New Mexico. Jordyn said that her grandma saved Violet and her mom and brother when their engine exploded outside of town. She said they were standing in the dark on the side of the road when her grandma pulled up next to them in her truck. They all piled into the front cab and Mrs. Petit drove them into town and dropped them off at the Do Pull Inn.
I don’t know if I believe Jordyn. She doesn’t always tell the truth. I guess Violet and her family are going to stay because Violet says that her mom got a job at the gas station and they rented a house on Hickory Street.
I felt kind of sad after she told me that. Violet seems nice but my mom will never let me go over to her house. Hickory Street is where my sister, Kendall, and her best friend, Emery, say the meth heads live. I asked Emery how she could possibly know that and she told me to get a good look at their teeth. Without trying to be too obvious, I tried to see Violet’s teeth and they seemed just fine to me. Emery told me to check again in a few months. It takes time for enamel to turn to mush.
Not to brag, but we live in a pretty nice house. It’s made of brick that my mom says is salmon-colored. I think it looks more pinkish but whatever. I have my own bedroom and we have a rec room in the basement where we keep the foosball table, the karaoke machine and the Xbox. We have a huge trampoline in the backyard with a net around it so no one falls off and breaks their neck.
Last year, after we got the trampoline, lots of my classmates came over to try it out but that stopped once school started again and it got colder. Kendall says it’s because I’m weird and if I tried harder I’d have friends.
In social studies class we sit in pods and Mr. Dover pulled an empty desk from the corner and added it to my group so Violet would have somewhere to sit. She didn’t say much, just sort of watched everyone.
At one point, when Mr. Dover said that we were going to take the ITP tomorrow and it was a very important test that the Department of Education makes every student take to see if we could make it to college, I thought Violet was going to start crying. Violet told me that she hasn’t been to school much in the last couple of months because of the move and all.
I whispered to her not to worry, that it wasn’t that big of a deal. That all teachers seemed to talk about anymore was “college and career readiness.” I made air quotes with my fingers and Violet smiled. I was hoping that Violet would sit next to me during lunch but Jordyn got to her first. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow.
I ended up sitting next to Joy Willard, which is okay. One thing I like about my school is that they don’t let people get away with saving seats or telling people that you can’t sit next to them. If Mrs. Morris, the lady who supervises the lunchroom, sees you don’t have anyone to sit next to she’ll send you to a specific spot. I swear she’s got this superpower that kicks in the minute you carry your tray from the food line. She sees you desperately looking around the cafeteria for a place to sit and then she swoops in and points. “No arguing, Landry,” she’ll say. “Sit there and start eating. This isn’t Perkins, you know.” Even the jerks don’t talk back.
Then at lunch I felt something hit me in the back. I turned to see what it was and I saw a tater tot on the floor behind where I was sitting. I turned back around and it happened four more times. Plop, plop, plop, plop. The last tater tot landed in my hair and stuck there. I pulled it out and turned around to see who was throwing them. Jordyn and some other girls were sitting at the table behind me and were trying not to laugh. I know it was her. Violet was just staring down at her lunch tray like she didn’t see what happened. At least she wasn’t laughing.
When I got home and took off my shirt there were four dark spots on the back. Like four