Astray (7 page)

But behind Will and Brian, Heather and Julie are staring at me. Very deliberately they turn and look at Mr. Brown and the others and then back at me. The girls’ grins
widen and their eyes shine. They press their lips together and start to hum. The tune is unmistakable. It’s the one they were all singing at the hospital. My head supplies the words even if they aren’t actually being sung.

I want to scream, to get the attention of Principal Geddy or one of the teachers, but I can’t make myself do it with
them
watching me. So instead I hunch over and turn my back on the fence. Still, I can feel their stares boring into my back.

I woke up this morning thinking that somehow this day would be a new beginning, that I would have a chance to start a new life—to finally figure out what normal is and leave the Community and Pioneer behind me. And somehow I thought that Heather and the others would let me. I’d dared to believe that the people here would be like Cody and his family, that they would make an attempt at getting to know us. It looks like I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A person can’t change all at once.

—Stephen King,
The Stand

It takes almost half an hour for my body to thaw once we’re allowed back inside the school. Mrs. Ward is keeping us sequestered in the library. I’m not sure if that was her plan all along or if she decided to do it around the time we all filed back into the building, but either way, we are stuck here. I can hear the heat rumbling on and off, echoing down the vents. Even so, the room is cold.

I blow on my fingers as Mrs. Ward settles onto the floor in the far corner of the library and motions for us to join her. The others stare at her, their arms folded across their chests. She looks so disappointed that I soften and sit down a few feet to her right. Will exhales, glances at the others, then slowly comes to sit beside me. I smile as he leans back against the bookshelf behind us.

“Think she’ll tackle me if I make a run for it?” he asks with his eyes closed.

“Hey, you’re not allowed to leave me alone here,” I say, and lightly squeeze his arm.

Will opens his eyes and looks at me, his face more
serious than I was expecting. “I’d never leave you alone anywhere.”

This doesn’t comfort me, especially after seeing Mr. Brown and the others at the fence.

“You guys don’t have to sit with me if you don’t want to, but we’ll be in here for a while yet.…” Mrs. Ward tries one more time, smiling encouragingly at the others. I focus my attention on her and not Will. Honestly, I’m grateful for the interruption.

Heather and Julie look at each other and then reluctantly find a spot across from us. Brian and a few of the other boys remain standing. The rest of the kids shuffle over and sit down close to Heather and Julie, leaving a wide space between them and Mrs. Ward. She fiddles with one of her bootlaces, then tucks her legs up to her chest. I’m not sure if she’s doing it on purpose, but her posture makes her look small, nonthreatening. It’s hard to see her as evil—the way Pioneer wants us to see all Outsiders. Maybe that’s what she wants.

“I’m sorry that we got off to such a rocky start this morning. I’d like to promise you that what happened out there won’t happen again, but I can’t. I wish I could tell you that everything that your Pioneer told you about people being cruel was wrong. But I can’t do that either. The truth is that everyone has the potential to be good or bad.”

“We aren’t here to listen to you give us a lecture on people being good or bad. We’ve seen firsthand what Outsiders can do,” Brian interrupts. His voice has such a hard
edge to it. “There isn’t anything that you can say to make us see you different. You’re all evil. What happened out there just proves it.”

Mrs. Ward gives him a look that’s all pity and understanding, and I watch Brian bristle under it. She doesn’t reach out to him, but I can tell that she wants to. Instead she rearranges herself until she’s sitting cross-legged. “I’m not trying to take your beliefs away from you. Really. All I’m asking is that you consider
why
you believe them.” Her eyes rest on me. “Questions aren’t bad, in fact they’re necessary when you’re trying to figure out just exactly what you stand for.”

Brian shakes his head and Heather and Julie grab each other’s hands and hold tight. I watch as the hand-holding catches on. In less than a minute everyone is holding hands, one long chain of defiance. Will offers his hand to me and I don’t know what to do. Mrs. Ward is watching me intensely. I feel like whatever I choose to do means something—means too much. The thing is, I think I agree with Mrs. Ward, but I’ve isolated myself from the Community so much already. Does it make sense to do it now, especially after what happened outside?

