You Can't Sit With Us

by Nancy Rue

  “Wow,” I heard Mitch mutter.

  It didn’t last long, though. As we were passing our homework papers up to the front, Kylie looked over at me yet again.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m mistress of my tongue, not yours.”

  I tried not to sound snarky. I didn’t think I did. And Kylie didn’t give me a snarky comeback. She just looked . . . surprised. I turned away before that could morph into something else.

  “Let’s get started on the assignment, mis estudiantes,” Mrs. Bernstein said. “It’s due at the beginning of the period tomorrow.”

  Good. I would do it for homework. Right now, I needed to get started on that new list: Things I Decided Not To Say. I began with the things I’d bitten back already, including what Kylie said first.

  It took me until the end of the period. Maybe I wasn’t so much of a blabbermouth after all. If only I hadn’t blabbed that one important thing.

  Chapter Ten

  Something did change after that.

  Part of it was in me. I was still scared about the things people were saying that I didn’t hear. But whenever my stomach pinched in, I thought about Lydia saying this wasn’t going to happen overnight. That usually a plan like ours worked. That I could trust her. I had to think about that or I couldn’t eat. My gym sweats were falling off me.

  Part of the change was in the air, and it wasn’t just the warm spring. It was about even the molecules feeling tense the minute we got out to the obstacle course on Friday.

  We were in full run-throughs, and I was doing a little better. Even though I always came in last, even behind Winnie, I could at least do everything, except the wall. We’d had so much rain the ground was thick and sticky and our tennis shoes made sucking sounds when we ran on it. Not only did we have to jump hurdles; we had to leap over puddles so deep you could’ve fished them.

  I was the one most likely to fall into one, but as I rounded the bend in the circular course, right after the tunnel crawl and the sprint, I saw Tori go into one headfirst. And I saw how it happened. Izzy was crouched at the edge of the path like she was tying her shoe, and when Tori passed her, going way fast, Izzy just calmly stuck her leg out and Tori went flying and splashed into the mud.

  I was the first one to get to her, but before I could even say, “Are you okay?” somebody pulled me back by the seat of my sweats and almost yanked them off me. I stopped to pull them up so I didn’t expose my entire fanny to the BBAs, and by that time, Mitch was already helping Tori up.

  “I got some extra sweats you can borrow,” Mitch said.

  “I have an extra pair too,” Tori said. Which was good because she was, like, half Mitch’s size.

  “Take a shower, Taylor,” Mrs. Zabriski called out. “You’re done for the day.”

  When everyone went back to the course, I hung back and edged up to Mrs. Z.

  “What is it, Hollingberry?” she said.

  I felt like an annoying mosquito. And I so wasn’t.

  “Is Tori going to get marked down for today?” I said.

  She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched the kids go for the hurdles. “Why is that your business?”

  “Because if she is, I should tell you something.”

  “Not interested.” She pulled her hand away from her eyebrows and looked at me. Her way-short hair didn’t even move in the wind. “No, she’s not getting marked down. Okay? Happy now?”

  No, but I nodded and started back toward the course.

  “Hollingberry,” she said.

  I turned and looked at her. If I’d had my notebook with me, I would have written, What? I’m sick of you being on me all the time. I haven’t done anything!

  “Have you lost weight?”

  I thought about my loose sweats. “I guess so,” I said.

  “Are you eating healthy?”

  “Sometimes.” Like when Lydia fed me.

  “Do it all the time. Eating disorders can start at this age. You don’t want to get into that mess.”

  “Um, okay?”

  She stuck her whistle in her mouth and blew before I had a chance to cover my ears. “All right, girls—back to the locker room.”

  I dragged my feet getting there so I could think about that scene. Mrs. Zabriski actually cared about my health? Smushy me?

  By the time I got to the locker room, the tension was like a fog in there. A scene so dramatic it was Ophelia-worthy was already under way.

