Wolves, Boys and Other Things That Might Kill Me (3 page)

I go to my Spanish and PE classes on autopilot. Then on to English. Mrs. Vandergraf, our teacher, is about four hundred years old and has been my English teacher twice already. She thinks
Beowulf
is edgy. But she lets us read in class, so I don’t mind.

I sit with Joss Tanner and Mandy Wright at lunch. When I show up they just keep talking. This isn’t surprising, because Joss and Mandy are arguing about the cosmic repercussions of grams and calories, and that’s not a subject that should be interrupted mid-debate.

“That roll is like the worst thing you can eat,” chirps Mandy.

Joss snorts. “How about that salad dressing you just flooded your lettuce downstream with?” Joss is two inches taller than any other girl at school and she doesn’t like advice.

“We have to be serious or it won’t work.” Mandy has strawberry blonde hair that she styles in tight curls every morning. She has a patch of freckles on each cheek that make her look like a perturbed Cabbage Patch doll.

“Be serious?” says Joss. “You are a serious pain in the butt, Mandy.”

“Fine. You look like this the rest of your life if you want to, but I’m on my way out of these stupid clothes.”

“You’re on your way out of your mind while you’re at it. It’s a roll. You need to breathe more.”

Mandy starts forking her dressing-swamped salad to death. Joss puts half the roll in her mouth at once.

“Hi,” I say for the second time.

“Hi,” says Mandy in full pout. Joss looks at me like I’m an old newspaper.

I like Mandy and Joss, but it’s always been clear that they are the pair and I’m the extra. So they call me to do stuff, but I don’t have metabolism issues so I’m not inner-circle material.

Not a total loser, more like a free-floating oddball.

I inhale half my cheeseburger. Ketchup gets on my face about the same time I spot Virgil Whitman wandering around the lunchroom trying to find someplace to sit down. I nearly aspirate my food. I grab Joss’s dirty napkin and clean off my chin. He sits down by himself and starts drinking his milk.

“Excuse me,” says Joss. “Who is that?”

“His name is Virgil,” I say. “He’s a complete jerk. I’m sure you wouldn’t like him. And he smells bad and is probably gay.”

“Did you meet him?” says Mandy.

“Sort of,” I say.

Joss snorts. “Have you spilled anything on him yet?”

I continue rubbing my chin. “Not yet. But thanks for asking.”

“Did you say anything to him?” says Mandy.

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Where’s he from?” says Joss.

“Min-e-sooda,” I say quietly, trying to look at him out of the corner of my eye. Dennis has migrated to his table and is talking his ear off. Lucky Dennis. “His mom’s a wolf scientist.”

Mandy takes her napkin out of my hand, “Whatever. Just because you got boobs and haircut. He’s still way out of your league, sweetie.”

Joss laughs with her mouth open. “KJ doesn’t have a league.”

I stop chewing. I know they’re kidding. They’re always kidding. But it’s not exactly cracking me up today. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” says Joss. “Don’t be so conceited.”

“I’m conceited? About what?”

“Sooo defensive,” says Mandy.

“Sooo true,” says Joss.

“I’ve got to go,” I say. My lunch doesn’t taste good anymore.

Mandy pats my hand like I’m lost in the grocery store. “We’re not trying to make you feel bad. . . . We totally love your new look, don’t we, Joss?”

“What?” I say.

Joss opens her mouth again. “At least you don’t look like a Peppermint Patty anymore, right?”

“Well, not totally, anyway,” says Mandy.

I say, “I’m going to the library.”

“There’s a shocker,” says Joss. “Don’t worry, he’s probably gay. Look at that hair.”

I pick up my tray and take it to the trash can, trying not to look at Virgil, and walk straight into Kenner and Addison. Walking into Kenner is sort of like walking into a moving van. I nearly fall on my face trying to get out of his way.

Kenner says, “What’s new in Dorkville?”

Same old Kenner.

“Be quiet, Kenner,” says Addison. “You look so cute today, KJ. I love your new look.”

I didn’t know I had a look. And if I have one I’m getting kind of tired of it.

Kenner says, “Geez, Addie, KJ doesn’t care about that stuff. She’s a tree hugger. She wears bark for underwear, right?”

“Oh, be quiet,” says Addison.

“
You
be quiet,” says Kenner.

“
You
be quiet,” says Addison.

The happy couple walks toward their waiting minions.

 

My next class is Algebra II, the second installment of last year’s nightmare. Even stoners are better at math than I am. And this is West End High—not exactly the Harvard of the West.

I do well in most of my classes. Partly because my dad is a gale-force freak about my grades. And partly because, much to my shame, I like school. Some of it, anyway. But anything involving numbers, spelling, or a foreign language . . . is like a foreign language to me.

The only semi-bright spot in the algebraic abyss is my teacher, Mr. Muir. He owns a knife and gems store called Sticks and Stones. He’s pretty cool for somebody that teaches math and sells weapons to bikers. Last year he figured out I have dyslexia, and I became his pet project. I studied my guts out and he gifted me a C-minus. But I still can’t do math.

I sit in the back as usual. Mr. Muir looks up from his table and gives me a little wink. He’s trying to be nice, but it makes me feel like I need a special parking space.

Kenner and Addie come in and are followed by three other guys from the football team. The Algebra II text must be preferred reading for the jock book club this semester. Addie waves at me like she hasn’t seen me all year and I wave back. A minute later Mandy and Joss walk in, followed by the new guy. He sits down right in front of me, again, and pulls out a book a foot deep.

Addie says, “Hi, Virgil.” She’s practically panting.

Virgil looks up, smiles, then goes back to his book. He reads in class more than I do, poor guy.

