The next afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how not to eat the “chip butty” fries-and-butter sandwich my grandmother had made me for lunch. No one spoke. My grandparents read their books as they ate, while I mentally filled in the daily paper’s crossword puzzle. There was no point in getting a pen; it was too easy.
A rap on the screen door broke the silence.
“Oh, Maren dear, I forgot to tell you, you’re getting a visitor today,” my grandmother said.
I barely had time to check my face for crumbs and stand up before Jo walked into the kitchen.
“Hi!” she chirped. “We met at Tesco, remember? I’m Jo Dougall. I live down the road, and your grandmother thought I could help you get settled at Kingussie.” I stared at her blankly. “The high school . . .?”
“Oh, hi,” I answered. I held out my hand, and she used it to pull me into a big hug. I was surprised when she kissed me on the cheek. British greetings were so . . . friendly.
“You already met? I knew you’d make friends quickly, Maren,” my grandmother said, proving she didn’t know me at all. “Why don’t you take Jo upstairs and pick out an outfit for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow? So Jo was right; my grandmother was going to send me back to school.
“Of course, Mrs. Hamilton,” Jo said, still holding my arm.
Jo talked nonstop from the kitchen all the way up to my room. And she talked fast—really fast.
“I’m so excited you’ve come!” Jo said, flopping onto my bed. “We hardly ever get anyone new at Kingussie. And certainly no one as foreign as you!”
“Um, thanks,” I said.
“Oh, don’t take it the wrong way,” she gasped. “Foreign is amazing. Foreign is so not Scotland. Foreign is bigger, better, and far, far away!” She fell back against the pillows, as if she had exhausted herself.
She didn’t stay down long, however, springing off the bed in an acrobatically unbelievable way. She was rather exhausting to watch, since, along with talking a mile a minute, she seemed in perpetual motion. She would be talking, and then, midsentence, fall away into a backbend, throw her legs over her head, and pop up again in front of you without missing a syllable. I wondered if her bones were elastic.
“So what kind of classes do you take here?” I asked.
“The usual,” she said. “Science, maths, modern languages . . .”
“Modern?” I interrupted. “As opposed to ancient?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m sure they won’t make you take Gaelic right away, but if you need help, I’m great at it.”
“Gaelic? Seriously?” I asked. She nodded again. “What else?”
“Um . . . Music, Writing, and Rural Skills. I think that’s it.”
“Rural Skills?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s great fun. We put on our Wellies and raincoats and learn how to build stone walls and repair fences . . .”
“Now you’re just making fun of me,” I said. “There is no way fence building is an actual school subject here.”
“No, it is, I swear.” Jo peered at me with big eyes that said she wouldn’t dream of making fun of anyone, let alone me.
“What are Wellies?” I asked.
“Tall boots for walking in the rain. Wellington boots.”
As if on cue, it started to pour outside.
“Yeah, I can see needing those,” I said.
Jo and I talked for two hours. Well, mostly she talked and I listened. We discovered we had more than a gravel street and the same grade in common: we were both missing parents.
When she was seven, Jo’s dad ran off with her babysitter and left a tsunami of scandal behind. Her family was left with no money, so her older brothers went to work on the oil rigs in the North Sea, Jo got an afterschool position at Tesco as soon as she was old enough, and her mom took the only job she was qualified for: a cocktail waitress in a touristy restaurant. The locals saw the Highland maiden costume she had to wear as less than appropriate for a woman “her age.”
I thought I was a loner, and kind of a loser living with my grandparents, but Jo was apparently an actual outcast.
“After my dad ditched, my friends weren’t allowed to come to my house anymore. I guess their parents figured we were a bad influence or something. It’s rubbish, is what it is, but I don’t really care. The girls I used to hang out with are all jerks now, anyway.” She beamed as if she’d just told me she was named prom queen.
“Don’t take offense,” I said, “but why are you so happy?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just wired this way, I guess.”
I wished I was wired that way, for happiness. Instead, I seemed to have been born cursed. No parents, no friends, and no sleep. And since I’d found my mom’s letter to me, no peace. I jumped at every little thing: every branch that scraped the roof, every creak in the steps. I was waiting for someone or something to attack me for having the journal, but I didn’t know who, what, where, or why. I didn’t even know if the warning was serious or some kind of sick joke. My mom didn’t have that kind of humor, and she definitely didn’t joke about death—probably because of my dad—but none of it made sense. No one was ever after her or us. Why would they be?
“So, do you have a boyfriend?” Jo interrupted my thoughts.
“Nope. Are there any cute guys at Kingussie?” I asked, hoping she might say something about Gavin. My heartbeat quickened as I realized seeing him every day would be more than enough reason to go back to school.
“Cute to me, or to everyone else?” She smiled.
“Both,” I answered.
“Well, there’s Stuart . . .” A slight blush spread across her cheeks.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
She sighed. “I wish. We’ve been friends since third grade, but that’s it.”
“What’s he like?” I pressed.
“He’s really tall, not too skinny, he has dark red hair, and I don’t know . . . he’s just . . . he’s just great.” She fiddled with a small ring on her hand. “He’s not really popular, but since he’s so tall, the other guys leave him alone. I guess you can’t really bully a guy who’s so much taller than you, right?”
“Who would bully him?” I asked, praying she didn’t suddenly mention Gavin.
“Anders and his crew. They pretty much rule the place.”
“What about Gavin?” I asked, unable to keep it in one more second. I couldn’t get him out of my head. I’d been trying to figure out how to find him again, and the best I’d come up with was camping out in the woods and hoping not to get shot by him.
“You mean the First Year in the wheelchair?”
“A First Year, like a freshman?” I asked. “I don’t think he’s that young. And he wasn’t in a wheelchair when I met him.” The details of my forest encounter came spilling out.
“There’s only one Gavin at Kingussie,” she said wistfully, “and he’s certainly not the guy you met.”
“Maybe he already graduated,” I offered.
“Could be,” she said. “Gavin’s a pretty common name here, and Kingussie’s the only high school for eight towns. I’m sure I’d recognize him if I saw him.”
Jo continued to tell me about the other things I wouldn’t find at Kingussie: no big football games (unless you counted the soccer matches they called “football” in Britain, which I didn’t), no cheerleading, no Homecoming, or Prom. They did have a year-end “KAY-lee” (spelled cèiligh for some insane reason) that she described as a “cool square dance” where everyone wore their kilts, but how a square dance could possibly be cool was beyond me. And I learned that even though Kingussie High was a public school, everyone had to wear a uniform.
I hated the idea at first, until I realized it would probably be a lot easier to blend in if I wasn’t immediately judged for my Midwest fashions.
It turned out the wrong clothes were the least of my problems at school. I apparently had the wrong everything else.