Rogue

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Copyright © 2013 by Lyn Miller-Lachmann.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, Nancy Paulsen Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Nancy Paulsen Books, Reg. U.S. Pat & Tm. Off. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller-Lachmann, Lyn, 1956–

Rogue / Lyn Miller-Lachmann. pages cm

Summary: An eighth-grade girl with Asperger's syndrome tries to befriend her new neighbor, facing many challenges along the way.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[1. Asperger's syndrome—Fiction. 2. Autism—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Racially mixed people—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.M6392Ro 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012036570

ISBN 978-1-101-59673-9

To my Secret Gardeners

CHAPTER 1

IT USUALLY TOOK THE NEW KIDS TWO WEEKS TO DUMP ME
, three weeks at the most. Melanie Prince-Parker was the quickest. She moved from West Hartford to Willingham when we started eighth grade. I couldn't make her sit across from me for more than five minutes of lunch, and at the end of the first week I spotted her in the middle of the popular girls' table.

I wanted to know how she did it.

I wanted to
be
Melanie Prince-Parker.

I used to watch her at lunchtime, first sitting at a table on the same side of the cafeteria, then moving closer and closer until one March day I set my tray at a corner of the table where the popular girls always sat.

The girls instantly stopped talking. Melanie scraped her chair back and stood. I lowered my gaze but could feel her glare on my face.

Without a word, Melanie pushed my tray from the table.

I jumped backward. The clatter of plastic on tile broke the silence. The tip of the apple pie stuck out from an edge of overturned plate. Oily tomato sauce spread from a pile of sloppy joe toward the bun that rolled away. Wilted lettuce curled up next to the pale green tray.

Kids surrounded me, shouting. Voices rose from the chorus.

Ooh, snap!

What was she thinking?

You don't do that, sit anywhere you want.

That's retarded.

So weird.

Look, she's crying again. Crybaby Kiara!

Crybaby Kiara!

Through blurry eyes, I stared at my trembling hands. A clear droplet splashed on my wrist, but I hadn't heard myself crying with all the noise, the kids laughing.

Anger surged from the pit of my empty stomach. My ears burned. I had a right to sit where I wanted. This wasn't kindergarten where they assigned seats in the lunchroom.

I picked up the tray.

For a moment, I caught Melanie's eyes. Scary eyes. Deep brown irises. My mind flashed to my mother's eyes, what they looked like whenever I made Mami mad. Melanie wore black eyeliner like Mami too.

I hadn't seen those eyes since Mami left last month.

I raised the tray above me, a batter waiting for the pitch.

Melanie placed her hands on her hips and opened her mouth. Her soprano harmonized with the chorus around me.

“Don't be stupid, Kiara. Put the tray down.”

I swung.

I swung at the light brown face that contained those evil eyes. The tray slammed into her face. Shock waves vibrated in my arms and spread to the rest of my body. I let go of the tray. It bounced on my foot before hitting the tile with a thud.

Laughter turned to screams. Melanie's nose spurted blood. Past her lips, down her chin, onto her pink sweater.

Then somebody's huge arms locked around me and carried me away.

Away from the cafeteria—and out of that school.

CHAPTER 2

CHAD ELLIOTT IS THE NEWEST NEW KID, THE NINTH SINCE
I started keeping track in third grade. Every year I'd go up to them and introduce myself—
Hi, I'm Kiara Thornton-Delgado. What's your name?
I said it to Chad two days ago when they moved in, but his father ordered him to carry boxes and not waste time on chitchat.

“I follow a band around the country,” I tell Chad now. So he'll think I'm cool and like me. We're standing in the little park behind my house and across the street from his new home on the first floor of the Mackenzies' house.

He flashes me a snaggle-toothed smile, holds up two fingers in a peace sign, and says, “Woo, hoo. Grateful Dead, man.”

The way he says it, I don't think he's impressed. Like I said something stupid—again.

I turn my face away and stare at the wooden fence that separates the park from my backyard. The late-afternoon sun casts shadows of Chad and me, making us look like stretched-out black-and-white drawings on the fence. Like a frame in a comic book.

“My parents are
in
the band. So are my brothers. And my uncles,” I tell Chad. It's not quite the truth. But it
was.

Chad hops onto the concrete platform that once was a stage and spins like a Tilt-A-Whirl, arms outstretched and blond hair flying. Above him, a squirrel darts across a bare branch. Mid-April in the northeastern corner of Connecticut means the buds still haven't opened on our late-blooming trees. “What's the band called?” he asks.

