Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (19 page)

The same “Let's welcome our new student” scene played out in my next class, precalculus, except there was no creepy group chanting, and the teacher did not invite me to call her by her first name and did not call mine refreshing. Also, I was there for roll call, so I heard the other students' names. They were things like Kevin, John, Julia, and Allison. They weren't named after animals or comets. Their names didn't represent anything other than names. I was starting to understand why Cham asked me if I would use Starbird. Maybe there was a good reason Cham didn't go by Chameleon and V didn't go by Venus.

The clock said nine thirty, and a smell came to my mind. You know how every hour of the day has its own smell? If it's a sunny day, especially after several days of rain, nine thirty smells like a tree waking up and like wet moss. Eleven smells like cucumber and mushrooms. Six in the morning just smells like chickens. This nine thirty smelled stale, like chalk-coated rulers. I got a surge of panic. It reminded me of the feeling you get when you're far from home at dusk, and you realize you didn't bring a flashlight. Why was I sitting in a math class? I was supposed to be on the Farm. I reached into my backpack and found the laminated edge of the crisis pass. I held on to it, debating with myself about taking it out. Then I remembered Lyra with Indus that night in the barn. I let go of the pass again.
I can go back tomorrow if I want
.

We did a worksheet and had to exchange them with our neighbor for correcting. I gave mine to a boy sitting next to me name whose name was Ben. I tried to associate it with something so I could remember it. It sounded like
den
, a home for a cougar or wolf. He was tall and painfully skinny with dark hair and glasses, and he had large hands that seemed too big for his body.

When he gave me my paper back, he had drawn a picture in the margin. It was a dark bird with a wingspan wide enough to flap into my math work, and behind it, graphite stars were winking against a loose-leaf sky. He stole a sideways glance at me as I looked at it, and then bent over his desk farther so his hair fell over his glasses.

 
 

By lunchtime, I had a list of questions in my head to ask Cham.

1. Why do people raise their right hands to say something?

2. What is a nerd?

3. How many other schools like this one are there?

4. How can a person possibly do this much homework?

After stopping by my locker, I followed the thickest group of fish toward the noisy, tiled box called the cafeteria, foolishly thinking Cham would be easy to spot. All around me were people. Standing bored or running, hitting one another or making out, whispering together in a cluster or sitting alone looking sad. It reminded me of the way the chickens acted when there were too many crowded into the tiny coop.

And I couldn't believe the stuff they had. People walked by with bright white sneakers and leather backpacks. They wore sparkly earrings and space-age watches and had teeny, tiny phones. At the edges of the room kids were grouped around electrical outlets, each connected to the wall with their own wire like an umbilical cord. What were they all looking at on those bright screens?

“Come here, you bitch. I am gonna stab you!”

From behind me, a girl ran into the lunchroom. She grabbed another girl by the wrist and spun her around before drawing back her hand with a plastic fork in it. “I cannot believe you bought that jacket before me!”

“I know you're jealous,” the other girl said, grabbing her lapels and pouting her lips.

“I'm gonna kill you, you nasty whore!”

Then the girl with the fork put her arm around the other girl's shoulder, and they walked toward the soda machines together.

“Over here.” Cham was suddenly in front of me, motioning to a table.

“Peter and Jeff,” Cham said, pointing to the boys sitting there. He didn't tell them my name, so I said, “Starbird,” and caught myself before putting my hands together in prayer position.

“Cham, did you see that kid Fred in first period? That guy's such a loser,” Jeff said.

“Everything that guy says makes me want to punch him in the face,” said Peter.

I thought I saw Cham steal a lightning glance at me before saying, “Yeah. Totally.”

The rest of the day went like this. “Yes, Starbird. Like star [point to the sky] and bird [flap hands like wings]. Starbird.” At least sixth period was held at the top of a spiral staircase above the science wing in the greenhouse. The warm, wet air and the smell of dirt brought me back to myself, to thoughts of the Farm, thoughts of Indus. I was thinking about him when the final bell of the day rang, releasing me back into the ocean full of fish.

