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from her once, but don’t say anything if you see her. She’s probably just busy with other stuff.

    Hey, Hana! School started today, but it was boring, and the kids here are boring, too. I wish I was home instead of doing time in Sierra Madre, but you can’t have everything, I guess. Write and cheer me up, okay? Luv, Skye (your friend, remember?)

8
The Thing about Art
    I n spite of what she’d written to Hana two weeks earlier, the days seemed to be flying by. It was now Monday morning, the last week in September, and Skye was sitting on Amelia Earhart’s wide front steps pretending to study as she secretly drew the kids around her, an act that was almost making them seem real.

    The kids at Amelia Ear hart were okay, Skye thought as she sketched, if you didn’t count those football players in the hall – or their admirers, the bad ballerinas, who had earned their name in part,Skye had learned, by tying the ribbons of old toe shoes together and tossing the pale pink satin shoes over telephone wires up by the canyon, to claim that neighborhood as their own.
    But every school probably had girls like that – even Taft Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
    She’d ask Hana, if she ever got the chance.
    Hana had only e-mailed that one time, though, and she hadn’t said much. Miffed, Skye had decided to cut back on her own e-mails to Hana – a decision that ended up being a lose-lose situation, Skye admitted privately. But she’d be back to her real life in Albuquerque soon, and then she could smooth things out.
    Skye sighed, and she was looking at one of her drawings as Kee Williams, the maybe-nice seventh-grader, walked by. He was tall, thin, and cute, with dark brown hair, and eyes the color of her grandmother’s morning tea.

    Had he looked her way? Probably not, Skye decided, surprised to find herself feeling a little disappointed. But things weren’t all bad,because after lunch she’d be going to her favorite class of all at Amelia Ear hart Middle School: art.
    The thing about art wasn’t so much the actual art you made, in Skye’s opinion. It was more that when you were making that art, time stood still and you forgot about everything: about the fun Hana might be having without you back in Albuquerque; about how weird it still felt to be living with Gran in Sierra Madre; even about your messed-up family, especially Scott, whose rehab seemed to have stalled.
    She was still Scott’s keyboarding assignment, as he kept reminding her.
    â€œHey, Skye,” a helium voice belonging to Amanda Berrigan–the first school day’s locker mix-up girl – said. “What’s that?” Amanda tried to get a look at the carefully disguised sketchbook disappearing into Skye’s book bag.
    â€œEnglish,” Skye said, deliberately vague, even though Amanda was in her art class, and Skye was starting to like her. “I was just finishing up an assignment.”
    Amanda Berrigan was a little taller than Skye, and slightly plump, with red-blond hair that seemed to glow with its own light. In spite of her bouncy walk and squeaky voice, however, Amanda proudly claimed to have what she called a “dark inner life.”
    But Amanda was pretty cool. She was even nice toMaddy, who by now was something of a before-and-after-school fixture in Skye’s life, and who the art kids, at least, were gradually coming to accept.
    â€œSkye-ster,” another voice said. It was Pip Claymore, another art kid Skye had been privately calling
Pipe Cleaner
in her sketchbook, because he was so skinny.
    â€œGot your maps all ready for Ms. O’Hare?” Amanda asked Pip and Skye. Ms. O’Hare’s assignment had been to draw a detailed map – of anything at all. “I did a map of my dream life,” Amanda said in a hushed voice, not waiting for their answers. She tweaked her bright hair, and, as she closed her blue eyes, sparkly slashes