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time!” She stubs out the butt like it has offended her and lights a fresh one. “When I say make yourself scarce in the evenings, I mean make yourself God damned scarce! We don’t want to see you, Katie. Joey is the real deal, I don’t want to scare off another one!”
    “Our little girl is growing up,” Travis said to Lisa.
    “What, puberty has finally struck?” She winked at me.
    “No, no, no!” Travis said. “This is all so exciting. Now I know how a mother bird feels when its baby wants to leave the nest. Our child has developed herself a little crush on the new boy.”
    “The new boy? Word is out all over the school, seriously hot. Is he here?” Lisa asked. “Can I see him?”
    “Could you both just shut up … and sit down …  please ?”
    Lisa looked like she was going to resist, but she must have sensed how embarrassed I felt.
    “Well, is he here in the café?” she asked.
    “Over there,” Travis said. “With Josh and Danny.”
    “Lordy, is that him? That’s got to be him.” Lisa elbowed me and let out a low, slow whistle at the same time.
    “I rest my case,” said Travis, mumbling through a mouthful of macaroni.
    “Okay.” She narrowed her eyes. “More than standard pretty, I’ll grant you. And definitely top-drawer private school type. What’s he doing in this hellhole?”
    “Excuse me!” Travis flicked a noodle at her. “You’re in this hellhole too!”
    “Completely different,” Lisa sniffed. “I made a conscious, classic, iconoclastic choice to be here.” She joined me and every other girl in the Droopy Diaper in locking on to Evan. “He, on the other hand, has a story. And I bet it’s a good one.”
    He seemed to be having a great time horsing around with Danny and Josh. And I had a great time looking. Evan was like nothing and no one I had ever seen before. And, a handy little bonus of being invisible, I could look all I wanted and no one could see me looking.

Chapter Six
     

     
    I balanced my tray as we moved across the cafeteria. Judging by the smell this was just one more way in which my present school couldn’t hope to measure up to any of my previous schools. There was an aroma suggesting a fast food restaurant … correction, the dumpster behind a fast food restaurant.
    “We always sit here,” Danny said as he settled at an empty table in the corner.
    I sat down two seats from him.
    “By the way,” he said, “I didn’t really take your car for a drive. That part was a lie. I’m just always late for class. I think they’d be surprised if I was on time.”
    “That was a very believable lie,” I said. “But you could have taken the car if you’d wanted.”
    “I might just take you up on that. How about as a first step you drive me home after the drama practice tonight?”
    “Can I take a rain check? I’m going to leave right at the bell.”
    “Well, I guess you could do that … if you want to fail drama,” he said.
    I gave him a questioning look.
    “Apparently you don’t know that doing something in the school play is part of the drama course—you get marked for it.”
    “You’re joking, right?”
    “I wish I was. But no worries, all the roles have been cast so you’ll be backstage crew. Most of the time we just sit around and shoot the crap.”
    I would actually have preferred to be in the play, not doing some donkey work behind the scenes. I didn’t mind being on stage … no, I actually liked it, and if I’d been around when the roles were cast I was sure I probably would have been the lead.
    “What play are we doing?” I asked.
    “A classic by none other than that Willie Shakespeare guy.”
    “Let me guess,” I said. “It has to be Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet , or maybe Macbeth .”
    “No, no and, um, no.”
    “So what play are we doing?”
    “ The Taming of the Shrew ,” Danny replied.
    “ That would not have been my guess.”
    “I sort of noticed.” He laughed. “And right now you’re about to meet the proud