She cupped her hand over my ear. “Kylie. In math, I heard him telling people.”
“And did she sit with him?”
“Nope,” Harper said, making a popping sound on the p.
It was hard to process what I was hearing. Silas Blackhurst had always been my neighborhood bike-riding buddy, a skinny kid with scabby knees and a chipped front tooth who shared my taste in bad jokes. The thought of him with a crush on Kylie Shen—it made no sense.
Although, to be honest, I’d sort of lost touch with Silas lately. The whole time I was in the hospital and all the months I was home recuperating, he sent me silly texts and links to YouTube videos. But he never visited. So maybe I’d missed something.
Harper led us over to some empty desks in the back of the classroom, and I sat, never taking my eyes off Silas. When Kylie and Aria walked in the door, his face lit up; when they sat next to this chatty dark-skinned girl named Addison Ventura, his shoulders slumped. Probably everybody could read his body language, even Kylie, if she wanted to. I mean, it was so obvious it was embarrassing.
“Crap,” I murmured to Harper. “Poor Silas.”
Harper shrugged. “That’s how it was first period too.”
“Why does he even like Kylie?”
Harper seemed surprised by the question. “Can’t you tell? She’s really pretty and cool. And fun.”
I didn’t argue, because I knew that Kylie was exactly the sort of girl boys crush on. My problem was that I couldn’t see Silas being one of those boys. He’d never liked girls before. He’d never even noticed that I was a girl. We’d just always been friends: two kids on bikes, patrolling the neighborhood for evil elves. On the lookout for jokes, the dumber the better.
A youngish woman with long brown hair and cherry-red lipstick appeared at the front of the classroom, introducing herself as Ms. Farrell. Instead of teacher clothes, she was wearing black leggings and a tee with the cover of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—and she’d decorated the walls with photos of dogs she’d rescued and given names like Hermione and Frodo. Right away I could tell Ms. Farrell wasn’t boring—and when she announced that for our first unit we’d be reading Greek and Roman myths, I was ecstatic.
But not yet, she said. Today she wanted us to write a paragraph or two describing one thing we wanted people to know about us.
Aria’s hand shot up. “You mean it could be anything? Like our favorite pizza topping?”
Ms. Farrell smiled. “It should be something meaningful, like something you believe passionately, or your favorite pastime, or an experience that affected you in some deep way. Something people should know so they get who you really are.”
“What do you mean by ‘people’?” Malik challenged her. “People in general? People in this room? Or just you?”
“Let’s say people in this class,” Ms. Farrell replied. “But if it’s something only I should know, please make a note of that, and I’ll make sure we don’t share it with the class.”
My heart sank. This was exactly the kind of assignment I’d been dreading. What could I possibly write about myself? My favorite sport is growing hair. My favorite pastime is resting. I passionately believe in blood donation . . . I mean, I passionately did NOT want to write a cancer thing. My life wasn’t The Norah Levy Story, Starring Cancer. And cancer wasn’t what I wanted people—or even just one teacher—to know about me.
Okay, but what was? After the last two years, I felt hollowed out, like an old tree trunk.
I peeked around the classroom. People were ripping paper out of their notebooks, sighing, writing, tapping their toes, twirling their hair, biting their fingernails, crossing out words, erasing. Even Silas, who hated to write anything longer than a text.
And now Harper was eyeing my still-empty page. “Just write anything,” she murmured.
“Like what?” I murmured back.
“I don’t know. I’m writing about an art project. Write about a book you read.”
I groaned. “You know how many books I’ve read, Harper? It’s all I’ve done.”
For a second I thought about Griffin, how I almost blew my secret. Fortunately, I hadn’t told him something like: Yeah, for the past two years, I’ve basically stayed in bed, reading about mythical creatures.
A hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, Ms. Farrell was smiling down at me. As soon as I saw that smile, I knew she knew everything. And it was stupid to think she wouldn’t have known. Probably all the teachers knew. Even the office ladies and the janitors.
“Are you having trouble thinking of something to write, Norah?” she asked kindly.
See? She knew my name! I didn’t tell her, so how else would she know it?
“Yeah, I guess,” I admitted.
“Well, try to keep it simple, then,” she said. “I always tell students who are having trouble thinking up a topic, or getting started: Just focus on what’s right in front of you. Think small, not big.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said. Ms. Farrell walked away, leaving a fancy-soap smell behind her.
Focus on what was right in front of me? Right in front of me was a purple gel pen. My favorite “writing utensil,” as Griffin called it. What a weird expression. Forks and knives were utensils, not pens. Although it was kind of cute he said that. Come to think of it, he’d never returned my green “writing utensil.” I needed to get it back from him, which meant we’d have to have another conversation.
And thinking about that cheered me up a little, I guess.
So, just before the end-of-period bell rang, I wrote:
My favorite writing utensil is my purple gel pen. I use it for doodles, which I wouldn’t call my favorite pastime, but it does pass the time—haha. What I passionately like about doodling is that it doesn’t matter. Nobody asks what your doodles mean or counts them or compares them to last week’s doodle. No one wants to know if your doodles are finished, because finishing isn’t the point when it
