The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,87

of their children, and we shouldn’t be giving them a dime.

I don’t know what to think. Maybe that’s what founding fathers have to do. Maybe the mothers were Communists. But still, it seems pretty mean, and if I could see them doing this, cutting off the arms of mothers, I would make them stop. Even if the nuns and mothers were Communists, you can’t go around doing things like that.

On the first day of ninth grade, Deena and I walk past two dead cats on the way to the bus stop. One is an orange tabby, the other black with white spots.

“Grody,” Deena says, turning away. “Gross out!”

But I feel bad just leaving them there, lying in the road. I push both of them into the grass, and stretch them out so it looks like they are just sleeping, except for the bloodstains around their mouths. Deena says I will get rabies.

“Fleas too,” she adds.

Travis is already down at the bus stop. When we walk up, he takes his cigarette out of his mouth and pulls Deena close to him. They get started right there, hands groping, eyes closed, at the bus stop at seven-thirty in the morning, right in front of all the little kids with their brand-new Big Chief tablets and unsharpened pencils squeezed against their chests, right in front of all the cars passing on the highway. One car honks.

“Are you guys sure this is the best place for that?” I ask, shifting my book bag to my other shoulder. “It’d be a shame if you misplaced your tongues on the first day.”

They stop and look at me, both of them smiling. But they are still holding hands, Travis’s thumb rubbing Deena’s palm. They are so in love that everything is funny, especially me.

“It’s kind of gross,” I say, looking down the highway.

Travis winks at Deena. “Sorry, Ev.” He takes out another cigarette, and Deena asks if she can see my schedule.

“Hey!” She wraps her finger around the belt loop of my jeans, pulling me closer. “We’re all in algebra together at the same time. All three of us! That’s so cool.”

“You’re still in algebra, Travis?”

He looks at me, long and steady, the flicker of hurt there for me to see. “Yes, Evelyn. I am.”

I say nothing, pretend to just watch for the bus.

“It’s not that it’s hard,” he says. “I actually don’t mind algebra. I just don’t like going.” He frowns. “Sellers is a terrible teacher. I’m serious. I passed all the tests last year, but he won’t let me out because of poor attendance. He has to let me out this year, though. He has to. It’s getting ridiculous, being in there with all those little kids.”

I want to point out to him that the little kids are ninth graders, and that Deena is in ninth grade, and that right at this moment, he has his hand in the back pocket of her jeans, which really, if you think about it, looks dumb at any age.

But I don’t. I don’t say anything. I have already hurt him once this morning, and that’s enough. If I do it again, we would all know that it was just my unhappiness talking, the scratching claw reaching out from my own sad little heart.

Travis was right about Mr. Sellers. He’s not a very good teacher.

He looks smart: he has gray hair and glasses that make his eyes look larger than they really are. On the first day, he wears a three-piece suit, with a used Kleenex poked in one of the buttonholes. He has a glass of water on the chalk tray, which he does not actually drink out of, but uses to occasionally rinse his mouth out, spitting the water back in the glass after swishing it between his teeth.

We watch him do this, saying nothing.

“My name,” he tells us, looking at us with his enlarged eyes, “is Mr. Sellers, and I have been educating young people at this institution for over thirty years.” He stops and picks up the glass of water, and still we are silent, half hoping he will gargle again in front of us because it is so disgusting that we still can’t believe he did it the first time, half hoping he won’t for the same reason. “So I know all the tricks,” he says, wagging his finger. “Don’t try anything funny.”

“Like this?” Ray Watley asks. He waves his hands up by his head, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. It is