like hoboes.
On a wall behind the counter a framed poster said POSITIVITY, beneath a photo of a blizzard-battered penguin cradling an egg on its feet. Below the frame was a cartoon cat who hated Mondays. Sejal rather thought the two posters canceled each other out and searched for a third to break the tie.
The office door opened and a boy entered. He was gathering up a rain poncho as if he’d just been holding it over his head, though a glimpse of the sky outside confirmed that it was just as sunny and cloudless as it had been a few minutes ago. The boy stood at the counter and waited.
The blond woman rose and said to the boy, 'Now then. It’s your first day?'
'What? No, I’m just late. I need a late pass.'
'It is my first day,' said Sejal, standing.
'Oh my dear!' the woman said to her. 'You’re our foreign exchange student, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me?'
'I’m sorry, I didn’t think it made a difference,' Sejal explained, though clearly it had already caused this woman to double the volume of her voice.
'Say-jall…Gangooly?' the woman ventured, reading Sejal’s name from a file. 'From India?'
'Yes. Kolkata.'
'It says here ‘Calcutta.’'
'It is the same thing.'
'And this is an Indian dress you’re wearing? It’s very exotic.'
The boy was frowning at it. 'It’s from Dark Matter,' he said. 'In the mall.'
The corn woman’s entire demeanor went stale as she turned to the boy.
'Name?'
'Um, Doug. Douglas Lee.'
'Reason for being tardy?'
'It…took me longer to get ready this morning than usual.'
The woman sniffed. 'That’s no excuse. I’m afraid I’m going to
'Right. Hey,' said Doug, pointing at Sejal’s file, 'that says she’s in the same Pre-Cal class as me first period. I can show her the way.'
Pre-Calculus was held in one of the temporary buildings ringing the parking lot, and Doug felt the sun crackling on his skin as he escorted Sejal. It could have felt worse, though — he had recently fed — and there was no way he was going to duck and cover around the one girl in school who hadn’t already decided he was a loser.
'I hate that word,' said Doug. '‘Tardy.’ Don’t you?'
'I had never heard it before a minute ago,' said Sejal.
'Oh. Well, school’s the only place you’ll ever hear it. It just means ‘late.’ And they invented it because they really needed a special word for kids that means ‘late’ but also sounds like ‘retard.’'
Sejal laughed. The sound of it rang Doug like a bell.
'So…' he said, 'when did you get here? To America?'
'A week ago.'
'You like it?'
'I like it. Everyone has been…very nice.'
'Yeah, well…high school’s just starting. Give it a few days.'
A brittle silence passed.
'So,' said Sejal. 'You are interested in fashion?'
'What?'
'You knew from where my dress had come. The boys back home would never—'
'Well…you know, I think guys can be interested in that kind of thing without being…you know,' Doug said in what he hoped would be taken for a confidently masculine voice. He only recognized the dress because he’d spent several summer afternoons at Dark Matter attempting to meet a nice girl with a vampire fetish.
They stopped outside the classroom door. The walk had been too short. And now Sejal was already frowning at him.
'What’s wrong?'
'I’m sorry,' said Sejal. 'Your face…you look like you’ve had a lot of sun, no?'
'Oh. Yeah. I spent a lot of the summer at the beach. You know.'
'I didn’t notice it in the office.'
'Also…' said Doug, 'also I caught some sort of sun allergy. My skin’s really sensitive.'
'Oh. I was going to ask you where you eat lunch,' said Sejal, 'but you wouldn’t want to eat outside, then, by the tree.'
She was inside the classroom door before he could answer.
11
First issue
'I DON’T WANT TO eat lunch by the tree,' said Jay to Doug as they walked from math class to Spanish. 'All the drama kids eat there. The popular ones.'
'Well, so what?' said Doug. 'You were in the musical, right? You played that waiter character — What was his name?'
'Waiter.'
'See?'
Specifically, the kids who ate by the tree were the ones who got good parts in the plays. Lead actors, plus maybe an assistant director or two. Less popular were the kids who got small parts and nonspeaking roles, but at least they were still members of the cast. Doug was crew. Crew were like the friends you called only when you needed help moving furniture.
Doug always tried out for a part in each production, and so far he’d always failed to get one. He often thought about how his life would change if he landed a lead role, but on some level he understood what everyone in Masque & Dagger understood: you weren’t popular because you’d played a lead role, you got lead roles because you were popular. Or, rather, your popularity and your distinguished high school drama career both stemmed from some effortless charisma that shone from your face and spilled from your lips — a shower of quarters when you opened your mouth, a trail of flowers and corpses in your wake.
Doug was just as nervous about lunch as Jay. More so, perhaps, as he assumed he was more highly regarded and therefore had more to lose. At least the rest of his classes were indoors, so he expected his skin to clear up by lunch.
'I should have brought a baseball cap from home,' he said. 'I was in such a rush.'
'You were hard to wake up,' said Jay.
'I only got like an hour of sleep! My body won’t let me sleep at night anymore. I maybe nodded off around six thirty.'
Jay had woken him at 7:30, and then again at 8:00. At some point, while he dozed, Doug had changed back to normal. Then he had had only thirty minutes to bike home, watch Mom and Dad pull out of the driveway, sneak into the empty house, shower, and change. In the foggy bathroom mirror he glanced quickly at himself to be sure. Pale. Hairless chest. The impression of being clammy even when he wasn’t clammy. Normal, or what passed for normal now.
The kids in Spanish class were broken up into groups of two and three, and Doug and Jay took up their usual spot near a poster from the Spanish board of tourism. Mr. Gonzales wandered around the room.
'She seems really nice,' said Doug.
