The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,44

hard on her face, pale and tight under the bare bulb. Her jaw is set and the little muscles along her jawline are flickering. Why am I trying to soften her up? It’s useless. Better to take a route she’ll respect, at least. Let’s get this over with. I spit. The glob, which tastes of blood, lands somewhere near my feet.

“Okay, so let’s just do this,” I say. “What do you want to talk about now? Somebody you had a crush on never noticed you, is that on me? How about that broken arm you had in eighth grade? Totally my fault, right? Obviously, anything that ever went wrong in your life comes back to me so what’s the next topic?”

Tress tosses the trowel into her mortar bucket, drops of liquid concrete flying out around her. “Walking in the rain,” she says.

And it’s not some poetic allusion. I know exactly what she’s talking about.

And it’s not good.

Upstairs, the clock chimes.

Chapter 32

Tress

Seventh Grade

There’s a big red D on the top of my science test. Next to it, in beautiful, flowing cursive, Mrs. Trevor wrote, Try harder! You know the answers!

Except I don’t.

Not to the science, and not to a lot bigger questions, either. Specifically, what happened to my mom and dad. It’s been three years, and at first I tried to do what Cecil told me to—just forget about it. I learned very quickly that when Cecil tells you to do something, you do it. So when he told me to forget about it, I tried. I tried very hard.

I tried when I was feeding the animals and when I was cleaning out pens. I tried when I was supposed to be listening in class or when I was supposed to be asleep. I tried constantly, but they kept surfacing—faces and voices, thoughts and smells, little reminders that jumped up to grab me when I was baling straw or wading in Ribbit’s pond.

I look at Mrs. Trevor’s advice and think maybe it’s better than Cecil’s. Maybe I should try harder to find out what happened, instead of just forgetting about it.

I crumple up the test and toss it in the trash can after the bell rings, walking past the bus riders lining up at the back door, slipping behind Mrs. Anho’s back as Maddie rushes up to her with a problem. Something new she can’t handle.

Good Lord, what would that girl do if something really bad happened to her?

Curl up and die, that’s what.

And maybe that’s what my parents did, and maybe not. I just don’t know. All I know is that I went from living in a nice house with my family to living in a trailer with my grandpa and whatever wild animal comes in the door because he doesn’t always remember to shut it.

Also, because raccoons are wily bastards. That’s what Cecil would say.

A lot of the things Cecil would say have been slipping into my vocabulary the past few years, which has landed me in detention more than once. I saw Felicity Turnado glancing in the window of detention one time, spotting me, and looking away. She has no idea what the inside of that room looks like. Never will, either.

Felicity Turnado doesn’t say things like wily bastard, because she probably hasn’t heard that kind of language in her nice house with her family. In her nice life that my life used to be like, until . . . something happened.

What? I don’t know. But maybe I need to try harder.

I haven’t been to the public library since my parents disappeared. I’m pretty sure there were some library books at my house that got packed up with all my other stuff. Everything ended up at Goodwill because Cecil said my bedroom was about to get a lot smaller.

The air-conditioning whooshes in my face when I walk in, the gust puffing some of my own smell back up into my nose. I’m carrying around the faint scent of zebra with me, having brushed out Zee earlier this morning while I waited on the bus. A bus I didn’t get back onto to go home. Instead, I came here, to the library. To try harder.

The librarian glances up, her Nice to see you smile slipping when she spots me. It’s not nice to see me, it’s awkward to see me. That’s what the smile tightens into; that’s what I see on all the faces of Amontillado now. Pity.

I go right to a bank of computers, but there’s a sign-in