Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo Page A

inquisition.
    “Yes!”
    “Who?”
    “You don’t know them. They’re freshmen.”
    “What are their names?”
    Oh jeez. “Well,” I say, “their names. Are.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Lisa! Lisa and Caroline.”
    “Seriously?”
    I would never, ever burden her by saying it, but I wish Kai would at least try to be near me once in a while during the school day. Sophomore classes, alternate lunch schedule, and it’s like she’s on the moon. But I am grateful she is kept safe, buoyed above the high school humiliation crap by her own firmly established self-esteem, track team friends, and an admiring school administration who hang banners in the hallways reading “Congratulations, Kai, Division IV Cross-Country Championship Qualifier!”
    Months into the school year and I remain a friendless parasite in this unfamiliar labyrinth, adored by teachers but virtually unnoticed by my classmates except for the few who mock the low-hanging fruit of our living in a graveyard. And then there’s Lisa and Caroline, aggressively lip-lined freshman ringleaders who at the start of the year seemed to have enough fun mocking my still poverty-stricken wardrobe, but who now actively hate my guts for breaking stupid standardized test curves in every class we have together, putting their stellar cheerleading careers in jeopardy. They shove me into cold metal lockers between classes, and I am amazed they haven’t yet come to Sierrawood to mess with me.
    “Mrs. McKinstry,” Lisa had huffed this afternoon in English Lit, not bothering to raise her hand. “Can I move to a new seat?”
    “ May you please do what?”
    Lisa rolled her eyes. “ May I please move?”
    “Why?”
    She’d snapped an enormous wad of gum. “Be cause I can’t concentrate! Leigh has worn those same jeans like ten days in a row, and the smell is making me ill. For real. They’re filthy, there’s like, mud or something on them. Formaldehyde.”
    Mortuary. You’re thinking of a mortuary.
    Mrs. McKinstry peered over her glasses at me, then back at Lisa. “Formaldehyde?”
    “Yes. Can I— may I —just move?”
    “No, you may not.”
    “Then can you move Leigh?”
    “Spit that gum out.”
    Lisa growled and inched her seat as far from mine as she could, pulled her shirt collar up over her mouth and nose. Caroline laughed hysterically, cried her mascara off.
    I squirmed and pretended to read, my eyes stinging, stomach burning.
    I have worn these jeans for ten days. I’ve been wearing them since before summer and they were my only pair then, too, and now they are also too short. But they aren’t dirty. I wash them. All the time. They’re just all I’ve got. I could remedy the situation, but the thought of asking Wade and Meredith or spending that much horrible icing-on-the-cake grave money still gives me hives. I can’t do it.
    In the Mendocino Cancer Pink Sweatpants Era, Emily’s mom begged me to let her take me shopping with Emily. Her well-intended generosity mortified me. “It’s just until Kai’s better,” I pleaded when she was on the verge of calling Meredith to discuss the “obvious-neglect-come-on-Leigh-this-is-ridiculous” situation with her. “It’s not a big deal, I like these pants, right now is just not a good time. …” I put her off month after month, embarrassed, until Emily finally got her to stop offering. But when the pink sweatpants’ elastic waist inevitably gave out and I began hitching them up with a big safety pin, her mom wordlessly handed me a J. C. Penney bag one day after school. I hid in the bathroom to pull on a beautiful brand-new pair of slightly too big jeans. I wore them every day and we never said a word about it. I’m wearing them still.
    I will not disrupt Kai’s happiness at school, and not even in retrospect will I ever let her know my time, care, and attention have ever been divided, that while she lay suffering I was sometimes purposely away from her, wearing new jeans, happy with Emily, cared for by