by daisy harris
Bethany’s friends sat across from us, as far from the sports table as the seats would allow.
“This is Thea and Kevin.” Bethany pointed to them.
“Nice to meetcha.” Thea jutted her chin my way, then settled into her plate of brown rice, vegetables, and some blobs I guessed were tofu. Between her no-nonsense blonde braids and her close-fitting soccer jersey, she seemed to be projecting her status as a jock.
Kevin, on the other hand, was mousy. Shorter and skinnier than me, he wore his brown hair slightly longer than Julius. While on Julius, the look was rebellious, Kevin just seemed unkempt.
I pulled my sandwich and Capri Sun out of my backpack. At my old school, bringing your own lunch was a status symbol. Only people who had no choice would want to eat the junk they served in Killeen Junior High’s cafeteria. Clinton clearly didn’t work that way. Very few students carried brown paper bags or lunch bags. The rest must have had parents who could afford the meal plan.
“So, uh, did y’all go to Clinton for junior high?” I asked, my accent kicking up out of nervousness.
“Thea came the last year of elementary.” Bethany managed to get words in around bites of leaves and sprouts. “Kevin came in seventh, but I’ve been here forever. Longer than most of the staff.” Bethany looked past Thea’s shoulder.
I followed her line of sight and noticed Julius walking through the cafeteria. He carried a paper bag on top of a tray.
“Hi, Julius!” Bethany smiled. She seemed unbothered when he didn’t respond.
Julius knocked on the door marked Maintenance. “Hello?”
I expected Bethany or one of the other people to snicker. But the only person to call Julius out was a girl at the table next to us.
“What’re you doing, freak?” She was older, either a junior or a senior, with short hair, almost like a boy’s. Her slender body and pixie features gave her the kind of high-end androgyny you normally saw in fashion models.
To my surprise, Julius sent the girl a narrow-eyed sneer.
The door Julius had been knocking on opened, and a man stuck his head outside. “Hello?” He had a heavy Spanish accent and wore a janitor’s uniform.
“Marcos. I need a favor.” His eyes were focused, almost feverish. Whatever was going on with him seemed different and exciting, and I found myself wishing that I could be part of it.
“You’re staring,” Bethany pointed out.
“Oh. Yeah.” I went back to my sandwich, less enthralled by it by the second. Maybe I was losing my appetite or maybe it was just that I couldn’t quite figure out what Julius was saying.
“Did you get Postcolonial Theory as an elective this semester?” Thea leaned across the table to compare schedules with Bethany.
“Yeah. With Fatima. I hear she’s good,” Bethany rattled.
Torn as I was between pretending to listen to Bethany’s conversation and trying to hear Julius’s, I didn’t notice the tall and disturbingly broad guy in a letterman’s jacket until he was right behind me. He cast a shadow over my lunch.
“Hey. You the kid who nabbed the second senior table?”
I walked my gaze up as slowly as I dared, trying to determine if he was friend or foe. Or maybe more accurately, how bad of a foe.
Short-clipped, dirty-blond hair. Wide-set stance. Jaw like a rhino’s. To make matters worse, his friends the next table over were laughing like Christmas had come early.
“Um . . . yeah?” If those guys were his friends, they could have told me the seats were taken. Heck, Bethany could have tipped me off that I’d sat at an upperclassmen table.
I widened my eyes at her. Bethany’s terrified expression said that she hadn’t tricked me or withheld information to get me picked on. Still, I was going to give her a piece of my mind when we got out of there.
“You don’t seem like the type to rock the boat, kid.” The guy crossed his arms and pasted on a smile like a pit bull trying to be friendly. “But I’ll give you a little lesson for free: this is our table. Get out of here and we’ll call it even.”
I wished the other people at my table weren’t studying their lunches like they thought their kale would grow legs and run away. I could have used a hint as to how to answer. “There are a couple free seats,” I said. “You could sit on that side.”
