KAT
HELL IS NOT BRIMSTONE AND SCORCHED FLESH; HELL IS BEING A HIGH school freshman for the second time. Hordes of cocky, confident upperclassmen swarm through the hallway behind me on their way to the cafeteria, jostling my backpack or my shoulder like I’m nothing. Because I am nothing to them. Just a freshman. An insignificant particle who can’t get her locker open fast enough to move out of the way of the lunchtime rush.
I yank at my lock once, twice, three times, before it finally clicks apart and I can swing open the forest-green metal door to use as a shield. In Legends of the Stone, I don’t bother using a shield, since enemies never get close enough for me to need one. But I need one here. I hide behind it, finally safe from the wandering elbows and careless shoulders, as I slide off my backpack and start to line up my textbooks on the top shelf.
I’ve made it to Friday, but Friday’s not over yet. I count my breaths as I try to block out all the chatter behind me.
One mathematics . . . two science . . . three Ancient Civilizations . . .
Being a noob freshman again would be easier if it was because I had failed all my courses. That would mean it was my own idiotic fault. But I’m not a freshman again because I failed. I’m a freshman again because Alberta and Ontario hate each other. Which is worse than if I had failed, because it’s so entirely out of my control.
“High school should start in grade nine,” says Ontario.
“No way, loser, it should start in grade ten,” says Alberta, for no reason other than to be spiteful.
And who suffers as a result? Innocent students like me, dragged through the crossfire by my parents, who thought it was a brilliant idea to move from Ontario to Alberta just before my grade ten year.
My English text drops into my backpack with a loud thud, and I hold my breath, hoping the noise doesn’t draw anyone’s attention. But the throng behind me is already thinning, and I’m still a nothing, thank goodness. I let my breath out slowly. Grab my other textbooks and my lunch and slide them more carefully into my bag.
I suppose my parents should be left out of it. They’re just trying to look out for Granddad. And he really does need looking after. His skin is so thin and papery these days that when he leaned in to hug me after we arrived, I thought the zipper of my hoodie might catch on a wrinkle and tear away an entire gray sheath of it. But when I drew myself away, it was still intact; no recesses of red flesh contrasted against his colorless skin like he’s a wereboar that’s been sliced open with a legendary sword. Thankfully. I hope I die before I get that old, because I don’t think I could handle worrying about my skin peeling off like paint from an abandoned barn.
I click my lock shut, swing my backpack on, and turn to face the almost-empty hallway. My throat constricts. Now what? There’s no way I’m going to the bustling cafeteria, with its fluorescent lights and jabbering students and judging eyes. I don’t know anyone, so anywhere I sat, I’d be an isolated doe, an easy kill for a hungry wolf pack. Their stares would tear me apart, and within seconds, my bloody carcass would be spread across the floor. Not literally, of course. But I’m still not doing it.
For the last few days, I’ve eaten outside, in a forgotten corner of the school—back against the cold, coarse brick, face to the sun’s soothing heat.
But today the rain’s coming down so fast the sky’s practically melting, so outside isn’t an option. I have nowhere to go. I force myself to go anyway. To wander down the hallway, one step after another. To hurry past the couple making out in the back stairwell and past the group of girls who chatter away like they’ve known one another since kindergarten. Because they probably have.
I pass a girls’ washroom. I could eat in there, out of the way. But I don’t really want to munch on my sandwich to the soundtrack of toilets flushing. Besides, the washroom may sound solitary, but there are always people in there.
So not the washroom. But then, where? I’m running out of ideas.
I hear, instead of feel, my breathing quickening into short, uneven spurts. Get it under control, Kat, I chide myself. Just breathe. One wolverine . . . two toilet stalls . . . three . . . three what . . . three wild mushroom soup . . .
Mom made me see a counselor in Ontario after I had one of my panic attacks in the canned vegetables aisle of the grocery store. The store manager had to call my mom to come get me. I’d have been painfully embarrassed if I wasn’t too busy focusing on my inability to breathe.
