inadvertently get mud and leaves all over your sheets.
No, that doesn’t work.
Superficially, it sounds neat and logical, but it doesn’t prove out.
—
In the mirror over the locker room sinks, I check under my eyes. It’s getting to be an obsession. Pat concealer in a dotted line, smear it with my fingertip. Usually, the full-coverage complexion perfecter in Porcelain Pure gets the job done, but today it looks chalky and unattractive.
“She’s doing it again,” Palmer says behind me, in a voice that could eat through metal.
When I turn around, Autumn is standing in the middle of the locker room with her shoulders slumped and her ankles crossed awkwardly. We have a meet today, but she’s still wearing a faded black T-shirt instead of her uniform.
When the fluorescent tube in the ceiling flickers, she looks like someone out of a cheap horror movie—the girl who gets killed in the middle. Not the smartest or the prettiest or the most virtuous, but everyone thinks she’s basically okay and they’re sad when she’s dead.
“Autumn,” says Kendry, with her hands on her hips. “I thought we agreed for you to keep your random flyers off the board or I was going to have to report you for being too freakish to be allowed.”
Autumn doesn’t answer right away. A new flyer is tacked in the middle of the board. It says, in heavy block letters:
MISSING UNICORN IF SEEN, PLEASE GO HOME. YOU’RE TOTALLY FUCKED UP.
The drawing is good. It’s of a Boston terrier with a horn taped to its forehead.
I think I catch Autumn looking at me from the corner of my eye, just for a second, but then she glances away, letting her bangs fall in front of her face.
After a lazy beat, she sighs and flicks her hair behind her ear with one coolly deliberate middle finger. “And I thought we agreed that you’d stop doing perverse things with tennis equipment.”
“God,” Palmer says, looking genuinely affronted. “You don’t have to be a
bitch
about it. She was only joking.”
Autumn just stares back with the same flat, sleepy expression she always has. Then she nods. “Oh. Oh, sorry, I get it now.” Her voice is husky. “No, that
is
funny. I think you might have messed up the punch line, though. I think it’s actually supposed to be
go fuck yourself.
”
For a second, I’m almost hysterically sure that I’m about to laugh out loud. Palmer and Kendry are both looking incensed. I wonder if this is what international correspondents mean when they say tensions have escalated. The air practically crackles with angry static.
Then Jamie yells down the hall that we have five minutes until the bus and Palmer and Kendry snatch their Windbreakers and turn for the door. When they leave, the room gets so quiet it feels like it’s starting to rust.
Autumn’s still standing under the gently flickering light. When she speaks, she sounds almost drugged. “You know what I don’t get? The fact that you do this shit voluntarily. I mean, forgive me, but what is the
point
?”
At the sink, I rest my hand on the faucet and take a beat before responding. “Excuse me?”
She covers the distance between us in four purposeful strides. “You. And them. Don’t even tell me you think they’re your same species.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How very mercenary.”
I lean away, trying not to look surprised, but I feel my eyebrows perk up anyway. “At least I know how to exist without antagonizing people.”
“There but for the grace of God or whatever.”
I splash some tap water through my bangs, pushing them off my forehead, using a strip of pre-wrap for a headband. “If you think it’s all so meaningless, why are you even here? No one is making you.”
She’s different now, in the empty room. Her expression is cool and alert. “This whole sports and activities thing is just my mom’s latest campaign for conformity, okay? Left to my own devices, I’m not a joiner.”
The face I maintain is carefully neutral—my
No, that doesn’t work.
Superficially, it sounds neat and logical, but it doesn’t prove out.
—
In the mirror over the locker room sinks, I check under my eyes. It’s getting to be an obsession. Pat concealer in a dotted line, smear it with my fingertip. Usually, the full-coverage complexion perfecter in Porcelain Pure gets the job done, but today it looks chalky and unattractive.
“She’s doing it again,” Palmer says behind me, in a voice that could eat through metal.
When I turn around, Autumn is standing in the middle of the locker room with her shoulders slumped and her ankles crossed awkwardly. We have a meet today, but she’s still wearing a faded black T-shirt instead of her uniform.
When the fluorescent tube in the ceiling flickers, she looks like someone out of a cheap horror movie—the girl who gets killed in the middle. Not the smartest or the prettiest or the most virtuous, but everyone thinks she’s basically okay and they’re sad when she’s dead.
“Autumn,” says Kendry, with her hands on her hips. “I thought we agreed for you to keep your random flyers off the board or I was going to have to report you for being too freakish to be allowed.”
Autumn doesn’t answer right away. A new flyer is tacked in the middle of the board. It says, in heavy block letters:
MISSING UNICORN IF SEEN, PLEASE GO HOME. YOU’RE TOTALLY FUCKED UP.
The drawing is good. It’s of a Boston terrier with a horn taped to its forehead.
I think I catch Autumn looking at me from the corner of my eye, just for a second, but then she glances away, letting her bangs fall in front of her face.
After a lazy beat, she sighs and flicks her hair behind her ear with one coolly deliberate middle finger. “And I thought we agreed that you’d stop doing perverse things with tennis equipment.”
“God,” Palmer says, looking genuinely affronted. “You don’t have to be a
bitch
about it. She was only joking.”
Autumn just stares back with the same flat, sleepy expression she always has. Then she nods. “Oh. Oh, sorry, I get it now.” Her voice is husky. “No, that
is
funny. I think you might have messed up the punch line, though. I think it’s actually supposed to be
go fuck yourself.
”
For a second, I’m almost hysterically sure that I’m about to laugh out loud. Palmer and Kendry are both looking incensed. I wonder if this is what international correspondents mean when they say tensions have escalated. The air practically crackles with angry static.
Then Jamie yells down the hall that we have five minutes until the bus and Palmer and Kendry snatch their Windbreakers and turn for the door. When they leave, the room gets so quiet it feels like it’s starting to rust.
Autumn’s still standing under the gently flickering light. When she speaks, she sounds almost drugged. “You know what I don’t get? The fact that you do this shit voluntarily. I mean, forgive me, but what is the
point
?”
At the sink, I rest my hand on the faucet and take a beat before responding. “Excuse me?”
She covers the distance between us in four purposeful strides. “You. And them. Don’t even tell me you think they’re your same species.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How very mercenary.”
I lean away, trying not to look surprised, but I feel my eyebrows perk up anyway. “At least I know how to exist without antagonizing people.”
“There but for the grace of God or whatever.”
I splash some tap water through my bangs, pushing them off my forehead, using a strip of pre-wrap for a headband. “If you think it’s all so meaningless, why are you even here? No one is making you.”
She’s different now, in the empty room. Her expression is cool and alert. “This whole sports and activities thing is just my mom’s latest campaign for conformity, okay? Left to my own devices, I’m not a joiner.”
The face I maintain is carefully neutral—my
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