I reach out and take Will’s hand. Mrs. Ward sighs and then opens her mouth to say something more, but doesn’t get the chance because the library door opens up and an older lady rushes in with a clipboard.

“Lunch,” she says. She’s a sturdy lady with rough hands and a ruddy face. Her hair is pulled up under a hairnet.
“Principal Geddy said it would be better if the kids ate in here.” She eyeballs us. “But just this once. I can’t be expected to pull together a special lunch for this lot every day and still get the rest of the school fed.” The irritation and outright revulsion in her voice as she talks about us startles me even after everything that’s happened. She gives Mrs. Ward a stern look. “I won’t be responsible for any mess that’s made. I’ll send one of our ladies back in half an hour to collect what’s left.”

“Thank you, Marianne, we’ll do our best to be tidy.” Mrs. Ward smiles patiently at her. Even though she’s got a nice smile and a kind face, it doesn’t soften Marianne any. I wonder if it’s starting to bug Mrs. Ward that no one’s responding the way she wants them to.

A cart is rolled in by another cranky-looking lady in a hairnet. It’s piled high with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, bottled water, and apples. Mrs. Ward asks Julie and Will to pass it all out, and soon we’re settled back down on the floor, our backs leaning up against the bookshelves, our meals in our laps. I’m not sure why we don’t sit at the tables. Mrs. Ward just seems to prefer the floor, I guess. She stretches out her legs across the aisle until her boots are resting close to my sneakers. She’s watching me and chewing her sandwich slowly. She blushes when she realizes that I’ve caught her studying me. Every move I make is being dissected now, not just by her, but by everyone, even me. It ruins my appetite, so I put my food aside, stand up, and start walking along the rows of books.

I land in a row that seems to be all fiction. We only had a few shelves of books in the clubhouse, and I’d read all of those enough times that I’d memorized entire chapters. I put a finger on one of the spines and slowly pull it out. It’s slightly tacky along the front and back cover, like it’s been handled often. Still, I flip it open and start looking at the first page or two. It’s by someone named Stephen King. There’s a picture of him on the back. He looks like Mr. Brown from the Community. The resemblance is almost eerie.

“Do you like to read?” Mrs. Ward is beside me.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. I flip the pages idly, forcing myself to be casual about it.

“Well, why not take that one home today?” Mrs. Ward smiles at me, takes the book before I can decide either way, and walks it up to the front of the library and around the back of the long table there. She hands it to the lady sitting behind it.

“Mrs. Connors, are the kids in the system yet? Lyla would like to check out this book.”

I want to disagree. It was one thing to consider it on the shelf, but now I can feel the other kids staring at my back and the prospect of reading isn’t as appealing as before.

Mrs. Connors shakes her head. “By tomorrow they will be.” She stares at her computer and types something. “She can check it out under my name for now.”

She types some more and then hands the book back to me. She gives me the dreaded pity look that I hate. “Take
as long as you like. Since it’s in my name, it won’t have to come back in the usual two weeks. But see that you take good care of it. No reading in the bathtub.”

I take the book and hug it tightly to my chest. My face is on fire. “Um, thanks. I promise I’ll be careful.”

Her face brightens. “I hope you enjoy it.”

Mrs. Ward grins at both of us. I guess I’ve just given her her first breakthrough of the day. Behind me someone coughs and I hug the book even tighter. I have the strong urge to rush to my book bag and stuff the book inside it, but I stop myself. I don’t belong to the Community anymore and yet I can’t help feeling like I’m forcing myself to balance on a very thin beam all the time, trying not to lean too far in either direction: Mrs. Ward’s or theirs.

I turn to go back to my spot on the floor. I tilt the book out in front of me so that I can see the title.
The Stand
. I don’t know what it means, but I’m suddenly dying to find out. It feels like this book could hold secrets about what I’ve been missing, about what Pioneer’s been keeping from us. It makes no sense, but I feel it anyway. I want to go through every row, stack book after book on this first one, and then sit down and read them all. There’s so much to discover. And this is only one tiny corner of such a large world.

