Second Skin (10 page)

"Isn't that sort of old news?" I asked.

My dad shrugged. "If it's still happening, it's not old."

I tucked the flyers under my arms and headed out. Kylie's house, I noted with more than a little relief, was completely dark and silent.

I speed-walked the six blocks to school, rushed through the heavy blue doors and dumped my things, including my dad's flyers, in my locker. Then I headed to the closest bathroom and locked myself in the first stall. I'd decided last night that, in order to avoid any early-morning run-ins, it was best to avoid homeroom completely.

I grabbed a magazine from my backpack and tried to read an article about celebrity cellulite but couldn't really focus. Instead, I doodled across the cover (if you ask me, every actress looks better with a goatee) as thoughts popped into my head like champagne corks.

The confidence from this morning was gone, replaced with nervous energy and a trace of

Schools were supposed to be supportive and nurturing environments-at least according to the posters in the guidance counselor's office. But for me, Woodlawn had always had the opposite effect. Walking through the halls, I felt hopelessly unimportant, in danger of fading away completely.

I shifted uncomfortably, realizing that, at that very instant, I had a far more pressing problem than the stolen Skin or even Kylie Frank's wrath.

I had to pee.

The good news: I was in the bathroom, actually sitting on the toilet. The bad news: I was in the Skin. And, so far as I could tell, the only zipper ran vertically along my spine, not horizontally, um, a little farther downtown.

I had no choice. I'd have to take it off. All of it.

As quietly as I could, I slipped off my clothes, then worked the zipper down my spine, pulled my arms out of the Skin and gently tugged.

The bell rang just as I was getting dressed. I

But what if the Skin didn't work? I was sure I was its most challenging case. Could my dorkiness melt all of the magic?

I paused at the row of sinks and checked out my reflection in the mirror.

It was me, all right. Round face. Way-too-curly hair. So-so brown eyes and a nose that was verging on too big but, for the time being, at least, had settled for prominent. I guess my cheeks looked a little flushed from my acrobatics inside the stall, but other than that I couldn't really see the difference my mother was talking about. Any sort of supermodel effect I'd expected from the Skin definitely hadn't kicked in yet.

Bummer.

"Aren't you Sam Klein?" asked the girl standing next to me. She was tall and skinny, with dyed black hair and a nose ring.

Abby Lawton, I thought. She sat two seats away from me in geometry but hadn't spoken to me all year. She usually spent the class hunched over, peeling the black polish from her nails.

"Um, yeah," I said, surprised she even knew my name. I rarely spoke in any of my classes, but in geometry I was borderline catatonic.

"I think Kylie Frank is looking for you. I

I stared at her. Wait, what? A compliment? Nobody at Woodlawn complimented me. They didn't
talk
to me. As far as I knew, they couldn't even see me.

Was this the Skin? Or maybe I'd misunderstood. I could be going deaf. That was definitely more believable.

I was on the verge of asking Abby to repeat herself when the second bell rang. I had about thirty seconds to get to English, otherwise Mr. Hill would lock me out. He lived for that.

I grabbed my bag and pushed my way through the door.

And that was when I heard it: "Sam Klein." Up and down the halls, the school was almost pulsing with the name.
My
name.

Sam Klein.

"Wait, where?"

"Oh,
that's
her."

I moved down the hall toward my locker, soaking up the attention as it swirled around me.

Of course, I assumed it was the Skin doing its thing, working its magic. I could almost feel the boost as I skipped several rungs up the Woodlawn High social ladder.

I was wrong.

People were definitely talking about me. The Abby Lawton thing hadn't been a fluke. But it

In history, Kim Price and Georgia Beeler-soccer players who, before today, definitely had no clue who I was-approached me.

"Kylie's looking for you," Kim announced as I unpacked my bag.

"Yeah, what's up with you guys?" Georgia chimed in, eyeing me with a new, almost hungry interest. "How do you even know Kylie?"

"She, uh, lives next door to me," I explained, shrugging a shoulder and doing my best to hide my disappointment. With or without the Skin, I was still a nobody. And Kylie Frank still ruled. How could that be possible?