“Corazón del Este. ‘Heart of the East' in Spanish.”

“Never heard of 'em.” He jumps down to the cobblestone path that runs from the platform like the center aisle of a theater. His feet slide on soggy leaves.

“They play folk music from around the world. They've played with Pete Seeger.”

“Who's that?”

“You don't know?” Chad has to know. Pete Seeger is my family's hero. I've heard his name since I was old enough to understand words.

“Sounds like a loser band.”

“No, they're not.” I blink rapidly against the tears filling my eyes, tears for the band that hadn't made music together in nearly a year.

“Why're you crying?”

“I'm
not
crying.” I wipe my eyes with my shirtsleeve so New Kid won't know me as Crybaby Kiara on the first day we've really met.

Chad turns his back on me and gazes across quiet Cherry Street to the sagging two-story house where his family now lives. The bottom floor used to be a second-hand record and comic book store, where I'd go after school to help Mr. Mackenzie shelve the stock and ring up sales until he died last year. Mr. Mac introduced me to the X-Men. The X-Men are mutants who don't fit into society. They're like me, but all of them have special powers. I'm still trying to find mine.

I blink hard, pretending to have dirt in my eye. Behind Chad two squirrels chase each other across the grass and spiral up the trunk of an oak tree. The one in the lead twitches its tail, as if to say
bet you can't catch me
to its friend. “My dad got this park built,” I finally say.

“Huh?” Chad steps closer. He's a few inches shorter than me and skinny, with a narrow face, smooth cheeks, and a pointy nose. He looks more like a ten-year-old than a seventh-grader. His breath smells of minty gum.

I inch backward. “Here. Where we are.”

Chad points to the brand-new wooden sign on the corner closest to Cherry Street and busy Washington Avenue. “Is your dad named—?”

“Nigel Mackenzie? No.”

“Mackenzie? Isn't that the name of the lady whose boxes are upstairs—”

“He and Dad worked together to turn some empty lots into a park.”

They'd originally planned to name the park after Dad, because when he first got cancer, the doctors didn't think they could cure him. When Dad did get cured, and the park finally got built, it was just called Cherry Street Park because Dad said he and Mr. Mac didn't like the idea of naming places after people who were still alive.

Now the park has Mr. Mac's name. It seems the whole town of Willingham wanted to remember Mr. Mac, and I don't understand why Mrs. Mac shut down the store and moved to her sister's house two towns away, as if she wanted to erase every trace of him. Dad said she didn't want to keep living in the place where her husband died, but I don't believe ghosts haunt those places and I don't see how moving away can make someone forget.

Mami moved away and I haven't forgotten her.

“How come you weren't on the bus?” Chad says, still staring at his house as if expecting something scary like Mr. Mac's ghost to burst out of it. Someone has covered the inside of the basement windows with what looks like black construction paper.

“I don't go to school anymore.”

“You have to go to school.”

“I'm homeschooled.”

Chad whirls around so fast that strands of hair stick to his lips. “Hey, wait. Aren't you”—he snaps his fingers—“the psycho eighth-grader that got kicked out for throwing a lunch tray and busting someone's nose?”

“That's someone else. I, uh, travel with the band.” Truth is, I didn't
throw
the tray. I slammed it—hands still on the tray. “Do you like the house?” I ask to change the subject.

“It's cool. I got my own room.” He jumps up and down as if trying to keep warm. “Last place I had to share with my little brother. He talks in his sleep.”

“Is it the room by the kitchen or the one next to the front room?”

“How come you know the rooms?”

“I used to work there, when it was a music store.” I sweep my hand in a semicircle to keep hyper Chad from running into me. “The store used to have concerts in this park too. Every Friday in the summer. Folk music. Hip-hop . . .”

“Hip-hop?” Chad's voice rises to a squeak.

“Yeah. Kids from the high school performed.”

Chad stops jumping. “Cool!”

“But not anymore. Mr. Mackenzie, who owned the store, died last August.” I gaze at the cobblestones, then at the house's second floor. “Heart attack. Upstairs. That's why they named the park after him.”

Chad makes a shivery sound. I bet he does believe in ghosts.

And while I want him to like me, I don't like that he's living there.

The squeal of tires
interrupts us. I spin around to face the corner, in time to see a gray car cut off traffic to make a wide left turn from busy Washington Avenue onto Cherry Street. Brakes screech and a horn blares. The car's tires bump the curb and . . . SMASH!

