“Be careful.” There’s a smile playing on Shelby’s lips, but at the same time, a look of warning is in her eyes. “That girl is clearly extremely troubled.”
She doesn’t have to tell me. From the moment I saw the name Adeline Severson on my roster, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. In my nearly ten years of teaching, I never once asked to have a student removed from my class, but I almost did it this time.
I have a terrible feeling about this girl.
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Chapter Four
ADDIE
SCHOOL IS fine until we get to lunch.
I mean, it’s not going great or anything. It’s not like the most fantastic day of my whole life. But it’s fine. A lot of kids socialize during the school day, but it’s not like you have to talk to other kids. You go into a classroom, you sit your butt down on a chair, and then listen to the teacher talk for forty minutes. Then you go to your next class.
So it’s fine that nobody is talking to me.
But lunch is different. Because everybody is sitting in groups and talking to each other, and if you’re not with other kids, then you’re some kind of loser who nobody wants to socialize with. And that is me all over today.
Not that I had many friends before. For most of my school career, it would be me and Hudson. We would plot to get the same lunch period so we could sit together, because he didn’t want to be alone any more than I did. It’s funny, because when we were in grade school, Hudson was more of a social pariah than I was. Hudson had a fatal case of the cooties. I was just a quiet kid who had trouble talking to kids I didn’t know, but most students actively tormented Hudson. They made his life miserable.
Today, as I walk through the rows of sticky benches clutching my tray containing a hot dog, crinkle-cut french fries, a few packets of ketchup, and a carton of chocolate milk, I literally do not know where I am going to sit. I make eye contact with a few kids who I used to be friendly with, and they quickly look away.
Hudson is here, of course. But he’s planted himself at Kenzie’s table, his pale hair mussed as he tilts his head toward her, deep in conversation. Hudson is for real Kenzie’s latest boy toy. He has officially arrived, and he has not taken me along for the ride. I can’t blame him.
I wish he would at least start speaking to me again though.
“Addie! Addie, over here!”
I swivel my head to see who is calling my name. It’s Ella Curtis, who I only know because she’s the skinniest girl in the junior class by at least ten pounds. Ella and I have barely said a dozen words to each other in the last two years, but now she’s sitting at one of the benches, waving vigorously to me. She’s not the sort of person I would ordinarily eat with, but I’m deliriously happy to be invited to sit with her. I drop down into the seat across from her, dumping my tray on the table as I manage my first genuine smile of the day.
“Hey,” I say. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Ella picks up a french fry with one of her skeletal fingers and licks the ketchup off it but doesn’t take a bite. “I felt bad for you, just standing there because nobody wants to sit with you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. She’s right, but I feel weird acknowledging it. But I’m glad there are people who are still speaking to me. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe everybody will eventually just forget about it, and it won’t be a big deal anymore.
Ella flips her long, stringy brown hair over one shoulder as she looks in the direction of Kenzie’s table. I turn my head just in time to see Kenzie resting her blond head on Hudson’s shoulder. “Hey, do you think they’re dating?” she asks me.
“Dunno,” I mumble. I take a bite of my hot dog, which tastes processed, even for a hot dog. It’s basically rubber.
“Hudson is so hot.” She has finished licking the first french fry and she puts it down. She picks up another fry and starts licking that one. “They make a good couple.”
I grunt in response, and I hate to admit that I agree with her. They look good together. Kenzie’s golden-blond hair even complements Hudson’s hair color, which is also blond, almost white.
“Didn’t you, like, go out with him last year?” she presses me.
I shake my head. “No.”
It was never like that between the two of us. Hudson and I became friends in grade school because we both had dads we were ashamed of. His situation was worse though—at least on the outside. My dad is gone now, but in those days, he used to pass out drunk in our living room in a pool of his own vomit, but at least nobody at school saw it. Hudson’s dad, on the other hand, was the janitor for our elementary school. He was frequently seen pushing a mop and bucket through the hallways and yelling angry curses at kids in Polish.