UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,18
bump someone else on it.
She frowns. How? she signs again.
Leave that to me.
• • •
The cafeteria is only half-full for lunch. Having eaten earlier, the arts kids are now beginning their marathon of tests. The hall has a different vibe without them. The sounds are more bass, with sudden silences intermixed with gravel-rattling voices and squeaking benches. The deaf kids are there, sitting at the far end of the room, comfortable in their forest of signs—but Thor has left for the computer lab in his attempt to save Brooklyn’s hide. He might be smart, but Brooklyn doubts he can influence the list at all.
As she exits the lunch line with her tray, another random lull descends. The slower eaters in her squad sit at the table under the clock. The most offensive members have already left. There are allies—or at least those who remain neutral—at the table, but still she stalls, not wanting to hear them rehash the tests, or worse, her fight with Pecs. At least he’s not there. She looks around for a safe harbor away from her squad. She can’t sit with one of the other squads, and she can’t sit with the deaf kids without Thor there. In the end, she starts for an empty table. Ironically, if Risa were here, Brooklyn might consider joining her. As much as Brooklyn has despised her, she can’t deny the fragile connection they made in her dorm room. And all that old baggage—the things that made Brooklyn feel thorny with resentment and shame—suddenly pales with the rawness of this morning’s many failures.
But before she even puts her tray down, she hears, “Yo, Brooks. Over here.”
From her squad’s table Logan waves at her. His back had been to the doorway, and someone must have told him that she was there. Reluctantly she walks to the table. Before she gets there, several of the others leave, averting their eyes—both guys and girls. But even the ones who remain don’t seem too hot on sitting with the Pariah of the Day. And of course there’s Kip, complete with a bandaged ankle that he wears like a war wound. He sits at the end of the table with a trio of scrawny plebes. They’ll fawn all over any older boeuf who gives them attention, and Kip always does. He gets off on being worshipped. If humans licked their wounds, she’s sure Kip would make the plebes lick his.
Writhing inside, but unable to escape, she sits next to Logan.
“Bombed the written test,” Logan announces cheerfully.
She’s grateful that he’s taken the sting out of her own failures by starting the conversation with his own. She can’t help wondering whether he has really failed the written, or is he just saying that to make her feel better. Could he be on the preliminary harvest camp list too? Thor didn’t tell her anyone else’s standings.
“You probably did better than you think,” she says generously.
“Don’t see how.” He seems to meditate briefly on it, and then shrugs. “Can’t do anything about it now.”
Not without a Thor to change his standing, she thinks, and takes a hefty bite of her burger.
“At least he didn’t break a fellow soldier’s nose,” Kip says. The burger suddenly tastes like a turd in her mouth. One of the plebes giggles nervously.
Logan frowns at his best friend. “Man, that’s not cool.”
“Yeah? Well what she did was worse.” Without looking at her, Kip grabs his tray and leaves. In his dramatic departure, he forgets to limp. The plebes slink after him, one girl shooting Brooklyn a dirty look after reaching a safe distance.
Logan bumps his shoulder against Brooklyn’s. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just sore you beat him in the two mile. And so what if you tripped him—Kip needed his ego taken down a few notches anyway.”
Brooklyn bristles. “I told you—I didn’t trip him.”
“You know what? It’s over. It doesn’t matter.”
But it does matter. Because Logan is taking Kip’s word over hers. He thinks he’s being magnanimous by forgiving her—but he’s forgiving her for something she didn’t do.
Logan goes on talking, not even noticing Brooklyn’s slow boil. “And Pecs—I wouldn’t worry about him, either. He’s leaving the home soon anyways. Turns eighteen in three months.” Then he looks at Brooklyn’s burger. “You gonna eat that?”
She finds what little appetite she had is completely gone. She puts the half-eaten burger on his plate. “All yours.”
Grinning, he wolfs it down and talks with his mouth full. It barely sounds like human speech.
“Didn’t understand a word you