My dad always said it was best to negotiate, rather than give in immediately to an enemy’s demands. I suspected his advice worked better when one had the might of the United States Army behind him, instead of a couple girls and a guy who looked like he’d off himself if he could find the right sound track.
“Out. Now.” The guy jerked his thumb.
Kevin scampered from his seat. One by one, the girls excused themselves. I couldn’t roll like that. Not at a brand-new school. If I was going to have any kind of reputation, now was the time to defend it. Teeth gritted, I held my ground.
“I’m serious. Get up.”
The words Make me were on the tip of my tongue, but if I said them, I would overstep some line I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross. I drummed my fingers on the table. “Actually . . .”
Julius appeared out of nowhere, with a spray bottle and paper napkins. He spritzed a section of the table with cleaner and wiped it down with quick, straight strokes. Then he slid into the seat, muttering to no one in particular, “Cafeteria tables are the most germ-infested surfaces in school. Over fifty percent harbor the influenza A virus.”
“Oh, um . . .” I wondered what Julius’s comment had to do with the jerk trying to steal my seat. “That’s nice?”
Julius observed me from across the table, making eye contact for the first time that day. “I didn’t catch your name earlier.” He had a way of talking that was different from other people, formal, like he was from England, though his accent was closer to Canadian.
“Henry.”
“Henry what?”
I blinked. “Walker.”
“I’m Julius Drake.” He dropped his backpack to his side and unpacked his brown-paper-bag lunch. Glancing up, he explained, “I have allergies.”
“Whatever. You’re both losers.” The jock cleared his throat, his face turning pink. “And you need to clear out of my table.”
“This is Hal.” Julius unfolded a sandwich from its wax-paper wrapping. “He and his goon friends are on the swim team.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, freak.” Though the freak comment was clearly directed at Julius, Hal got behind me and grabbed the back of my chair.
Luckily, I caught a handful of the table. When the seat pulled out, I dropped to a crouch instead of falling on my butt.
“Nice reflexes,” Julius commented.
“Er, thanks.” I rose to face Hal. “And you.” I didn’t care that he was a foot taller than me, because I was having what my mom always called a teenage moment and I refused to back down. Julius’s presence only amped my anger higher. “I’m not getting up from this table.”
I shoved him in the arm, glossing over the fact that technically I’d already stood.
From the edge of the room, Roberto eased forward like a ginger secret agent. He didn’t move to step in, but I could tell he was thinking about it.
“Think you’re a badass, huh?” Hal’s smile was slow and mean. He put on a fake Southern accent. “Used to fight a lot where you’re from?”
“You bet I did.” Of course, I’d never been in a fight in my life. But if a little Texas swagger would get this jerk off my back, I’d lay it on extra thick. “Won some, too.”
“He sure did,” Julius piped up. He tossed his hair out of his eyes, smirking. “I’d watch out around him if I were you, Hal.”
“Oh, shut up,” the skinny girl at the next table snapped. “No one was talking to you.”
Julius only shrugged.
“Yeah, freak. No one was talking to you.” Hal started toward Julius.
Struck with a sudden need to protect Julius, I pushed Hal in the side hard enough to get him off course. “We’re sitting here, and that’s final
.” I felt rather than saw Julius’s smirk.
Mom was always saying I shouldn’t show off for other kids, but right then, I wanted Julius to think I was the coolest guy he’d ever met.
“Excuse me.” Roberto wove through the room at last. “I need both of you to settle down and finish your lunches. Next period starts in ten minutes, and I’m sure you have things you need to get from your lockers.”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Hal said. “We were just kidding around.” He wore a wide and seemingly genuine grin.
“That’s good.” Roberto smiled back, clearly buying Hal’s horse-pucky. “But you know, the sign says no roughhousing. And we mean it.” He pointed to a list of rules on the wall.
“Sure thing, Rob.” Hal bunched his shoulders in the picture of humility. “See you in class.”
“Yes. Fine.” Roberto left, and Hal went to sit down at the table with his friends.
I hovered, pretending to look through my backpack, hoping that Julius would ask me to walk with him to class.
