Snark and Circumstance (Novella) - By Stephanie Wardrop Page 0,11

a bag labeled “Bloody Pig Nostrils”—but if I had, he’d probably ask where we keep the forks.

“What’s all this for?” he asks when I don’t answer him.

“To eat, obviously.” I sigh and look at him at last. He has on his usual polo shirt—this one is forest green—but jeans that are actually faded. I guess a trip to my house must count as slumming for him. “I’m writing an article on veganism for The Alt. Because you’re not the only one in this town who thinks a meal isn’t a meal unless it once had a heartbeat.”

He smirks and leans against the refrigerator.

“Is that a line from your article? If so, are you trying to convert people or just bludgeon them?”

I force myself to hold a cup under the faucet without my hand shaking too much. I even manage a sip from it before I say, “Well, you’ve seen that Tori’s just fine so, amusing as I find your ignorant comments about my eating habits, don’t feel you have to stick around here on my account.”

“Right. Well, I just wanted to make sure Tori was okay. And see if you were still mad at me.” He kind of chuckles at that idea, peels himself off the fridge, and looks at me with one eyebrow crooked in amusement. “I’d better go hunt down some poor, unsuspecting farm animal and wrestle it into submission. Unless someone here has a crossbow I can borrow?”

“You’re all out of luck,” I inform him, forcing myself to smile at his prodigious wit.

He walks away, says something to Tori, and a few seconds later I hear the front door close.

Sitting at the little kitchen table that my mom has covered with home improvement articles and pictures from magazines, I turn a package of dried lentils over and over in my hands, trying not to grit my teeth so hard they break off.

I don’t know why I let Michael get to me so much. Or why he said he was worried that I was mad at him, when he seems to be perpetually mad at me.

In AP English class, Ms. Ehrman announces we will have a year-long series of projects that are supposed to “provide historical and social context” for what we are reading. Our first project will be about Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and we need to form groups of three. I know I’m likely to be the odd one out in group formation, and one way to keep that promise to my mom to be more “proactive” is to think ahead and reach out to another odd-girl-out.

So I turn to the person next to me, a girl named Shondra. I recognize her from gym class last year and I noticed she hadn’t spoken to anyone today as class settled in before the bell rang. I ask Shondra, “Do you want to be in a group together?”

“Sure,” she says with a nod that makes her myriad braids bounce.

I grin at Shondra with some relief, and then we both sort of look around at everyone else as they band together.

Ms. Ehrman waves her arm in the air, setting her silver bracelets jangling, and reminds us that we need to form groups of three.

“Is there anyone who is not yet in a group?” she’s calling over the chatter and the grating squeals of chairs scraping against the floor tiles as people move together. “Are there any groups with fewer than three people in them?”

Shondra and I raise our hands sheepishly and Ms. Ehrman says, “Great—that means you can join their group, um, Michael, right? Yes. Perfect!”

Michael Endicott.

Perfect indeed.

I think I groan out loud, and when Michael cranes his neck around to see across the room to where destiny has placed him, he looks as if he has just been given a terminal diagnosis. But he marches over to Shondra and me dutifully, and I introduce them. We have the rest of the period to figure out what sort of background research we will do for our first reading. I know a little about The Canterbury Tales because my dad has taught classes on the early novel, and Chaucer’s as early as it gets. So since somebody has to start things off, I say, “I thought we could look into the role of women in Chaucer’s time.”

“That sounds good,” Shondra agrees.

Michael sighs wearily and studies his pen. “Why? There are only three women in all of Canterbury Tales.”

I’m kind of surprised he knows that much about the book, but I don’t