Mary Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

after school,” I say. She shrugs.
    I walk quickly toward the high school. It’s an old brick building surrounded by portable classrooms. I’m glad I wore jeans; most of the girls wear pants. Class hasn’t started; kids are milling around or standing in little groups. Radar tingling, they sense me immediately. I move through a restless sea of whispers.
    In the office a bunch of girls who cut class are giving the secretary a dramatic excuse. “Well, that’s just thrilling,” she says when they’re through. They shriek their innocence while checking me out, quickly dismissing me as competition. Not ugly or beautiful, just there, like air. Invisibility is the look I’m after.
    The school counselor gives me my locker combination and tells me to see him if I have any problems.
    I won’t. My parents don’t like problems, don’t like coming to school for meetings. There are too many questions they can’t answer. They’re ashamed to explain that we live in our RV. In big cities there are lots of homeless people, but in little towns you feel like a freak. So I’m friendly and polite, but I keep my distance. It makes saying good-bye easier.
    The bell rings and I go to my English class. The room is crammed; a custodian hauls in my desk and sets it in back by the door. The teacher gives me a copy of Moby-Dick . I’ve studied it twice before.
    The girl across the aisle catches my eye and smiles, so I smile back, then look at my book. At a new school, you don’t know what’s what or who’s who. Lots of lonely people glom onto the new kid and try to make you their instant best friend. Sometimes they’re lonely because they’re so nice, and sometimes because they’re crazy. Like this girl Eileen I met in Missouri. She invited me to spend the night the very first day. She said the kids hated her; that they were really mean. But she was mean, too, in her own way; she was bossy and asked a lot of personal questions. I felt like she was trying to crawl inside my brain and read my mind. I wasn’t sorry when we moved away.
    After English, I had history, home ec, and p.e. I didn’t have gym clothes, so I sat on the bench and watched the girls play softball, crashing into each other and screaming with laughter when they thought any boys were looking.
    The worst times at a new school are breaks and lunch. You can get through breaks by hanging out in the bathroom and combing your hair. Lunchtime is awful. It’s way too long. I walk around eating, trying to look busy. Some schools have areas that are off-limits. At one school I was eating lunch in a deserted courtyard and two girls came by and said, “You can’t be here. You’re not a senior.” They waited till I left, then they left too.
    I go to my locker and pretend to arrange it. The girl from my English class instantly materializes, as if she’s been lurking nearby.
    â€œHi,” she says. “I’m in your English class, remember?”
    â€œYes.” I smile, then glance into my locker as if it commands my attention.
    â€œSo how do you like the school so far?”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I say. “I haven’t been here very long.”
    â€œI know. I saw you in the office this morning. Where do you live?”
    â€œIn the hills,” I answer vaguely.
    â€œWhere’d you live before this?”
    â€œOh, different places.”
    â€œLike where? Have you ever been to Redding? That’s where my dad lives. I wish we could move there. The people there are really nice. But my mother’s got this boyfriend and he lives here.” The girl made a face. “Oh. My name is Beth. I forgot to tell you.”
    â€œI’m Mary.”
    â€œYour hair’s so long. Has it always been like that?”
    â€œNot when I was born.”
    The joke clears her head. “I mean since you were big.”
    â€œYeah, I guess.”
    â€œIt might