done, flickering quickly through the possibilities.
"I don't have time for this," she said, stomping out of my room. Then she headed for the outside door.
"Take your sweatshirt, it's getting cold," I said. Jenna always complained about being chilly.
She sighed at me, the dampener on her good time, grabbing her yellow sweatshirt off the back of a chair.
"Anything else you need, mom?" she asked, rolling her eyes at me as she stood impatiently by the open door.
A tear rolled down my cheek and I wiped it away.
"Stop acting like a baby," she commanded sharply, bracing her arms against the doorway. "I'll be back before midnight. You'll never even miss me." She swung outside into the night, but she made sure I heard her next words.
"I won't miss you."
And with that she was gone. Out of my life, possibly forever. Would I always wonder what I could have done to stop her from leaving that night? If I'd known she wouldn't be back, I would have chased her outside, but she would only have become angrier with me.
She hadn't always been cruel. In fact, for years we'd been thick as thieves, our personalities the exact right fit. I patiently listened to her stories, almost never pointing out how she embellished her dates to make her life sound more exciting. But in the months before she left, she changed. Sometimes I felt like whomever she had been vanished before my eyes, long before she stepped out into the night.
Chapter 5
When the end of the day finally arrived, I found I was wary of going back to the electives hall. I still hadn't come up with a logical solution to what happened with the lockers, unless I had mad cow disease eating my brain, and to be honest I hadn't been trying to think about it. Once I actually got there, my irrational fear dissipated. The crowd was busy shouting and joking and scrambling to get to class. No room existed for my dread.
I went into the art room, and saw that my calculations through the window were correct. It was quite a bit roomier than our classroom from last year. But bright replications of famous paintings covered every wall, and carts of paper and paints crowded the side aisles. I looked to the board; no assigned seating. Those were the hardest classes now. Just finding someone to sit by became an awkward chore.
A girl sat alone in the back row, dressed in dark, creative clothing. Her dress looked like it was made out of torn sweater pieces stitched together. I wished I had the guts to dress like that, instead of my bland uniform of t-shirts and jeans. Behind her little tortoiseshell glasses, the girl's eyelids sparkled with thick silver glitter.
I walked towards her. She looked like a fascinating person to talk to, and I had never seen her before. But she spotted me, and picked up her brown messenger bag from the floor. Dropping the bag on the seat next to her with a clunk, she scowled at me. The bag was covered with little pins that had phrases on them I was too far away too read. I assumed they all had an antisocial theme.
"Okay..." I said under my breath, turning back around.
I took a seat in the second row next to a nerdy boy who ignored my presence. I had been getting a lot of that reaction today, so it didn't bother me. In front of me, I noticed with an internal groan, sat Lainey. Her cloying cloud of fruit punch scented perfume hit me in the face like a chemical warfare attack. But the only other empty seat in class was right next to her, and bumping elbows would be ten times worse.
Henry breezed in through the door the second before the bell rang.
"You have got to be kidding me," I said out loud, shocked at the coincidence. Both Lainey and the boy next to me looked at me as though I were insane. I began to conclude I probably was. But the situation was getting a little ridiculous, like the universe enjoyed rubbing absurd but gorgeous smile boy in my face. He swung into the seat next to Lainey agilely, depositing his books on the table.
To my surprise, Henry spun in his seat, looking at me. Gripping the chair back, he said, "I'm not following you, I swear. This is pure coincidence."
"Uh huh," I said, frowning. I had no idea how to react to his attention. I'd checked