Friends of a Feather

  I pull Joseph toward Mrs. Webber anyway.

  “Mrs. Webber, can Joseph please be in Crazy Crabs?” I ask. The desks are set up in clusters all over the room, and each cluster has a name. Crazy Crabs, Super Sea Horses, Dapper Dolphins—like that, for all eight clusters. All the names have to do with the ocean because . . . well, I don’t know why. But, huh . . . is that the reason Lexie gave him an octopus shirt?

  “Or he could sit with me,” Lexie says, elbowing her way in.

  “No, because we don’t have an octopus group,” I say. “We have Jiggling Jellyfish, but no octopuses.”

  Lexie looks at me funny. “Octopi,” she says. She turns back to Mrs. Webber. “There’s tons of room by me and Breezie, and we’ll take good care of him. Right, Breezie?”

  Breezie is Lexie’s real best friend. I scan the room, wanting to know what she thinks of this idea.

  “Uh-huh,” Breezie says. She’s in the beanbag chair in the reading nook, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. She’s staring at the floor.

  “We should let Joseph decide,” I say. “Joseph, whose group do you want to be in?”

  “If you stay in Wonderful Whales, you’ll be closer to Lester,” Chase says, because suddenly he’s there, too.

  “Who’s Lester?” Joseph asks.

  “Our class snake,” Chase says. He tilts his head, like how could Joseph forget Lester?

  And I think, Because Joseph wasn’t here when we got Lester, that’s how. Chase would know that if he were Joseph’s best friend. But he isn’t, so he should stay out of it.

  “I’ll show you Lester after we move your stuff,” I say.

  “Or I will,” Lexie says.

  “Or I will, because you already have a desk, and it’s next to mine,” Chase says.

  Taylor bursts into the room. “Ooo-eee!” he says. He sticks out his booty and pulls his fists in at his sides, just like he did with Hannah and Claire. “Makin’ bacon!”

  I scowl at him, because this is all his fault. Everything that’s making me feel . . . twisty-uppy is Taylor’s fault. If he hadn’t ambushed Hannah and Claire with his poot smell, then I would have gotten to Mrs. Webber’s room earlier. If I’d gotten to Mrs. Webber’s room earlier, then I’d have been with Joseph when Mrs. Webber assigned him a desk, and I’d have made sure he was a Crazy Crab.

  “OOO-EEE!” Taylor says, even louder. “MAKIN’—”

  “Taylor, no,” Mrs. Webber interrupts. “No more bacon, any of you,” which is unfair because no one was making bacon except Taylor.

  Taylor says, “Mwa-HA-ha-ha!” and Mrs. Webber says, “Taylor? Enough!”

  Her voice is sharp. Joseph flinches.

  “Oh, Joseph,” Mrs. Webber says, softening her tone. She squeezes his shoulder, and he looks at her hand. She lets go.

  “Right,” she says, going back to teacher mode. “Put away your free-choice activities, everyone. It’s time to work on your vocabulary sheet.”

  My heart flutters. “But—”

  “We’ll figure out the desk situation later.”

  “But Mrs. Webber—”

  “It’s okay,” Joseph says. “I don’t mind.”

  Lexie smiles triumphantly. “Yeah, Ty,” she says. “He doesn’t mind.”

  A lump forms in my throat.

  “Wait,” Joseph says. “I do mind, but I don’t . . . you know . . .”

  It seems like everybody is silent at the same time, and my twisty-uppy feelings get twisty-uppier. I’m blushing. I can feel it.

  Then kids start talking and moving and tidying up the free-choice stations. Joseph tries to get me to look at him, which I know because we’re so good at feeling each other’s eyeball lasers. I don’t meet his gaze, though. I don’t know why for sure. It’s more than Joseph being a Wonderful Whale, but I can’t exactly say how.

  I sit down, open my desk, and take out my pen with the four different colors: red, blue, green, and black. It’s an excellent pen. It’s a lot cooler than a pretend octopus. All I have to do is decide which color I want and click the clicky thing. Then, cha-chink! Out pops whichever color I choose.