The counselor was useless, mostly, so I’d never admit to her that the breathing exercises she taught me actually help.
“Try breathing,” she said. “That’s right, nice and slowly. Count them in your head. One elephant . . . two elephant . . . three—”
“Why elephants?” I interrupted, crinkling my nose. I’m not sure why it bothered me, because I do like elephants.
“It doesn’t have to be elephants, Katherine.” She always said Katherine, even though I had specifically told her it was Kat. “It’s just a placeholder word to slow down the counting. You can put in whatever you want.”
Four cucumber . . . five Alberta . . . six Pythagorean theorem . . .
My breathing has slowed. Thank goodness. The last thing I want is to have a full-blown panic attack in the middle of the hallway during my very first week at a new school. Talk about something to attract the wolves.
I need to get out of this hallway. I just have to get somewhere. Anywhere. Please.
As if in answer to my silent plea, just to my left a door opens and a safe haven materializes out of nowhere—the library. With computers. I force myself not to run. One step. Two steps. Ten steps. Eleven. Then I am in a seat and wiggling the mouse. Wake up, computer.
The screen flickers to life. I log on to the internet.
It’s not going to work. Of course it’s not going to work. But I can’t not try.
My fingers automatically tap out the web address, click download. I watch the progress bar slowly fill.
The other computers are empty. If it was possible to download and install and log in, wouldn’t all the computers be in use? Wouldn’t everyone want to be in here?
But the file finishes downloading. And installing. And I’m entering my username, tapping out my password. Inputting our server details.
Then I am blinking at the screen, at the shimmering fantasy world hovering in front of me. Legends of the Stone. LotS. It actually worked. At my Ontario school, the game was blocked. Along with pretty much every other good thing the internet has to offer. You could look up the scientific names for algae or the middle name of the first prime minister and that was about it.
I take two steps forward—or at least my fingers do. The flowers I planted last week on the sandy floor of my underwater castle wink at me, as vibrant and dazzling as any real-life meadow of blossoms. I pull out my bow and ready an arrow. If a wolf attacked me here, I would kill it. If an entire pack of wolves attacked me here, I would kill them all.
No one else is online on our server, so a rift raid probably isn’t going to happen. But I can work on my underwater castle. Or search the badlands for packs of baddies who’ve wandered up from the rifts.
A real-life sound startles me, and I glance up. A freckle-faced librarian sits at her desk, coughing delicately into the crook of her elbow. As she finishes, her eyes meet mine and my chest constricts. The game isn’t blocked, but I don’t know the rules. Maybe I’m not allowed to—I stop myself before I panic. From where she’s sitting, in front of me and to the right, she can’t possibly see my screen.
In game, I steady my bow hand. In real life, I smile at the librarian. She smiles back, then glazes over, looks down at her papers. I am safe.
MEG
“TEN HIGH FIVES!”
“What?” Lindsey doesn’t look up from rummaging in the bottom of her locker. Instead of crouching at floor level like I would, she leans over with her butt sticking out toward the chattery rush of passing students—probably on purpose.
“I got ten high fives,” I say. “That’s better than the eight from this morning, though I might have lost count because I thought I saw a guy wearing a LumberLegs shirt, but he wasn’t, or maybe he was and I went running after the wrong guy. I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure it was ten, though.”
I lean out into the hallway—farther than Lindsey’s butt—and stick my hand in the air. “High five!” I shout. Two white girls pass by in almost-matching jeans and cardigans, too lost in their conversation to notice, but the Filipino guy behind them grins through his mouthful of braces and smacks his hand against mine so enthusiastically that he forgets to aim and hits my wrist. The brown flushes a little red.
“Eleven,” I say, giving my arm a shake as I lean back against the wall of lockers. “Holy tiddlywinks, I love high school.” There are so many more people here than in my tiny junior high. And it’s Friday, so they’re all happy.
“Have you seen my lip gloss? I can’t find it and my lips are so—what are you wearing?”