 17 

T
he next morning, I packed my canvas wood-carrying bag in dark and silence so I wouldn't wake Io. I considered taking the clothes she bought me back to the Farm, but it just didn't seem right. I left them folded on the bed with a piece of paper that said,
Thanks
.

I figured I would catch Ephraim downstairs having breakfast before his pickup, and I could just have him say good-bye to everyone for me. I hadn't mentioned it at dinner the night before because I didn't want anyone to try and talk me out of it. I tiptoed down the stairs and found the kitchen dark and Cham standing in the foyer.

“I'm not going to school with you,” Cham said, putting his shoes on by the door. “I'm doing the Farm run.”

“Why not Ephraim?”

“Too sick.”

“I'm going with you.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“There's no room.”

“V said I could go back with you, and so did Ephraim.” I gripped my canvas bag.

“There is literally no room. I have to return machinery that we borrowed during the café remodel. It's already packed.”

“I'll sit in the refrigerated section.”

“I'm saying it's all full. You should have told someone you wanted to go.”

“I did tell someone I wanted to go!”

“Sorry.” Cham shrugged and grabbed the keys off the hook in the hall. “Ephraim's going again Saturday. You can bail on your new life then.”

“I'm not bailing! This stupid job isn't my Calling.”

“Tell me about it,” said Cham, closing the front door behind him as he left.

Venus came down the stairs holding Eris. “Was that Cham leaving?” she said. “I wanted to remind him to get the check from Ephraim.”

“You said I could go.” I dropped my bag on the floor. “You promised. There wasn't any room.”

“When you didn't mention it last night, I thought you changed your mind.” V adjusted Eris on her hip.

“I didn't. I didn't change my mind.”

“I'm so sorry.” V started bouncing Eris. “There is too much to keep track of. Ephraim's going again on Saturday.” Eris started chewing his hand and whining. “He's going to melt down if I don't feed him,” she said, walking toward the kitchen.

“Well, I don't want to go to school today,” I said.

“You really have to. You just enrolled, and if you don't attend, then your counselor is going to call me and start asking questions and get curious about you. I'm sorry, Star, but as long as you are here, you have to go to school.”

“Cham's not going.”

“Cham's a senior.”

“I hate that place,” I said. “The Outsiders are just trying to get me to be like them, and I didn't do my homework.”

Eris started kicking and let out an angry squeal. “EARTH would want you to go,” said V, before disappearing through the swinging door.

 
 

A miserable rain fell on my head as I stomped all the way to the bus. I couldn't believe I had followed some crazy fake Calling because I was mad at Iron and Fern and jealous about Indus. I screwed up. I screwed everything up. What if Indus was in love with Lyra by the time I got back? What if I was too late? Right then, I would have given anything to be in the henhouse collecting eggs.

I had made a hasty change after talking to V and dressed for school in a green sweater and the orange skirt. It might not have been the most attractive color combination. Going to Roosevelt without Cham wasn't a mortifying loss, since he hadn't been a stellar guide through my first day. But at least he was someone familiar. Everything else was so painfully foreign.

In first period, Teacher Ted had us discuss the homework reading I hadn't done on the French and Indian War, and then we looked at color-coded maps of North America to see where the British and French were fighting over land.

In second period, I sat next to Ben-rhymes-with-den, and when we were instructed to exchange and check each other's homework, I switched with him again. I had spent my morning bus ride on a sloppy version of the worksheet and was pleasantly surprised when he handed it back with nine correct answers out of ten. I was also pleased to see another drawing. This time it was a cardinal sitting in the branch of a tree with its beak open and a line of tiny, five-point stars sprouting from its mouth like a song. The tree's branches extended all the way up the page to cradle my name, and the roots stretched to the bottom.