  I click the clicky green thing, and cha-chink, the green ink tip comes out. I click the red thing, and cha-chink, the red ink tip comes out. I hmph under my breath. At least my pen works.

  I open my notebook to a clean page and draw Cyber Grape. He’s supposed to be purple, but I draw him using blue. I invented him, so I can do whatever I want. Only he looks weird blue, so I open my desk again, thinking I’ll trade in my four-color pen for a purple marker.

  I do the switch and close my desk, but now I feel bad for my four-color pen. It’s not fair to make my four-color pen go, Yay! I’m coming out of the desk! I’m going to be used! just to put it away and make it go, Wh-what? No! Don’t close the desk! Don’t close the de-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-k!

  But Cyber Grape is a grape, and not the green sort of grape but the purple sort of grape. And yes, I invented him, but he looks weird blue.

  He.

  Is.

  Supposed.

  To.

  Be.

  PURPLE.

  “Ty? Are you working on vocabulary?” Mrs. Webber asks.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, because I kind of am. I will in a second, but no one is doing their vocabulary sheet yet.

  I think about things. I drum my fingers on top of my desk. Then I give a quick nod. I open my desk and take my four-color pen back out. I put my four-color pen next to my purple marker, and I say, “Just hold on, okay? You’ll get a turn, too.”

  I say this to the pen. I say it in my head.

  I flip to the next page in my notebook. With the purple marker, I draw Cyber Grape. I draw him standing on top of the world, which is Earth, and which I draw with my four-color pen since Earth is green and blue when you’re looking at it from outer space.

  I draw more quickly. I’m on a roll. I draw all the planets, even Pluto, because I don’t think it’s fair to say out of nowhere that Ha-ha, Pluto, you’re not a planet anymore.

  I draw the planets out of order, though. I scatter them over the page like a handful of Skittles, with Mars in the top right corner and Saturn off to the left and Neptune squished beneath Pluto. I make Jupiter the smallest planet of all, even though I’m not dumb and I know it’s actually the biggest.

  I add stars and asteroids and space junk, which is a real thing and not something I made up. Space junk is made up of busted-up satellites, pieces of rockets that are floating around in space, and rocks that aren’t big enough to be asteroids. They’ll float around in space forever, unless they break through the atmosphere and burn up or turn into meteors.

  Except space junk is a lonely thing to think about. It makes Cyber Grape lonely, too, and I don’t know why I stuck him up in space or why I drew this stupid picture in the first place.

  I rip it out of my notebook and crumple it up. Then I rip out my first picture, the wrong one of Cyber Grape being blue, and crumple that one up.

  Lots of kids still haven’t settled down, and Breezie is the only person doing her vocabulary sheet. Mrs. Webber claps her hands and tells everyone to go to their seats. When they don’t, she flashes the classroom light off and on. Finally people jump to it, because the next step after flashing the lights is time-out. If you get a time-out, you have to sit in the hall or sometimes on the floor in another teacher’s classroom. Nobody wants that.

  Elizabeth steers John over to my cluster of desks.

  “Sit,” she commands, pressing down on his shoulders.

  He drops into his seat, and Elizabeth goes to collect her next person. Elizabeth likes telling people to do things.

  “Hi, Ty,” John says.

  “Hi,” I say. I shove my wadded-up drawings into my desk.

  “I have a loose tooth,” he says. “Want to see?”
br />   “No,” I say. “And just to warn you, it might not really be loose. It might be a fake out.”

  “It might?”

  I nod, because that very thing happened to me. Two weeks ago, Taylor whacked me on the playground and made my tooth loose, but a few days later, my gums sucked themselves back around it and suddenly it wasn’t loose anymore.

  Loose teeth becoming un-loose. Another thing that’s not supposed to happen, but that sometimes happens anyway.

  John doesn’t reply. I peek at him, and his expression makes me feel bad, because it’s possible I made him feel bad. I peek at Joseph, using my hair to cover as much of my eyes as I can. His expression makes me feel bad, too, but in a different way. Joseph is talking to Chase as Elizabeth steers the two of them toward their seats. His eyes are happy, and his face is lit up like it was earlier.

