Caroline felt her skin prickle. It was, of course, true that she wasn’t supposed to be around the table. She certainly did not want to be there. But it sounded to her like this girl was saying something else.
She’s not even supposed to be here. Here, as in the table? Or here, as in Pinecone Arts Academy? Caroline tapped her hands against the edge of her shirt.
“Now,” Ms. Williamson said in a voice Caroline recognized as strained. “It was just an accident. I’m sure Caroline is very sorry. Aren’t you?”
Cheeks blushing furiously, Caroline nodded. In the periphery of her vision, she could see a familiar shape messing around with pens. So Micah had been able to take advantage of the distraction.
Having at least attempted an apology, Caroline raced back to the relative safety of her own table. Her giraffe’s sad face greeted her. A few minutes later, Micah slid into the seat next to hers.
“Good job with the distraction,” he said.
Caroline did not feel like she had done a good job at anything.
She made a half-hearted attempt to add more definition to her giraffe’s spots and tried very hard not to look at Marissa’s table. After just a few strokes of her carver, yet another scream came from the other side of the room.
“Goodness,” Ms. Williamson said as she hurried over to Marissa’s table. “Is there a problem? Again?”
Maybe Caroline was just imagining it, but she thought their teacher sounded more tired than usual.
“Yes, there is a problem!” Marissa said. Caroline winced at the volume.
Marissa held up her drawing. Even from the other side of the room, Caroline could make out the red splotches mixed in among the intricately drawn flowers. Caroline flapped her hands.
She deserves it, Caroline reminded herself. Besides, it was just fake blood—even if it looked awfully real.
Next to her, Micah stood completely still. But Caroline could make out the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips.
“Good job, Finkel,” he whispered to her. “We did it!”
Caroline did her best to smile back, but succeeded only in a twisted grimace.
The color her brain painted was a dark, dreary gray.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE INTERROGATION
For the next several class periods, Caroline tiptoed through Pinecone Arts Academy filled with the certain dread that she was about to be caught. Every time she entered a new classroom, her heart pounded. She was positive that Principal Jenkins was going to walk in at any moment to drag her into the office. Caroline could practically see the frown on the principal’s face as she delivered a lecture about how very disappointed she was. “After all this trouble we’ve gone to to accommodate you,” Principal Jenkins said in her mind. “You’ve done something terrible to one of your normal classmates. I’m sorry, Caroline Finkel, but we’re going to have to ask you to leave this school.”
But as the hours ticked by and no one showed up to take her away, she slowly began to relax. Maybe she’d gotten away with it.
The thought did not fill Caroline with joy, and anxious lime-green dots continued to dance through her brain.
Dad picked them up on time once school came to an end, much to Caroline’s relief. But even after such a terrible day, Caroline noticed something odd about Lara. Something that didn’t seem quite right.
“How was your day?” Lara asked, with more intensity than seemed warranted.
Caroline pressed a button on her speech app and closed her eyes. “Fine.”
“Oh?” Lara asked.
Sighing, Caroline pressed the same button again. “Fine.”
Surely Lara would get the message that Caroline was not in a talking mood. Unfortunately for Caroline, her sister did not care.
“I’m just asking because today seems like a rather interesting day. Some might say it’s a bloody interesting day.”
Bloody? Surely Lara couldn’t be implying anything. After all, how could she possibly know what had happened? True, Marissa had been complaining about the injustice of it all day. But Caroline was pretty sure her sister didn’t know Marissa. She felt even surer that her sister did not care about Marissa’s art.
So why was she throwing around that word?
Maybe Lara was just trying to talk like a British person, Caroline reasoned. She knew that British people said “bloody” when they wanted to sound particularly cool. Back when Caroline changed to a new computer voice, she’d learned all about British-isms. True, Lara hadn’t ever spoken in British-isms before, but maybe she was starting some kind of new experiment? After all, Georgia Ketteridge had a British mom.
Caroline would just have to ignore her sister. She swiped away from her speech app and tapped her fingers against the tablet cover. That should tell Lara how very much she did not want to talk right now.
Lara, however, kept at it. “It was a bloody interesting day,” she repeated. “Don’t you just love the word bloody? Bloody bloody bloody.”
The skin on Caroline’s neck prickled. Something was off about the whole thing. Lara was fond of many words, but bloody generally was not among them. It probably had something to do with her general squeamishness.
She had to play it cool. Caroline opened her speech app once more. “Stop saying ‘bloody.’ You know I’m the British one in the family,” she typed. Her computer voice sounded especially clipped and British-y, much to Caroline’s satisfaction.
A sly smile crept onto Lara’s face. “That you are,” she said. “Speaking of which. I bet you’re making all kinds of friends at school, aren’t you?”
Caroline frowned. She did not see any discernible connection between her alleged Britishness and her school friends. Probably because there wasn’t any. Lara was up to something.
“I have friends,” Caroline said. She saw no need to elaborate on the subject any further.
“Mmm-hmm. You looked awfully—I mean. I know you’re friends with a boy in your grade.”
Staring