I glance down at the lime-green leggings and black coverall shorts I found at Value Village. “It’s retro. And I’ll have you know that this shade of green complements my particular kind of brown.” I flash her my arm and put it against my legging. “See?”
Lindsey crinkles her tiny pink nose. “It’s weird.” She pushes a strand of her red hair behind her ear.
“You’re weird.”
She frowns. “You took your meds today, right?” she asks, then disappears back into the depths of her locker without waiting for an answer.
She’s always asking me if I’ve remembered to take my meds, like she thinks they’re some magic pill that’ll cure me of me. Ugh, blah, and sigh. I think I was better off in the spring, when I hung out with those girls who were obsessed with making friendship bracelets. Then again, maybe not. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just my ADHD that made me bored out of my mind within the first ten minutes. Just thinking about it makes me want to do jumping jacks. I stick my hand back out into the thinning river of people and snag a slap from a too-tan white guy in sweatpants and a hoodie.
Fact: guys high-five more than girls. I mean, I haven’t actually been keeping track or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
Lindsey’s face is still buried in her locker. I don’t know why I bothered to trek all the way over here between afternoon classes. If high school had just started one week earlier, I could be two halls over, hanging out with Bradley Dennis’s posse instead.
“His loss,” I say.
“Whose what?” Lindsey finally resurfaces.
“Brad’s.”
Her expression softens for just a moment. “He’s a jerk. He shouldn’t have broken up with you. Can you throw this out for me?” She deposits a crumpled piece of paper into my hand.
The bell rings for the next period right then, and Lindsey swears. “I’ve got to go.” She kisses the air at me, then turns and scurries off down the hall.
I smooth the crumpled paper against my leg, then fold it and feed it through the slot in her locker door before heading off to my science class.
Brad’s friends all chose him over me, which is ridiculous because I was closer to most of them than he was, even though I’d only known them for a couple of months and he’s known them for years. Although maybe we weren’t as close as I thought, because the last time I tried to get them to do the chicken dance with me, a couple of the guys just rolled their eyes instead of laughing their heads off as we strutted and bucked like at the beginning of the summer. Ugh. Good riddance to all of them.
I should really find some new friends, though. I’m not going back to those friendship bracelet girls. They got all annoyed when I started spending so much time with Brad, as if they couldn’t believe that I’d find my boyfriend more interesting than friendship bracelets. Good riddance to them, too.
Thank goodness none of them are in this class. I put my head down on my desk, resting it on my arms for just a moment before popping back up again. There are approximately a bajillion people in this classroom, and I could make friends with any of them. There aren’t any other black kids, but that’s no surprise. My classes are scattered with Filipino and Chinese and East Indian kids, but other black people—not so much.
The Asian guy in the back corner is wearing a Legends of the Stone T-shirt, which is awesome. It has one of those ginormous rabbit creatures fighting a filthworm, and the cartoony art style makes them look even more hilarious than they do in the game, but the shirt would be even funnier if it had LumberLegs on it, too. If he doesn’t watch LumberLegs, it might not be worth befriending him. I’m not putting up with another lecture about how I’m not a true Legends of the Stone fan if I only watch other people play and don’t actually play it myself.
That’s one good thing about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named splitting up with Mom. His rule was I couldn’t watch YouTube until my homework was done, but in the one year and four months since he left, Mom’s only enforced that rule maybe three times. So screw you, Stephen. All right, so I used his name—it’s not like he’s the world’s most powerful wizard and he’s going to abracadabra me out of existence. His only magical power is leaving.
“Megan?” Mr. Carter asks, and I snap my head forward. Mr. Carter’s eyes are hidden behind the reflective glare of his thick-rimmed glasses, but his chin is pointing directly at me, expertly. No, expectantly. I have no idea what the question was.
If I was still in junior high, I would say, “Sorry, ADHD got the better of me,” because everyone at Britannia Junior knew that about me and because when you’re officially diagnosed, teachers have to make concessions. It’s the law or something.
But high school is going to be different. I’m not going to be known for that.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I seem to have missed the precise nature of your question.”
