Thursday, February 12

DAVID

Sammie’s not at lunch again, and someone else doesn’t show: Luke. I’m not even sure when my sidestick suddenly unstuck. We were in science together, and the bell rang, and I packed up my bag and walked out of class with him right there beside me. But when I got to the cafeteria, he was gone.

He shows up in math class, his nose kind of red like he has a cold.

“Where were you?” I whisper while Mrs. Knell explains the Do Now.

Amanda leans forward so I can’t see Luke at all. I lean back and whisper again, “Where were you? At lunch. You weren’t in the cafeteria.”

He shrugs, staring at his desk.

“I had to meet with someone,” he whispers, opening his math binder. “A teacher.”

Amanda leans back, blocking Luke again. I lean forward so I can see him. “Who? Why?”

“It was nothing. Mrs. Dougherty wanted to talk about the Giver essay we turned in last week. She wanted to go over it with me, I guess because I’m new.”

Mrs. Dougherty is the kind of teacher who gives you back your essay a month after you hand it in. She for sure never reads essays in a week.

At the front of the room, Mrs. Knell says, “I’ll be collecting and grading these Do Nows. You have five minutes to complete them.”

I haven’t even written the problem down, and didn’t hear Mrs. Knell’s instructions. I sigh and open my math binder, wondering why Luke would lie about where he really was at lunch. I take out my pencil and have a horrible thought: maybe he’s not telling the truth because he was with Sammie, and he doesn’t want me to know. I picture them, together, in the back stairwell, Luke’s blue eyes wide open, staring into her dark brown ones, as he moves in to kiss her right on the lips. My pencil snaps, and the vision disappears just as Mrs. Knell says, “David, what answer did you get for the problem?”

SAMMIE

When the dismissal bell rings at the end of the day, I grab my stuff and head straight for the girls’ bathroom by the front office. It’s the safest place to wait for the halls to clear. Then I can head to the library, where I wait until five for the Peas to pick me up.

Except today, someone else is in my bathroom, in one of the stalls, and I know by the sneakers who it is: Haley.

I’m standing there, trying to decide if I can squeeze out a bit of pee or if I should turn around and leave so she doesn’t think I’m a stalker, when the door pushes open and Carli, Sarah, Marissa, and Mackenzie flood into the bathroom. Carli’s eyes are red-rimmed and puffy, and there’s shiny clear snot below one of her nostrils. She hiccups.

Sarah walks right up to me, her green eyes narrowed and angry, and hisses, “Liar.”

The only lies I’ve told anyone are the little ones to Mrs. Knell about needing glasses. She can’t possibly mean those, can she? I look past her angry face, at Marissa and Mackenzie, who are in math with me.

“You said you didn’t like him,” Sarah says, her hands on her hips and her chin jutted out.

“What?”

She pokes her index finger at my chest. Her painted fingernail is dark red, the exact color of blood. “You lied to us about Luke. You said you didn’t like him.”

Luke. His name stabs me right in my gut. I wince. And somehow, what I feel as pain must look like something else, because her scowl turns to a look of triumph.

“I knew it!” she says. “Liar! Carli has had a crush on him since his first day here. But you’ve ruined everything. David told us you guys were making out in the hall.”

I open my mouth and close it. Open it again. Why would David tell them that? I can’t make any words come out. I want to say that I didn’t lie, and that I’m not going out with Luke, and that I’ve never made out with anyone, in the hall or anywhere else.

Unless . . . what if? On the bus? What if I did something to cause that? To cause all of it?

I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open, when there’s a groan from behind the stall door. Haley. I’d forgotten about her. The groan is followed by an awful retching noise and then the sound of something splashing into the toilet. Another retching sound, and more splashing. Haley’s full-on barfing. I look from Sarah to Marissa to Mackenzie, and they’re all standing, frozen, eyes wide. Even Carli has forgotten her tragic situation and is staring open-mouthed at the stall door.

“Haley?” I say, unsure.

