I figured the school would be a thirty- or forty-minute walk. I could make it if I hurried. I ripped off my clothes and dove into the shower. The dribbles fell ineffectually about my hair. There was a nugget of soap on a shower ledge and I glided it through my pits and across my neck, and seconds later I was drying with the dingy towel that had sat wadded atop the toilet. The shorts I had worn yesterday smelled of smoke, but there was no time to find an alternative. I unzipped a bag and put on the first shirt I saw, some atrocity printed on both sides with a cartoon duck in sunglasses. Textbooks—Claire had assured me that my father would have them. My eyes spun across the room: a million books, none of them likely to be mine. I tied my shoes and stepped outside, opting not to lock the door behind me, and stood on the grass feeling naked and unprotected without the usual first-day arsenal of notebooks and folders and pencils.
I wove through the twists of Hewn Oak Road. By the time I made it to Jackson it was seven-forty. I ran.
With only minutes to spare, I made the front lawn. From a distance the students could have been my former classmates. As I drew closer, though, differences became apparent. Many wore baseball caps, something not allowed in my previous school. On average they were beefier. Every single one of them was white. The boys were red in the neck and the girls were tan, their deep browns segmented by the milky negatives left by tank tops and bikini straps. One of the boys was draining a mouthful of chaw. One of the girls had a Confederate flag patch on her backpack. An actual tractor was parked in the lot.
A warning bell rang as I entered. I had a moment of panic when I realized I didn’t have an ID, not even my passport, but relaxed when I saw that there were no security guards or even a metal detector. Students scattered as though they knew where they were headed. More lockers were closing than opening. I wandered until I found the designation in faded wooden letters—PRI CIP L’S OF ICE—then waited in line behind a dozen other students. A few of them looked as confused as I felt; they continually referenced their schedules and checked the clock. The two women behind the counter communicated with the deadpan cheer of store clerks during a holiday rush. Through the clatter I heard information exchanged about switching study halls, prescription medications, erroneous locker combinations. A bell rang at 8:05. Classes were beginning; I felt another surge of apprehension. I could finally read a sign behind the desk: PRINCIPAL JESS SIMMONS/VICE PRINCIPAL ESTELLE DIAMOND. My turn had arrived.
“What’s up, hon?” the woman asked. Cat’s-eye glasses were wedged onto a piggy face further undermined by excessive purple eye shadow.
“I’m new,” I said.
“Name?”
“Joey Crouch.”
She licked her thumb and fluttered through a few pages. “Okay, hon, I got you.” She glanced at me over her glasses. “You’re supposed to be with Pratt in English.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“The room number is on your schedule, hon.”
“I don’t have a schedule.”
“You lose it? You got your log-in? Everything’s on the computer.”
“No, wait.” She was already glancing over my head at the person behind me. “I don’t have anything. I just got here yesterday. I don’t have a schedule. I don’t have a locker. I’m not even sure if I have books. My dad wasn’t able to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
The woman paused and gave me her first real consideration. She pursed her painted lips and looked back down at her papers, her chin melting into the gelatin of her neck. “Joey Crouch?”
“Yes.”
“Parents are …” She looked. And blinked. Then, without looking up, she said, “Ken Harnett?”
There was the blast of an exhale from behind me, followed by a mutter of amazement: “No way.”
I had no recourse but the truth. I nodded. The woman wormed her tongue inside her rouged cheek. Then she started clicking her mouse.
The other woman behind the counter, a younger redhead, called out, “Next,” and the boy behind me stepped up. He looked me up and down, a sly grin on his square and watchful face. He wore his blond hair in a military cut, and his tight shirt showed off his arms, thick with muscle and encircled with barbed-wire tattoos. His neck was irritated from