Underneath by Sarah Jamila Stevenson

and talking about some band they all saw over the weekend. When I peer in at them, they look at me like I’ve lost my mind. If they only knew.
    I move on. The grass next to the auditorium is too wet for sitting. Inside the auditorium is where the drama geeks hang out. I peek in the side door and see a few people from my history class, two guys and three girls I don’t like because they’re always all over each other in public and oozing fake friendliness all over everyone else. Fake friendliness is the last thing I want right now. Instead, I try some of the open classrooms, but they’re mostly full of students taking shelter from the light rain.
    One of the science classrooms is nearly empty: just a group of guys playing Dungeons and Dragons. By now I’m kind of hungry, so I’m fully prepared to ignore them and sit down for lunch, but one of them leers at me through a shaggy fringe of hair and says, “ I’m a seventh-level elf wizard” and looks at me expectantly. I beat a hasty retreat. I know it’s a game, but I don’t want to pretend I’m someone I’m not any more.
    I’m about to give up and go eat in my car when I remember there’s an awning at the back of campus, sandwiched between the decrepit little art building and the portable classrooms. I think there’s even a lone picnic table back there.
    The table is empty. I feel an amazing rush of relief, and I sit down. It’s quiet back here. I can faintly hear some football players yelling out by the bleachers, and the strains of innocuous, principal-approved pop music drift over from the lunch area. But mostly I just hear the steady dripping of rain from the gutter onto the awning, and the hum of traffic on the street behind the school. It’s nice. The orange paint on the bench is peeling and there’s some black-marker graffiti on the table, but I think I could get used to eating here.
    The rest of the day drags, though, and it’s hard to pay attention in class. Images of Cassie and her mean laugh, of Spike walking away and not even bothering to defend me, keep floating into my mind. A vindictive little part of me wishes something bad would happen to one of them so they’d know how I feel. In sixth-period physics there’s a pop quiz. I know I’m going to bomb it; I leave a fourth of the questions blank, but I can’t bring myself to care. When I hand it in, Ms. Rabb takes one look at it and glances at me with concern—a watered-down version of the Stare of Pity—but I just give her a vague, fake smile and go back to my desk.
    Finally, the day is over and I’m home. It’s quiet, and no-
body is here to laugh at me, or quiz me, or even talk to me. I toss my baseball cap and backpack onto the faded old Persian carpet on our living room floor, and switch on the TV. I try halfheartedly to do some history reading, but give up partway through and lose myself in a reality show in which people’s friends set them up for tasteless pranks involving public humiliation.

    The next day, fourth period, I’m staring out the grimy window of the library at the empty lunch area. Cassie and Marc ignored me in class today; even Elisa looked the other way when we passed each other between periods. Some friends they turned out to be. Maybe it’s just as well. But there’s a part of me that wishes nothing had changed .
    Nobody shows up for chemistry tutoring. The clock over the librarian’s desk ticks away the minutes way too slowly.
    After stewing over everything a while, I get kind of mad. I’m not the one who needs to apologize, to make excuses. I’m not going to whine at them or beg them to take me back into the group. They’re the ones with the attitude, not me.
    At lunch, when I pass by their table on my way to buy a soda, I see their little identical-zombie clique and feel … less bad, anyway, than I did yesterday. At least today I’m not