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  The door to D12 closes with a thwack behind him.

  “What a silly goose he is,” Cara says generously. “But everybody knows he’s the best English teacher in this school. We’re so lucky to have him as our advisor. Now okay, we actually have two posters to vote on. Who wants to be in charge of designing the one for the Autumn Poetry Competition? Yael Wexler, what about you?”

  The wind pleats Aimee’s skirt against her legs as she stands out in front of the school waiting for the late bus, the spiky energy of the Photon meeting still buzzing in her ears.

  A navy blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, shiny as a torpedo and big as a snub-nosed tank, eases up alongside the sidewalk where Aimee is standing. Its windows are tinted and Aimee can’t see in, but she knows who must be driving it. The car is presidential; it’s sleek and serene; it’s exactly the kind of car Cara Roy would drive. Aimee is suddenly very aware of her skirt gripping her legs in the wind, exposing their contours. She tries lamely to pull the fabric away from her skinniness, make it fluff out in front of her in a velvet buffer. The passenger window of the Jeep glides down and the red head of Cara Roy cranes toward her.

  “Hi,” Cara says calmly, expectantly.

  Aimee makes an attempt to smile, but it feels like trying to set up a tent on her face, like she’s struggling to assemble the smile out of rods and grommets.

  “Hi,” she manages scratchily.

  “I just wanted to say that I’m so glad you decided to join us today. It’s really important for us to have new blood in the collective, you know, to keep the sensibility of the magazine fresh.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “And I hope you’re planning to submit something. You’re a writer, right? I mean, I just assumed that you were.”

  You’re a writer, right?

  You’re a writer, right?

  “Yeah,” Aimee says, taking herself by surprise. “I am.”

  Cara glows.

  “I knew it! Don’t tell me—poet.”

  Aimee blushes hot.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh I knew it, I totally knew it! The first second I saw you I knew you were a poet. That’s so awesome, I’m a poet too.”

  “Yeah,” Aimee says for the third time.

  “So hey, if you’re a poet you should submit to our Autumn Poetry Competition. If you win of course you get your poem published, but also you get it read aloud over the PA during morning announcements, and then Mr. Handsley sends it to this national literary competition, and if you win that you get to go to D.C. and go to this ceremony and meet all these amazing famous writers—I actually won last year and I got to meet Sharon Olds and Toni Morrison. It was really cool. So you should totally submit. Put your poem in the Photon box on Mr. Handsley’s desk in the English office and put ‘Autumn Poetry Competition’ on the top, like, in big letters. And I’ll see you Thursday at the next meeting?”

  Every word she has ever known has evaporated from Aimee’s mind—all she can do is nod her head. But this time the smile leaps into her face, easy and natural, like it belongs there.

  “Great! So okay, see you later!” Cara Roy waves at her from four feet away, the way little kids wave, opening and closing her hand. The passenger window zips shut and the Jeep purrs away, down the access road toward town.

  In a wild delayed reaction, Aimee’s arm comes suddenly loose from her side, flails in the air, waving at the back of the retreating Jeep. She feels a stab of embarrassment at her silence, at her spastic-ness. But a new feeling starts to melt at her center, too, dissolving slowly, warmly, into her bloodstream. It feels like sleep, it feels like sunburn. For a second Aimee thinks it might be the beginning of a new kind of reaction, but then she finally realizes what it is: happiness.

  Above Aimee’s head the low clouds pearl at the edges. A V of south-flying birds wipes across them and the beauty of that, a group of birds with a purpose they don’t even understand cutting across a field of pearly gray clouds, suddenly makes Aimee want to cry. Her throat seizes and a wet, gurgly noise comes out of it.

  Aimee breathes in and out, brings her eyes back down to ground level where things aren’t quite so heartbreaking to look at. She takes in the leaves on the trees around the parking lot, notices that they have that plump, vegetable look of early fall, like ripening apples about to turn red.

  She’s working up the beginnings of a metaphor—leaves as apples, apples as symbols of evil and death—when across the parking lot in the thicket of woods, a flash of sky blue catches Aimee’s eye, then vanishes. She leans forward slightly and peers into the stand of trees, waiting for the blue thing to reappear somewhere else—it’s moving through the woods, she’s suddenly sure, and just as surely she knows what the blue thing is: it’s the fat girl. It’s the fat girl, and she was watching me, Aimee thinks. The fat girl was watching me from across the parking lot.