  Kylie stood on the bench in our locker row, flipping her hair all over the place and whining, “It’s gone! It’s gone!”

  “What is?” Tori said.

  “My poem! For English!”

  Those Girls gathered below her, looking up as if their queen were about to be dragged off to the executioner.

  “Oh, no!” Heidi said. “It was so good!”

  “You worked really hard on it,” Riannon said.

  “Yes, I did.” Kylie ran her fingers through her hair the way I’d seen actors do in soap operas on days I stayed home sick. “I wrote, like, a whole epic about my best quality.”

  “Wow,” Mitch said.

  Ophelia turned away and literally stuck her whole head into her locker. I could see her shoulders shaking.

  I would have laughed too. I mean, really, didn’t Kylie hear what she just said? I didn’t, though, because Kylie was staring hard at Tori.

  “Where did you see it last?” Tori said, as if Kylie wasn’t trying to drill holes into her with her eyes.

  “It was in my backpack,” she said.

  “Was your backpack in your locker?” Tori said.

  That was one of the things I liked best about Tori. She was so logical, even when everybody else was losing it.

  “It wouldn’t fit in my locker,” Kylie said. “I just left it on the bench. I shouldn’t have to lock all my things up.”

  Something to add to my list: All your nice things you think everybody else wants?

  “Maybe you should look again,” Tori said, just before she went back to combing the tangles out of her wet hair.

  “I turned it upside down and dumped everything out. My poem. Is. Gone.”

  “I’m sorry that happened,” Tori said.

  Kylie stepped down from the bench and tossed her bob back. It was stringy from her dragging her hands through it, so it didn’t toss so well.

  “Someone else is going to be sorry, too, if I don’t find it,” she said.

  Yeah, we could have scooped that tension up with a spoon. Something was building.

  And speaking of poems, that day in fifth period, when Colin and I were putting our story ideas on index cards, Mrs. Fickus invaded the library with the whole class so they could find poems for their poetry notebooks and photocopy them. Mr. Devon couldn’t be there for us because both he and his assistant had to be at the Xerox machine the whole time, or it would probably have been a disaster. BBAs working office equipment? That was scary.

  I tried to concentrate on our story, but it was hard—especially with the Tribelet there working together, just like we’d all worked together on our science presentation just a few weeks before. Or was it a whole lifetime ago?

  I was flipping through the ideas Colin and I had so far, and not actually soaking in what I was seeing, when Tori pulled a chair up next to mine.

  “Could I talk to her for a minute?” she said to Colin.

  Colin looked from her to me and I nodded and he went into the social sciences section. I couldn’t help sending a panicky glance across the library where Those Girls were becoming hysterical over something the BBAs were showing them.

  “This is school business,” Tori said.

  I didn’t tell her that wouldn’t make any difference to Kylie.

  “We have to have somebody else read our poem and critique it before we turn it in,” Tori said. “So, would you do mine?”

  Kylie and Those Girls and anybody else who wanted to ruin my life drained away like I’d just flushed them d
own the toilet.

  “You want me to do it?” I said.

  “You’re really good at it. You’re doing this special project and everything.”

  I stared at the stack of cards, which were now practically melting in my hand. “I’ve sort of, like, shut you out. Aren’t you mad at me?”

  The laughter on the other side of the library stopped.

  “We don’t have time to talk about this now,” Tori said in a low voice. She pushed a sheet of paper toward me. “Will you e-mail me what you think?”

  “Do you need this back?” I said.

  “I have another copy. Thanks.”

  After Tori disappeared into the crowd, I put the cards aside and read her poem. If I were Mitch, I would have said, “Wow.”

  I was sliding it carefully into my backpack when the mob suddenly seemed to expand. People were all around our table and reaching for books on the nearby shelves that weren’t even poetry. In the middle of it, my backpack got knocked off and my stuff went everywhere. I heard Winnie shriek as her papers flew and got mixed up with mine. We were both on the floor on our hands and knees, along with Shelby and Colin and one of the soccer girls, when Mr. Devon finally called out:

  “Silence! Let order be restored!”

