In poetry, Mr. Davidson was so engrossed in writing Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20 on the board that he didn’t even notice Lilith come in late.
She sat down cautiously, watching the other kids, waiting for someone to hold their nose or gag, but luckily they only seemed to notice Lilith as a means for passing notes. Paige, the sporty blond girl to Lilith’s left, would nudge her, then slide a folded note onto her desk. It wasn’t labeled, but Lilith knew, of course, that it wasn’t meant for her. It was for Kimi Grace, the cool half Korean, half Mexican girl sitting to her right. Lilith had passed enough notes between these two to glimpse snatches of their plans for prom—the epic after-party and the sick stretch limo they were pooling their allowances to hire. Lilith had never been given an allowance. If her mom had any cash to spare, it went straight to Bruce’s medical bills.
“Right, Lilith?” Mr. Davidson asked, making Lilith flinch. She shoved the note under her desk so she wouldn’t get caught.
“Could you say that again?” Lilith asked. She really did not want to piss off Mr. Davidson. Poetry was the only class she liked, mostly because she wasn’t failing it, and Mr. Davidson was the only teacher she’d ever met who seemed to enjoy his job. He’d even liked some of the song lyrics Lilith had turned in as poetry assignments. She still had the loose-leaf paper on which Mr. Davidson had written simply Wow! beneath the lyrics for a song she called “Exile.”
“I said you’ve signed up for the open mic, I hope?” Davidson asked.
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled, but she hadn’t and hoped not to. She didn’t even know when it was.
Davidson smiled, pleased and surprised. He turned to the rest of the class. “Then we all have something to look forward to!”
As soon as Davidson turned back to his board, Kimi Grace nudged Lilith. When Lilith met Kimi’s dark, pretty eyes, she wondered for a moment if Kimi wanted to talk about the open mic, if the idea of reading in front of an audience made her nervous, too. But all Kimi wanted from Lilith was the folded note in her hand.
Lilith sighed and passed it to her.
She tried to skip gym to study for her bio test, but of course she got caught and ended up having to do laps in her gym uniform and her combat boots. The school didn’t issue tennis shoes, and her mom never had the cash to get her any, so the sound of her feet, running circles around the other kids who were playing volleyball in the gym, was deafening.
Everyone was looking at her. No one had to say the word freak out loud. She knew they were thinking it.
By the time Lilith made it to biology, she was beat down and worn out. And that was where she found her mom, wearing a lime-green skirt, her hair in a tight bun, handing out the tests.
“Just perfect,” Lilith said with a groan.
“Shhhhhh!” a dozen students replied.
Her mom was tall and dark, with an angular beauty. Lilith was fair, her hair as red as the fire in the hills. Her nose was shorter than her mother’s, her eyes and mouth less fine. Their cheekbones sat at different angles.
Her mom smiled. “Won’t you please take a seat?”
As if she didn’t even know her daughter’s name.
But her daughter knew hers. “Sure thing, Janet,” Lilith said, dropping into an empty desk in the row nearest the door.
Her mom’s angry gaze flicked to Lilith’s face; then she smiled and looked away.
Kill them with kindness was one of her mom’s favorite sayings, at least in public. At home, she wore a harsher manner. All that her mom loathed about her life she blamed on Lilith, because Lilith had been born when her mom was nineteen and beautiful, on her way to a remarkable future. By the time Bruce came along, her mom had recovered enough from the trauma of Lilith to become an actual mother. The fact that their dad was out of the picture—no one knew where he was—gave her mother all the more reason to live for her son.
The first page of the biology test was a grid in which they were expected to map dominant and recessive genes. The girl to her left was rapidly filling in boxes. Suddenly Lilith could not remember a single thing she had learned all year. Her throat itched, and she could feel the back of her neck begin to sweat.
The door to the hallway was open. It had to be cooler out there. Almost before she knew what she was doing, Lilith was standing in the doorway, her backpack in one hand, her guitar case in the other.
“Leaving class without a hall pass is an automatic detention!” Janet called. “Lilith, put down that guitar and come back here!”
Lilith’s experience with authority had taught her to listen carefully to what she was told—and then do the opposite.
She bumped down the hall and hit the door running.