Speechless (8 page)

I hear things. People say a lot in front of me because they don’t think I’m listening.

What else have you heard? Don’t answer that. So what are you in for?

I punched a teacher in the face.

Seriously?

No, but it sounds cooler than having a bunch of tardies.

Point taken.

Hey, your answer to problem number four is wrong. To find the domain you need to set the denominator to zero.

Wow. I was not even close.

Not really, no.

It goes on like this for a while, until the teacher glances at the clock and says, “All right, you’re all excused.”

Everyone clears out of the room like it’s on fire. Asha is the only one who takes her time packing away her knitting needles, zipping up her bag and tucking the newspaper under her arm. Now that we’re both standing up, I can tell exactly how short she is. I mean, I’m no giant, but I tower over her by a good three or four inches. Her sleek black hair sways back and forth as she walks in front of me out the door. I wonder how she deals with it—it must take forever to wash, and even longer to brush. I have enough trouble keeping my own tamed, and mine only goes a little past my shoulders. It’s flaming red and wavy, and no matter how much product I use, it always ends up looking wild and tousled within an hour of drying. Ridiculous.

Asha and I head in the same direction, and we end up walking side by side through the parking lot together. Outside the weather is clear and cold. There’s snow blanketed on the grass; it’ll be there for another two months, at least. Michigan winters are like that. Last year there was a blizzard in April, bad enough to close the schools. Usually I’m eager for all the snow to melt, for spring to start and the birds to sing and the flowers to bloom, all that jazz, but today I’m glad for this miserable weather. It suits my perfectly miserable mood.

“I love winter,” Asha announces out of the blue, winding her scarf tight around her neck. “I get to wear all of the stuff I knit. I need to buy some new boots, though. My old ones fell apart.”

I let my gaze travel down to Asha’s feet; she’s wearing scuffed-up black ballet flats. Her feet must be freezing. Asha seems unperturbed by this, though.

“So I guess I’ll see you around,” she says cheerfully. “Good luck with the vow!”

She starts down the sidewalk, but I touch her arm and grab my whiteboard.

Want a ride home?

I can’t let her walk in those shoes. It’s just too pitiful.

“I have to go to work,” she says. “Over at Rosie’s. You’ve heard of it?”

I nod. Rosie’s is the little diner in the center of town, right on the strip by the lake. We don’t usually eat there—Kristen always thought of it as a magnet for the “undesirables,” which I guess is her word for anyone below her family’s tax bracket—but I pass by all the time.

I can drive you.

“Really?” She beams. “That’d be great!”

My car is my baby. It’s an old-school Volkswagen Beetle my parents gave me for my birthday two months ago. Dad took me to the used-car lot and did all the haggling; he’s big into cars, and everything I know I learned from him. By the time I was twelve, he’d taught me how to change a tire, switch out the oil, add more steering fluid, name all the engine parts. Stuff like that.

The first thing I did when I got the car was swing by Kristen’s house. She was totally unimpressed. “You got it in yellow?” she’d said, her mouth turned down with distaste. “It looks like a taxi.” She acted like it was the tackiest thing she’d ever laid eyes on. I went from feeling excited to wanting to crawl under a rock in five seconds flat.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about that right now.

We’re heading toward my parking spot when a voice calls out from behind us.

“Asha!”

It’s Sam. He’s on his skateboard, rolling in our direction, pushing off the pavement easily with one foot. Who skateboards in the winter? The parking lot is clear of snow, but it’s still odd. He skids to a stop a few feet away, surprise registering on his face when he notices me standing there.

Asha turns around and smiles. “Hi, Sam,” she says. “What’re you still doing here?”

“Library research. Thrilling stuff, I know,” he replies. His gaze flickers to mine and then back to Asha’s. “What about you?”

“Detention,” she says brightly. I can’t help but smile a little at her nonchalance.

Sam’s eyebrows shoot skyward. “Why, Asha, you little deviant. Guess I should go before your bad influence rubs off on me.”

