the escarpment. We march back home in a line, with me and Wex bringing up the rear, and Xavier way up ahead like he’s too cool to be seen with all these little kids.
“Slow down, Xavier. You’re too far away.”
He heaves his shoulders, turns around with his hands thrown in the air. “Come on. You’re too slow. You said it was time to go home, so let’s go.”
But instead of speeding up, I stop in my tracks. Rounding the corner ahead of us, coming right toward us, is Ashley Walsh, resplendent in her bright pink down jacket and Ugg boots.
“Funny seeing you north of Main Street,” I say, trying to sound casual. She’s clearly looking for me, because she slows when she sees me. I wonder if she’s going to beat me up as punishment for some offense I might have committed in gym class…or maybe just to cleanse herself from the humiliation of having been seen with me in public at school.
“I heard you’d be around here. Scott Becker says he sees you here all the time.”
“I usually am after school, if the weather’s okay.”
She turns around and falls into step beside me. I have no clue what she’s after. She’s a little shorter than I am, maybe ten pounds lighter. I’m pretty sure I could take her in a fight, and I don’t think she’d jump me in front of a crowd of little kids anyway. I wonder if they’d all spring to my defense, and I smile a little at the thought of Ashley getting her ass kicked by a bunch of first-and-second-graders.
“What are you smirking about?” she wants to know.
I shrug. “Nothing special. So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“I was thinking after gym class. You’re not so bad.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No, I mean, seriously. You’re really weird. I mean, like, freak-show weird. But you’re kind of funny, too. Maybe we can hang out or something.”
I stop in my tracks and stare at her. “Seriously? You spend ten years treating me like something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe, and now we’re buddies all of a sudden?”
Ashley shrugs. “Yeah. Sorry about that. But I figure… your friends aren’t talking to you, my friends aren’t talking to me…and it sucks having nobody to sit with at lunch.”
“Is this some elaborate setup where you’re going to spend a couple of weeks pretending to be my friend, then set me on fire in the cafeteria or something?” Wex looks up at me, alarmed. Sometimes I forget he’s there, always listening. I ruffle his hair. “Don’t worry, Wexy. Nobody’s gonna do that.” I shoot Ashley a pointed look. “Are they?”
Ashley looks genuinely bewildered. “No. I just thought…”
“We’re going to my house,” I tell her. “You can come along if you want, I guess.”
I herd the kids into the vestibule of our apartment building, unlock the inside door and walk down the hall. Ashley’s face is pinched, like she’s afraid to touch anything with her hands.
“So this is where you live,” she says, trying to sound like it’s no big deal.
I nod and open the apartment door. “You don’t have to be polite about it. I know it’s a hole.”
“No, it’s not that bad. I mean, I’m sure it’s…”
I don’t get to find out where she’s going with that train of thought, though, because Xavier’s mother is waiting in our living room to pick him up. Remarkably, she has the rest of the money she owes me, which is up to forty bucks now. I tuck it in the back pocket of my jeans and mumble a thank-you. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ashley taking in the room, casting a critical eye on the cluttered living room, the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. I imagine her home is something out of Good Housekeeping, with spotless rooms painted in subtle earth tones, tidy afghans folded neatly over the backs of chairs, shelves covered in beautifully arranged knickknacks and wicker baskets full of magazines.
We sit in the living room, me on the couch and Ashley perched on the edge of the tattered La-Z-Boy chair like she’s afraid it will swallow her whole if she sits back.
“So this is what you do every day, huh? Watch other people’s kids?”
“Yeah.” I suddenly realize I know nothing about this tidy pink Barbie doll sitting in my living room. “Do you have a job?”
“No. My dad thinks it would distract me from getting good grades. I just get an allowance for doing chores.”
“Must be nice.”
“What, getting an allowance?”
“Well, yeah. That and having a dad.”
Ashley gives me a knowing look. “Ah, your parents are divorced.”
“No, dead.” I pause for effect, enjoying the look of horror on her face for a second before I elaborate. “My dad is, anyway. My mom is…sick. She’s in a nursing home.”
