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thing is that I can tell that he’s pretty shy too; he’s just better at pushing through it than she is. She’s clammed up a little more than before, even, and she’s kind of shoving her lettuce around on her plate and drifting off, looking at this lady farmer on the wall beside her who has big thighs and looks strong.
    â€œI want to be this person who gets out,” I say.
    Mason says, “A-fucking-men. Sorry, Bee.”
    She smiles at him. “It’s fine.”
    James says, “You didn’t apologize to me!”
    â€œYou don’t get sad about God like Bianca does.” Mason turns back to me. “Anyway. Getting out of Nebraska.”
    I say, “Getting out of Nebraska is like the first dream a Nebraskan baby has.”
    He taps his glass against mine.
    I say, “I’ve just attached all this cosmic significance to getting to New York, and whenever I’m here, I feel like that’s so cliché and stupid, but when I’m there, it just feels like the only option, you know? I’ve just promised it to myself.”
    â€œYou’ll get there.”
    â€œI’ll get there. Stuff is just becoming . . . I don’t know. Intolerabler.” I shake it off. “I need something to keep me going before I can get out. Really I just want to be in a motorcycle gang. I think everything wrong with me is repressed and misguided agitation about not being in a motorcycle gang.” I think I’m kidding.
    Bu then Mason says, “I have a motorcycle,” and yeah, maybe I wasn’t kidding that much, or maybe it’s just that he’s really damn cute and has been smiling at me all through dinner and that I have this feeling that I can get on this bike and go anywhere and that he will want to go too.
    â€œShut up.”
    â€œSeriously. I’ll bring it to prep tomorrow and take you out after. How about that?”
    How about that indeed.
    â€œYou got it.”

5
    EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY WE HAVE these things called extension days, which should really be called reduction days, to be honest, because all you do is this long grueling version of one class the entire day. This week is calculus, and I’m a math kid, but seriously, no math kid needs seven hours of calculus and no girl in exile needs seven hours of just the same fifteen people, I’m pretty sure, no one in the whole world needs seven hours with the same fifteen people when one of them is Natasha.
    She makes this big show of ignoring me but otherwise doesn’t do anything because I guess picking on someone all by yourself is boring, and she’s the only Dyke in this class. To all the other girls she’s just, well, a Dyke, so for a little while it feels like we’re kind of the same. We’re both friendless and surrounded by nothing but math, but then on her way tothe bathroom she snaps my bra so hard my skin’s still burning when she gets back, so yeah, I’m guessing she didn’t feel like joining me down here at the bottom of my totem pole. Whatever, I out-math her like it’s my job.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    The people in my chorus at the rec center aren’t mean, exactly. They’re not even unfriendly . It’s just that they all go to school together. They’re picking up conversations that started during fifth period or whatever and passing each other notes and whispering about oh my god Lisa what a slut! I slept with a girl named Lisa once. Today I wish I were friends with these guys just so I could find out of it’s the same one.
    We’re singing Mendel right now, “Hallelujah Chorus,” which is okay as far as choral music goes. It’s got these gorgeous high notes, but I’m a mezzo, so those aren’t mine. I sing these notes right in the middle, and the other mezzos find them no problem, while I have to hope my director remembers to play all the parts separately this time instead of jumping