After

  Devon peers through the door’s small window to the hallway outside. Directly across is another unit, labeled UNIT C. Through the small window of the opposite door, she catches movement inside. Blue jumpsuits carrying breakfast trays to a cart, pushing and shoving and jostling each other. Boys.

  “Mmmm. Nice, huh?” A voice whispers behind her.

  Devon looks over her shoulder. A girl is there, standing a little too close, invading Devon’s personal space. She’s heavy-lidded, with only tiny dark slits for eyes, her brown hair twisted into two low braids held with rubber bands. Her face is too pale, even for the sunshine-challenged Northwest, with big, pouty lips.

  “Yeah, well,” the girl says, “as the saying goes, ‘If you want to marry a prince, you’ll have to kiss many frogs.’ Compliments of my friend Anonymous. That, over there, is a pod full of frogs.” She leans even closer, whispers, “Pucker up and get busy.” She turns from Devon then, a crooked smile playing those lips as she saunters away and through the door to the classroom.

  Devon takes a moment to steady herself; the girl had startled her, though Devon doesn’t think she’d let it show on the outside, thankfully. And that thing about a prince. Hadn’t Kait once said something to Devon about finding a prince, too? Devon pushes the thought away and follows after the girl toward the classroom.

  “Time to zip the lips!” Devon hears a voice shouting over the loud girl chatter as she crosses the threshold. A woman rises from behind a cluttered desk at the front of the room. Must be the teacher, Devon thinks. She watches as the presumed teacher props herself on a tall stool beside the desk, a large whiteboard to her back. Waving Devon forward from where she had hesitated in the doorway, the teacher says, “Come on in. Take an empty seat.” She scans the room and points. “That’s a good one, over there.”

  Devon’s eyes skim over the room’s three rectangular tables and find the vacant seat indicated. It’s beside the pale girl with the braids. The girl scoots her chair back to make room for Devon, presenting the seat to her with an open hand, her crooked smile creeping back onto her face. Devon feels sweat prickling all over her body.

  “Hey!” The teacher turns back to the room of girls and raises her hand. “Ladies? Hello, ladies!”

  Devon moves for her seat, careful to keep her face a mask. She does a quick scan as she moves: the three tables, including hers once she’s there, will each hold five girls. She does the math—fifteen girls in all.

  “Ladies, why am I raising my hand?”

  The noise level in the room drops one notch, then two.

  Devon reaches her place and sits down.

  “Better.” The teacher says. “Now—”

  Devon feels eyes hitting her from all directions. What should she do with her hands? Place them on the table? Put them in her lap? She glances at the black girl sitting across from her. She’s outright staring at Devon, sucking on her thumb. Devon looks quickly away. Another option, Devon thinks wryly, place hands in mouth.

  “Uh, Ms. Coughran?” the thumb sucker across Devon’s table blurts.

  The teacher looks over at her. “Yes?”

  Staring down at the tabletop, the girl says, “I just wanted to say that why you raise your hand is ’cuz you want us to be quiet.”

  A snort comes from somewhere in the room, and a “No duh” from another.

  “You’ve got it,” the teacher says. “Thank you, Destiny. Now—”

  Devon chances another quick peek across the table at the girl who the teacher had called Destiny. She’s sucking on that thumb again, her face unreadable. Her hair’s twisted into tiny Rasta knots; it looks like she’s wearing a wig of brown Cheetos sticking up everywhere, but cool. Destiny, Devon thinks. A curse, that name. Like her own middle name, “Sky.” Devon’s mother’s dreams, compressed into three heavy letters.

  “Okay,” the teacher says, pulling up a clipboard from the desktop. “Roll call time. When I call your name, all I want from you is ‘here.’ Got it?”

  Devon turns her eyes back on the teacher. She puts on a pair of funky reading glasses that had been hanging around her neck on a multicolored beaded chain.

  “I’ll start with me—Ms. Coughran—with whom most of you are well acquainted.” She smiles. “That’s ‘cough,’ as in what you have when you’re sick and ‘run,’ as in what you do when you’re chased.”

  “Tee hee, Freak Woman.” Devon hears the braid girl beside her scoff under her breath. “So funny, I forgot to laugh.”