“Hey, Walker,” Hal called from the other table. He still wore that big grin. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was going to apologize. But I knew his type all too well.
I kept my distance. “Yeah?”
“You got a bike?”
For a second, I assumed he meant a dirt bike like some of the guys in Texas had, but I doubted any of these city kids rode around in mud on the weekends. “You mean a bicycle? Yeah.”
“Meet me at eight tonight. The top of Madrona Hill. We’ll see how tough you are.”
From behind me, Julius piped up. “You asking him on a date, Hal? I’m jealous.”
“Nobody was talking to you, dork.” Hal waved his hand, dismissing Julius and me in a single gesture.
While I was still ahead of the game, I left. My hands were shaking, but more from giddiness than fear. Honestly, I would have expected Hal to challenge me to a fistfight. A bicycle drag race was nonthreatening enough to be laughable. Maybe kids didn’t fight in Seattle the way they did in Texas. Add that to the growing list of things I didn’t fully understand in my new life.
“Oh my God, what happened?” Bethany appeared at my side as soon as I was in the halls. Her book bag bounced as she took up step next to me.
I took a bite of my sandwich, relaxed enough to eat now that I was away from Hal and Julius. Gloppy and oversweet though it was, my lunch tasted wonderful doused in victory.
“I got asked on a date by a senior,” I said, playing along with Julius’s joke.
Bethany rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. I mean what happened with Julius? Did he talk to you? He doesn’t talk to anyone.”
I laughed. “What, do you have a crush on him or something?”
“That makes two of us.”
I didn’t know what she was getting at, so I kept my mouth shut the rest of the way to class.
“Nothing else to report?” My dad’s face was grainy, and his lips moved after his words.
“No. Took classes. We don’t have any homework.” I remembered right then that I needed an excuse to get out of the house. “Well, I mean except for this one reading assignment.”
“So, are the classes harder than you expected or easier?”
“I can’t tell yet,” I told the screen. It was hard to think of the image as my father since I hadn’t seen him in person in over a year. “They want our opinions on everything. What do we think of this, what’s our take on that. I guess they’re trying to make us creative?” My old school had been more about learning facts and repeating them. I could already tell from the laundry list of sources my new teachers had provided that at Clinton they were going to want us to show a lot of initiative.
“That sounds pretty cool.” My dad glanced behind him. His day was just beginning. “I miss you, buddy. Wish I was there.”
My eyes prickled. “I should get going. I told some kids we’d meet up to study.”
“Already?” Mom was sitting next to me, but she scooted in front of the computer when I vacated my seat.
“Yeah. I made some friends today.” I gave her a meaningful look. She and I often talked in code. “I’m meeting some kids to study” meant “I’m going out, but won’t get in trouble.”
Tonight that might have been a tad of a lie, but how much damage could I do on a bicycle? The worst I’d get is scraped knees and elbows. I’d even wear a helmet.
“Well, be home by nine.” That was Mom-code for “be home by ten.”
“Fine.”
Mom smiled. The 9 p.m. school-night curfew had been my dad’s idea. As was the notion that I could only go out on a school night to study. But the thing about having a parent who didn’t live with you was that even if they made the rules, they weren’t around to enforce them.
“See ya.” I waved past Mom’s shoulder to my dad on screen. Though it took a little bit with the delay, he waved back.
Our apartment was a small one-bedroom. In other words, Mom was on the computer with my dad in the apartment’s only bedroom. In the living room, my twin bed was pushed up against the wall with my dresser that we’d brought from Killeen. Luckily, there was enough space for us to still have a sofa, TV, and coffee table to eat meals on, even if there wasn’t enough room for a dining area.
Back home, I’d had my own room, and my mom had an office. Sure, our neighborhood in Seattle was attractive, and the waterfront nearby was pretty, but it was too bad we had to live like two sardines in a can.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Mom stuck her head out the door of her bedroom.
