The Blue Girl Read Free Page A

mouse was never really a big part of my repertoire.
    I’d tried dressing normally the first few days at the new school in hopes of not standing out—jeans or slacks, a simple top, one of Jared’s jackets that was only a little long on me and looked okay with the sleeves rolled up—but Valerie made that impossible. With her on my case, the last thing I could be was invisible, so by the end of the week, I was back to my old nostyle style. I showed up Friday morning in a plaid skirt with striped socks, clunky shoes, a black T-shirt, and my old Army surplus olive green jacket. I’d used a veritable militia of barrettes to transform my black pageboy into a thicket of little hair tufts that stuck up every which way.
    And you know, I didn’t really stand out that much. This being a high school, fashion went from one end of the spectrum to the other, holdover punks and hippies to skateboarders, preppies, headbangers, and everything in between. Just an endless array of cliques and small gangs with as little mixing as possible except when actually in class.
    But my punk-grrl-cum-thrift-shop look still gave Valerie plenty of fuel. As soon as she saw me that morning, she started right in on me—at least until I took her aside, just far enough from her little coterie of clones so that they couldn’t listen in. I have no idea why she even stepped out of their hearing, because half the satisfaction for someone like her is playing to an audience. I guess she was curious.
    “You’re having your fun,” I told her, “and so long as we’re on school grounds, I’m going to let you say any damn thing you want.”
    “Oh, like you could stop—”
    “Because I just don’t need the grief of detention and visits to the office and crap like that. But here’s the thing, princess.”
    “I told you not to call me—”
    I leaned in close, a friendly smile on my lips.
    “Keep this up,” I told her, “and you don’t ever want to see me out of school because I will so beat the crap out of you.”
    “You wouldn’t—”
    “Princess, you don’t know the first damn thing about what I would or wouldn’t do. So you just think on that.”
    “You are so—”
    “Now go tell your little friends how you really put me in my place, and I’ll look suitably chastised, and we can get on with our respective days.”
    She got this look in her eyes that I couldn’t figure out. Some weird mix of anger, fear, and relief. But she didn’t say anything. She just went off with her little friends, their giggles trailing behind them, and I figured that was that. But then she had to go sic her boyfriend on me.
    *    *    *
    His name was Brent Calder, and of course he was the football team’s quarterback. Who else would the captain of the cheerleader squad be going out with? I suppose somebody, somewhere, might have considered him to be a lovely young man, but I pegged him for a big dumb jock the moment I saw him. What can I say? I can be as guilty of stereotyping as the next person.
    He was taller than me, naturally, and good-looking in the same plasticky way that Valerie was, except he had this whole boy thing going for him. You know, rugged, while she was soft. His hair was short and brushed back, and he filled out his shirt the way a guy does when he exercises regularly. Seeing him made me realize I had to change my personal nickname for Valerie. I was forever going to think of them as Barbie and Ken.
    He stopped me on the west stairwell, giving me a little push that banged me up against the wall. One of his teammates, a dark-haired guy named Jerry Fielder, stood a couple of stairs up from us, arms folded, a little smile of anticipation playing on his lips. The other students just went by, looking away, nobody wanting to get involved.
    “I’ve heard all about you, Yuck,” he said.
    Like making that joke with my surname, Yeck, was even remotely original.
    “And I don’t like what I’m hearing,” he added.
    I started to straighten up