FOUR
Lunch was Morgan’s least favorite time of day. Surrounded by the entire student body, she felt most isolated. Kids sat in the same place every noon hour, in easily definable groups. Jocks, who divided into subgroups depending on their respective sport—basketball, hockey, volleyball, soccer. Kids who were destined to take advanced classes in high school. Skaters, who performed impossible tricks off the steps of the school until shooed away by whichever teacher caught them. There was a long list of cliques. Some kids crossed over. Some kids did not. But everybody seemed to have somebody.
Morgan sat in the same place each day just like everybody else, but she sat alone.
She’d bought fries today and was stabbing at them while watching Eli, the only other kid who was alone. He was wearing a Radiohead T-shirt and Army green cargo pants, with his hair in a tight braid. His shoulders were slumped, his head was slumped, his entire body was slumped, sitting on the floor. A plate of food he’d bought from the cafeteria was resting by his feet, untouched. She might have continued torturing her poor food but just then a cool hand touched her own. Morgan looked up to see Emily standing by her—it was the first time Emily had approached Morgan away from their lockers.
“Hey,” Emily said.
“Hey,” Morgan said uncertainly.
“Can I sit with you?” Emily asked.
“Uhhh.” Morgan looked around at the table as though she had to make space for Emily. She didn’t. “Sure.”
Emily sat across from Morgan, placed her lunch bag on the table, and zipped it open. She pulled out a plastic container and opened it to reveal little containers of Caesar salad with chicken strips, a mandarin orange, and trail mix with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and raisins.
Morgan shoved a forkful of fries into her mouth.
“What did those fries ever do to you?” Emily asked.
Morgan swallowed. “Huh?”
“You’re annihilating your fries.” Emily reached over and picked up Morgan’s plate for a moment to show her the state of her food. It wasn’t pretty.
“Collateral damage,” Morgan said.
Emily had been chewing a slice of orange and almost choked on it. She patted at her chest while staring at Morgan confusedly, her face turning red.
“You okay?” Morgan asked.
“Yeah.” She caught her breath. “I just didn’t know you were funny.”
“It wasn’t that funny,” Morgan said, looking down at her plate of mashed fries.
“Seriously, Ghost.” Emily poked Morgan’s hand with her index finger to make Morgan look at her. “What’s going on with you?”
“Why do you even want to sit here?” Morgan asked.
Earlier in the year, another kid, one of the skaters, had sat with her, acting all suspicious. He was talking to her, but glancing away, like, every second. Morgan noticed a table full of his buddies snickering, watching them. He’d been put up to it by them. She guessed there was something funny about sitting with the new Native kid.
“I float,” Emily said. “I’m a floater.” It was true, she was. She was one of the kids who could sit with several different cliques effortlessly. “I saw you sitting here looking kind of upset, kind of mad, serial murdering your fries, and thought, ‘Hey, this seems like a good idea.’ I guess I’m a risk-taker.”
“I’m not going to stab you with my plastic fork, don’t worry,” Morgan said.
“See? You are funny,” Emily said.
Morgan smiled, but when she caught herself smiling, she stopped, like it was a dirty secret she didn’t want out.
“So,” Emily said, “what’re you mad about? What’s up?”
“It’s about the poetry assignment,” Morgan said. “Mrs. Edwards didn’t give me a mark because I can do better, according to her. I have to redo it. By tomorrow.”
“Well, at least you didn’t fail, right?” Emily said. “That doesn’t sound like a defense for french-fry homicide. Just…write a better poem?”
“She said I have no heart, pretty much,” Morgan said. “And I wanted to, like, scream at her. Tell her that her poetry book is lame, or something like that.”
“But you didn’t, right?” Emily asked.
“No, but…” Morgan stabbed another fry. “I always have this hot feeling in my chest, and you know when you’ve done something wrong and you feel so bad about what you did that you can’t even say sorry about it?”
“Okay, I’m confused,” Emily said. “You didn’t, right?”
“It wouldn’t have been the first time I blew up at somebody today,” Morgan said, “if I had.”
“So…you shouted at somebody, wanted to shout at somebody else, and now you’re beating yourself up about it?”
“I think I need to reset the karmic balance of my life somehow.”