“Yeah.” I grabbed my backpack, but removed most of the books so I wouldn’t be carrying a ton while riding. Then I ignored her inquisitive stare as I went through the front door and into the night.
Our apartment complex was actually pretty nice. The grounds were clean and well-kept—which honestly I’d started to think of as a Seattle thing. Killeen had worn its mess on the outside. In Seattle, I suspected that they kept their problems under the surface.
There were dozens of bikes on the rack, most of them fancier than mine. I got my ten-speed loose and mounted it.
From my apartment complex, it was a flat, straight road to Madison Park—an area so high-end I felt weird stepping foot in the Starbucks, but where I had happily gotten ice cream and ridden my skateboard for the last two weeks. From there, it wasn’t far to Clinton Academy, but there was a huge incline between the park and the school.
I huffed, standing on my pedals. Though it was getting dark, it wasn’t fully night yet. A little gray still hovered to the west, a reminder that we were at the very end of the country, and if you traveled too far, you’d fall over the edge.
My couple of weeks riding up this hill had paid off, because I didn’t have to walk up like I had when I first got to Seattle. Whatever fear I’d had at lunch faded into excitement. I was alone and on the wide-open road. Okay, fine, a twisty, windy road behind school, but it was still pretty cool.
I rode to the top of Madrona Hill, and that’s when the trepidation set in. See, moving, you can always imagine you’re getting somewhere. Once you stop, you’re stuck with creepy shadows and trees that make weird creaking sounds when they rustle. A breeze came up from the lake, raising the hair on the back of my neck.
I imagined people would be there already. Either a bunch of seniors who’d chase me until I crashed, or the whole school gathered like some kind of back-to-school party.
I should have realized not too many people lived close enough to witness my humiliation.
An ominous black SUV pulled up behind me, and a guy from Hal’s table at lunch hung out the window. “Hal here yet?”
“No.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to play host to Hal’s friends, but it’s not like I could lie.
“Oh.” They pulled forward and parked. Soon reggae poured from the car’s open windows, along with the sweet, pungent smell I’d come to associate with Seattle parks on sunny days.
I got out my phone and sent a halfhearted message to Bethany. She lived to the south of Columbia City, and I didn’t get the sense she was the kind to go out on a school night anyway. Still, it was nice to have someone to tell that I’d shown up on Madrona Hill and Hal wasn’t there yet.
Bethany even responded with a worried Take care of yourself, which I had to admit was comforting.
Another vehicle rolled along the street; this one was a green Subaru. I’m not sure why but it’s impossible to be intimidated by a Subaru. It parked in front of the SUV. They must have sparked up too, because clouds of smoke billowed from the window.
With no one talking to me, there was nothing to distract me from the night’s cold. The sweat I’d built up riding had dried in a sticky layer. I didn’t want to go home, but I didn’t feel like hanging out much longer, either.
I was about to leave when another vehicle pulled up. The Mercedes G-Class had ominous dialed to eleven. It wasn’t just black, but had a finish that made it glitter in the dark, and chrome accents that reflected the moonlight. With its tall windows and boxy frame, it looked like an armored car that some foreign dignitary might drive.
This couldn’t be Hal’s car. It moved too carefully as it drew to a stop not far from me. When the door opened, Julius Drake stepped down from the passenger seat. He wore a black three-quarter-length coat over the same clothes he’d been in at school.
The girl on the driver’s side was the same skinny upperclassman from the cafeteria. The one who’d told Julius he was a freak. The one who’d been hanging out with Hal.
Now that they’d gotten out of the same car, I realized the resemblance between them. She and Julius shared the same jet-black hair and pale skin. Her eyes were black while his were the palest blue, but otherwise their features were similar enough for them to be twins.
“Hey,” I shouted. “Where’s Hal?”
Julius shrugged.
The girl glanced at the other cars, then over the water as if Hal might appear out of the black. “You haven’t heard from him?” In the lunchroom, her voice had been strident and obnoxious. Now, she sounded much the way Julius sounded when he talked to the air instead of a person.