  Chase laughs, and so does Elizabeth, and so do Silas and Natalia, who haven’t gone to their seats yet.

  The four of them crowd around Joseph when he sits down. They breathe up his air molecules. Elizabeth should make Silas and Natalia go to their own desk cluster. She should make herself go to her own desk cluster.

  She doesn’t, and everyone talks and laughs.

  Joseph is the sun, Chase and Elizabeth are planets, and I’m space junk.

  I put my arms on my desk and my head on my arms.

  I want the universe to line up right again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning at breakfast, Winnie asks me what’s wrong.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Or . . . I don’t know. Maybe something.” I shrug and push my eggs around with my fork. They’re a shade of yellow that usually makes me happy, but not today. Today my stomach is too worried for eggs.

  “Is it Joseph?” Winnie asks.

  I put down my fork. How did she know?

  Mom’s off with Baby Maggie, Dad has already left for work, and Sandra is somewhere else in the house. Probably her room. Probably text-ing her boyfriend, Bo, who probably never gets stomachaches, because he’s a baseball player and always smiles and does fun things like have doughnut-eating contests with Sandra.

  But that means Winnie and I are alone. No one is listening in.

  “When I was in fifth grade, a girl in my class broke her arm,” Winnie says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “She didn’t mean to. But it happened during recess, with everyone there to see, and she cried and got rushed off to the hospital. It was very dramatic.”

  I imagine an arm with a bone sticking out of it. I’d cry, if I had that arm.

  “And then the next day she came to school with a cast,” Winnie goes on, “and guess what?”

  “She broke her other arm?”

  She laughs. “No. But everyone thought she was so cool, like a rock star.”

  That sounds about right, because the same thing would happen in Mrs. Webber’s class if something very dramatic happened. Like when Lexie got hit in the head with Mrs. Webber’s clog last week, or like yesterday, when Joseph came back and everyone hogged him because he was the rock star.

  I don’t care if he’s a rock star. I just don’t want everyone hogging him.

  Thinking about it makes me not feel so good, and I drop my gaze.

  “Hey,” Winnie says. “Ty.” She lifts my chin. “It’s normal, whatever you’re feeling.”

  “What am I feeling?” I ask, because that’s part of the problem. I honestly don’t know, not for certain.

  “Lots of things, probably,” Winnie says. Her brown eyes lock with mine, and there is not a speck of meanness in them. Not a speck of you’re wrong or I’m disappointed in you or it’s your own fault for not expecting the unexpected.

  “But there’s more to my story,” she says. “Maxine came back with a cast, like I said, and she got all kinds of crazy attention.”

  "Like a rock star?"

  "Yeah, so guess what I did?"

  “Maxine was the girl who broke her arm?”

  “Uh-huh. I went outside after I got home from school and climbed the climbing tree, the one in the backyard.” She makes a funny expression. “I went all the way out on the branch, as far as I could, and I dangled and dangled, trying to work up the courage to fall. Except Mom saw what I was doing and said, ‘If you break your arm on purpose, I am not taking you to the emergency room.’”

  “But she would have if you really did,” I say.

  “Eh,” Winnie says. “Probably.”

  I tilt my orange juice glass, but not enough to spill any. With Winnie and Maxine . . . I think I get it. Winnie thought if she traded places with Maxine, or if her arm traded places with Maxine’s arm, then everyone would have crowded around her instead of Maxine.

  But with me and Joseph, it’s different.

  Winnie wanted the “everyone” part. I just want Joseph. I’m not sure how I feel about the “everyone else” part.

  Winnie stabs a bite of my eggs with her fork and puts it in her mouth. “But after a few days, things went back to normal. Okay?”

  I nod. I’m still confused, but I definitely like the idea of things going back to normal.

  • • •

  As soon as I get to school, I can see that it hasn’t happened yet. Things haven’t gone back to normal.

  Part of it might be Joseph’s red hat. Red is a hard color to look away from, for one thing, and the second thing is that nobody else is wearing a hat. Nobody at all. So his hat is like a cast, sort of, and everyone swarms all over him again.

