Sighing, she glanced at her watch.
“Is lunch almost o?ver?” Pittaya asked hopefully.
Anjuli shook her head. “Some people from EFS said they might stop by.”
“Effs?”I echoed.
“Experimental Film Society.” From her long-suffering tone, you would have thought I’d asked how to tie my shoes. “Nonlinear, nonnarrative, avant-garde cinema. It’sverypolitical.” She bit her lip. “They should have been here by now.”
I knew Anjuli well enough to read the anxious creasing of her brow: Maybe they weren’t coming at all. She’d been stood up. Snubbed. As a friend I should have shared her dismay, but a secret part of me was relieved.
Despite my ambivalence, I was struggling to come up with a neutral-yet-sympathetic response when a trio of strangers approached. Ordinarily my curiosity would have been piqued, but I was too startled by the change in Anjuli to pay them any mind. In an instant she’d gone from clouds to sun, her body language unfurling like a flower.
“Hey!” Where a moment ago every word had emerged weary and annoyed, her voice now crackled with energy. “This is Pittaya, the one I told you about. He’s an amazing painter.”
Greetings were mumbled. I waited for Anjuli to introduce me, but she was focused on the empty chairs. Later I would find it impossible to say how much time elapsed in tortured silence before it clicked: two chairs, three people. Anjuli barely looking at me throughout lunch. Her attempt to fob me off on random stew-making seamstresses. The simmering undercurrent of irritation.
How could I have been so foolish? She hadn’t been waiting formeto show up; she didn’t want me there at all.
I pushed my chair back. “I have a ... prior engagement.” The words were barely audible, addressed to no one in particular.
Pittaya gave a microscopic nod. Anjuli pretended not to hear, laughing with one of her new friends at some inconsequential remark. I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and find that I’d become ghostly and insubstantial. Invisible to the naked eye.
Gathering the scraps of my dignity, and my lunch, I fled.
Dear Diary,
I wonder if the popular crowd in high school will be as ruthless as the society mavens in an Edith Wharton novel. Probably that dynamic exists in any stratified society, with the upper echelon cutting people down to maintain their own power and position.
The good news is that I have no desire to be part of the ruling class or their cruel games. Give me a simple life with interesting companions, far from the movers and shakers. I’d rather be safe than sorry any day.
M.P.M.
Chapter 3
When at last the final bell signaledthe great stampede toward the parking lot, I snuck out a side door and cut across the sloping green lawn that always made my mother grumble about water shortages. I had decided to detour through downtown to reduce the risk of crossing paths with Anjuli. The charms of Millville’s quaint shopping district, the flower boxes and sidewalk cafes, were lost on me; I was seeking sanctuary, not an overpriced sandwich. The entire concept of sandwiches had been poisoned in the wake of the Shunning.
As I walked, my thoughts continued to circle the fateful lunchroom encounter, rewriting it in my head.Et tu, Anjuli?That would have been a good parting salvo, and not just because we’d readJulius Caesarlast year. It felt like a stabbing. She’d opened a hole in my side, and now everything was leaking out. Not blood and guts, but all my comfortable assumptions about the world and my place in it. My idea of interpersonal conflict was a discreet verbal jab:I take no leave of you. I send no compliments to your mother.Not silently repudiating your oldest friend.
And okay, maybe on some level I’d been aware that things between us had been strained of late, but it was like hearing an odd noise in the middle of the night. A reasonable person pulled the covers over her head and pretended everything was fine, because what were the odds of assassins creeping up the stairs ... or sitting next to you in the cafeteria?
If this were a novel, I would have staggered around moaning and wailing with the shock of betrayal. But you couldn’t do those things in real life, at least not where people from your high school might see. I was already an outcast; no point making things worse. The most I could allow myself was to slow my steps to a trudge, staring numbly at storefronts I’d seen a thousand times before.
A flurry of movement caught my eye. Someone was gesturing at me from inside Toil & Trouble, one of Millville’s many used bookstores. That was one of our town’s claims to fame: too small for big box superstores, yet bursting with booksellers and coffee shops. Or in the case of Toil & Trouble, a bookstore/café combo.
Momentary panic seized me at the thought that the person trying to get my attention might be Noreen, Toil & Trouble’s sour and oversharing proprietor, who assumed every customer had come in search of detailed accounts of her medical history. But no, it was Marco, one of my father’s grad students. I started to wave back before realizing he was beckoning me inside.
Soothing flute music heralded my entrance, the mingled scents of coffee, incense, and mildewed paper rising in welcome. It was a few degrees cooler inside, away from the direct heat of the sun. My spirits climbed fractionally. Why not hide out here instead of going straight home, where someone might ask about my day? I was heading for the fiction aisle when Marco edged in front of me.
“How’s it going?” he asked, stroking his overgrown beard. Viking chic was all the rage among English majors these days. His eyes darted to the door before returning to my face.
“Okay.” I had the strong impression he wasn’t really listening, despite the nod.
“You busy right now?”
“Not really.” Surely he wasn’t about to ask me to hang out. My mind dismissed the possibility as soon as it arose, which wasn’t quickly enough to arrest the heat I could feel rising into my cheeks.
Another furtive glance at the exit, and then his feet. “Listen, I really need to run to campus and talk to your dad, but his office hours will be over by the time I get off.”
