Shelter

Oookay. “Then thanks, no, I’m good.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

When I finished buying lunch, Spoon-that was how I thought of him now-was waiting for me.

“Where you going to sit?” he asked.

Since Ashley had vanished, I’d been eating alone outside. “I’m not sure.”

Spoon started to follow me. “You’re big and you keep to yourself. Like Shrek.”

Not much to say to that.

“I could be your Donkey. You know?”

Oookay. If I went outside, he’d follow, so I looked for a safe place inside to sit.

“Or your Robin. Like Batman and Robin. Or Sancho Panza. You ever read Don Quixote? Me neither, but I saw the musical Man of La Mancha. I love musicals. So does my dad. My mom, not so much. She likes cage fighting, like the MMA. That’s Mixed Martial Arts. Dad and me, we go to a musical once a month. Do you like musicals?”

“Sure,” I said, scanning the cafeteria for a safe haven.

“My dad’s cool like that. Taking me to musicals and stuff. We’ve seen Mamma Mia three times. It’s awesome. The movie, not so much. I mean, Pierce Brosnan sings like someone shot him in the throat with an arrow. Dad gets discount tickets because he works at the school. He’s the janitor here. But don’t ask him to give you access to the girls’ locker room, okay? Because I asked and he said no dice. Dad can be strict like that, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

There was a nearly empty table in the so-called outcast corner. The only person sitting there was my unappreciative damsel in distress-Ema or Emma-I still hadn’t learned her name.

“So about being your Donkey?”

“I’ll get back to you,” I told Spoon.

I hurried over and put my tray next to hers. She had the heavy black makeup thing going on, shoe-polish black hair, black clothes, black boots, pale skin. She was goth or emo or whatever they called that look now. Tattoos covered her forearms. One snaked up her shirt and around her neck. She looked up at me with a face that could not look more sullen without actually being punched.

“Oh, great,” she said. “The pity sit.”

“Pity sit?”

“Think about it.”

I did. I had never heard that one before. “Oh, I get it. Like I pity you for sitting alone. So I sit with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “And here I pegged you for a dumb jock.”

“I’m trying to be a Renaissance man.”

“You have Mrs. Friedman too, I see.” She looked to her left, then her right. “Where’s your preppy girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

“So from sitting with the prissy pretty girl to sitting with me.” Ema/Emma shook her head. “Talk about a big step down.”

I was getting tired of thinking of her as Ema/Emma. “What’s your name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I heard a kid call you Ema. I heard Ms. Owens call you Emma.”

She picked up her fork and started playing with her food. I noticed now that she had pierced eyebrows. Ouch. “My real first name is Emma. But everyone calls me Ema.”

“Why? I just want to know what to call you.”

Grudgingly, she said, “Ema.”

“Okay. Ema.”

She played with her food some more. “So what’s your deal? I mean, when you’re not rescuing the fat girl.”

“Your bitter act,” I said. “It’s a little over the top.”

“You think?”

“I would dial it back.”

She shrugged. “You might be right. So you’re a new kid, right?”

“I am.”

“Where you from?”

“We traveled around at lot,” I said. “How about you?”

She grimaced. “I’ve lived in this town my whole life.”

“Doesn’t seem to be too bad.”

“I don’t see you fitting in yet.”

“I don’t want to fit in.”

Ema liked that reply. I looked down at my tray. I picked up my spoon and thought of, well, Spoon. I shook my head and smiled.

“What?” Ema asked.

“Nothing.”

It was weird to think about this, but when my father was my age, he sat in this very cafeteria and ate his lunch. He was young and had his whole life ahead of him. I glanced around the room and wondered where he would have sat, who he would’ve talked to, if he laughed as easily back then as when I’d known him.

These thoughts became like a giant hand pushing down on my chest. I blinked and put down the spoon.

“Hey, you okay?” Ema asked.

“Fine.”

I thought about Bat Lady and what she had said to me. Crazy ol’ bat-hey, maybe that’s where she got the nickname. You don’t just get a rep like hers for nothing. You get it for doing crazy things. Like telling a boy who saw his father die in a car crash that the man he missed so much was still alive.

I flashed to the day just eight months ago when we landed in Los Angeles-my father, my mother, and me. My parents wanted to give me a place where I could go to high school and play for a real basketball team and maybe go to college.

Nice plans, right?

Now my dad was dead and my mother was shattered.

“Ema?” I said.

She looked at me warily.

“Do you know anything about the Bat Lady?”

Ema frowned. When she did, the mascara on her eyes folded up and then spread out like a fan. “Now I get it.”

“What?”

“Why you sat here,” Ema said. “You figured-what?-the crazy fat girl would know all about the crazy old Bat Lady.”

“What? No.”

Ema rose with her tray. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

“No, wait, you don’t understand-”

“I understand fine. You did your good deed.”

“Will you stop that? Ema?”

She hurried away. I took a step to follow her and stopped. Two big muscle-heads wearing varsity football jackets snickered. One came up on my right, the other on my left. The one on my right-the name stenciled in cursive on his chest was BUCK-slapped me too hard on the shoulder and said, “Looks like you struck out, huh?”

The other muscle-head-stenciled name: TROY-laughed at that. “Yeah,” Troy said. “Struck out. With the fat chick.”

Back to Buck: “Fat and ugly.”

Troy: “And you still struck out.”

“Dude.”