Wonderful timing, Jenna. Now is not the time for my attitude to come out of hiding.
Gabriel stops chewing, and his eyes grow wide. Allys sets her sandwich aside. Ethan sits, stunned, like I just slapped him across the face. The tension holds us like a shock of electricity, and then something odd happens. Allys chuckles. A little snort at first. And then a deep expelling of air that comes all the way up from her belly. Her laughter snags Gabriel, and puffs of air fill his cheeks, and then in the next breath, Ethan and I are snorting, too, unable to maintain our scowls. Pieces of bread fly from Gabriel’s mouth, and we all howl louder, until finally Allys says, holding her stomach, ‘I like you, Jenna.’
My laughter subsides, and I hear her soft voice over and over in my head until I just sit there with satisfaction wrapping around me. I like you. That’s what she said. I like you, Jenna.
Ethan’s eyes are softer now, gently focused on mine, like the day I first saw him at the mission. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to be a dickhead.’
Dickhead? Another word I’ve lost. It must mean annoying or small-minded.
‘I didn’t notice,’ I say, which brings another small chuckle from him.
‘Dane pushes our buttons,’ he says. ‘Especially mine. Most of the time I try to ignore him.’
‘We’re different from others,’ Gabriel says, like he is admitting something. ‘But that doesn’t mean we’re freaks.’
‘Dane has a way with words,’ Allys adds.
Ethan swigs down a big gulp of milk and brings the bottle down like a gavel. ‘Dane has a way with everything.’
‘He keyed Ethan’s truck last week,’ Gabriel explains. ‘No one can prove it, but weird things always seem to happen around Dane.’
‘He’s missing something. I mean, really missing something,’ Allys says.
Gabriel shakes his head. ‘He’s not like us.’
‘He’s not like anyone,’ Ethan says. ‘That’s probably why he’s in school with us. In that sense, he’s right. We all have reasons for needing to come to a small alternative school. My theory is Dane’s already been kicked out of every school within a thousand-mile radius.’
‘At least,’ Gabriel confirms.
I don’t know what to say. They seem to be releasing every frustration they have about Dane, and yet I found him interesting. Blunt maybe, but something about him intrigues me. Maybe his honesty? He’s the only one who bothered to tell me that I walk funny. Why didn’t Claire? And what exactly is funny?
I’m glad when Allys turns the conversation from Dane to her. ‘My reasons for coming to this school aren’t so mysterious,’ she says. ‘A large campus just doesn’t work for me anymor
e, and a flexible schedule makes therapy easier to work in. At an academy I would always be missing school. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.’ Allys picks up her sandwich and resumes eating. ‘Plus, I like the course study better. Especially after all this’—she gestures with all four limbs. ‘I have a particular interest in bioethics, and Rae lets me explore that. Why’d you want to come here, Jenna?’
‘I didn’t exactly want to. My mother chose it. I’ve been sick and …’ I don’t know how to finish. I still have a lightheaded aversion to saying the word accident. Has Mother drilled it into me that deeply not to speak about it? Or is there some other reason? But I don’t want to lie.
‘Accident,’ I say much too loudly. ‘I had an accident. And I’m still recovering.’
They all stare at me. My words have come out in halting spurts. Lovely, Jenna.
‘You don’t have to tell us—’
‘And the worst part of it is, I’ve forgotten everything. I don’t remember my parents, my friends, which things I love, and which things I hate. I can’t even remember which side I parted my hair on—or maybe it was down the middle? And look at this,’ I say, pointing at my legs. ‘I obviously can’t even remember how to walk!’
‘It’s okay—’
‘It’s all a blank. My life, my parents, my friends. I’m not sure I should even be here. I can’t remember anything that matters,’ I say in a desperate breathless finish, feeling like I have confessed a sin and I need forgiveness. Their forgiveness. Three friends. Are they friends?
Ethan’s eyes, at that moment, are the kindest, deepest, safest brown I am sure I will ever know. I wait for him to absolve me of not remembering a mother who birthed me, a grandmother who saved me, friends who rebelled with me, and a suffocating fear I can’t name.
‘Jenna,’ he says. His voice is as soft as a sparrow’s beating wing, and I can almost feel the gentle flutter across my cheek. ‘Thou speakest the loveliest … load of crap.’ He leans close and whispers, ‘A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten …’
He waits expectantly. I lean in closer.
He watches my lips, and I let my words trickle out as softly as his. ‘… on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us …’
Ethan downs the rest of his milk. ‘Two points made.’