  Finally Mrs. Webber gets tired of it. She turns around from the whiteboard and puts down the marker.

  “You kids are driving me crazy!” she says about all the whispering and fidgeting and fake pencil sharpening going on. Kids want an excuse to pass Joseph’s desk. That’s why they keep sharpening their pencils.

  Joseph looks worried. So does Elizabeth, who is squatting beside him. She got out of her seat a few minutes ago in order to tell Silas to go back to his seat, but she stayed on after Silas left.

  “These rascals can’t leave you alone for a moment, can they?” Mrs. Webber says to Joseph. Elizabeth tries to sneakily duckwalk back to her desk, but ducks are probably the least sneaky animals in the world other than hippopotamuses.

  “Elizabeth, I can see you, you know,” Mrs. Webber says, and Elizabeth topples over. Her legs splay in front of her and her hair falls out of her barrette. Everyone laughs but me.

  “Joseph, would you like to come up front and let everyone ask all the questions they’re so desperate to ask?” Mrs. Webber says. “And then maybe, just maybe, we can focus on fractions?”

  Everyone says please and makes begging hands, and Joseph rises from his desk and walks to the front of the room. That’s where we stand when we do recitations, except Joseph hasn’t done a recitation for ages.

  “All right. If you’d like to ask Joseph a question, raise your hand,” Mrs. Webber says.

  Lexie’s hand shoots into the air. She doesn’t say “ooo ooo, pick me, pick me,” because she knows Mrs. Webber doesn’t like that, but she does perch on her bottom and make herself as tall as she can.

  “Yes, Lexie?” Mrs. Webber says.

  “I have a comment, not a question,” Lexie says. “It’s about my bruise. Do you remember my bruise? From last week, when you kicked me in the head?”

  Mrs. Webber sighs. “I did not kick you in the head, Lexie, and we’re not here to talk about your bruise. Those days are over.”

  “No, because it hasn’t gone away yet,” Lexie says. “See?”

  She pushes her hair off her forehead, and her bruise is a good one, I admit. It’s bluish purple in the middle, but turning yellow around the edges.

  “Ooo-eee! Makin’ bacon!” Taylor says.

  “Absolutely not, Taylor,” Mrs. Webber says sternly. “Now. Who has a real question?”

/>   Taylor sticks up his hand. Mrs. Webber gives him a look, and he slumps and puts it down.

  Claire raises her hand. Claire is a good kid and not too rascally, so Mrs. Webber says, “Joseph, would you like to call on Claire?”

  “Um, Claire?” Joseph says.

  “Are you better now?” she asks.

  “Well, my doctor says I’m cured,” Joseph says. “So . . . yeah.”

  “Did it hurt?” Elizabeth says.

  “Did what hurt?” Joseph says.

  “Being in the hospital.”

  “Oh. Um, I guess.”

  Chase raises his hand.

  “Chase?” Joseph says.

  “My sister went to the hospital when she had appendicitis, and she had one of those pole things that gives you fluids,” Chase says.

  “An IV?” Joseph says.

  “Yeah, that. It made her have to go to the bathroom all the time.”

  Everyone laughs. Joseph does, too, but he twists his hands at the same time.

  He calls on Lexie, even though she's already had a turn to talk. She says, “Did you know that a bruise means having dead blood trapped under your skin? That’s why bruises turn different colors. It’s the blood dying more and more until it goes away.”

  “Oh,” Joseph says.

  “I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate, Lexie,” Mrs. Webber says.

  “It is,” Lexie says. “Red, blue, purple, green, yellow, and brown. I’m almost to the brown stage.”

  Mrs. Webber says we should get back on topic. She calls on Natalia.

  “Not to be rude,” Natalia says, “but are you bald?”

  Joseph blushes. “No. But . . . sort of.”

  Excitement ripples around the room. I raise my hand.

  “Ty,” Joseph says.

  “I think being bald is cool,” I say. “All the way bald or partway bald.”

  He’s glad I said that. I can see it on his face.

  “In fact, I’ll probably shave my head when I grow up,” I continue. “I’ll have a shiny bald head, and it’ll be awesome.”