Another moan, then more splashing sounds. In unison, Carli, Sarah, Marissa, and Mackenzie put their hands to their mouths. Sarah makes a small gagging noise and runs for the door, with Carli and Marissa right behind her. Mackenzie, with one hand over her mouth, touches my shoulder. I’m not sure whether she’s trying to comfort me or steady herself, but I try to give her a reassuring smile. From behind the stall door comes a wave of retching. Mackenzie makes a little sobbing sound, turns, and runs out of the bathroom.

I wait for a pause in the puking sounds. “Haley?” I say. “Are you okay? Do you want me to see if the nurse is around?”

“I’m okay,” Haley says weakly. “Can one of the other girls go get her?”

“Umm,” I say, “the other girls bailed. Sorry. It’s just me.”

The stall door swings open. “Cool,” Haley says. “It worked.” She’s holding her water bottle, smiling.

“What worked?”

“The fake puking.”

“You mean you weren’t just barfing up your insides?”

Haley laughs. “Nope. I learned that trick at softball camp. We used to use it to get out of dining hall duty.”

“Wow. It sounded really real,” I say. “But why?”

“I thought you could use a distraction. I don’t know what’s up with you and Luke, but those girls were freaking out.”

“Nothing’s up with me and Luke,” I say.

Haley shrugs, then pulls her phone out of her back pocket. “Whatever,” she says, looking down at the phone screen. “Do Carli and Sarah and crew take a bus?”

“I think so. Why?”

“They’ll start pulling out in a couple minutes.”

I sigh with relief. “Thanks.”

Haley grabs her backpack.

“Aren’t you going to miss yours?” I ask.

“I don’t take a bus,” she says, pushing the bathroom door open. “My mom picks me up on her way home. I’m going to hang out in the library until then.”

“Me too,” I say, following right behind. “Get some homework done.”

“We could work together,” Haley says. “At least on math and English.” She turns and grins. “Give you a chance to prove you’re not stuck-up after all.”

I laugh, half at the joke Haley’s made, and half with pleasure at the idea of doing homework with someone.

The last time I did homework with a friend was at the very beginning of sixth grade, when Sarah and I did a book report together. We had to make a “quilt,” and Sarah was focused on gluing pink ribbons in between the quilt blocks and writing the headings in purple puffy glue, like that was the part of the assignment that really mattered.

“Cool,” I say, and we head into the library.

DAVID

In PE, we’re playing badminton golf, which is super boring and mostly involves standing around, so I start thinking about Saturday because it’s Valentine’s Day. Pop always grumbles that it’s a holiday made up by greeting card companies, but I think what really gets him is that it’s a holiday when no one buys sporting goods. Jock straps, mouth guards, and baseball bats are not Valentine’s Day gifts.

In middle school, everyone acts like they don’t care about Valentine’s Day, but they do. Last year, when it fell on a Friday, the halls were crazy all day because kids kept leaving classes to slip valentines into other kids’ lockers. Girls were coming into classes crying. One eighth-grade boy got slapped in the face during lunch. The rumor was he gave valentines to three girls. None of my crew gave cards to anyone. I wanted to give one to Sammie but I didn’t. We both pretended like it was just a regular day.

I wonder if Luke’s going to give Sammie a valentine. Maybe he’s bought a card already, and maybe he’ll give her candy too. I wonder if he knows that Sammie’s favorite candy is Sour Patch Kids. I wonder if I should buy some Sour Patch Kids and take them to her house on Saturday. It’s not fair that I know Sammie so well, and Luke barely knows her at all, and he’s maybe going out with her. It’s not fair that what happened on the bus made everything weird and awkward between us. I wish I could remind her of our history, of our friendship, before the bus. Before Luke.

Then I have a flash of inspiration. I can remind Sammie about us, through my drawings. I can draw our friendship, the story of us. Sammie loves my drawing, and always asks me what I’m working on. She’s the only friend who knows how I feel about The Northern Province. She’s the only friend who’s seen my real drawings. I decide right then: I’m going to draw my way back into Sammie’s life.