Principal Geddy comes back to the media center just as we’re tossing the remains of our lunches into large trash cans. His eyes dart around the floor and after a minute he stoops down and picks up a smallish crumb, sighs. A
few kids are still huddled against the bookshelves, their uneaten sandwiches beside them. Principal Geddy’s face tightens and his mouth opens and closes, but ultimately he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s afraid to, afraid to have any of us react to his reprimand the way we did to the fire alarm. It makes for a weird sort of tension between him and us. It makes me wish someone would fake a hysterical fit just to get it out of the way, to stop him from wondering when it might happen and what he should do when it does.

Mrs. Ward passes out a series of tests. We’re supposed to answer all of the questions on them to the best of our ability. They want to see what we already know so that they can put us in the right classes. I read over the questions. The English part is easy. I’m smiling by the time I finish it, but the history bits are … confusing. I recognize the dates of some of the historical stuff, but the possible answers we’re supposed to choose from don’t make sense. All of them are just wrong. And the math is like looking at another language entirely. After struggling through a few questions, I just randomly pick answers and hope for the best. Pioneer always chose what we studied. Some of us concentrated on the arts, others on math and science. By the looks of things, his lessons were very different than what the Outsiders were learning. I wonder if anyone else is realizing the same thing. I glance up at the others, but they’re intent on their papers. Will is tapping his pencil on the side of his head like maybe somehow he can hammer
the correct answers into it. I see very few pencils actually touch paper.

By the time we complete all of the tests—or at least pretend to—the school day is over and my head is pounding. As soon as the last bell for the day chimes, the hallway outside the library fills with students. A few students knock on the library’s glass window and make faces at us as they pass. Others walk by without looking in at all. A very few smile shyly. I try not to watch them, but I can’t help myself. According to Principal Geddy, tomorrow we’ll be out there. With them.

I want to go back to Cody’s house and shut myself up in his sister’s room and try to make sense of this day, but I can’t. I have a counseling session with my parents in less than an hour. My headache goes from bad to almost unbearable.

Mrs. Ward gathers up the last of our tests and we start collecting our coats and lining up by the double doors.

“What do you think about this place? About today?” Will says as he comes up beside me. He has his coat on. His hands are in his pockets like they’re already cold.

“I have no idea,” I say honestly, and his mouth turns up a little.

“I think it sucked … truly.” He makes a face and I can’t help smiling back at him.

Heather and Julie are watching us from the front of the line. Heather raises an eyebrow and the side of her mouth curves up. She whispers in Julie’s ear. They both stare at
us with unmistakable approval. Julie starts humming that creepy song again, loudly enough for me to hear; this time the tune is extra cheery. There’s an unspoken “I knew it was only a matter of time” to the tone.

“So how’s your new place?” I ask Will in a voice loud enough to drown out her humming.

“Not like home,” he says.

Will and I squeeze through one side of the library’s double doors. We haven’t been this close since the night we snuck out of the Community and danced together down by the river. My nose bumps his chest, right above his heart. I breathe in sharply. It only takes a second to realize that Will doesn’t smell like summertime or the fields beyond Mandrodage Meadows the way he used to. He just smells like soap and boy. That familiar scent is gone—like so many other things. Out of nowhere my eyes fill with tears. They fill up so unexpectedly and fast that I can’t keep the tears from spilling out and running down my cheeks.

There goes Taylor’s carefully applied makeup and my vow to never cry here
, is all I can think as the tears run off my face and onto my shirt. My nose starts to run and my chest aches and then all of it—this day, this moment, all that I’ve lost—overwhelms me. I can’t move.

Will’s already through the door, but when I don’t keep up, he turns back toward me. He notices that I’m crying right away. I open my mouth to explain, but he shushes me. “It’s okay, I get it. Man, do I get it,” he says softly, his
hand coming up to touch my cheek. His eyes are rimmed in red and he swallows hard. “This … it’s not easy.”