  A chilly squiggle of discomfort twists in Aimee’s center, knocking out the warm happiness that had been brewing there. She realizes that she’s had this feeling on and off all day, the feeling of being observed. But she can’t tell if it’s the feeling of being watched over by a guardian angel or the feeling of being spied on by a Peeping Tom.

  5

  The bell rings for B period and Mr. Handsley strides through the door to D12, his arms spilling over with books and papers, already barking directions.

  “Page eighteen of your Caesars, please, children, and will the lacrosse lovelies kindly remove their baseball caps before I add them to my collection.”

  Behind and to the right of her, Meghan senses the sullen motion of Shane, Freedom, and J-Bar dragging their baseball caps off their heads, muttering to each other, running their hands resentfully through their flattened crew cuts. The rest of the class flips through their battered copies of Julius Caesar looking for page eighteen. The paperbacks they hold in their hands are dog-eared and taped up, soft and crumbly from years of use, and inscribed like commemorative plaques with the names of older siblings, older siblings’ friends, infamous druggies, legendary basketball players from that one holy year when they took it all the way to state—ancestor kids. If you know how to read them, there is as much drama scribbled on the inside covers of these books as there is in the pages of Julius Caesar.

  Facts about Mr. Handsley: He has two toy poodles, Perdita and Cymbeline, with whom he can be seen walking up and down Juniper Lane, where he lives. He is best friends with the Latin teacher, a tall, stoop-shouldered, stringy-haired specter named Ms. Werner. He once came to school in a purple velvet cape, swinging a mother-of-pearl walking stick—and not on Halloween. He is rumored to sleep in his own coffin. He got into trouble last year for assigning a play in Drama II—Angels in America—that the school board determined was pornographic.

  Now Mr. Handsley scoots his half-glasses down to the end of his nose and tips his head back to see through them. He holds his copy of the play out in front of him and reads aloud in the plummy Masterpiece Theatre accent he always puts on for Shakespeare.

  “‘Let me have men about me that are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.’ Act one, scene two, lines one ninety-two to one ninety-five. First of all, who is speaking?”

  In the desk in front of Meghan, ponytailed Becky Trainer raises her hand so urgently she lets out a faint squeak. Mr. Handsley can’t conceal the weariness in his eyes as he calls on her.

  “Rebecca?”

  “It’s Caesar? And he’s talking to Mark Antony?”

  “And who are Caesar and Mark Antony?”

  Again Becky shoots up her hand, but Mr. Handsley raises one eyebrow and prowls the room with his gaze. Meghan drops her eyes to her desk, but she’s not really afraid he’ll call on her; Mr. Handsley has always known better than to ask her to talk in front of the class. He never called on her even once all last year during Classics of Literature I.

  “Mr. Boyd?”

  Three desks to the right of Meghan, a dwarf
ish, red-faced kid who has been reading something concealed in his lap lurches to attention.

  “Will you remind us, please, about Caesar and Marcus Antonius?”

  “Caesar and Marcus Antonius?” Jonah Boyd echoes in his fluty voice, still uncracked by puberty. “Yes, Mr. Handsley, and well you should ask, because Caesar is the emperor of Rome and the title character of the play, and Marcus Antonius, also known as Mark Antony, is Caesar’s close associate and the only member of his entourage who isn’t plotting to kill him. They are both very significant characters.”

  “Fine,” Mr. Handsley says, nodding.

  Behind her, Meghan is aware of some subterranean fun being made of Jonah by J-Bar and his crew. It’s barely audible; it’s more like a change in the air currents in the room caused by the sneering looks they’re exchanging.

  More amazing than the Facts of Jonah Boyd’s life are the Facts of his personality. If he knows the unwritten rules of school he doesn’t follow them. He’s shaped like a potato, four feet tall and round around like a barrel, and absolutely every time Meghan sees him in the halls he’s yammering away at skinny Lucas Treischler or oily Timothy Lyme about whatever interesting lizard fact he’s just learned, or which powers, exactly, a Master Wizard wields in Level Four. As far as Meghan can tell, Jonah is unembarrassable. Even now, when anyone else would feel the viciousness rising up like swamp gas from the jocks’ corner and shut the hell up, he doesn’t stop babbling.