  “Now, let’s hear from the rest of you—Bella?”

  “Here.”

  “Casie?”

  “Here, Ms. Coughran.”

  “Destiny?”

  Devon keeps her eyes on this Ms. Coughran as she goes down her list. Yet another person here with an indistinguishable ethnicity and age. But she looks too young to need reading glasses, Devon decides. She has this dark hair twisted up into some hair clips, and warm brown eyes. She wears hip clothes, but not pretentious or ridiculous for her age—a short jean jacket, boot-cut jeans, square-toed shoes, big sterling hoops in her ears. She makes a point to smile at every girl as she calls her name.

  “Devon?”

  Devon blinks, yanked back to reality.

  Ms. Coughran is smiling at her now.

  Devon’s heart pounds. Okay, so what’s the big deal? Calling roll happens the first day at any school. And sometimes every day, if you have study hall with Mr. Brugman (aka “Drugman”), who’s never learned a single student’s name in his twenty-two years at Stadium and is proud of it. Calling role is expected.

  “Here.” It comes out a sort of gasp, which Devon isn’t satisfied with, so she clears her throat and repeats, “Here.”

  “I need your birth date, the last school you attended, and current grade. I don’t have a copy of your school records yet, but I’ll put in a request for them today.” Ms. Coughran has pulled a pencil from somewhere and is waiting for Devon to talk.

  Everything in Devon’s body is resisting this; the room is quiet, listening. What ever happened to the Right to Privacy? When the information comes out of Devon’s mouth, it’s fast and tinged with annoyance. “May fifth. Stadium High School. Sophomore.”

  “Thank you, Devon.” Ms. Coughran turns back to her clipboard and resumes calling roll. “Evie?”

  “Here.”

  “Grace?”

  “Here.”

  “Haylee?”

  “Stadium.” Another whisper from beside her. The girl with the braids kicks Devon’s chair and laughs softly. “What a crap heap. Hate that place.” She leans close and whispers. “Bet you love it.”

  “Karma?”

  “Oh! Right here, Ms. Coughran!” The girl with the braids straightens, her voice practically singing the words, pure sarcasm. Ms. Coughran pauses, watching Karma for a moment before moving on.

  “Keesha?”

  “Here.”

  “Lexie?”

  Devon looks over at the girl with the braids. Karma, huh? Talk about a name setting someone up for failure. Their eyes meet. Karma smirks. When Devon doesn’t look away, Karma makes a crude gesture with her tongue.

  Karma’s unfortunate name makes Devon think about her own ridiculous one again. Take away the oppressive “Sky” part, and there’s still the embarrassing “Devon Davenport.” Her mom’s subtle attempt to set Devon up to become a soap opera star. Or Broadway diva. Or fashion designer. Things that Devon’s mom had always dreamed of one day becoming herself. Things that Devon would refuse to do even if held at gunpoint.

  “And, finally, Tana.”

  “Here.”

  Ms. Coughran drops the clipboard onto her desk. “Okay.” She pulls up a silver travel mug from the mess that’s her desk and cups her hands around it. “Rule time.”

  “Snore,” Karma murmurs beside Devon.

  “We do this every morning so people new to the class know what’s expected. And it also serves as a nice reminder for the rest of us. Because everyone needs reminders, don’t we, ladies? Repet
ition aids learning.”

  Ms. Coughran goes through the rules and expectations. No curse words of any sort are allowed, including what she calls the three “s-words”: stupid, shut up, and sucks. “Respect yourself and one another,” she says. “Words hurt, and ‘shut up’ can be like a slap. Profanity is offensive and contributes to illiteracy. If you don’t have anything nice to say, talk about the weather. Don’t interrupt when others are talking, especially me. Don’t discuss your charges, where you live, or anything else about your personal life on the outs with anyone in here. Unless the person who’s asking is me.” Ms. Coughran takes a sip from her travel mug. “Now let’s talk about behavior.”

  Ms. Coughran goes over more rules, about not bringing court papers into the classroom or writing letters to boyfriends while in class or leaving the classroom without permission, the bathroom included. Devon half-listens, but mostly she allows herself to look around, to get the information she needs about the room through her eyes.

