“Here you go, sweetie. Stay warm.” She hands me a half dozen sandwiches.
On the way to the bus, I’ve got a spring in my step as the sun shines down on my hatless head. I work out a beat in my mind and start moving my feet to keep warm while I’m waiting.
A garbage man clinging to a truck passes and yells, “Alright, alright, work it out!”
So I knock it up a step and start breaking. The truck stops and all the garbage men are watching me, one of them clapping out the beat. I go until the bus arrives and the first guy on the back tips his hat to me.
“Good looking out, kid. Keep dancing!”
I give him a salute before I step onto the lurching, stinking city bus with my free pass and a bag full of what feels like pure gold.
Academics are all in the morning hours, and everything after noon is dedicated to your art specialty. I’m no Brainiac, but I can get by in Algebra and English. Becker is in a few of my classes, too, so that makes it tolerable as we bust our asses trying to live up to the expectations of all of these exceptional rich kids. I’m not dumb enough to get a complex about them being better than me. I know how life works. Some people get it all, the tutors, the lessons, the best equipment, and resources. The world chalks it up to talent, a special ability you’re born with. That’s a load of bullshit—these kids are bred like fancy racehorses. When they wanted to make mud pies, their parents were forcing them to do Rodin miniatures with their playdough.
F that.
I say let ‘em live. You groom them into something they’re not and one day it’s all gonna come crashing down and hurt everyone involved. Be who you gotta be. It’s hard enough to figure that shit out without adults breathing down your neck and forcing you to become something you’re not.
I can barely wait for lunch. As soon as I step foot in the pristine cafeteria that resembles the atrium of some fancy-pants office building, I spot Sam with her tray, a look of severe concentration on her face. Her hair is pulled all the way up today, no bangs in sight, but she still blows them away and scans the room looking for water without alligators.
“Sam!” I wave at her from the table I’ve scored by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the courtyard. No one else is sitting here minus two actors running lines at the opposite end.
She blushes bright red and looks relieved at the same time. She rushes over to sit right next to me without contemplating it much.
“Holy shit, I hate this place,” she mutters. She crashes her tray down, which contains a school salad—inedible—and a carton of skim milk.
“Haverton?” I ask her.
“The lunchroom,” she says.
“That looks like a one and half star lunch,” I say, eyeing her tray. “And that’s being generous.” The salad is just lettuce with some shredded red cabbage and a couple of sad pieces of carrot.
“I’m starving.” She eyes the food like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Dash to the rescue,” I mumble. Then I plop my arsenal of squished PB and J’s on the white Formica.
“Holy shit,” she whispers.
“They most certainly are. But I tossed the Jesus pamphlets at the bus stop, sorry.”
“Are there six?” She’s still whispering like we’re in church. “Are they PB and J?”
“Probably government surplus peanut butter that they grind with the cheap bitter oil and all the peanut casings to make it taste like shit.”
She grabs one and starts the lengthy process of unwrapping the endless layers of saran wrap. When we finally get down to the bread, the sandwiches are pathetic. Totally squashed with the grape jelly bleeding through the thin bread. But Sam takes a huge bite and her eyes are as wide as saucers until she closes them and savors it.
“Oh, my God,” she says, bringing her hand to her lips and covering her full mouth.
“Funny you should say that. They did come from God. Three and three sound good?”
Chapter Four
Natayla
The ache. I’ve had the ache ever since I can remember. Mother calls it drive. She says it builds character, that it will build my career. I know it’s not ambition or anything redeeming. It’s a lack. A void. It feels like shame and it weighs on me like a heavy blanket I lug around every day of my life.
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” I wipe the grape jelly from my lip and lick my finger. I look at Dash like he’s Jesus himself, sneaking me food on instinct, twice now, after only knowing him less than twenty-four hours.
“Those fouette turns from yesterday—think you could show me how to get my balance on those? I mean, I get the step, but I don’t understand where your center of gravity is supposed to go.”