Mr. Carter raises his eyebrows, and I wait for the usual sigh, but instead the corner of his mouth twitches upward in an almost smile. “I asked if my instructions were clear.”
His instructions? What instructions? Gee, thanks, Mr. Carter. That was helpful. “Perfectly clear.” I smile at him, flashing my pearly whites, which really should be quite white since I’ve been plastering them with whitening strips for the past month, at least whenever I remember.
“So no questions?”
“Not from me.” Perfect grin. I should be in a toothpaste commercial.
“Great. Thank you, Ms. Winters. Anyone else . . . No? Then I’m going to give you the last ten minutes of class to sort yourselves into pairs. Choose partners wisely, as there’ll be no switching. Ready, set—pick!”
Partners? Great! I love partners. Maybe I will take a risk with that Legends of the Stone guy.
But no, he’s already talking to the scrawny white guy sitting next to him. Ang and Jenni, the two Filipino girls in the front row, will of course be pairing off, since they’ve been attached at the hip for as long as I’ve known them. And the two girls next to me are apparently BFFs already, because they’ve got their heads together, giggling in a way that makes me think they’re not talking about science. Though, wait, I think I saw them holding hands yesterday, so they’re probably dating.
I could ask the goth girl two rows ahead, Alexis, but when I hung out with her at Folk Fest this summer, she spent the entire time smoking pot, and she’s one of those people who gets super boring when she smokes. Like all mellow and crap. I am not ending up with her.
And I am not sitting here like a friendless outcast while others pair off all around me.
I whirl around. The pink-shirted, blond-ponytailed white girl sitting right behind me glances down at her desk, then to the side, then back at me. She bites her bottom lip.
I flash her my pearly-white grin. “Hi, I’m Meg. Want to be partners?”
KAT
THE GIRL—MEG, I GUESS—COCKS HER HEAD AT ME, WAITING FOR MY RESPONSE. One of her black corkscrew curls falls in front of her dark-skinned face, and she shakes it out of the way while somehow maintaining eye contact. Her grin is a little too broad. I shift back in my chair just an inch.
Here’s the thing: this science project isn’t like some grade five thing where you make a volcano and everyone cheers when the red-dyed vinegar and baking soda explode and you get a gold star just for participating. We’re supposed to work on it for most of the year and then present it at a schoolwide competition at the beginning of March. It’s worth 30 percent of our entire science mark.
And grade ten marks matter for getting into university. And getting into university matters for the rest of life. And the rest of life is a really long time to be a jobless, homeless bum.
So I can’t partner with just anyone.
But here’s the other thing: I don’t know anyone in this class. I don’t know anyone in this whole school. What am I supposed to do—interview her?
One introvert . . . two unemployed . . .
“Um, sure,” I say.
“Great. Give me your phone.” She sticks out her hand, palm up.
“What?”
“So I can put my contact info in. Oh, I guess I need yours, too.” She draws back her hand and fishes her own phone out of her pocket. Its case is green and sparkly. She taps at the screen a few times, then looks up at me. “What’s your number? Oh, and your name, duh.”
“Oh, um, Kat. Kat Daley.”
“Okay, Kat Daley. You want mine?”
My phone is in my backpack, on silent. I’m not sure what the rules are about having them out during class time. Tonight, I’m reading the student manual.
“Um, just write it here.” I push my planner across the desk. She holds her phone in her left hand as she scribbles down her name, phone number, email address, and even her street address with her right. “Can I have your email password, too?” I think about joking, but don’t.
She hands back my planner and returns to her phone. “Okay, now you.”
I feel weird giving my info to this stranger, but I can’t really say that when she just gave me all of hers.
Once she’s entered it, she plunks her phone down on her desk—in full view of Mr. Carter, which means either I’m worrying needlessly or she’s not worrying enough—and grins at me. Less manically this time. “So,” she says, “what are we partnering for?”
“What do you mean?”
“I zoned out for a bit. What are we partners for? Labs or something?”
I regret everything.