“Wow. No wonder you’re so screwed up. No offense.”
“You know, just saying ‘no offense’ as soon as you say something rude doesn’t mean it wasn’t offensive.”
Ashley looks startled and thinks that over for a minute. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Sorry.” It doesn’t make up for nine years of her treating me like crap, but I suppose it’s a start.
“You want something to eat or drink or something?” I’m not much of a host. It’s not like I have a huge variety of guests over. Griffin and Katie and Marie-Claire all know where the food is and help themselves if they’re hungry.
Helped themselves, I suppose.
“Yeah, I could eat,” Ashley says.
I look in the cupboard, find Twinkies and grape juice. Wex comes in and wants some, then plunks himself down in front of the TV to watch Phineas and Ferb.
Ashley makes a face. “Ugh. Kid stuff. My little sister watches this all the time.”
“You want to go sit in my room instead?”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth. I can’t let Ashley Walsh see my bedroom, with Rubbermaid boxes of yarn lining one wall and Emily’s posters of thrash metal bands tacked to another. I realize I don’t even know whether Emily is home. Griffin and Katie are used to finding her passed out on the floor, the couch, wherever she happens to land, but how do I explain her to someone like Ashley?
“Yeah. You have a TV in your room?”
“No, but I’ve got a little portable DVD player with a screen. Maybe we can watch a movie or something.”
I lead the way to the bedroom, holding my breath a little as I open the door and hoping Emily is somewhere else. I relax a little as I see her bed is empty, although she’s clearly been through here today, because it looks like a tornado hit.
“I share the room with my sister. It’s a little messy.”
“That’s fine. You should see my room. My mom keeps threatening to go through with a garbage bag and throw everything out.”
“My mom never really cared much. And my brother doesn’t care at all, really.”
“Really? You live with your brother? That’s so weird. What happened to your dad, anyway?”
So suddenly I’m pouring out my entire life story to Ashley Walsh, who perches on the edge of Emily’s bed and leans forward with her eyes bugging out like this is the most fascinating thing she’s ever heard. Before I stop to think about what I’m saying, I’ve told her everything— even the part I didn’t tell Katie and Griffin and Marie-Claire: my meeting with Travis Bingham.
Ashley’s mouth is agape. “That. Is. So. Cool.”
“Cool?”
“Seriously. I mean, who knew you were so, you know, deep. I just thought you were this weird kid who hangs out with losers and knits in the library. Look at you, tracking down killers and junk.”
I shrug. “Well, it wasn’t the way I wanted it to go. I was hoping for something a little more…satisfying. And now none of my friends are talking to me because they think I’m totally obsessed with ancient history.”
“Well, I think it’s really interesting. And your friends suck if the stuff that’s important to you isn’t important to them.”
I look Ashley over carefully. She might be trying to put one over on me, but she seems so earnest, it really seems like she might be sincere.
“So why are your friends shutting you out all of a sudden?” I ask her. “I thought you were all pals for life.”
“Oh, it’s stupid.” Her voice breaks a little. “You know I used to go out with Ned Street, right?”
“That was kind of hard to miss. You were always making out in the halls.”
“Yeah, well.” She shifts a little, looks away like she’s embarrassed. “Well, he started sneaking around with Carrie Lerner behind my back, and when I found out about it she started this rumor that I was pregnant and got an abortion, even though Ned and I never even, you know, did it, and so I got mad and told Maddie Grant that Carrie was the one who—”
The story goes on for a while, and, I have to admit, I lose track of who said what to whom and sort of drift off a little in my head. It all boils down to someone making up stories about someone else, lies piling up on top of lies and poor Ashley landing squarely on the bottom of the heap. I really do wind up feeling a little sorry for her in the end, even though I haven’t completely followed the chain of events. I just nod sympathetically and throw in a “Really? That’s terrible” every once in a while, kind of like I do when I’m listening to Henry or Wex ramble on and on about something. I wonder if this is how Katie and the rest of them feel when I talk about Travis Bingham.
