Читать книгу Invisible i - Stella Lennon - Страница 11

Bio and English were a total blur except for when Ms. Burger pointed out that today was March fifteenth and warned us to “beware the Ides of March.” Her words created a flicker of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Could there be some connection between the date and Amanda’s prank? But what? I couldn’t even remember why we were supposed to beware the Ides of March, and by the time Ms. Burger told us to open our books to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, I’d gone back to ignoring what was going on around me, just focusing on the clock as I counted the seconds until last period.

I was totally sure Amanda was going to be in math class, so sure that I actually jogged the last fifty yards to the room. Even though I was pretty confused and starting to get more than a little annoyed about everything that had gone down over the course of the morning, it would be such a relief to see her. Was she really friends with Hal and Nia? Why had she spray-painted Thornhill’s car and our lockers? I’d run over in my head what I was going to say to her so many times I practically had it memorized.

It didn’t mean anything that she wasn’t there when I pushed open the door of room S-51 (when was Amanda ever on time for anything?). It didn’t even mean anything that she hadn’t shown up by the time the late bell rang. But as the minutes ticked by and Mrs. Watson took us through the homework problems (problems Amanda and I had just done together the night before), the excitement I’d felt started to morph into frustration. Where was she? It was one thing to cut school; god knows Amanda did that fairly regularly. It was another thing to cut school on a day when you’d pulled a prank that got several other people in mad trouble. Of course, knowing Amanda, she would just respond with a raised eyebrow or a quotation of unknown origins to direct questions she didn’t care to answer.

That was so not going to fly this time.

It’s not exactly a major problem when I can’t concentrate in math class. When I don’t pay attention in history, I know I’m a goner on the next test. But math is totally different. Math is like … okay, you know when you’re shopping for jeans and you try on ten million pairs and each one is just a little too tight, or a little too loose, or it’s got some freaky acid washed thing going on, and then all of a sudden, right when you’re like, Oh, forget it, I’m just going to live without a new pair of jeans, you try on one last pair and as they slide up your legs it’s … it’s like you were born to wear them. That’s what math is like for me, like a language I was somehow born knowing.

Actually, I probably was born knowing it. My mom is one of the best mathematicians in the world. I mean, I might be good at math, but she’s brilliant. Like, if you ask me to multiply two three-digit numbers, I can do it in my head pretty fast, but that’s nothing compared to my mom. If we’re at the grocery store and she’s trying to estimate what everything’s going to cost, she can glance at the cart and figure out to the penny what the total’s going to be. And if you ask her in July how many days until Christmas, she can tell you the answer in less than a second.

For me, it’s more … well, when Mrs. Watson puts a new concept up on the board, like when we learned sine and cosine this fall, it feels like the whole time she’s talking and writing stuff down, I’m just thinking, Right. Right. Of course. That makes total sense. I can’t really explain how I understand something when it comes to math—I just understand it.

That was why I was so totally bummed back when Mrs. Watson asked me to catch up the new girl in our class, Amanda Valentino, on one of her first days in school, maybe Halloween or the day after. First of all, I was already half out of my mind because of everything that was going on with my mom, but even when I’m functioning normally, I’m lousy at relaying math concepts to other people. Traci used to ask me to help her with her math homework when we first became friends; after I tried to teach her a few times, she got so irritated by my inability to show her how I was getting my answers that she just told me to forget it. So I knew assigning me to teach Amanda Valentino two months' worth of math was destined to end in failure, but I mean, what can you say? I’m sorry, Mrs. Watson, I swear I wasn’t cheating, but there’s no way I can explain my work to another human being.

Instead I just said what you always say when a teacher asks you to do something. “Sure.”

“How long have you lived in Orion?”

“My whole life.” My answer was more terse

than polite because Amanda struck me as kind of weird. First of all, she was wearing bright, bright red lipstick, which looked even brighter because her face was super pale, like she’d powdered an already Über-white complexion. She wasn’t ugly or anything. Actually, she was pretty; not like Heidi and Traci and Kelli are pretty, not the kind of pretty you’d find in a catalog, but there was something about her that would definitely make you look at her twice if you saw her in a crowd. It might have had something to do with what she was wearing—her black hair was pulled back in a tight, high bun held up by two crisscrossed chopsticks, and she was wearing a gray dress that was really plain but somehow chic, like something you might see on a Vogue model. Around her neck was a thin blue ribbon necklace that disappeared under the front of the dress. It was nothing that anyone at Endeavor would ever wear.

“That must be wonderful, living in one place.” She sounded wistful, which was surprising considering I’d heard she grew up all over the world. I mean, why would someone with a childhood

like that envy someone who’d spent her life in Orion, Maryland, capital of nothing?

“I guess,” I said. Then I felt bad for being so rude. “Um, do you have a favorite country?”

“Country?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, realizing too late that it might freak her out to know the Endeavor population was already gossiping about her. “I heard you grew up all over the world.”

Amanda laughed this totally unself-conscious laugh that I wouldn’t have expected to come from someone looking so tailored. “Fascinating. Who told you that?”

I’d heard it from the note Heidi passed me in history.