  “Caesar actually knows what’s going on, because the old soothsayer warned him when he said ‘Beware the ides of March’! But Caesar believes that he’s too powerful to be assassinated. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Handsley?”

  “Indeed,” says Mr. Handsley.

  “Hubris!” Jonah cries, waving his finger in the air like a crotchety old man complaining about the government.

  “Indeed—” Mr. Handsley says again, trying to cut him off.

  “I would diagnose this as a classic case of hubris. A classic, tragic case of hubris, Mr. Handsley, that will lead to Caesar’s downfall.”

  Behind and to the right of Meghan the stifled sneers break out into snorts. Meghan makes out Freedom’s unmistakable lazy chortle. Jonah is their jester, and they’re going to laugh.

  “Excuse me, I don’t see what’s so funny,” Jonah bleats, turning around in his seat and staring at the Abercrombie Adonises in the corner. Meghan tenses at the sight of Jonah gazing so frankly at J-Bar; it’s a beautiful, horrible thing to see, a freakish little troll like Jonah daring to look golden J-Bar in the eye.

  “All right,” says Mr. Handsley from the front of the room.

  Jonah balls his little fists and plants them on his fleshy hips. “All I’m doing is answering our teacher’s questions. What exactly is so funny about that, boys?”

  At this the dam bursts completely—the jocks can’t contain themselves and explode into whooping laughter. The hilarity, the total slapstick comedy of Jonah making eye contact with them, acknowledging them, and then calling them “boys” just puts them over the edge. Of the group of them, J-Bar is the most contained, the only one not outright guffawing. He smiles but keeps his mouth closed, and he stares at Jonah levelly, eyes serious, warning him.

  Even when that look is landing on someone else, even when there’s no imminent danger of J-Bar turning it on her, Meghan still feels its stinging heat on her skin. Silently she wills Jonah to shut up, look away, disappear. . . .

  “I don’t understand you people,” Jonah sniffs, turning back around in his seat and shaking his head. “You’re all so mentally retarded, I can’t imagine how you even manage to dress yourselves in the morning.”

  The class takes in its collective breath. The hilarity evaporates off the faces of the jocks. Even Becky Trainer extracts her pointy nose from her book and turns to watch the showdown.

  “Excuse me?” says Freedom, suddenly serious. He pushes his desk back and gets to his feet slowly, unfurls himself into a six-foot-three-inch banner of preppy clothes and muscle.

  “Jonah,” Mr. Handsley says gently from the front of the room. Meghan’s attention is drawn back to the teacher, who has folded his arms across his chest and is now studying Jonah closely.

  “What?” says Jonah. “Why are you saying my name? They’re the idiots, Mr. Handsley. They don’t deserve your protection when they’re making fun of other people. Don’t you see them making fun of me?” He spins around again to face the jocks and waves his stubby little finger at them. “I know when you’re making fun of me, you know!”

  “Jonah,” Mr. Handsley says again, more firmly.

  “I’m not making fun of you, you tool,” Freedom drawls from the back of the room. “You just called us mentally retarded idiots, you’re making fun of us. Mr. Handsley, that kid’s making fun of us.”

  “Both of you,” Mr. Handsley says tightly. “Cut it out.”

  “You should send them all to the principal’s office, Mr. Handsley!” Jonah cries.

  “Shut up, you little faggot,” Freedom sneers, low but loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Mr. Handsley hurls his copy of Julius Caesar to the floor with a carpeted whap and the class starts, snaps around in their chairs to face the front of the room. Meghan holds her breath, suspended with everyone else in the sudden silence.

  After a moment Mr. Handsley says quietly, “What did you just say?”

  Freedom stares down at the floor, slides his big manly hands into the pockets of his chinos. For a second he looks to Meghan like an oversized kindergartner caught trying to steal someone else’s lunch.

  “Mr. Falcon, will you please repeat the epithet you just used to address Mr. Boyd?”