He starts skating past us, until Asha reaches out and grabs his backpack handle, yanking him to a stop. He laughs and pops his board up with one foot. It’s kind of cool. I don’t know how to skateboard, or even use Rollerblades. My mom is paranoid because growing up, she knew a boy who had an in-line skating accident and hit his head on a rock and died, so she never let me learn. She doesn’t trust anything with wheels. It took weeks of convincing to even talk her into letting me take the training wheels off my bike.

“Hey, when are you gonna make my scarf?” Sam asks Asha.

“You still have to pick out the colors,” she says. “I was thinking red and blue.”

“Nah. Too Captain America for me. I’m more of a—”

“—Batman? Black and gold?”

“Green Lantern, maybe. Green and silver.”

I sit back and listen to them debating superhero colors. They don’t seem to be bothered by me being there. Not even Sam. If he’s unhappy with my presence, he doesn’t let on.

I wonder if he knows how Noah is. If he’s any better. No one’s told me, and even if I was talking, I wouldn’t ask. Even though I’m dying to know. It just…it doesn’t seem like it’s my place. Or maybe I’m just scared to find out if he’s not doing well. That would make things even worse for me than they already are. If the vitriol aimed at me is already this bad, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like if Noah doesn’t recover.

I look past Asha and Sam and toward my car. Weird…it looks like there’s something on my windshield.

I let them continue with their bantering and walk up to the car, and that’s when I see it. Someone’s thrown eggs all over the front window, the yolk running down onto the hood in a sticky yellow mess. I walk around only to find the word
BITCH
spelled out in shaving cream all over the back. It’s like I’ve been sucker-punched. My bag drops to the ground at my feet.

“Chelsea? What’s wr—” Asha’s voice cuts short as she comes up beside me, eyes widening.

“God.” Sam stops cold, skateboard in both hands, and shakes his head. “Who would do this?”

I’m not sure why he’s so shocked. I don’t bother pointing out that the suspect list would include probably half the student body—including him. I can come up with twenty names off the top of my head. It’d be easier to narrow down who
wouldn’t
do this.

“Come on,” Asha says gently. She puts a hand on my arm. “I’ll help you clean it off.”

Sam sets down his backpack, takes off his jacket and unzips the hoodie underneath it. “Here,” he says, handing me both. “Use this. I’ll check and see if there’s any other damage.”

He checks all the tires while Asha uses his hoodie to wipe off the shaving cream. I grab my squeegee from the backseat and scrape the eggs off the windshield. It takes a while because they’re all crusted and frozen and gross.

“Why don’t you pop the hood?” Sam asks.

I go into the driver’s seat and push the release, then go back outside and lift the hood all the way. Sam comes up beside me to peer at the engine. His arms stick out of his black T-shirt, pale and skinny. He’s shivering.

“Doesn’t look like they messed with anything else,” he says. “You okay to drive?”

I nod, close the hood and hand him back his coat. He slips into it and turns up the sheepskin collar. My whiteboard is still in my hands; I write on it and show him.

Thanks.

A weird look passes over his face, like he doesn’t know how to take my gratitude. “Don’t mention it,” he says. He turns to Asha, who is pinching the shaving cream-covered hoodie by the tips of her fingers. “Hey, just so you know, I’m covering Andy’s shift tonight.”

They work together? Well, that explains their friendship.

Asha frowns. “Is he sick or something?”

“No,” he says. “He texted me to say he’s supposed to stop by the hospital. Noah woke up last night.”

My heart jumps into my throat. Noah woke up? Sam shoots me a meaningful look, and my fingers curl tighter around the whiteboard. I don’t know if he wants me to feel relieved or guilty. I’m both, really. But it also makes me feel even more foolish. If Noah’s going to be totally fine, what was even the point of saying anything? If I’d waited, he could’ve just pointed the finger at Warren and Joey himself, assuming he doesn’t have amnesia or something, and spared me all of this.

