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be sure. The boys werecrowding around Maddy now, and it was difficult to see what was happening.

    â€œHe finally got a girl,” a second boy said, laughing. “Even if it is just a sixth-grader.”
    â€œGo ahead, Cord,” the biggest boy said. “Let’s hear you talk some game!”
    â€œGive it up,” a fourth boy said in a drawling, too-cool voice. “She’s a
re
-tard.”
    â€œEase up, Aaron,” a different boy protested.
    Skye wanted to do something to shut them up, or at least to make the first boy let go of Maddy, but she couldn’t move. Everything was happening so fast that it didn’t seem real. Maybe she truly
was
invisible, Skye thought suddenly. After all, those boys hadn’t seen her, and–
    But no. Maddy saw her. The girl’s brown eyes were darkwith fear, and Skye took a concrete-footed step forward in spite of herself.
    And, as if they were one, the boys turned to look at Skye just as the warning bell rang. “Aw, let her loose,” the biggest boy said, pulling the first boy – Aaron? – away from Maddy. “Let’s go, dude, or they’re gonna sweat us.”
    And like that, the avalanche of boys melted away.
    Skye and Maddy looked at each other for one long, white-faced moment, and then Skye turned away–ashamed, and angry with Maddy, though she couldn’t have said why.

7
Social Ecology
    S kye hid in the girls’ room for almost twenty minutes after school let out, hoping Maddy would walk home alone, but Maddy was still waiting for her at the bottom of the school’s front steps a little after three. “Hello, Skye,” she said, not seeming irritated at all by the delay. And, in spite of what had happened in the hall that morning, Maddy looked cheerful.
    â€œHi,” Skye mumbled, trying to look around without moving her head, to see who else was on the steps. “You could’ve left without me, you know.”
    â€œI would never do that,” Maddy said softly.
    Skye sighed as they began their walk home. She did
not
want to spend the entire semester walking to and from school with Maddy, but she felt too drained by her first dayat Amelia Ear hart to pursue the topic. Also, she admitted privately, she felt guilty about what had happened in the hallway that morning. Should she have said something to those boys? Tried to protect Maddy somehow?
    â€œAre you angry with me for some reason, Skye?” Maddy asked after a few blocks, sounding more curious than worried.
    â€œWhy would I be angry?” Skye asked, not answering Maddy’s question.
    â€œI don’t know the answer to that,” Maddy said, plodding along.
    Skye counted to ten. “Who were those boys?” she finally asked Maddy. “The ones who grabbed you this morning?”
    â€œThey bumped into me,” Maddy corrected her. “It was a collision. An accident. Only one of them is really mean, Skye. He’s in the eighth grade. He grabbed my arm last summer when I was just walking down the road, and he bumped into my – my front. That was probably only an accident, too. But he calls me names pretty often. He almost made me cry once.”

    â€œWhich one?” Skye asked.
    â€œâ€˜
Re-tard
,’” Maddy said, pronouncingthe word carefully as she answered the wrong question. “Only I’m not, actually. I’m something else. So he’s mistaken.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, you’re something else?” Skye asked in what she hoped was a casual tone of voice. “Are you saying you have, like, a learning disability?”
    â€œNo,” Maddy said, shaking her curly head. “Learning’s easy for me. I get really good grades. It’s the people who are hard! Except for you,” she added quickly, as if not wanting to hurt Skye’s feelings. “You’re different, Skye.”
    â€œWell, thanks, I
guess
,” Skye said. “But I don’t get it,