At the end of PE, I’m so deep into thinking about what I can draw, running through different story ideas and thinking about what scenes I could draw, that I don’t bother changing out of my stinky gym shirt. I just grab my backpack and coat and head for the bus.

I’m still lost in my own head, thinking about what story to tell and how to tell it, when Luke sits down next to me. “What happened to you at the end of PE? You disappeared.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I have a lot on my mind.”

Luke pulls out his phone and starts playing Candy Crush, and I go back to staring out the window and thinking about what I can draw.

When the bus is coming to my stop, Luke says, “Want to come over later?”

“Can’t,” I say, standing up and grabbing my backpack. “I’ve got a ton of homework.”

Luke looks at me funny, and I remember that he has all the same classes as me, and knows exactly how much homework we have, which is practically zip.

“For Hebrew school,” I say, even though no one ever has homework for Hebrew school.

In the kitchen, Allie’s sitting at the table, eating a Rice Krispies treat.

I cut myself a couple of squares, pour myself a glass of orange juice, and carry my snack to the table.

When I take out the drawing stuff, Allie says, “I’ll write the story, if you want.”

“No thanks,” I say.

Her chin gets all quivery, which means that any second she’s going to start crying, so I say, “I have to do the whole thing myself. It’s an English assignment. If you do the story, that would be cheating.” I personally believe getting a little help with homework never hurt anyone, especially when it comes to English assignments, but Allie thinks it’s practically the same as murdering your parents with an ax.

“Oh,” she says. “Never mind.”

The story I want to tell happened at a baseball game two years ago, when Sammie scored a run because of me. On her at-bat, she whacked the ball way into the outfield, over the heads of everyone out there, and made it all the way to third base. Then the next kid up, Jason Diaz, struck out. A kid named Trey went next and hit the ball into the infield, right between the second baseman and the shortstop. There was a little bit of bumbling with the ball, so Trey got on first base, but Sammie was still stuck at third. Then another kid got up to bat, and struck out. So it was two outs, with Sammie on third, and I was up.

Basically, I hate being at bat. I hate standing there, waiting for the ball to come flying toward me because most of the time, I’m 100 percent convinced that it’s going to hit me. I’m thinking, What kind of idiot would stand here and wait to get hit by a small, round rock? Which makes it hard to focus on trying to hit the ball. I mean, it would be nice to hit the ball, but it feels more urgent to avoid being hit by the ball.

Anyway, Sammie was on third, and she needed a hit by me to score a run, so I managed to almost stay in the box. The pitch was thrown and I stayed in and stayed in and stayed in and . . . backed out. But as I started to back out, swinging the bat, I came down hard on my front foot, which propelled the bat right into the ball, and I got an awesome hit! It went over the head of the second baseman, plunked down on the grass, and rolled out into the outfield, far away from anyone out there. I made it to first, and Sammie got home, and when the opposing second baseman bobbled the catch, Trey ran to third and I got onto second.

I didn’t honestly care about making it to second, and when the next batter up hit a high pop that was caught by one of the outfielders, the inning was over without me scoring, but I didn’t care about that. What mattered was Sammie. I got her the run.

I don’t want anyone except Sammie to know what this story is about. I want it to be like a secret message that only Sammie will be able to decode. My hero, Melvin Marbury, has animals who act like people in his comic strip, so I decide I’ll make the people in my story into animals. I draw Sammie as a cat, and I make myself a dog. The other guys, I make all dogs too. It takes me six pages to tell the story, and I have a little trouble making enough different-looking dogs for all the other players, but in the end it’s a great story. A great Valentine’s Day gift for Sammie, to remind her of our friendship, of who we were, together, before. I staple the pages together like a book, but I don’t write anything. I fold the whole thing in thirds, get an envelope from Mom’s desk, and slide it in, then write Sammie on the front.