It was like that in every class, all day long. After a lifetime of invisible-girl status, people were finally seeing Sam Klein, only it was through the lens of their Kylie Frank worship. My newfound celebrity was simply a testament to her unflinching power-hold over the student body. I'd come to school expecting the halls of Woodlawn High to have magically transformed into a friendly neighborhood coffee shop, but it just wasn't like that. Sure, I heard

It was 3:10 p.m. The final bell had just rung, signaling an end to my Woodlawn High Skin debut. And I was feeling down. Not only was I wearing a magical popularity suit, but Kylie Frank's feverish Sam Klein search had also, inadvertently, triggered a viral marketing campaign. And it all amounted to a big nothing. The Sam Klein buzz around school was still more mosquito than queen bee.

I was hopeless. The pen was uncapped but the page was still empty. The redraft of my life was suffering from major writer's block.

"Well, if it isn't the girl of the hour," Gwen said, coming up behind me, "Seriously, what's going on?"

"What do you mean?" I asked carefully, shoving my head inside my locker as far as it would go. Some conversations were just best conducted without any sort of eye contact.

"She did?" I asked, trying to sound surprised. Gwen nodded. "Yep. And Kylie Frank started a fire in chemistry."

"Really?" I swallowed.

"She was passing around your yearbook picture and accidentally knocked over her Bunsen burner. Mrs. Hecht had to break out the extinguisher and everything." Gwen eyed me skeptically. "Why would Kylie Frank care about you-or your yearbook picture?"

"Gee, thanks," I said, trying to look indignant despite the fact that Gwen's suspicion more than made sense. "That's a really nice thing to say."

"C'mon, Sam," she pushed. "You know what I mean."

I stared at my feet, too ashamed to tell the truth. Gwen wouldn't understand. She'd hate me.

And she'd be completely justified.

I could have stopped it all there. I could have closed the shoe box, relinquishing my almost-hold on the stilettos. I'd taken them out for a practice spin-and fallen flat on my face. Forget Keds. I was more of an orthotics girl.

I shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe it's, like, a neighborhood thing."

Gwen stared at me pointedly, as if waiting for an "I'm a big fat liar" thought bubble to burst out of my mouth. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Did you do something to your hair?"

"No, why?"

"I don't know," Gwen said in a voice laced with skepticism. "You just look different."

She glanced down at her watch. "Whatever. Let's go. I'm making osso bucco for dinner and need to stop at Whole Foods on the way home."

I took a tentative step forward, then froze as a fresh problem presented itself to me.

I couldn't go home.

Well, I could, but Kylie would definitely be waiting for me...and it'd be really nice to delay that particular confrontation for as long as possible. Like, till the next millennium.

"Listen," I said to Gwen. "You go ahead without me. I have some research to do in the library."

"Research? For what?"

"Uh, fine," Gwen said, squinting at me like I was some sort of strange, possibly poisonous mushroom. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I watched her walk away, feeling like something uncomfortable had just started between us. I wasn't exactly sure what it was, but I knew I was the one who'd started it.

Twenty minutes later, I was doing something I'd never, ever done before. I was attending an actual school event. Since I'd chosen randomly and said event hadn't actually started yet, I couldn't, at that moment, give any specifics. But I had a feeling whatever I was about to watch was sports-related. The fact that I was sitting in the bleachers staring at the field was a pretty big giveaway.

It wasn't like I was anti-extracurricular or anything. But freshman year Gwen had vowed never to set foot in Woodlawn High outside of mandatory school hours, and football flyers and homecoming posters just weren't the sort of thing Alex would ever notice. Since the thought of attending one of those events alone was, for obvious reasons, about as unappealing as tofurkey, I'd steered clear.

The flyers in the hall had summed up my choices: the drama club's dress rehearsal of Our Town, a Mathletes competition or a model Congress.

It was pretty slim pickings, which was why I'd wandered out to the field and climbed onto the bleachers, joining the definitely-cooler-than-model-Congress crowd.