Eva stood there, holding a cotton-candy-pink sweatshirt with a rhinestone butterfly bedazzled onto the front. The kidney-shaped wings were purple and yellow and shamrock green. “I got this for you at work yesterday. I figured every girl should have something new to wear on the first day of high school.”
It was the ugliest thing Lexi had ever seen, better suited to a four-year-old than a fourteen-year-old, but she loved it instantly. No one had ever bought her something special for the first day of school. “It’s perfect,” she said, feeling a tightening in her throat. She’d only lived with her aunt for four days, and every hour she felt a little more at home. It scared her, that settling in. She knew how dangerous it could be to start liking a place. A person.
“You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I just thought—”
“I can’t wait to wear it. Thanks, Eva.”
Her aunt gave her a smile so bright it bunched up her cheeks. “I told Mildred you’d like it.”
“I do.”
Eva bobbed her head in a little nod and backed into the hallway, closing the door behind her. Lexi put on the pink sweatshirt and stepped into a pair of faded Target jeans. Then she filled her hand-me-down backpack with the notebooks, paper, and pens Eva had brought home from work last night.
In the kitchen, she found Eva standing by the sink, dressed now for work in her blue Walmart smock, lemon-yellow acrylic sweater, and jeans, drinking coffee.
Across the small, tidy space, their gazes met. Eva’s brown eyes looked worried. “Mrs. Watters worked hard to get you into Pine Island High. It’s one of the best schools in the state, but the school bus don’t come over the bridge, so you’ll have to take the county bus. Is that okay? Have I already told you all this?”
Lexi nodded. “It’s fine, Eva. Don’t worry. I’ve been riding buses for years.” She didn’t add that she’d often slept on their dirty seats when she and Momma had nowhere else to go.
“Okay, then.” Eva finished her coffee and rinsed out her cup, leaving it in the sink. “Well, you don’t want to be late on your first day. I’ll drive you. Let’s go.”
“I can take the bus—”
“Not on the first day. I got the late-shift special.”
Lexi followed her aunt out to the car. As they drove toward the island, Lexi studied her surroundings. She’d seen all of this on maps, but those little lines and markings only told so much of the story. For instance, she knew that Pine Island was twelve miles long and four miles wide; that it was accessible by ferry to downtown Seattle and by bridge to mainland Kitsap County. On the Port George side of the bridge, the land was tribal. Pine Island, she saw now, was not.
She could tell by the houses that the people who lived on the island were rich. The houses over here were practically mansions.
They turned off the highway and drove up a hill to the high school, which was a collection of squat redbrick buildings huddled around a flagpole. Like many of the schools Lexi had attended, Pine Island had obviously grown faster than expected. A collection of portables ringed the main campus. Eva parked in the empty bus lane and looked at Lexi. “These kids are no better’n you. You remember that.”
Lexi felt a rush of affection for this careworn woman who had taken her in. “I’ll be fine,” Lexi said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
Eva nodded. “Good luck,” she said at last.
Lexi didn’t say that luck was useless at a new school. Instead, she forced a smile and got out of the car. As she waved good-bye, a school bus pulled up behind Eva, and kids poured out of it.