“So then Ned said he didn’t even want to be friends with me anymore, and now none of them are even talking to me.”
“Wow. That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long silence, and I can see Ashley looking around the room, taking it all in. Her eyes keep going back to the clear Rubbermaid containers full of yarn and knitting patterns.
“So you really know how to knit?” she finally says. “I mean, I’ve seen you in school, but…you look like you’re really serious about it with all this stuff.”
“Yeah. My mom taught me when I was seven. Before she was really, um, sick.”
“So all those weird sweaters and hats and stuff you wear…you make them all?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so cool. Seriously. I mean, I always thought you just got them at the Goodwill or something, but you actually…like, you’re some kind of artist or something.”
I shrug. “I guess. I never really thought that much about it.”
We chat for a few more minutes before Simon knocks on the door and yells through it that he’s brought home KFC.
“No need to yell. You can open the door,” Ashley yells back. “We’re not naked or anything.” And she giggles madly, but I don’t really get the joke.
Simon opens the door, pokes his head around. “Hmm. I don’t know you. When Wex said Jenna had a friend over, I just figured it was Katie or Elvira.”
I throw a book at him. The Chrysalids. It bounces off his head, but it’s a paperback so it probably doesn’t hurt him too much. “Her name’s Marie-Claire, you loser. And this is Ashley.”
“Is Ashley staying for dinner?”
“Ashley could, if she’s invited,” she says with a big smile. Ye gads, is she flirting with my brother? Ew. What is it with people trying to flirt with Simon? It’s not like he’s terrible-looking, I guess, it’s just…strange. And it’s not like he even seems to notice. Besides, he’s almost eighteen years older than we are, which is just gross.
Simon cocks an eyebrow. “Well, Ashley and Jenna should wash up, because dinner is going to be on the table in about two minutes, and Wex has been known to put away half a bucket of chicken on his own.”
He closes the door behind him, and Ashley claps me on the shoulder like we’re the best of friends. “Your brother’s cute.”
“He’s thirty-two.”
“Well, for an old guy, I mean. I don’t want to do him or anything, but he’s kind of weirdly adorable. Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Nope. Not for as long as I’ve known him.”
“That’s weird.”
I shrug. I’d never thought of it as weird before that Simon doesn’t go out on dates. He doesn’t go out with friends either. He doesn’t do much of anything, as a matter of fact. He’s just…here.
Ashley is charming and animated over dinner, like she’s part of the family. She makes a big show of playing with Wex, pretending to steal his nose even though he’s really too old for that game, but Wex eats it right up, giggling and trying to grab her hand. Afterward she plunks herself down on the couch with us to watch TV—just makes herself right at home.
“So what’s there to do around here at night?” she wants to know.
I shrug. “I usually watch TV and knit. Or go over to Katie’s. That’s pretty much it. What do you do at night?”
“Hang out. Go to the park or the mall or something.”
We sit for a few minutes, staring at the TV. Ashley takes the remote control and flips through the channels, but there’s nothing on worth watching.
“Hey, you want to see something?” I say finally.
“What’s that?”
Simon is busy helping Wex get his pajamas on and his teeth brushed, and I know that as soon as Wex is in bed, Simon is going to flop out on the couch for the evening. I dig in the pocket of his jacket and pull out a huge wad of keys. I stuff them in the pocket of my hoodie, holding them tight so they don’t jingle and attract Simon’s attention.
“Let’s go downstairs. You were asking about the guy who killed my dad; I want to show you something.”
I’m feeling oddly nervous as I lead Ashley down the hall to the stairs. I’ve taken Katie down here before, but never anyone else. I feel like a pirate showing the new cabin boy where I’ve stashed the treasure chest.
I’ve never been in a medieval dungeon, but I imagine it would look a lot like the room in our basement where the storage lockers are. They’re old-school creepy, with slatted wooden doors padlocked shut, packed with piles of musty boxes, artificial Christmas trees and bicycles in varying states of decay. There are a few empty lockers, and I always picture some emaciated guy inside, banging on the slats with a tin cup.