“That’s great,” Asha gushes, bouncing on her heels. “I was going to knit him a hat, but I don’t know what size his head is, so I’m working on a scarf instead.”

“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Sam says with a grin. He starts to take his hoodie from her, but I hold up a finger to stop him.

Let me wash it for you.

He looks surprised. “Um. Okay. If you want.”

I do want to. I want to wash his hoodie, and tell him to tell Noah—well, I don’t know what I’d say to Noah if I had the chance.

Pretty sure I won’t have to worry about that. No way is Noah going to ever want to see me face-to-face. On second thought, maybe I should cross my fingers for that amnesia.

* * *

I drive Asha to the diner, and she spends the whole time talking. About her knitting. About how she waits tables and Sam is a cook, and this cool guy named Dex owns the joint, and she really likes the job. About how she earned so many tardies for first period health class because her father makes her walk her little brother Karthik to the middle school every morning, and he is always running late.

She won’t shut up, but I can’t really be annoyed because I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to distract me. I appreciate the sentiment. I’m still a little rattled from what whoever did to my car. I keep wondering how far this will go. Messing with my locker, messing with my car, verbal intimidation—what’s next? Cutting my brakes? Roughing me up in the parking lot? I don’t think anything that extreme will happen, but obviously the past week has, if nothing else, shown that I severely underestimated what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Kristen & Co.’s bullshit.

Not talking leaves me a lot of time alone with my thoughts and ever-growing paranoia. I’ve never been like this. So inside my own head.

As we near the lake, Asha directs me down the street to the diner on the corner. I pull up against the curb and put my car in Park. Rosie’s doesn’t look like much from the outside, just a small, cozy gray building with a red neon sign out front, the
E
flickering on and off intermittently.

“Thanks for the ride,” she says as she unbuckles her seat belt.

I take my board from where it’s resting on the seat divider.

Anytime.

“Well, my sentence is up, so I guess you’ll be on your own tomorrow.”

I can handle it.

She pushes her hair behind her ears and smiles. “I’m sure you can.”

I wait until Asha runs up to the entrance, and she turns to wave before disappearing inside the doors. I wave back, and then sit there, idling, lost in thought. I’m in no hurry to go home. It’ll just mean sitting around, stuffing my face with tofu while Mom threatens to have me committed or something, and then dragging myself to bed, where I’ll toss and turn, staring at my alarm clock and dreading school.

Maybe I’ll do my homework for once. Actually look at the Steinbeck reading Mrs. Finch assigned. What a novel concept.

When I go to pull back onto the street, I notice she left the newspaper sitting on the passenger’s seat. The comics section stares up at me, and suddenly I’m hit with the idea.

I totally know what our art project is going to be.

day three

“Charles Schulz?” Sam says. “Really?”

We’re the only ones in art class actually discussing the project, I’m pretty sure. There was an awkward moment at the start of class when I pulled out his hoodie, freshly cleaned and smelling like Mountain Spring detergent. He just mumbled thanks and dived into talking about the project. Everyone else around us is talking and laughing and throwing shit at each other. Stay classy, Grand Lake.

I roll my eyes and snatch his sketchpad out of his hands.

Skeptical is not a good look for you.

He grabs it back. “I’m just saying—” he starts to say then stops. “You know what? It’s too weird having a conversation with no one. It makes me feel a little like the schizophrenic dude outside the Save-U-More who yells at the ice freezer. So I’m just going to continue this discussion via note-writing, okay?”

do comic strips even count as art?

Of course they do. Don’t be so prejudiced. Art encompasses more than old oil paintings and stupid abstracts. Open your mind!! Be creative!!

you sound like ms. kinsey.

Ms. Kinsey would never call abstracts stupid. Besides I choose to take that as a compliment.

you would. so—charles schulz? really?

Broken record much? Come on, it would be fun!!!! Different!!!! EXCITING!!!!!

your abuse of exclamation marks and capslock is not really selling me on this.

I need to express my enthusiasm somehow.