Sarah Stevenson - Underneath (Sarah Jamila Stevenson)

Spike is the only one not joining in. Feeling desperate, I try to catch his eye, but he looks away. He crumples up his empty brown bag, picks up his backpack, and heads off toward the volleyball court. My jaw clenches involuntarily. Why isn’t anybody standing up for me? For an instant I have this intense wish, like an ache in my chest, to know what they said. Maybe it was something perfectly innocent, completely unrelated to me. Then I change my mind. I don’t want to know what they said. Thinking about that moment with Cassie on Friday, I realize that knowing for sure is infinitely worse.

—what is her problem? we didn’t do anything—

I flinch and turn away.

As I wait, it starts to drizzle, which is just perfect, but I don’t even care if my hair goes flat. It’s as hideous as it can get already. I’m surprised I didn’t underhear Cassie saying something bitchy about that . Despite myself, I reach back to straighten my ponytail, then let my hands drop to my sides.

I’ve been part of that group for more than two years. The first day of ninth grade, Shiri and I met up with Tessa and Cassie near the back parking lot, and Cassie introduced me to her friends. I introduced her to Spike. That day at lunch, we were all so nervous that we tried to identify something weird, or goofy, or embarrassing about each person we saw so that we wouldn’t feel so out of place ourselves. “ Look at that guy—can you believe he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt? Check out Tracie. She’s had the same hairstyle since the fifth grade.” When I think back on it now, I cringe.

But I thought they actually liked me for me , not because I was cool Shiri’s cousin or because we just happened to be on the swim team together.

I guess I was wrong.

I’m a big girl now, though. I can do without them. When I get to the front of the line I pay for my pizza, grab the little box, and brave the drizzle with a surge of angry energy.

I don’t need them. I’ll just find a new place to eat lunch, preferably someplace with nobody around to laugh at me.

I jam my dad’s cap down further on my head and do my best to shield the pizza box with my arm as I make a quick, damp circuit of the campus. Everywhere seems to be already occupied. Even the bleachers at the far end of the football field are taken over by the stoners, who are sitting underneath smoking cigarettes and talking about some band they all saw over the weekend. When I peer in at them, they look at me like I’ve lost my mind. If they only knew.

I move on. The grass next to the auditorium is too wet for sitting. Inside the auditorium is where the drama geeks hang out. I peek in the side door and see a few people from my history class, two guys and three girls I don’t like because they’re always all over each other in public and oozing fake friendliness all over everyone else. Fake friendliness is the last thing I want right now. Instead, I try some of the open classrooms, but they’re mostly full of students taking shelter from the light rain.

One of the science classrooms is nearly empty: just a group of guys playing Dungeons and Dragons. By now I’m kind of hungry, so I’m fully prepared to ignore them and sit down for lunch, but one of them leers at me through a shaggy fringe of hair and says, “ I’m a seventh-level elf wizard” and looks at me expectantly. I beat a hasty retreat. I know it’s a game, but I don’t want to pretend I’m someone I’m not any more.

I’m about to give up and go eat in my car when I remember there’s an awning at the back of campus, sandwiched between the decrepit little art building and the portable classrooms. I think there’s even a lone picnic table back there.

The table is empty. I feel an amazing rush of relief, and I sit down. It’s quiet back here. I can faintly hear some football players yelling out by the bleachers, and the strains of innocuous, principal-approved pop music drift over from the lunch area. But mostly I just hear the steady dripping of rain from the gutter onto the awning, and the hum of traffic on the street behind the school. It’s nice. The orange paint on the bench is peeling and there’s some black-marker graffiti on the table, but I think I could get used to eating here.

The rest of the day drags, though, and it’s hard to pay attention in class. Images of Cassie and her mean laugh, of Spike walking away and not even bothering to defend me, keep floating into my mind. A vindictive little part of me wishes something bad would happen to one of them so they’d know how I feel. In sixth-period physics there’s a pop quiz. I know I’m going to bomb it; I leave a fourth of the questions blank, but I can’t bring myself to care. When I hand it in, Ms. Rabb takes one look at it and glances at me with concern—a watered-down version of the Stare of Pity—but I just give her a vague, fake smile and go back to my desk.

Finally, the day is over and I’m home. It’s quiet, and nobody is here to laugh at me, or quiz me, or even talk to me. I toss my baseball cap and backpack onto the faded old Persian carpet on our living room floor, and switch on the TV. I try halfheartedly to do some history reading, but give up partway through and lose myself in a reality show in which people’s friends set them up for tasteless pranks involving public humiliation.

The next day, fourth period, I’m staring out the grimy window of the library at the empty lunch area. Cassie and Marc ignored me in class today; even Elisa looked the other way when we passed each other between periods. Some friends they turned out to be. Maybe it’s just as well. But there’s a part of me that wishes nothing had changed.

Nobody shows up for chemistry tutoring. The clock over the librarian’s desk ticks away the minutes way too slowly.

After stewing over everything a while, I get kind of mad. I’m not the one who needs to apologize, to make excuses. I’m not going to whine at them or beg them to take me back into the group. They’re the ones with the attitude, not me.

At lunch, when I pass by their table on my way to buy a soda, I see their little identical-zombie clique and feel … less bad, anyway, than I did yesterday. At least today I’m not ready to run to the bathroom and barf. Spike even smiles at me tentatively, but I’m not quite prepared to smile back. Let them stress for a change.

After getting a cola, I quicken my pace on the way to my new table, far away from Cassie and the Zombie Squad. I set down my lunch bag and drink and plop down in the middle of the bench.

I’m about three bites into my turkey pita sandwich when I hear people approaching from the parking lot. The conversation grows closer. I can pick out a couple of female voices, a few male; none of them recognizable. Then a group of artsy goth types turns the corner of the art building and heads for the table. My table. My heart sinks.

“Hey,” says one girl. “What are you doing at our table?” She looks at me disdainfully, pouting from a mouth lipsticked a dark maroon color. It strikes me that Cassie probably would have said the same thing if I’d tried sitting at my old lunch spot. My heart starts pounding and my ears get hot as I try to think of something to say.

Another one of the girls stares at me closely for a moment, and I realize she’s recognized me as The Girl Whose Cousin Committed Suicide. Just what I need. I duck my head a little, trying to hide under my untrimmed bangs while I peer up at her surreptitiously. She looks familiar, and I realize I had English class with her freshman year. Back then she had really long brown hair, though; now she has short, spiky two-inch-long purple braids that poke out from her head like little coiled springs. I also remember her being quiet in class. Now she speaks up.