Ashley looks a little jumpy. “You’re not bringing me down here to lock me in one of these cages to get back at me for being mean to you or something, are you?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” Hmm. That almost sounded like an apology. “I just thought you might like to see this.”
I pull Simon’s keys out of my pocket and shuffle through them until I find the little brass key that opens our storage locker. It’s full of stuff from our old house—furniture that wouldn’t fit in the apartment, Rubbermaid containers full of my mom’s old clothes, cardboard banker’s boxes stuffed with old papers. I open up the one on top and pull out a file folder of old newspaper clippings.
“This is the guy who killed my dad.”
“Wow.” Ashley flips through the folder, skims the articles. “That’s pretty amazing. Look at this—your name’s in here, like, a hundred times. You’re famous!”
“Yeah, for about six months, when I was born. And look how far it’s gotten me. Besides, having everybody feel sorry for you isn’t the same as being famous.”
“Oh, come on. You’re actually pretty all right, you know.”
“Thanks. You’re different than I thought you were too.”
Ashley hands the folder back to me and opens up another box. “What’s in this one?”
“I think that’s Simon’s old yearbooks and stuff.”
“Really? What was he like in high school? I bet he was a hottie.”
“How would I know? I was hardly even born when he graduated.”
Ashley pulls out a blue hardcover book with gold embossed lettering and flips through it. “Look at these haircuts. All the girls look like that chick from Friends and the guys look like they’re trying to be George Clooney on ER.”
I take the book from her and flip through it, looking for a picture of Simon. “Here he is. On the basketball team.”
“Ooh, a jock. Let me see. Was he cute?”
“Dude, he’s my brother.”
Ashley laughs. “I know. Just curious.” She looks over my shoulder. “Wow. He looks so different. Look how skinny he is. I mean, not like he’s fat now, just not as… bony. He looks better now.”
“You are too weird.” I flip through more pages. I don’t bother to buy the yearbooks at my school. With only three people in my social circle to sign them, it hardly seems worth it. But it looks like Simon was a pretty popular guy: on nearly every page, somebody has proclaimed what a great friend he was, promised to get together over the summer, scribbled the same dirty limericks I still see scrawled on desks and bathroom walls at school now. I guess some art forms are just timeless.
Suddenly Ashley snatches the book out of my hands and slams it shut.
“You know what we should do tomorrow?”
So apparently we’re a we now. “What’s that?” I ask.
“We should totally cut school and get you a makeover.” She looks me over thoughtfully. “How much money do you have?”
“A little. Why?”
“Perfect. We’re so going shopping. Your wardrobe needs an update. And when was the last time you had a haircut?”
I run my hands over my braid, frizzy from that afternoon’s snowfall. “I don’t know, when I was ten, maybe?”
Ashley laughs. “That’s like, what, six years?”
“Five and a half, I guess. Maybe longer. Maybe I was nine.”
“Great. Then it’s decided. I’ll meet you here; we’ll hit up the clearance racks at Limeridge. That should give us a good start. And we’re getting your hair done.
I know a place you can get it done for eight bucks, and they actually do a pretty good job.”
“Um, I…” I mull it over. I’ve never skipped school before. I mean, I’ve missed days when I was sick, and I did leave early once last semester when Wex fell on the playground at his school and split his lip open and the principal couldn’t get hold of Simon or Emily. But to full-out take a day off without permission—that’s just not something that’s ever occurred to me. It’s not like I think Simon will freak out, or even notice, for that matter, it’s just…naughty. It’s something Emily would do, but not good old, reliable Jenna. And for something as shallow and superficial as shopping for clothes? I can’t help but wonder what Ashley’s angle is. Is she dressing me up so she won’t be embarrassed to be seen with me at school? Or is it something more sinister: is she planning to pick out clothes that are just out of style enough to earn me more mocking from her old gang?
Still, maybe this is the kind of thing one does when one has friends who aren’t all charter members of the Loser Club. I toss the yearbook back in the banker’s box and put the lid back on.
“Sure,” I say finally. “Let’s do that.”