Her eyes rested on Eli again. In her mind, she flipped through all the pictures he’d drawn. He must have made some of them right where he was now. And while Eli had said that she always looked angry at school, he always looked content while drawing. Like her books, his art was an escape. Without it, no doubt he had to think about being away from home, being in this strange school, being in a strange house with an angry, jerk-face girl.
Emily poked Morgan. “Hey, I’m still here, you know.”
“We’ve got Art next period, right?” Morgan asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because it’s about time I did something nice today.”
A few minutes into Art class, with Mrs. Bignell demonstrating how oil painting was done, Morgan felt something hit the side of her arm. She decided to ignore the projectile, whatever it was. A spitball. A paper ball. Any kind of ball. She kept her eyes forward and tried to be interested in how Mrs. Bignell was painting the petals of a flower. I bet Eli totally kicks butt in this class, Morgan thought. She stopped paying attention to the teacher, and her impressive lilac, and took inventory of the room. There had to be a drawing pad somewhere, one that was comparable to Eli’s.
Another object hit her arm.
“Stop it!” Morgan hissed at whoever was throwing things at her.
“Is everything okay, Morgan?” Mrs. Bignell asked without turning her attention away from her lilac.
“Yeah, sorry,” Morgan said.
“You’ll paint a beautiful lilac, then, won’t you?” Mrs. Bignell asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Bignell.”
“Perfect.” Mrs. Bignell put the finishing touches on the petal she was painting and moved on to the next one. It was very likely that the kids would not get an opportunity to paint their own flowers today.
Morgan looked for what had been thrown at her; two neatly folded pieces of white paper were scattered by her shoes. She looked around the class to see who could have thrown them, and her eyes met Emily’s. When Emily nodded towards the papers, Morgan picked them up and opened them.
The first one read: Hey, what’s the plan? What do you have to do that’s nice?
Text me. 204-555-3474. That was the second one.
Mrs. Bignell was still going strong. Morgan slid her phone out of her pocket and texted Emily the following message: Kid living with me ruined drawing pad. Getting him a new one.
Morgan sent the message, and it made a swoosh sound. She quickly put her phone on silent and closed her eyes, like she was two, like it would make her invisible. It didn’t. When she opened her eyes, Mrs. Bignell was standing over her. She did not look impressed.
“Sit outside of class until it’s over,” Mrs. Bignell said.
The class all said, “Oooooooh.”
“Mrs. Bignell, please. I won’t make another sound, I promise.”
“Sorry, Morgan. You’ve disrupted the class twice already. You’re done.”
I kept the class awake! Morgan imagined saying to her teacher, heat simmering in her chest. But instead, she left class deflated.
In the hallway, she slammed her back against a locker and slid to the floor.
Moments later, she received a text.
Emily: Plan B?
Morgan: Don’t have one.
Emily: Kid living with you…First Nations, braids?
Morgan: Yeah.
Emily: How much do you want a drawing pad?
Morgan: Doesn’t matter anymore.
Morgan waited for Emily to respond. She saw the three dots in the gray circle, which meant that Emily was writing something. The three dots seemed to be there for a long time. Finally, Emily texted: What kind of drawing pad?
Morgan perked up. She wrote: Really?
Emily: Class could use more excitement.
Morgan: THANK YOU. One of the big ones.
Emily: On it.
Morgan waited. There were forty-five minutes left in class, and she wished that she’d brought a book with her to kill the time. Instead, she imagined how Emily would steal the drawing pad. It became a fantasy adventure heist. The class was full of snow, like the scene in her head that morning. Their classmates turned into rabid animals. Emily had to fight her way through them to get to the drawing pad, which was being guarded by the fiercest wolf of them all: the Bignell Wolf. No matter. Emily was armored with hockey equipment and a hockey stick with a blade that was an actual blade. Emily fought her way through the animals, then faced down the Bignell Wolf in an epic confrontation, eventually knocking it into the pit of despair where, if legends were true, the wolf would slowly disintegrate over thousands of years in a pool of watercolors. Emily stood triumphantly with the drawing pad raised over her head.
The bell rang.
Morgan jerked to attention, thrust out of her daydream. She watched the line of students filtering out of class, waiting for Emily. It felt like an eternity until she appeared, carrying a large drawing pad.
Morgan shot into a standing position. “You got it!?”
“I got it,” Emily said.
“How?”
