Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (21 page)

I never did find out if Indus asked about me, or if he even told Cham to tell me hello.

 19 

S
omething was wrong with the plant. It was sitting on a stand to my left, next to the door of my precalculus classroom, and as far away from the bank of windows as it could get. Why would someone put a plant that far from the window? It didn't look yellow or dry, it just looked wrong.

The buzzer hadn't sounded yet, so I slipped out of my chair and walked over to it, snaking a finger into the pot to see if the soil was damp. Here's the thing—the soil wasn't damp, because there wasn't any
soil
! The plant wasn't a plant. It was some waxy, brittle imitation made to look like a pothos. Pothos is the easiest plant to grow. I turned to look at my math teacher, standing at her podium and scanning papers. What kind of maniac would have a fake plant?

I was still there next to the door staring at my teacher, holding a plastic leaf in my hand, when dark-haired Ben walked in. I let the leaf go.

Ben. Hen. Glen.
The name had no other meaning than the sound it made starting in my mouth and moving down into my throat.
Ben. Pen. Margin
.

He sat next to me in the same spot as before. After the buzzer, we exchanged homework. I only got seven right out of ten because the homework included word problems instead of just numbers. For me, working with numbers is like making art. For a while, the Family had a pottery kiln and we sold ceramic tableware at a stand on the side of the road. Like most of our businesses, it failed, but it was interesting to see which Family members took to the craft. At first, clay feels foreign and unwieldy, especially when you use the wheel for the first time and watch bowl after bowl flop into a sloppy lump. But after a while, you gain an understanding of the medium, and the clay starts to speak to you, telling you how to manipulate it. That's how numbers feel for me. I can shape them and bend them and sometimes make them into something beautiful.

Ben got ten correct out of ten. He drew a flock of geese flying in front of a harvest moon with a tiny star beside it, and this time the drawing included a note. It said,
I know the secret to word problems
.

A tiny electric jolt rippled up my arm. I considered Io's advice. Unfortunately, I didn't have much practice at flirting, so I just awkwardly smiled with half of my face.

During class, I stole glances at him. Ben was definitely skinny. His arms sprouted from his T-shirt like stalks that had grown too quickly, plenty of water but not enough sun. The fingers that gripped his pencil were bony and ungraceful. There was even something strange about the way his back leaned against his chair, as if it was twisted to the right, instead of straight up and down. If there were a math equation comparing Ben to Indus, it would be an easy answer. Indus was the greater sum.

The buzzer signaled my heart to pound. Time to flirt. “So, what's your secret?” I said, sliding out of my chair and grabbing my army book bag.

When Ben stood up, he was taller than I was by several inches, but still shorter than Indus.

“You have to get the words out of the way first.” He started walking toward the door, so I followed. He wasn't looking at me when he walked, as if the floor had asked the question instead of me. “Think of it as a translation. Put all the words into numbers first, make an equation out of the problem, and then solve the equation. The mistake most people make is getting caught up in the words.”

“You're good at this,” I said, so very stupidly.

“My dad's an accountant.” He shrugged. “I work in his business every summer. It's not what I'm into.”

“What are you into?”

If our math class had been in probability, I might have known the actual chances that Cham would choose that moment to show the slightest interest in my well-being. “Lunch?” he said to me blankly, suddenly appearing in front of me in the hall.

“Later.” Ben gave a half wave and walked off.

“Yeah, lunch,” I mumbled back to Cham.

 
 

The lunchtime conversation with Cham and his friends included some online video game that is
rad
, a new skate park in West Seattle that is
dope
, and a song that just came out and is
filthy
. I wanted to participate in the conversation, but I didn't know about any of the things they were talking about, and I didn't know any of their words. I just ate my leftover burrito and listened, but found myself looking around the cafeteria for Ben.

I wasn't sure why I was so interested. Ben wasn't what you would call my type. Plus, Ben was an Outsider. It's not like I was going to invite him over for a Story Night.
Ben, meet my Family of one hundred people. Any one of these men might be my father.

Plus, he had to be corrupted by the Outside, its capitalism and greed. He was born into it. It's like Europa said: Outsiders would only contaminate me.
I'm just practicing flirting
, I reminded myself, and kept looking for Ben.

The rest of the day went well until horticulture, when two girls approached me in the greenhouse. A northwest rain was drizzling itself all over the glass with a quiet tapping, and the room was moist enough to soak the instructions for growing a new plant from a start. I could have forced a start twenty times before the sun came up on the Farm. In the class, we sat on stools along worktables that lined the walls, listening to long-winded instructions before we could put on our gloves. I was bent over my own nepenthe flower, preparing to cut.

“Why's your name Starbird?” one of the girls asked, leaning onto my worktable with a pair of open shears in her hands. She had perfectly curled hair and careful makeup, the same as the girl who stood behind her listening.

Rory with the silver rings from history club was sitting on a stool nearby. She looked up from her flower.

“Um, I don't know,” I lied. My name is Starbird because EARTH Translated it for me during my solstice naming ceremony. It calls upon my cosmic guide and my earthly guide to watch over me during my life in a body.

“But, I mean, like, are your parents hippies, or did you, like, grow up in a cult?”

My shoulders tensed and my lips pressed together. The red splotches on my chest came suddenly and hot, creeping up toward my neck and jaw.
Cult
is a familiar insult to the Family. The Bellingham newspaper had referred to us as a cult. People in the town where we traded said it. Even people driving by the Farm had been known to yell the word at our roadside stands. EARTH said that it's language used by Outsiders as a method of testing our spiritual faith and devaluing our commitment as a family. Insulting us is one of the ways Outside society tries to hammer us into the shape of them.

“I don't want to talk to you,” I said.

“She doesn't want to talk to us,” the second girl mimicked.

“Whatever.” The first girl's shears snapped together. “Everyone's saying it. You should be glad I asked you to your face.” They both walked away.