I looked at him again. His skin was pale, and his glasses sat too far down on his nose. He looked like an under-ripe tomato that had grown in too much shade. From his skinny arms, I could tell he had never lifted a hay bale or pushed a wheelbarrow. He wouldn't last an hour working the harvest. I might have stared too long, because he had to reach over to my desk to get his own homework back with ten out of ten marked correct.

After morning classes, I got my lunch from my locker and started toward the cafeteria. That's when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Hold up. You don't even know me and you can't keep my name out of your mouth? I didn't sleep with him, and if I did, you wouldn't need to be talking about it because it's my business, not your business!” A girl with hot-pink lipstick and a deep tan poked a nail into my shoulder.

“Not that one,” another girl with long black hair said, grabbing the tan one. “It was her!” She pointed to a girl standing by her locker with her thumbs on her phone.

“Oh,” the first girl said, looking me up and down. Then she swung around toward the girl at her locker and said, “
You're
the bitch who needs to stop gossiping.”

The two girls who had just surrounded me now closed in on the girl using her phone. She looked up at them like a cornered barn cat. I couldn't handle it anymore.

Instead of going to the cafeteria, I took a left and exited toward the back of the school where the oval football field and the tennis courts were planted in a large, otherwise empty field. A man on a riding mower was working his way in wide, sloping rectangles through the grass. The rain had let up, but a thick fog was clinging to the evergreens edging the field, and my boots were wet within a minute. I pulled my scarf up around my neck and closed my eyes, heading out toward the center of the grounds.

I inhaled the wet air, the pine from the trees, tried to pretend I was at the Farm again. But the Farm never smelled like cut grass, and even out here I could still hear those awful buzzing signals in the building. I started to eat the veggie sandwich V had packed for me as I walked. Back home I would have been eating a hot lunch that Fern made and sitting around the farm table. A sudden tear rolled down my cheek and all the strength left my body. I collapsed into the grass, ignoring the wet as it seeped through my tights and skirt, all the way to my skin. I lay in the grass and cried.

My tears managed to make me late for third period, where I got a verbal warning from Ms. Weaver and a headache from crying.
Go ahead, give me detention. I won't be here to serve it
. I could sense kids staring at my wet back. What did Outsiders know about lying in the wet grass when you're sad? What's weird about that?

At the final bell, I dragged myself back to the heavy door of Teacher Ted's room for my first history club meeting. I was only going because V said I had to do it for the Family, that EARTH would have wanted me to. When I got back to the Farm, this would be a bizarre and distant memory.

The atmosphere was a real change from first period.

“Who wants popcorn?” Teacher Ted asked as I entered. He was plugging in an air popper next to an electric teakettle. “Starbird, pick out a flavor of tea.”

There were five other students in the room, two sitting on top of their desks instead of in the chairs, and one perched on the windowsill with headphones on. I chose peppermint and Teacher Ted got me a mug. Then he had us put our desks in a circle.

“Let's start with names since we have a new club member today.”

“Rory,” said a girl with long brown hair, black makeup around her eyes, and two hands covered in silver rings. She was slumped over in her chair to my right in the circle. I recognized her from my horticulture class. Next was Kevin, who took out his earbuds to say his name. Then Jake and Danny, who had been sitting on the desks and seemed to be friends already, and finally Alex, who didn't make eye contact with anyone in the room and hit himself in the arm several times before telling us his name.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, but Teacher Ted caught my eye and subtly shook his head, so I didn't press the question.

Ted reiterated his name and then it was my turn. “Starbird,” I mumbled.

“Your name is Starbird?” Rory watched me through thick eyeliner.

“Hippie parents,” I said.

“I'll review the club setup for Starbird.” Ted saved me from further questions. “We use the inquiry method of learning, meaning you guys are more likely to learn if you are curious. Everyone writes a question for the day, anything you want to know some history about. It can be something that's been on your mind for a while, or something you cook up right now, for a class or for yourself. Your only job is to be curious.”