As I studied them, I was being watched too. When I caught them looking, they’d wrinkle their noses before turning away to whisper to their friends. A girl in a gray skirt pointed out my ratty old coat and giggled. I faked like I was cold and pulled it tight around me, hoping to hide the rest of my clothes.
Once we were inside the classroom, Jackson, Martin, and Derrick took desks about halfway back. Jackson pointed to an empty chair in front of him.
“Sit here,” he said.
All around me, kids were writing in their notebooks, desperately trying to finish their homework, I guessed, like Jackson had done that morning. The ones who weren’t working were talking. The roar of it came in waves, building and building until the entire room was shouting at once. It sounded to me like glass grinding against glass. Why does everyone talk so much here? I wondered. What is there to say? I almost put my head down on the desk and covered my ears, but the last thing I needed was to stand out even more. I looked up to my right. Above a set of tall bookshelves I could see the blue sky and the waving branches of the sycamore tree out of the window. “What are you doing here?”
At first I didn’t realize anyone was talking to me, but then someone’s knee bumped roughly into my side. “Hey! Spy! I’m talking to you.”
I looked up. Will Henry. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans that bulged a bit around the thigh where I guessed a bandage was. He was with his three friends, the two sluggy twins and zit-covered mountain of a redhead.
“I said, what are you doing here?” Somehow Will’s eyes glittered but were utterly blank at the same time. My hand fell beneath my coat and closed around the handle of my knife. When I didn’t say anything, Will snatched the notebook out of my hands and held it up to Jackson.
“You give him this, Greeny? You and your folks? How many of these you think we have left? And you give one to some spy?”
Will planted his fists on my desk and leaned over me.
“These things are for us,” he said. “Not you.”
“Leave him alone, Will!”
I turned and was surprised to see that Jackson was up out of his seat. Derrick and Martin rose tentatively to join him.
“What are you going to do?” Will continued, leaning toward him. Even though he was a whole row of desks away, Jackson took one nervous step back, which clearly delighted Will. “You and your folks gonna save this stray too? What? Was the first one not pathetic enough for you?”
Every part of me tensed, desperate to shoot up out of my chair and knock Will into the wall behind him. I struggled to stay calm even as he leaned over me, his face inches from mine.
“How about you, spy? You gonna do something?”
My cheeks burned and the wounds on my hand throbbed as I gripped the rough leather of the knife’s hilt.
The doors at the back of the classroom flew open and slammed against the wall.
“Class, settle down! Settle down, everyone!” the teacher called as he rushed in past us to the front of the room. “Mr. Henry, take your friends and sit.”
“Mr. Tuttle —” Will began, pointing at me.
“No time, Mr. Henry,” Tuttle said, distracted with papers at his desk. “Sit or find yourself in detention.”
Will glanced at Tuttle. “You’re lucky, spy,” he said as he tossed the notebook over his shoulder to one of his friends. “Come on, guys. Kid’s stinking up this side of the room anyway.”
The redhead gave me a vacant, moist-eyed glare while one of the slug twins nudged my desk so my pencils fell to the ground with a clatter. I waited until they were back at their seats before bending to pick them up, but when I did, Jackson was already holding them out to me.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” I turned away from him and rearranged my things. It was odd how Jackson and the others had stood up for me the way they had. Getting backed up like that by people who weren’t family didn’t make sense. It felt good, but I couldn’t afford to be careless. Nobody did anything for free.
“Class, I will need your attention… now.”
Tuttle smacked his ruler across the desk and there was a rustle of bodies as everyone dropped into their seats and shot to attention. He surveyed the room, moving from face to face and making little marks on a sheet of paper until his eyes fell on me.
“And who is this?”
“Stephen,” Jackson piped up from behind me. “Stephen, uh…” Jackson tapped my shoulder.
“Quinn,” I said.
“Stephen Quinn. He’s new.”
Tuttle glanced at Jackson. “Yes, I can see that he’s new, Mr. Green. If he wasn’t, I would not have expressed surprise upon seeing him, would I?”
“Um—”
“Rhetorical question, Mr. Green. Now. Quinn. Stephen. I am Mr. Tuttle. Have you been in school before?”
I cleared my throat and tried to sit up straighter. “No sir.”
“Can you read? Do you know your numbers?”
“Yes sir.”
“The Pledge of Allegiance?”
“The pledge of allegiance to what?”
The class laughed all around me. I felt my cheeks go red and hot.
“Well, you’ll have a lot of catching up to do, but I can’t afford to slow down.” Tuttle went back to marking his paper, then nodded toward Jackson and Martin. “Mr. Green and Mr. Stantz will help you.”
“Hey, what about me?”
Tuttle glared at Derrick. “I think Mr. Quinn would do well to pay as little attention to you as possible on educational matters. Don’t you agree, Mr. Waverly?”
“Yes! Absolutely!” Derrick said. “Good call, sir.”
Tuttle gave him a withering look, then stepped back to the blackboard behind him. It was covered by some kind of pull-down screen. The class groaned as he reached for it.
“Yes, class,” Tuttle said. “That’s right. If you were able to better control yourselves, these little tests wouldn’t be necessary. So take out your—”
Before Tuttle could finish, the doors behind us burst open again, smacking against the walls. The class turned as one body toward the sound as Jenny Tan strode barefoot into the classroom. She carried a tattered notebook. A nub of pencil was stuck behind one ear.
“Well, well, well, this is quite an honor,” Tuttle deadpanned. “We haven’t been graced with your presence in weeks. So nice of you to join us today, Miss Green.”
“It’s Tan,” Jenny said as she plopped down into an open seat toward the back of the class and put her bare feet up on the chair in front of her. “And you’re welcome.”
A ripple of laughter went through the classroom. Jackson had his eyes closed tight and his head in his hands. Irritation pulsed off him in waves. Tuttle slapped his ruler down on the corner of his desk.
“I won’t have any more disruptions.”
Jenny raised her hands, palms up, as if to say he wouldn’t get any from her. Tuttle considered her a moment, made a notation on his sheet, then stepped back to pull on the screen in front of the blackboard. It shot up toward the ceiling, revealing a long list of questions written in chalk. Jenny bent over her desk, laying her chin in the palm of one hand while she dug into the wood of her desk with her fingernail.
Jackson handed me a sheet of paper from his notebook as the rest of the class picked up their pencils and began writing. Jenny flicked her hair out of her face, turning just enough to catch me staring at her. It was like being stuck out in the open as lightning flashed all around me. I knew I should look away, and quickly, but I froze.
Jenny raised one eyebrow, and when I still didn’t look away, she jutted her face out at me, bugging her big brown eyes and making a show of staring back. I looked away immediately, up at the test questions, trying to calm the thrill of nerves in my stomach.