The first bell rang, and we moved toward the doors, the talkers doing the talking and the listeners doing the listening. I was a listener. Today Jill was talking as if she was going to get a prize if she said a million words before homeroom. Her chin was a little too far up and her hands were making gestures that were a little too large. I glanced at Eddie. He didn’t look bothered. He was talking to Genevra, who was new this year; she’d moved in during the summer, near Jill. Maybe he’d met her there. Genevra was listening with her tongue not quite hanging out. Eddie could be very charming. Dreeping jerk.
I trailed behind a little, thinking about what I was going to say the next time someone asked me about Val. Ashley and Keisha were yakking away beside me. I glanced up when someone passed close by my other side.
I had to look up a long way. I’m not short, but Takahiro is majorly tall. He’s also majorly quiet most of the time. He’d grown up in Japan but when his mom died he was shipped over here to live with his dad. The story was that he didn’t know any English when he arrived but his dad enrolled him here anyway and told him to figure it out. Thanks, Dad. Nobody I knew had ever met his dad—he never came to any of the school stuff parents were invited to—and they lived in a gigantic house on the far side of town almost nobody ever saw either. I’d been home with Taks a few times so I could vouch for the fact that it existed and was enormous—and was full of Farworld art and silence. The only other person who lived there was Kay, the housekeeper. I’d met Kay. Kay was one of these people who thought food was always the answer. The way Taks ate, she was probably right. But I’d never met his dad, who traveled a lot, buying stuff for museums and then telling them how to install it and take care of it (according to Taks).
I didn’t remember Takahiro’s first couple of years here very well myself—he arrived the same year my dad died, and it took me a while to start noticing the rest of the world again. By the time I was noticing, Takahiro was famous for (a) not talking (b) doing origami all the time, which helped with (a) and (c) getting the highest grades in his class for almost everything. Since this included papers in English you have to assume his English was fine, at least at home alone and quiet with his books and ’top and not in the middle of the playground or the cafeteria with everyone screaming.
But he still didn’t talk all that much, he still had a slight not-Newworld accent when he did, and he still tended to leave out words like the when he was upset about something because you don’t have the in Japanese. Although I may be the only person who’s figured this out, since Takahiro didn’t get excited or upset in any of the usual ways. I noticed it because the tended to disappear when he talked about his dad.
So I looked up till my neck cracked and it was Takahiro. “Oh, Taks,” I said, and, not knowing I was going to do this, threw my arms around him. He had spent the last couple of Augusts at this super-whizzy brainiac camp his dad had found to stow him away at so Kay could have a holiday. He was such a good student the school didn’t make a fuss about him getting back a day or two late, as he had last year, for the beginning of term. Since I hadn’t heard from him beyond the occasional text saying stuff like “meteor shower last night. Electric” or “Have scientifically proven oatmeal here made of bleached beetle carapaces” (I’d answered that one “Want my aunt to sue for you? She’s good at it”) I’d assumed he wasn’t back yet.
He patted my back gently and I let go before I embarrassed him any more. He didn’t hang out with Jill and me and our crowd of loose connections: he was a solid-state brainiac, and hung with other brainiacs. I nodded to Jeremy and Gianni, on Takahiro’s other side, who nodded back cautiously: I was pretty sure the only things they ever hugged were their ’tops. They were either pretending they hadn’t seen me do anything gruesome or were having a telepathic conversation about the atomic number of Venus. (Science: not my best feature.) Probably the second.
“Bad summer?” said Takahiro.
“Not the best,” I said. “They got married.”
“Ah,” said Takahiro. “Yeah. They were going to.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You?”
“Not the best,” he said, and smiled. “Some new origami though. I’ll show you.”
“Great,” I said. “Can—” But the second bell went, and we had to hurry.
There was a mob at the back of Mrs. Andover’s homeroom as we all fought to get into the last row. Jill and I lost and were in the middle row, but at least we were together. Takahiro sat in front of me in the second row, which instantly made my seat the best in the whole classroom. Even slouching (Taks was always slouching) he was taller than anyone else. Under the roar of conversation Jill said to me, “We’re going to P&P tonight, okay? Laura says there’s a seriously cute new guy making pizza.”
When a gang of us went to P&P, we went later, after the family-supper rush. I took the bus home because Jill was going to the café after school, changed into my grubbies, hooked up Mongo (who had been very good and I only found the last shreds of a paper towel on the kitchen floor, although it might have started as a roll of them) and shot off for the bus that would take us to the shelter. By the time school started the days were already getting inconveniently short. I gave a few of my friends a quick walk (with Mongo accompanying) and settled down to cleaning kennels. I had to turn the lights on to see what I was doing.
Then Mongo and I went home on the bus and I spent some time looking gloomily at my course outlines. My main claim to scholastic fame is that I read a lot. I always liked stories but it got kind of out of control after Dad died. I read The Count of Monte Cristo in sixth grade (good choice, although Haydée is a dead battery) and War and Peace in seventh (bad choice, what a bunch of losers). But this will only get you so far. The class I was dreading most was something they were calling Enhanced Algebra. This was camouflage for college-track students who needed another math credit but had barely scraped through Algebra I and Geometry. But they’d found a unique way to punish us for being stupid: the textbook was enormous. It was not going to fit in my knapsack. So not only was it going to be a total pain to haul back and forth to school every day, carrying it was going to be this great badge of dishonor: Here’s One of the Dumb Ones. Jill and Takahiro were taking calculus. At least I had friends who could drag me through Enhanced Algebra—as they’d already dragged me through Algebra I and Geometry. They weren’t going to help me carry the book though.
Mom asked me how my first day went and I told her about the algebra book. Unfortunately that reminded her to ask if I’d accepted the place at Runyon yet—sent the paperwork back, she said, although most of it you can do slightly after the last minute on the webnet. No, I said.
“Why?” she asked, clearly surprised.
“I’m not sure I can afford it,” I mumbled.
“Of course you can!” she said. “We’ve been through all this. Tennel & Zeet agreed last spring to underwrite a student loan for you. And you can live at home—” She stopped. I didn’t say anything.
The silence turned loud and harsh, like a silverbug zapper. I went on brushing Mongo for about another minute while my ears rang and my skin blistered and then said, “I need a shower before Jill picks me up,” and fled. I heard Val come in the kitchen door as I ran upstairs, and I could hear Mom’s voice, really quiet so I couldn’t hear what she was saying, as I locked myself in the bathroom.