I shrugged. It wasn’t like the name Heidi Bragg would mean anything to Amanda. “A friend.”

Amanda nodded. “And what else did she say about me?”

Okay, the rest of the note so did not need to be repeated. “That was all,” I said. Amanda gave me a look that said she knew I was lying. It was a look I’d get to know very well over the next few months. “Did you not grow up all over the world?” I asked,

not one hundred percent sure what “citizen of the world” actually meant.

“Not a bit,” said Amanda. “I grew up in this country.”

I thought it was strange how she didn’t name a city or even a state. “Where?”

“Here, there, and everywhere.” Her smile was impossible to read.

“Oh,” I said. I mean, what are you supposed to say to something like that? (It wasn’t until much later that I would learn about her penchant for quoting others.) “Well, welcome to Orion.”

“Thanks.” She nodded, looking around the corridor where we were sitting. “I really feel I’m going to like it here.”

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “Not much here.” Okay, I realize I wasn’t exactly being the Orion Township Welcoming Committee, but I wasn’t feeling all sunshine and light right about then. My mom had been gone for two weeks, and my dad was already starting to lose it.

Amanda didn’t seem to mind my negativity, and she didn’t ask why I was so down on my hometown. Instead, she continued to nod, like I’d just given her a really helpful, insightful piece of information. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

I wasn’t in the mood to keep talking. I wasn’t in the mood to do much of anything besides stare out the window and figure out when my family was going to get back to normal. I knew attempting (and failing) to teach someone math wasn’t exactly going to improve my mood, but anything was better than chatting.

“So,” I said. “Sine and cosine.” I flipped open my book to the page we were on, then started to work backward to the beginning of the chapter.

“Right,” said Amanda. “About that.” Suddenly she sounded embarrassed. I was kind of surprised given that she’d been so cool and collected when Mrs. Watson had introduced her while making her stand at the front of the class like livestock to be judged at a county fair.

I held my book open at page 217 and looked up at her. On her index finger was an enormous silver ring shaped like a bunch of grapes, and she was twirling it around distractedly.

“What ’about that'?"

“I actually know about sines. And cosines. My father taught them to me. I’m sure that sounds completely strange to you,” she added quickly.

“No it doesn’t,” I said honestly. “My mom knows tons of math. She’s always teaching me stuff.” I was kind of psyched. All my friends thought it was really bizarre that my mom and I talked about math so much. Back when we were first hanging out, Heidi asked me one day what I’d done the night before, and I said my mom and I had used her telescope to find M31 in the Andromeda Galaxy, only we’d purposely used an out-of-date star planner so we’d have to do the computations to figure out where to look in the night sky. When I finished, Heidi looked at me like I’d just confessed to being a victim of domestic violence.

“Oh, this is such a relief,” said Amanda. “I was debating between pretending not to understand what you were talking

about or saying I learned it at school. I didn’t want you to think I was odd.”

Now I was the one who laughed a real laugh. “Wow, I’m so the last person to think that you’re a freak for learning about math with one of your parents. And you would have been really sorry if you’d pretended not to know what sine and cosine are. I’m the worst teacher.”

“Me too!” Amanda’s voice was a shout, and she put her hand over her mouth. “Me too,” she repeated, whispering this time. “I can never explain how I got my answers on tests. I just … I see them. Teachers are always accusing me of cheating.” She practically glowed with pleasure.

“That used to happen to me!” I said, almost as loudly as she’d spoken before. And then we were both laughing, like being accused of cheating on a math test was the funniest thing that could ever happen.

Amanda stopped laughing first and gave me a look that lasted so long I started to get weirded out. “What?” I asked, rubbing under my nose self-consciously. Did I have a horrible embarrassing something?

“Do you ever get a feeling about the future?” she asked. Her eyes were enormous—a deep, storm-cloud gray that I would later learn changed color with the light.

“What, you mean, like, ESP?” My nose felt clean, and I put my hand down.

“Not exactly,” she said, gently tapping the tip of her pen against her top lip. “More like the sense that something is destined.”

“Um …” Okay, this was getting a little intense. A second ago we’d been joking about math tests and now we were suddenly onto destiny?

Amanda didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t answering her. She leaned forward and touched me lightly on the shoulder with her pen. “It’s you,” she said.

“What?” I said, not sure how to communicate to her that she was starting to freak me out.

Oblivious to my monosyllabic, unenthusiastic response, and with a sure smile on her face, she exhaled, leaned back against the wall, and closed her eyes. “You’re going to be my guide.” Her voice was quiet.

Even though I had no idea what Amanda was talking about, I felt my heart pounding in my chest. “Your guide?” I asked, and my voice was as low as hers had been.

Amanda opened her eyes and stared straight at me. “I knew I’d find you,” she said.

And since I didn’t know what to say back, I didn’t say anything at all.

Occasionally a geological occurrence takes place that is so dramatic, it actually shifts the earth on its axis. A tsunami. An earthquake. If you could go into outer space and film the planet at the exact moment the event occurs, you would literally witness the world move.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that is what meeting Amanda Valentino would be for me.