  Everybody got quiet for about three seconds, and then Riannon snickered and Patrick said, “Hey, dude, you talk weird.”

  Mrs. Fickus bustled over. She shooed Patrick away, and Mitch told everybody to get their feet off our papers. Mr. Devon said to Riannon, “I see you’re amused, milady. Care to share?”

  “No,” she said.

  I hoped Mr. Devon didn’t hear her murmur, “What a freak.” I really might have popped her one. Or something.

  Order was finally restored, although people were still handing my stuff back to me at the end of the period. At least I had Tori’s poem, and that was all I cared about.

  It really was awesome, that poem. I read it for about the hundredth—okay, maybe the twentieth—time Saturday before I started the e-mail.

  She wrote:

  My hair is not the shiniest of bobs

  My eyes are not the brightest in the room

  My figure will not get me modeling jobs

  My smile will not bring young boys to their doom.

  But do I cry and mourn my average face?

  Or wish that I had boyfriends at the ready?

  Do I not sleep because I lose the race,

  Or spurn my food because I don’t go steady?

  My mind is on a more important thing

  That lifts my heart and makes my spirit soar

  I want to make the souls of people sing

  And quiet down the mean and bullying roar.

  To help the wounded girls replace the scar

  With the right to be exactly who they are.

  I wrote:

  Dear Tori,

  This is the most awesome poem ever, and I’ve read a lot of poems. The Lord of the Rings is full of them. Also The Hobbit. But yours is better, and here’s why:

  1. It’s a real sonnet. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter and the right rhyme and everything. It’s very professional.

  2. It’s supposed to be about your best quality and it is. You don’t care what people think about the way you look, and you’re not all boy crazy. You’re about the important things like anti-bullying, and even though it seems like I don’t appreciate your help, I do. I believe in everything you do. You’re the leader, and I wish I could be like you.

  3. It made me cry. Poems are supposed to get you to be emotional. I hardly ever cry over poems (I do over novels, though), but every time I read the last two lines in yours, I got big tears in my eyes. Once I even cried out loud. And now I feel better.

  I only have one criticism about your poem and it’s this. The first four lines aren’t exactly true. You are one of the cutest girls in our class, and when you smile, it makes people happy. Well, at least me.

  Thank you for the honor of reading this poem. I know you’ll get an A.

  Sincerely,

  Virginia (Ginger) Eve Hollingberry

  I sent the e-mail and checked my inbox at least ten times for her answer. When she didn’t write to me by Sunday night, I started to sink inside. I tried not to think of all the reasons that she wouldn’t write me back: she thought it was a stupid critique, she didn’t like the part where I told her some of it wasn’t true even though I meant it as a compliment, she was mad at me for shutting her and the Tribelet out after all. But none of those fit the person in the poem. Tori wouldn’t think any of those things.

  My heart lifted (that was the way she described it in her poem) when she came up to me in the gym locker room before P.E. started. I didn’t even look to see if Kylie was watching as Tori nudged me out the door to walk with her to the obstacle course.

  “I don’t get why you won’t hang out with us,” she said when we were outside. “But I’m trying to do like Lydia said and not bug you about it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. My heart wasn’t lifting anymore.

  “But jeepers, Ginge.” Her voice changed out of I’ve been thinking about what to say and into I’m just going to come out with it. “Do you have to be mean about it?”

  “Mean?” I said.

  “Yeah. Mean.”

  “Is someone being mean to you, Ginger?” Kylie said behind me.

  I whipped around to face her. “I’m having a private conversation about school business,” I said. So much for writing things down before I said them.

  “You were having a private conversation,” Kylie said, and smiled the smile that didn’t even look like one.

  I turned to find that Tori was gone.

