style="font-size:15px;"> “That doesn’t excuse them.”
“They don’t know any better.”
“You don’t know any better,” Julie says.
“What do you mean, me?” I demand, sitting up straight. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly!”
We don’t speak again through the rest of lunch. It’s lunch for me, it’s picking through her salad for Julie. She doesn’t eat anything that’s a certain shade of green, so I don’t know why she always gets a salad. Nothing green on a cheeseburger. She eyes mine hungrily, and I purposely make a show of enjoying a great big bite.
I’m on my chocolate pudding when Julie says, “So, do you still want me to come to the mall with you after school?”
I look up in surprise. “Of course.”
She nods and stands up, tray in hand. “Fine. I’ll see you in photography class.”
“Okay, fine,” I say.
“Well then, fine.”
“Fine.”
We smile at each other, still best friends. She waves and disappears into the throng of students who are clearing their tables, but she’s so tall I can still see her blonde hair bobbing along in the sea of heads as she aims right for the door. I finish my pudding and join the crowds, letting the surge push me this way and that. It’s easier to go with the flow than to shove against it. Luckily I’m pushed next to a garbage can where I dump my trash and deposit my tray. Unlike Julie, I’m so short I can’t see a thing except shoulders and backs until I’m released into the hall and the press of bodies spreads out. Finally I can breathe again.
Until I see Sean O’Malley, that is. He takes my breath away, plain and simple. He’s got reddish hair, too many freckles to count (though I wouldn’t mind trying), hands big enough to practically palm a basketball (I admit they look a little goofy on him, but I figure he’ll grow into them one day), and a smile that could melt an iceberg.
The only bad thing is the two guys on either side of him. Matt and Greg.
“Where’s your bodyguard?” Greg says, looking around for Julie.
I smile. Please, I wish silently, not now, not with him here.
“So, slant, did you do your math homework?” Matt says.
So much for my wishes. Does that mean none of them will come true?
Sean frowns. I think he’s going to say something to his friend about calling me names, but he only says, “Jeez, I forgot about that. I’m screwed.” Knight in shining armor goes up in a puff of dust.
Matt’s still waiting for an answer. I shake my head. I know he just wants to copy my homework. I should let him, and it’d serve him right. Does he think I get math just because I’m Asian? Maybe he thinks slanty eyes can see the numbers better or something.
“I’m getting a D in math,” I say.
Matt hoots. “Yeah, right, and I’m the King of—of England.” He turns to Greg. “They have kings there still, right?”
I marvel at the fact that when I actually tell the truth, I’m not believed anyway. What would Daddy call this? A lie of disbelieving morons?
I don’t want to be late for my least favorite subject, so I step around the boys and head down the hall. I hear them following me. Well, not following me exactly, just walking in the same direction since we’re all in the same class. I do wish Sean would follow me, like to the ends of the earth, or even just to my locker sometime, but no way am I going to waste wishes on that impossibility. Better to save them for something that might actually come true.
In the room, I sit at my assigned front-and-center seat. Maybe Mr. Driggs thought I’d be a good example to the other students. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t be able to see over the top of anyone’s head if I sat anywhere else. Maybe he went alphabetically—backwards, since my last name is Wallace. I don’t dare try to figure out the last names of the two sitting on either side of me, just in case this theory doesn’t pan out.
The bell rings, Mr. Driggs shuffles through the door, boredom sets in. Another typical math class.
Fifty-two minutes later, when the bell rings again (waking everyone up), I don’t rush to the door with my classmates. I’ll get crushed. Plus, I don’t mind avoiding Greg and Matt when I can, even if it means missing a last glimpse of Sean. But to my amazement, Sean looks back at the last second before he disappears through the door, and he smiles. At me? I look all around. No one else here except Mr. Driggs. So for the rest of the day I have to wonder if that special, secret smile was for me or for the math teacher with the droopy pants, too much cologne, and a bald patch that I’m not sure he even knows about.
I make it to seventh period in a daze. Was the smile for me or Mr. Driggs? For me? Or Mr. Driggs? Mr. Driggs? Me?
“Hey, space-case.”
My eyes focus. I’m about one inch from walking into Julie. We have photography together down in the art wing. Not that either one of us is artsy, but we had to sign up for some elective above and beyond our core curriculum, so we thought it’d be fun to take pictures together. I can’t even draw a stick figure with a ruler, so I figured this’d be easy. You know, let the camera do the work. Ha!
After the first week of class, when Miss Shepard tried her best to teach us all the parts of a camera and explain about f-stop and shutter speed and other stuff I’ve already forgotten, she gave us our assignment.
“You are to get with a partner,” she said.
Julie and I grinned at each other. Perfect!
“And take photos of each other.”
This, I thought, was not so perfect. I hate having my photo taken. I’m so not photogenic. My nose looks flatter than ever, my eyes are slits, my hair is a black helmet.
“You are to capture the essence of the person you are shooting. Take a look at these photos by Dorothea Lange.” She flashed a series of black-and-white images on the screen. “See how Dorothea captured the souls of these people during the Depression.” She talks in italics a lot. She went on to explain how Dorothea Lange traveled across the United States during the Depression, shooting pictures of families looking for work and food.
One image appeared on the screen called “Migrant Mother.” It was a picture of a woman with two children beside her. The children were hiding their faces. The mother had one hand to her face, and she was staring off into the distance. I was surprised to feel tears prickle the back of my eyes as I looked at this image. Another shot came up. It was another mother with two children. It looked like they were in a car or the back of a bus. She looked so confused, like she was wondering how she got there. And even though it looked like it might have been hot out, because the little boy wasn’t wearing pants or shoes, they were all wearing heavy winter coats. I thought it was to remind them of when they had money, and I couldn’t help wondering what their lives were like before the Depression, and where they went, and how they ended up . . .
Miss
