Free Spirits Read Free

about the ghostly goings-on in Adam’s house or about how we talked to dead people. And we couldn’t give credit to the third member of our team, what with her being dead and all. That’s the part that really made me feel bad. It’s a shame that nobody but me can see Abigail. Of the three of us, she would’ve gotten the biggest thrill out of being on TV.
    What made Adam and me small-time heroes in the newspapers only made us bigger freaks in school. Now that we had attracted some positive attention, kids felt like they had to make up for it with the opposite kind. And so I’ve been called the Witch Girl even more than I used to be, and I don’t even want to repeat what Adam’s been called, but he has to hear a lot of idiotic jokes about fortune cookies and chow mein.
    “I’m Korean, not Chinese,” he always tells his tormentors. One time when he was particularly worn out, he said to obnoxious Cody Taylor, “Look, if you want to be a racist, be a racist. But at least know which group you’re being racist against.”
    Later Adam said to me, “Maybe the school should sponsor a special racial insensitivity class, so these morons will at least know what slurs to use against what group.”

    Adam and I have sat through social studies and science and have suffered through PE where we have to separate by gender. It used to be that without fail I’d be picked last for a team in the girls’ class, and Adam would be picked last in the boys’ class. Since the Mexican kids moved here, though, I sometimes get picked before the Mexican girls. Adam says he sometimes gets picked before the Mexican boys and sometimes not, depending on who’s doing the picking. When he does get picked before the Mexican kids, he says he figures the only reason is because English is his first language.
    Now we’re standing in line to file into the cafeteria, and Adam is telling me about how he’s started watching all these horror movies made in England in the Sixties. He is totally obsessed with horror. “Mom and Dad don’t usually like me to watch movies with blood and gore, but the blood in the Hammer films is so obviously fake they don’t mind it. Mom says getting upset about me seeing that fake blood would be like getting upset about me seeing red nail polish.”
    As usual when Adam is going on about one of his obsessions, I just listen and nod, but then I see something that makes me cry out in a little yelp.
    “What is it?” Adam says.
    “Look.” I point at the dry-erase board where the day’s lunch menu has been written. It says,
    Tacos
    Tater tots
    Fruit cup
    Milk
    But next to the word tacos somebody has written, “This ain’t Mexico, spics go home.”
    Adam rolls his eyes. “Well, obviously this isn’t Mexico, or they wouldn’t be serving tater tots with the tacos.”
    I can barely hear him because when I read the words on the board I’m inside the head of the person who wrote them, and while I don’t know exactly whose head I’m inside, I know it’s the last place I want to be. I feel fear and hate and spite, but there’s laughter, too, the terrible kind of laughter that comes from laughing at somebody else’s pain.
    “Miranda!”A hand is squeezing my shoulder.It takes a couple of seconds for me to register that the hand and the voice belong to Adam.
    “Sorry,” I say. “For a second there, I was someplace I really didn’t want to be.”
    “You’re okay, right?” Adam has gotten used to my tendency to fall into other people’s thoughts and accepts it just like any other personality quirk, as if it’s something as simple as being left-handed or good with numbers.
    “Yeah.” When we file past Mrs. Lawson, the bleached-blond cafeteria monitor, I say, “You might want to take a look at the menu board.”
    When she does, she just mutters “Kids” and erases it like it’s no big deal.
    The tables in the cafeteria have always been divided between the popular kids and the country kids. Now that there’s