  The tension notched up again, and now some of it was coming from me. All morning I simmered like a pot of Dad’s chili that was too hot for me to even eat.

  I didn’t know what Tori was talking about when she said I was mean, but it had to have something to do with Kylie. Me not being able to hang out with the Tribelet was one thing. But Tori getting her feelings hurt was a whole other thing.

  That thing was, if Kylie and Those Girls were just hurting me, I wouldn’t care so much. I could do the Stone Face and the one-liner and all the other things Lydia and the Tribelet had taught me, and it might go away like Lydia said.

  But the harder I tried, the more other people got hurt, and for what? Wasn’t the lie already all over the school that my dad caused my mom’s accident by being drunk? Hadn’t Jackson already found out and taken care of it himself by “pounding” some guy? What difference did it make now?

  The difference was Dad, of course. If I could just find a way to tell him how it all got started, maybe he’d understand.

  Or maybe he would go down into depression again and the house would get moldy and my grandmother would appear out of nowhere with papers from a judge.

  One thing I did decide, though. I was going to talk to Lydia about it during lunch. I was going to tell her everything.

  I was even writing stuff down at the end of third period so I wouldn’t babble on like a moron when Mr. V came to my desk with a note.

  “Special delivery for Ginger Hollingberry,” he said, grinning his big elastic grin.

  “Again?” I heard one of Those Girls say. They were all starting to sound alike to me.

  I waited for everybody to stop looking at me before I unfolded it. Please come to my room at the beginning of lunch, it said, and it was signed, Mrs. Fickus.

  She probably wanted to see how things were going with Mr. Devon. At least I had good news for her. Colin and I had our story almost outlined except for the big heroic scene and the end. I didn’t like that this might cut into my time with Lydia, though.

  So as soon as the bell rang, I rushed to the library, but she wasn’t there yet, so I asked Mr. Devon to give her the message that I would be late.

  “I think Mrs. Fickus wants to check our progress,” I told him.

  “Indeed?” he said. He looked a little confused, but I didn’t ha
ve time to explain.

  Mrs. Fickus just better be quick, I thought as I climbed back up the steps against the throng of kids going to the lunchroom. I needed all the time I could get to talk to Lydia.

  But the minute I stepped into the English room, I hit a wall of tension higher than the one on the obstacle course. Mrs. Fickus was leaning on the front of her desk with her arms tightly folded and her rosy lips pulled in so hard her lipstick made angry feathers around her mouth.

  This wasn’t going to be a quick conversation.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wasn’t the only one who had been . . . summoned, I think was the word for it.

  Kylie was sitting in a desk in the front, looking kind of small and teary-eyed. I knew that look. I’d seen a version of it in the mirror plenty of times. She was acting like a victim, and in my opinion, she wasn’t very good at it. How could she be? She didn’t have any practice.

  Tori sat next to her, and she wasn’t acting at all. The fear in her eyes was totally real, and she was folding and unfolding her hands like she was totally distressed.

  “Miss Hollingberry, have a seat, would you please?” Mrs. Fickus said.

  I went to the other side of Tori and away from Kylie, who I didn’t even look at again. Mrs. Fickus waited until I was still before she picked up two pieces of paper from the desk she was leaning on.

  “Ginger,” she said as she held them up like exhibits in a courtroom TV show, “I was just telling Miss Taylor and Miss Steppe that the poems they turned in are almost identical to each other. Kylie’s is typed and Tori’s is handwritten with some drawings, but other than that they are exactly alike.”

  As quietly as I could, I pulled my little notebook out of the front pocket of my backpack and wrote down what I wanted to say, which was, Kylie could NEVER write a poem like Tori’s!

  Mrs. Fickus looked down her powdered nose. “Clearly we have a problem.”

  Kylie raised just her hand, not her whole arm, and gave Mrs. Fickus a simpering smile. You know, like one of the ugly stepsisters flirting with the prince.