  Freedom doesn’t answer.

  “Or perhaps you’re not bright enough to remember the words you just said.”

  Now the whole class stops breathing. Teachers aren’t supposed to call kids stupid, even kids that everybody knows are stupid.

  Freedom’s chiseled face burns, little muscles jumping along his jaw like plucked strings, his eyes boring deep into the carpet. Then he lifts his head and looks directly at Mr. Handsley. “I said faggot.”

  “Out of here,” Mr. Handsley hisses. Then he roars: “Go!”

  With one rugby-shirted swipe of his arm Freedom sweeps up the floppy folder and battered book from the top of his desk, crosses the back of the temporary classroom in three strides, yanks open the door, ducks his curly head to clear the transom, and slams the door behind him with a muffled thud.

  The class waits for a distended moment to see what will happen next.

  Mr. Handsley presses his thumb and forefinger to his eyes over the tops of his half-glasses.

  “Children,” he says wearily after a moment. “I understand that adolescence is complicated. Physically, yes, emotionally, yes, but more than anything else adolescence is ethically complicated. How are we to behave? How are we to treat one another? These are big questions, perhaps the biggest of our lives, and they are questions that we must begin to confront as adolescents. And yet if we are young, and beautiful, and powerful, it’s naturally tempting to forget about these questions, and to use our youth and beauty and power not for good but for evil. Evil is easy. Evil comes cheap, children.”

  Meghan steals a glance at J-Bar across the room. He’s gazing calmly at Mr. Handsley, leaning back comfortably in his chair, his face as serene as a field of wheat.

  “But,” Mr. Handsley continues, “it is our highest calling as human beings to resist doing evil whenever we can, and to choose a life of integrity and good no matter what the cost. So if the Caesar teaches us nothing else this semester, perhaps we may profitably read it as an allegory for certain social patterns at our beloved Valley Regional. Allegory, anybody, allegory? Who’s been reviewing vocab for the verbal?”

  Becky Trainer’s arm shoots into the air and vibrates there like a struck tuning fork.

  “Rebecca,” Mr. Handsley says with some tenderness, “there is no doubt in my mind that you know the meaning of this word. No one
is more impressed than I with the breadth and depth of your vocabulary. But is there anyone else who’d like to offer a definition? Anyone who hasn’t spoken yet today?”

  Allegory, thinks Meghan. A character or story that represents a general truth about human life. Synonym: Symbol.

  As if he has heard the voice inside her head, Mr. Handsley turns and looks Meghan square in the eye; he raises his eyebrows, wordlessly offering her the floor. As he opens his mouth to recognize her out loud, Meghan drops her chin to her chest and hunches her shoulders, trying to get as far away from Mr. Handsley’s gaze as she can without leaving her seat.

  Meghan feels him turn away from her.

  “Anyone?” he says. “Any takers for allegory?”

  The room is motionless, drained and dulled from too much drama. From her hunched-over position Meghan sees, out of the corner of her eye, Becky Trainer re-raise her hand, this time waving it back and forth in slow motion like a delirious fan at a rock concert.

  “Rebecca,” Mr. Handsley says finally. “Thank you for your persistence. I hereby call on you.”

  “Allegory!” Becky nearly explodes, ecstatic with relief at being allowed to speak at last. “Is like a symbol? A figure or a story that stands for something else? Like the Statue of Liberty is an allegory for freedom?”

  “Very much so,” Mr. Handsley concurs. “Thank you, Rebecca. So let’s return at long last to our Caesars, children. Page eighteen, exactly where we left off. As we read about the lean and hungry Cassius, and how he works his charms on the noble but malleable Brutus, think to yourselves who their corollaries might be in the endless drama that plays out around you in these halls every day.”

  Passing period, and Meghan is passing the door to the English office, a converted classroom crammed with the chunky green metal desks of English teachers, posters featuring has-been celebrities claiming to like to read, stacks of battered books leaning against the cinder-block walls: four hundred Bell Jars, four hundred Their Eyes Were Watching Gods, four hundred Catchers in the Rye. The office is sparsely populated at this moment, only two teachers in it, square-headed Mr. Rufus hunched over his grading, frizz-headed Ms. Arnberger staring off into space.