  The small space resembles a kindergarten class, not anything close to what Devon had imagined “school” would look like here—if she’d allowed herself to think about it. Bright pictures cover the walls: watercolors of rain forests, tissue-paper American flags, pastel drawings of zebras, and crayoned coloring book pages of Disney’s various princesses—Snow White, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty. The Disney display strikes Devon as very out of place, considering the kind of girl who goes to school here. Crammed bookshelves of different heights take up most of one entire wall. A long table across the back holds five turquoise desktop iMacs all in a row. Then there’s the filing cabinets, plastic milk crates stuffed with art supplies, the TV and DVD player on a rolling cart, the overhead projector and globe and boom box, all stashed in the remaining available space. And, of course, Ms. Coughran’s cluttered desk at the front beside the big whiteboard. Cozy chaos.

  “Do not bring anything in here,” Ms. Coughran is saying now. “No hygiene items, no combs, no cups. Nothing in your socks and nothing in your pockets. The only thing allowed in your pockets is lint.”

  Devon hears Karma groan beside her. “God!”

  “Keep your hands to yourselves. And,” Ms. Coughran says, “M.Y.O.B.—that’s ‘mind your own business.’ That will take you far. Any questions?” She looks around the room. “Any answers?” She waits. “You ladies are all so good with the answers. I know there’s at least one comment out there.”

  Devon looks around the room, too, but cautiously. The girls are all very busy watching their hands or the tabletops or the empty space in front of their faces.

  “Nobody? Well, okay. Then let’s hit it, people!” Ms. Coughran downs the rest of her drink and slams the mug on her desk. “Jenevra? Evie? You two pencil count and pass them out. Casie, get some paper and hand one piece to everyone. Please.” Ms. Coughran turns her back to the class, faces the whiteboard. “Quickly, ladies.”

  Devon watches as two girls walk up to Ms. Coughran’s desk and count pencils from a canister. The girl on the left, the one with the shaved head, moves like an athlete. Devon suddenly recognizes her; she’s that girl Devon had seen her first day here, waiting on the plastic seats to go into court.

  Ms. Coughran is writing a column of words down the whiteboard: shadow, imagine, stars, twist.

  “You can kill someone with a pencil,” Karma whispers in Devon’s ear.

  Devon doesn’t respond in any way. Pretends like she didn’t hear her. Or, even better, like she couldn’t care less.

  “There’s lots of ways to do it.” Karma laughs to herself. “Aren’t you wondering why they’re counting out those pencils oh so carefully?”

  Devon says nothing.

  “It’s so when we break for lunch and they collect them back, they’ll know how many they had in the first place. If the numbers don’t match, we all get Lockdown and searched.” Karma’s breath is hot, and Devon wants to shove her away. “Makes it very tough to kill someone around here. But”—she kicks Devon’s chair—“it’s still possible. Totally possible.”

  “Karma?”

  Karma pulls back from Devon, her voice sweet again. “Yes, Ms. Coughran?”

  Ms. Coughran is leaning against the stool now, her arms crossed. “You have something you want to share with everyone in the room?”

  “Sure. I’m just explaining to . . . to . . . ”—Karma snaps her fingers—“. . . um . . .”

  “Devon,” Ms. Coughran says.

  “Oh, yeah!” Karma says. “Sorry! I was just explaining to Devil—”

  “Devon, Karma.”

  Laughter erupts around the room, some of the girls repeat it: Devil. DevilDevilDevil.

  “Oops, gosh. So sorry, Ms. Coughran,” Karma says. “I was just telling her why it is we count out the pencils.”

  “I’m sure you were,” Ms. Coughran says. “But next time, let me do the explaining. All right?”

  The noise in the room drops to quiet and still.

  “Absolutely, Ms. Coughran. As my friend Anonymous always says, ‘The less you say, the more you don’t have to apologize.’ It’s good advice to put into practice.”

