people on edge, starts that leak of adrenaline associated with terror, but I can’t find an inkling of fear. It’s walls, floors, abandoned medical equipment, syringes left by junkies and runaway imaginations.
There’s no such things as ghosts or demons. Probably the most dangerous thing in this place is tetanus from a rusty nail or encountering a raccoon with rabies.
Sylvia nudges the broken tile floor with the toe of her black Converse. “We have a real shot at winning the team coed state division in swim this year, but to do it, we need you.”
She’s nice enough to leave out that one of the reasons why we didn’t capture the title last year, when we should have, when we were expected to, was because I was forced to sit out near the end of the season for academic reasons. The shame of letting my team down because I didn’t keep my grades up still burns.
“Listen,” she says with sympathy, “I know English is tough for you.”
Reading is tough. I can get an A in math with my eyes closed and earbuds in tight, but reading is like being air-dropped into the middle of Japan and expected to be fluent day one.
“I was thinking, if we have English together, then you, me and Miguel should work on our English project.”
The short, dry laugh is my answer. “I won’t be in your English class.” They’re in advanced classes. Except for math, I’m not.
“It’s a crazy world.” Sylvia waggles her eyebrows. “You never know what can happen.”
“Hey.” Miguel walks toward us. “Are you two coming in farther or are you too scared?”
“Sylvia’s scared,” I say, and Sylvia pushes my shoulder again. I nail her with a side-eye. “You are scared.”
She glares back because she is. “Not all of us were born without a fear gene. Which is weird, by the way. Like they should do genetic testing on you to see how that’s possible.”
True.
“I overheard you two discussing AP English, and I know where this is going,” Miguel says. “You’re not stealing Sawyer, Sylvia. He’s going to be in my group.”
This conversation is fruitless since I won’t be in their class.
“You’re going to be in my group and so is Sawyer,” Sylvia says. “The two of you would be lost without me. You’d spend the first three months of the project talking video games.”
Has she not caught on that I haven’t been on a single honor roll since moving here? “You’re better off with Miguel than you are with me.”
“Did you hear that?” Miguel glances over to Sylvia’s friends, and when Jada meets his eyes, he offers her a crooked grin. His deep and slick voice causes her to lean forward. “You’re better off with me, mi alma.”
Miguel is bilingual, and girls fall for the Spanish tidbits he drops. Miguel calls it his Latin charm. I tell him he’s full of crap. He’ll laugh then agree.
Sylvia fakes a gag as she presses her cell to life after it flashes with a notification. “Can you two go make out in a darkened corner and save the rest of us from having to witness this?”
Jada and Miguel laugh. The two of them have been nonstop flirting since junior prom.
Miguel and his sister older sister, Camila, are second-generation American. His father came to America from Mexico as a child, and Miguel’s mother came here on a student visa for college. The two met, fell in love, got married and now run a successful we-bring-the-birthday-parties-to-you business.
“What do you think of the apartment?” Sylvia asks.
The question is for me as I’m the only one currently in rental living. One of the problems with my mom being best friends with my friends’ moms is that my friends know too much of what’s going on in my life when I’d rather be a closed book. It can work in the opposite direction, too. Sometimes information I’d rather keep to myself gets magically unloaded onto Mom. “It’s fine.”
“Our moms are going out later tonight.” Sylvia focuses on her cell, typing in a comment to someone’s photo. “I hope they start the party at my house first. Your mom is such a riot.”
Yeah. A riot. Mom’s plans means I’ll need to hightail it out of here to watch my sister while Mom burns down the town.
Sylvia grins at Miguel now. “Did Sawyer tell you he’s living in the apartment below Veronica Sullivan? Gives you chills just thinking about it, doesn’t it?”
“No crap,” Miguel says. “Twenty dollars there’s dead bodies in the backyard.”