Morgan ran through the whole adventure sequence again. No, of course it hadn’t been like that. But it could have been no less exciting. A heist, all done under the cover of silence. Emily had undoubtedly managed to steal the drawing pad, get back to her desk, and conceal it (that seemed most impressive, since it was huge), all without alerting Mrs. Bignell.
“I asked her if I could have it, and she said I could,” Emily said.
Morgan’s brow furrowed. “What?”
Emily repeated what she’d said, word for word, but slower.
“And that’s it? She just…gave it to you?”
“She just gave it to me.” Emily snapped her fingers. “Like that.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway”—Emily handed Morgan the drawing pad—“here’s the thing you wanted for the sake of karma and all that.”
It was the same size as the pad Eli’s father had given him, just not the same brand. Morgan flipped through the pages, checking to see if there were already drawings on the white pages.
“It’s perfect, really. Sorry if I’m being weird. I was…daydreaming.”
“About a drawing pad?”
“Something like that.”
They started off towards their next class, the last class of the day, which was Math.
“So, just to be clear,” Emily said, “the drawing pad is for, and I quote”—she took out her phone and read the text Morgan had sent her—“ ‘the kid living with me.” By me I mean you.”
“Eli,” Morgan said. “That’s his name.”
“Is he your brother?” Emily asked. “Because that’s cold if he is. Calling him ‘the kid living with me’ and all that.”
“No, he’s not my brother,” Morgan said. “He’s a foster kid.”
“Really? Did your mom get a foster kid that looked like you?” Emily asked. “Feel free not to answer if that’s a stupid question. Actually, it’s for sure a stupid question.”
All Morgan really heard was mom, and everything else after that kind of blurred together. “I don’t have a mom.”
Emily cupped her mouth. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Your mom’s—”
“No. She’s not dead. At least, I don’t think she is. I—” Morgan closed her eyes. “I don’t care if she even is. I just don’t have a mom, not since I was a baby. I’m a foster kid too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Morgan said. “I’m not. And this…” She held up the drawing pad in a desperate attempt to change the subject. “This is awesome.”
“I have my moments. And you can take all the credit.”
“Thanks.”
Morgan still wasn’t sure how Eli would react. It wasn’t the drawing pad his father had given him, so would he even want it? But the drawing pad wasn’t his father. Losing the drawing pad didn’t mean he’d lost his father any more than losing his drawings meant that the stories he’d drawn stopped existing. Either way, she’d tried. And so much of it was thanks to Emily. Getting the drawing pad was Morgan’s idea, but Emily was the one who had actually got it.
“Why…” Morgan thought for a moment longer, figuring out how to ask what she wanted to ask. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Emily didn’t think long about her response. She tilted her head, scrunched her eyebrows together, and asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The bell rang.
Math had always been hard for Morgan, especially algebra, which they were studying now. But Emily’s response felt like a more complicated problem to solve. Still, Emily had sounded so matter-of-fact. Why wouldn’t she be nice to Morgan? She’d asked it rhetorically, as though the answer was obvious.
What’s there about me for anybody to like? What do I even like about myself? Morgan thought. It felt like the world’s hardest algebra question, and by the time class was over, she’d settled on the fact that Emily being nice to her was more a reflection on Emily than it was on her.
Eli was waiting for Morgan at the bottom of the steps out front of the school, just as he always did at the end of the day. She broke off from the swarm of kids and stopped at the top of the stairs with the drawing pad hidden behind her back, ready to surprise him. He was sitting hunched over, just like in the lunchroom. Morgan took the steps all the way down to the sidewalk, then turned to face Eli.
“Hey,” Morgan said.
“Hey,” Eli said.
“How was your day?”
“Fine.”
“I was thinking, when we’re home you might want to draw in my secret hiding place.”
“I don’t have anything to draw on, remember?” He had yet to look up.
Morgan took the drawing pad out from behind her back. “You could draw, and I could read, or work on my stupid poem, I guess. You’d like it up there. It’s quiet.”
“I said…” Eli looked up and saw the drawing pad.
“Here.” She handed it to him.
He opened it, flipped through the pages as she had. It was as if he could already see all the drawings he was going to draw, all the fantastic stories that he’d created in his old pad. “You got this for me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I got it for you.”
Eli stared at the drawing pad for quite a long time, then looked at her. “Why would you do that?”
Morgan tilted her head, scrunched her eyebrows together, and asked, “Why wouldn’t I?”