The crash on impact is followed by a longer crunch. Chad screams behind me. In the driveway, Mrs. Mac's gray Honda Civic has slammed the back of the Elliotts' rusted blue minivan.

Chad and I dash across the street.

Mrs. Mac's car smells like burnt plastic. Steam rises from the creased hood as her car's life hisses away. The deflated airbag hangs over the steering wheel. Slowly, the door opens. A leg pokes out—mostly covered by a paisley-print skirt and boots.

“Are you okay?” I ask Mrs. Mac.

Swearing, Chad runs his hand along his family's dented van and peers underneath.

Holding the door frame, Mrs. Mac pushes herself out of the car. Strands of her long charcoal-gray hair have come out of her braid. I know I should take her arm and help her, but I step back instead.

“I'm all right, don't call the cops.” She sounds like she's speaking from far away. “One more accident and they'll yank my license.” She flashes me a weak smile.

Mr. Mac used to do all their driving. He said she gave him a heart attack every time she got behind the wheel. But he didn't die in a car. He died in his bed.

She totters up the porch steps, fumbles with her keys to the door that leads upstairs, and drops them at her feet. They bounce off one black boot tip and slip through a gap in the floorboards. She grabs the doorknob. “Oh. They fell.”

“Do you want me . . . to . . . look for them?” I ask, trembling inside. Once a cat died under the Mackenzies' porch. Its bones are probably still there.

“Please, dear.” In her tiny, distant voice, she adds, “I'm sorry. I don't know what's gotten into me.”

Chad stands behind me, his face pale. He shoves his hands into the kangaroo pockets of his navy New England Patriots hoodie, making no move to rescue me.

I crouch down and reach blindly under the porch steps for Mrs. Mac's keys. My fingertips touch only air, a spiderweb, a dead insect in the web. I force myself to look. In the dim light I see the keys lying in the dirt and next to them a white plastic bottle with a skull and crossbones and the word POISON stamped in black on the label. Swallowing to keep my stomach in place, I read the words
Muriatic Acid
and below,
Ácido Muriático,
the name of the mysterious acid in Spanish. Avoiding the bottle, I close my fingers around the keys and pull them out. I take them up to her on the porch, where she squeezes my shoulder. I swallow again because strangers touching me creeps me out and even though I've known Mrs. Mac my entire life, today she feels like a stranger.

“Did you hit your head, Mrs. Mac?” I glance down at Chad, who has taken my spot on the first porch step. “He can call the ambulance.”

“No,” Chad whispers.

“No ambulance, no police,” Mrs. Mac says. “Your parents, Charles. Are they home?”

“It's Chad. And they ain't home.” His voice is hard and his hands still in his pockets.

“Tell them I'll make good. Send me the bill, and I'll deduct it from the rent.” She scrapes the key into the lock and opens the door. I notice a stack of boxes at the top of the stairs and wonder how long it will take for her to have all the rooms totally empty—nothing left of the times she and Mr. Mac took care of me like grandparents while the rest of my family went on tour. “Thank you, dear Kiara.” Before going inside, she kisses my forehead. I cringe and rub my forehead with the back of my hand while the door closes behind her. I didn't expect her to kiss me. I hadn't seen her in nearly a month.

“She's drunk.” Chad pounds his fist into the palm of his hand.

“No, she isn't. Her husband died. She barely knows how to drive.” My shoulder and forehead still feel crawly. I remember the times I leaned against her while she read to me and kissed me on the top of my head. She smelled of the wild honeysuckle in her garden then.

Chad points at the two cars, navy and gray, crumpled together. “My parents are gonna kill me.”

“Why? It wasn't your fault.”

“I'm here. That's enough. Anyway, you heard her. No cops.”

“Yeah.” I see my chance with New Kid. Keep him from getting in trouble with his parents. “Want to come over?”

Chad's eyes dart up and down the street. “Can't. I have to stay here till they tell me. Till they . . . get back.” I wonder what the van's doing there if his parents aren't home. Then again, no one came outside when Mrs. Mac rammed it.

“I'll wait with you. Tell them what happened.” I don't want to leave him alone to get in trouble. No—I don't want to leave him to maybe find another friend and ditch me like the other eight New Kids did. But seeing him twitch and fidget and glance from corner to corner like he's watching three Ping-Pong games at once is making me fidgety too. And the wind is picking up, shifting to the north, blowing colder from the tops of the tall trees as dusk creeps in.

“No. Just go,” he says.

I do what he tells me. Because it's what all the kids tell me, and I haven't figured out how to make them change their minds.