  Ms. Coughran holds Karma’s gaze a long moment before turning back to the class. “Now, ladies,” she says, “direct your eyeballs to the board.” She tells the girls how they’re to use the list of words in a poem, explaining that poems don’t always have to rhyme. “We call it a poem, but it’s really like a story, a story that ties together into one theme. Try to use as many of the words up here as you can, okay? If you can’t do anything else with them, at least use each word in a sentence. And you can use any form of the word, in any order.”

  Devon looks up at the board.

  Shadow

  Imagine

  Stars

  Twist

  Twilight

  Courage

  Sail

  Clutter

  Release

  Diamonds

  One girl raises her hand; she doesn’t know what twilight means. Another wants to know if it’s sail as in boat, or sale as like at a store when stuff’s cheap.

  Are these girls really that dumb? To not know the meaning of simple words? Devon sighs in exasperation.

  Devon hears the sound of pencils rubbing across paper in the otherwise silent room. She has a piece of paper in front of her and a pencil, the eraser worn down flat. She sees Karma working beside her, her own pencil moving over her paper, her arm shielding her work from prying eyes.

  Devon doesn’t need an eraser because she can’t write, not this assignment. She won’t even pick up the pencil, hold it in her fingers. She doesn’t like poetry, not anymore. Poetry makes her feel and remember too much, and she doesn’t want to remember. Or feel. Not about poetry. Not about that night, that first night, with him.

  Devon sits there in her seat and stares at the blank paper.

  The moonlight is overhead, spilling onto the walkway and illuminating the poetry etched in concrete under their feet. The water ebbs and flows softly against the shore like a whisper, its frothy white foam a delicate lace.

  “Really cool idea,” he says, “whoever thought of doing this.”

  Devon looks at him. “Um, sorry. What?”

  “The poetry.” He points to the sidewalk.

  “Oh. That. Yeah . . .”

  They are quiet and shy, now that they’ve left the noise and distractions of the restaurant. It had been easy to talk then, to tell him about playing soccer and the music she liked, the concerts she’d been to, the movies she’d seen. Easy then to laugh at his jokes and nod and smile at all the appropriate times while he told her about Denver, where he lived with his mom, and the summers he’d spent in Tacoma visiting his dad, and playing baseball.

  But now, in the quiet dark, with him walking beside her along Point Defiance, where the land gently juts into the Sound, she has nothing to say. It’s one of those uncomfortable moments when two people are walking together, but not touching. When they aren’t saying much, but the silence is no
t companionable. When they’re trying to read the other’s signals, trying to figure out what the other is thinking, feeling. The tension is there, the fluttering is there, the wanting to initiate something is there, but the fear of making the wrong move holds them back and to themselves.

  Then he does the perfect thing; he begins reading the sidewalk poetry aloud.

  They stare down at the words.

  “Well.” He grabs Devon’s fingertips with his and laughs. “Isn’t that an upper?”

  But Devon doesn’t say anything, not immediately. That last line about the slippery grip on life. That is so like her mom—always reaching for something, but that something is always slipping out from between her fingers. No matter how tightly she holds on, she’ll always, always, lose it.

  But that’s not Devon. She has a grip. She knows what she wants and where she’s going. Devon shakes her head. She doesn’t want her mom’s intrusion here.

  Devon smiles up at him. “Yeah, losing your grip—not a good thing. A definite downer.”

  “How true. So much better to hold on.” He suddenly grabs her hand then, fully encloses it with his. “Right? Nice and tight.”

  They laugh together, a little awkwardly, and move on. She steps slightly closer to him, lets her shoulder brush his arm as they walk hand in hand. Lets her hip bump his. Once. Then twice. Will he notice? And what will he think of her if he does? Does it matter? The night air breezing over them from the water is cool; she can feel the warmth of his body beside her through his clothes.

  Oh, what is she doing?

  They move forward, stopping at each poem as he reads them aloud. After some time, he drapes his arm loosely around her back, his fingers lightly touching her shoulder. They send tingles through her body, gentle electric waves. She feels herself lean into him.

  “My turn,” she says the next time they stop. “I’ll read this one.” She nudges him playfully. “You’re being a poetry hog.” Her voice is higher. A flirty girl voice. The one her mom uses when she’s met a new guy she likes.