Belle Heights High School was enormous, bursting at the seams with over two thousand students, but on Monday morning Rose found something wonderfully energizing about all these personalities in one place. Overcrowding or not, there was something new to notice anywhere you looked—a girl with silver jewelry in her braids, a guy with a forehead tattoo that said If you can read this, you’re too close. Rose hoped it was a Sün-Fade tattoo; some things just weren’t meant to be permanent. She sighed, feeling so good—never mind that that strange red light had been there again that morning, behind her eyes and still there once she opened them. How could it be both inside and outside? But all she’d had to do was blink a few times and it was gone.
Morning classes went by in a flash, instead of dragging endlessly, and she talked to kids as if she fit right in, just like they did: “Tough math test!” “Did you finish that bio thing?” At lunch in the cafeteria, the student who worked the scanner looked at her, down at her tray, and back at her again. He had dark bushy hair and eyebrows so thick they almost formed a unibrow, and he was several inches shorter than Rose.
“Never thought you were the scuffin type,” he said. “A scone or a muffin, maybe, but not the combo.”
“It looked good,” Rose said.
“Garbo talks!”
“Garbo?”
“Greta Garbo—a silent movie star. Silent, like you—before now, that is. When she finally made a talkie, everybody got so excited to hear her voice, the posters said, ‘Garbo Talks!’” He picked up the scuffin and tossed it around like a baseball. “This thing is dry as dust. You’ll need this.” He put a pineapple juice stick on her tray. He was talking like they knew each other. They didn’t, really, but Rose smiled at him. “She smiles! Stop the presses!” He was starting to sound like someone in an old movie himself. “Except, let’s try a second take.”
“What?”
“That smile looks, well . . . kind of Photoshopped or something. Hey, sorry.” He put his hands up like he was surrendering.
The line bunched up behind Rose, and she moved on.
She noticed Kim Garcia at the end of a long table, which was where she always sat, and gave her a big wave and an even bigger smile. But Rose wasn’t able to catch her friend’s eye. She made her way over through the crowds and sat on the bench opposite Kim, her long legs bunched up beneath the table.
“How was your weekend?” Rose asked.
Kim had a long, ropy braid down her back, pale-gray eyes, and light-brown skin, and she always wore colors that didn’t quite match—olive green and red, for instance. But Rose thought she looked really good.
As usual, Kim brought her own lunch; today she had a tuna sandwich and blueberry yogurt. “My weekend?” she said.
Rose took a bite of the scuffin. It crumbled to gravelly bits in her mouth, and she had to work hard to swallow it. Still, it was sweet, and the juice stick that turned from solid to liquid helped, she had to admit. “Did you have fun? I went to the zoo. It was really great. I never get tired of seeing the gorillas.”
Kim blinked at her. “I wasn’t sure you were speaking to me.”
“Of course I am! You’re my oldest friend.”
“You got so freaked out at my place, and then you just left, no explanation—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s long over.”
“It was only last Friday.”
“Feels like a lifetime ago. Speaking of which, I’d like to be called Rose from now on.”
“Rose? Why?”
“It suits me, like a second skin.”
Kim sighed. “How many skins do you need?”
“Hey, remember when we were in second grade, and we had to do that post office project, and we were supposed to write letters to kids in first grade, but we got in trouble because we only wrote letters to each other, so then Ms. Zimmer separated us and I threw a fit? My dad said I needed extra care and attention because I was ‘sensitive,’ but I don’t think Ms. Zimmer agreed with him.” Rose took another bite of the juice stick. “You remember my dad, don’t you?”
“Rose . . .” Kim shook her head, as if brushing dust out of her hair, and took a deep breath. “Yes. Of course I remember him. He called me Kimmy—nobody else did.” She took what was left of Rose’s juice stick. “He always had these great little jokes. Like, a man wants to take piano lessons. He’s told the first lesson costs fifty dollars but the second lesson is only five. He says, ‘Can’t we start with the second lesson?’” Kim started to smile, but it didn’t turn into an actual smile. “I remember you, too.”
“Well, I should hope so!” Rose looked across the cafeteria. “That wall video for the boys’ basketball team. Isn’t that Nick Winter? The cute one?”
Nick Winter was one of the most popular guys in tenth grade. He was in Rose’s bio class and virtual lab, last period of the day. His hair was always messy in what looked like a carefully planned way, and he was tall, like Rose, with a diamond in his front tooth. She’d seen it once, sparkling in sunlight. He was gorgeous. What would that diamond look like up close, if he leaned in to kiss her?
“I wonder if I should try out for the girls’ basketball team,” Rose said, thinking it would give her something in common with Nick.
“Basketball? You?”
“Why not? I’m tall. In middle school the coaches were all over me to join the team.”
“The tryouts were in September. It’s way too late.”
“Oh, too bad. Well, there’s always next year.” Rose smiled—a smile she was sure did not look Photoshopped.
“I’ll try to remember,” Kim said, half to herself.
“Remember what?”