“That’s a pretty big book,” says Kenner. Two of Kenner’s brick-brained friends laugh. They’re like a walking sound track, especially Road Work Reynolds, who seems to have donated his brain to science. Kenner has a look on his face that doesn’t bode well for Virgil. “Mr. Minnesota must be a bodybuilder. I bet his boyfriends like that.”

Virgil keeps reading. He looks relaxed, at least from behind. But why not? He’s from the real world.

I stare at Virgil’s head with impunity. I can’t help it. The blond mess, slightly lopsided and honey colored, makes me momentarily immune to my own typically incapacitating inhibitions.

“Whatcha readin’ Vir-gil?” asks Kenner in his best Addie voice.

“Oh, shut up,” says Addie.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” says Kenner.

Mr. Muir says, “Both of you shut up. Welcome to class, Virgil. Now let’s get to work everyone, and see what you remember from last year.”

Mr. Muir gets busy writing things on the board. I get busy remembering I’m a math idiot. I also remember I’ll have to stay in this town for the rest of my life being harassed by people like Kenner if I don’t pull a decent grade. My dad will disown me. I’ll end up working the night shift at the gas station, living on the edge of town in a camper. I’ve got things to think about other than the gorgeous freak of nature sitting in front of me.

Right. From where I’m sitting I can smell the wool in his shirt. The blinking fluorescent tube on the ceiling above him makes little dents of light in his hair.

Mr. Muir leans forward. I realize he has just asked me a question.

“KJ, remind the class what the difference is between a conditional and unconditional inequality.”

What? I’m supposed to be listening to math theory when I have Sexy Hair sitting in front of me? My face floods with traitorous red color.

“Unconditional inequality is . . . um . . .”

“Yes?” says Mr. Muir, pointing at something he has obviously just explained on the board. He turns to me and gives me the Special Ed. smile. I feel around in the darkness of my brain. . . .

Kenner whistles faintly through his teeth making the sound of a crashing airplane. Road Work adds the laugh track.

Mr. Muir turns back to the board. “Mr. Reynolds, you have a lot of energy today. . . . What is unconditional inequality?”

Kenner twists in his seat and hands Road Work the algebra book with the page open. Road Work says, “Unconditional inequality is . . . when things can’t ever be the same?”

I hate Kenner. I hate Road Work. I hate algebra. “Exactly,” says Mr. Muir and continues writing. “And conditional inequality?”

Road Work looks quickly at his book and draws a blank. Kenner whispers to him. “The opposite?”

Mr. Muir looks back at him skeptically, sees the book, and says, “Virgil? How about you?”

Virgil’s warm Minnesota voice floats out in front of me. “When the value of variables changes, when the values can be reversed or destroyed it changes the inequality.”

“Exactly,” says Mr. Muir “If the variables can change it makes different outcomes possible. Yes, class?”

Yes, class. Sometimes things can change. Exactly.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY JIG

THE GOOD THING about the first day of school is that eventually it ends. The bad thing is that this means I have to go to work. The other good thing is that Virgil Whitman is in almost every one of my classes. My goal tomorrow is to avoid talking to him. Guys seem to like me better that way.

On my way walking to work, I figure I have earned fifteen minutes of hooky. I head for the tree house.

The “house” is a pie slice of plywood wedged in between four lodgepole pines and buttressed up by other scrawny lodgepoles hammered underneath. It doesn’t exactly meet building codes.

This castle was built by someone else’s dad, but I took it over when I was about seven. It’s on the edge of national forest property, so it’s really anybody’s tree house, and I know from the cigarette butts and beer cans that other kids occasionally come here. Luckily it’s in bad enough shape that most of the burnouts have better places to get wasted.

From the uneven plywood perch I can see the trees that stand next to our house and a few signs from town, but I never look that direction. The other view is mostly just the tops of lodgepole pine and lots of sky. Not a calendar shot, but restful, especially when the wind is blowing. The pines really do whisper around here.

One thing I love about the tree house is that this section of the forest is full of old men trees, piney giants that have lived through enough fires and bug infestations to tower over me and make me feel like they are watching. I don’t mind being watched by trees. It’s everyone else that makes me feel like the stupid-smart-intermittently-imploding girl.

I think about the wolf I saw killed and my dad’s little speech afterward. “The minute that wolf backed down it was all over.”

All over. I should be so lucky.

I lie flat and cogitate about Virgil Whitman. Solar smile. Naked hair. Floating voice. It almost makes me want to go back to school tomorrow. I drift until a raven circles over me and squawks irritably. I look at my watch. My dad is going to kill me.

My dad lifts his head to look at me as I walk in. He’s with a customer so he gives me a quick glare, which I pretend not to see.

I say, “Hi, Dad.”

He furrows his brow slightly and ignores me. This is how it goes. People come from all over the world just to fish with my dad and have the pleasure of his company, but he only speaks Nod and Gesture to me.

I recognize the fisherman my dad is talking to from last fall. I remember chatting him up when he bought his licenses; he sells townhouses in Utah. Has a daughter about my age that won’t fish. Bob Andrews or Anderson. He triple sneezes as I come closer. He did that last year. His name rhymes with “achews.” I walk up and say, “Welcome back, Mr. Andrews.”

He looks at Dad. I love it when people give that look to my dad. “It’s good to be back, dear. How are you?”

“Well, I started school today.”

“That’s a shame,” says Mr. Andrews.

I shed my ghastly day like a bad shirt. In the shop I’m just me. No freak show explosions. “How’s your daughter Melinda doing?”

Mr. Andrews winks at Dad. “Impressive . . . Wish my daughter paid that much attention to what I said.” He turns to me. “She just started her senior year. Total nutcase. Wants to be an astronaut.”