Imagining Elsewhere E-Book

Sara Hosey

• Herausgeber: CamCat Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 443

Beschreibung

Imagining Elsewhere

Leseprobe

Imagining Elsewhere

Sara Hosey

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Further Discussion

Author Q & A

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CamCat Books

Content Warning: This book touches upon the topics of bullying and suicide that may be triggering to some readers.

CamCat Publishing, LLC

Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

camcatpublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© 2022 by Sara Hosey

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address CamCat Publishing, 101 Creekside Crossing, Suite 280, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Hardcover ISBN 9780744305777

Paperback ISBN 9780744305524

Large-Print Paperback ISBN 9780744305425

eBook ISBN 9780744305593

Audiobook ISBN 9780744305807

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available upon request

Cover and book design by Maryann Appel

5 3 1 2 4

For Jess, John, and Julian

Chapter One

Moments after she met Candi Clifton for the first time, Astrid Friedman-Smith experienced a sinking feeling of recognition. She knew karma when it came around to bite her in the ass.

It was on that very first day at her new school that Astrid found herself flying—literally flying—across the cafeteria and then falling face down on the polished linoleum while her classmates laughed and threw milk cartons and French fries at her.

She knew she deserved it, especially because her own poor choices had been one of the main reasons she was at this new school in the first place.

It was the fall of 1988 when they moved from Queens to Elsewhere, New York, in part because Astrid had a not-so-insignificant problem with bullying and harassing other students. A problem so big, in fact, that it had made the New York area tabloid newspapers, which ran third-and fourth-page headlines like, “High Performing High Schoolers Get an A+ in Cruelty” and “Out on Her Ass-Trid: Lead Bully Expelled From Prep School.”1

Astrid had lived in Elsewhere for a full two weeks before that first day in the cafeteria and she’d still believed the move had been punishment enough. This was partly because, before the move, when Astrid had looked up Elsewhere in the World Book Encyclopedia,2 all she was able to discover was that it was a small, economically-depressed community where the high taxes were matched only by a startlingly high suicide rate.

Some real small-town values right there, Astrid had thought. She’d imagined that if she could simply survive her senior year at Elsewhere High, she’d be fine. She’d had no idea that surviving Elsewhere might actually be a challenge.

She’d heard of Candi before she’d met her—and even seen a picture of her. For some inexplicable reason, there was a lurid painting of a twelve-year-old Candi hanging up in the public library. From what Astrid had gathered, this Candi girl, despite only being in high school, ran the town of the Elsewhere.

This made no sense to Astrid, but then again, there were lots of things about her new town that she hadn’t been able to fully comprehend. How it was possible, for example, that the town simply “didn’t have cable” and barely got network television stations?3 Or why was it that everyone was so scrawny? And not thin in a fashionable New York way but unhealthy, sunken-eyed and sallow. And why, at least if the classes Astrid had attended that first day were any indication, did no one seem all that concerned with attendance, academics, or really anything close to scholarly rigor at Elsewhere High?

Astrid couldn’t ask these questions though, because, up until the day she met Candi, no one was willing to actually speak to her. All of her overtures of friendship had been met with either blank indifference, nervous giggling, or wide-eyed, outright fear.

That all changed the day she met Candi.

Astrid was sitting at one end of a long table, empty except for a cute, nerdy kid alone at the other end, immersed in a D&D rulebook.4 Astrid was—strategically—sensorially-cocooned: The Cure blasting on her headphones, eyes glued to her blue binder, on which she was putting the finishing touches on an elaborate rendering of the words “THE SUGARCUBES,” and chewing on the turkey sandwich she’d just bought and then customized (removing the turkey and putting chips in its place).

She had almost forgotten herself, munching away, when a strange sensation overtook her—it was as though someone had thrown a big down comforter over the entire cafeteria. She looked up to see that everyone was talking differently, standing differently. They had an unconvincing nonchalance about them, as though a camera crew had entered the room and they were trying to “act natural.”

And then, there she was.

Candi.

She wore a white cinch-belt over a skin-tight pink dress, layered pink-and-white socks and white ked sneakers, and dozens of bracelets on each arm. Her voluminous blonde hair, which framed her face like a lion’s mane, added several inches to her height. She walked like a runway model, drawing each knee up before shooting her pointed foot forward, like an archer drawing an arrow. Lift, shoot, lift, shoot.

Other students parted to let her pass. She was flanked with a girl on each side, who walked just a bit behind her, reminding Astrid of the v-shaped formation birds flew in.

Frozen mid-chew, Astrid wondered if they had planned the entrance. It felt like something out of a John Hughes movie.5 Perhaps the music still streaming into Astrid’s ears helped, giving the trio’s dramatic march a soundtrack.

As it became clear the girls were headed toward Astrid, Astrid’s tablemate quickly put the rulebook in his pocket and scurried away.

Astrid longed to follow him but was pinned in place as Candi, with a flip of her magnificent hair, rested her gaze on Astrid’s face.

Awkwardly, Astrid put down the pen she was gripping and, despite her churning stomach, forced a hopeful smile. Astrid, who had been popular, really popular, at her old school, thought maybe this would be her chance, her introduction into the upper echelons of Elsewhere society. She willed herself to play it cool. Or at least cool-ish.

Candi crossed her arms and regarded her coldly. Astrid stopped smiling.

Her heart raced with fear and, she realized, a bit of excitement. This was the most socially stimulating encounter she’d had in weeks. And, she couldn’t help but admit, Candi was startlingly beautiful. Beyond her basic good looks—she had the face of a Sears catalogue model and the figure of someone in an aerobics workout video6—she was somehow luminous, as if she were being followed around by her own special lighting crew. Astrid wanted to snort contemptuously and pretend to refocus on her drawing, but she found that she couldn’t take her eyes off of Candi.

Candi’s lips moved, but her words were inaudible to Astrid, who still had music blaring into her ears.

Astrid moved one headphone to the side and said, “Sorry, hi? What did you say?”

Candi widened and then narrowed her eyes.

Astrid gave a closed-lip smile and removed the headphones completely, pushing them down to rest around her neck and, after fumbling with the player, turning the music off.

“What’s that?” Candi said impatiently, gesturing toward the table. “Is that a transistor radio?”

Astrid looked down and then back up at Candi. “Yeah, basically,” she said. “It has a tape player. With headphones. It’s a . . .” She didn’t want to appear patronizing, but it seemed to Astrid that the other girl actually didn’t know. Upstate was clearly behind the times in so many ways. It was possible they hadn’t heard of the invention yet. “It’s a Walkman?”7

Candi hummed, a low and lovely noise that could have meant comprehension or agreement or even disapproval.

“I’m Astrid, by the way,” she said.

“Astrid,” Candi repeated archly.

No one else in the cafeteria was even pretending not to watch them. Instead, they stood, wide-eyed and spellbound.

“You’re . . . um, you’re Candi, right?” Astrid asked. She sat up a little straighter. It seemed to her that this might be an audition. Somehow, however, no one had given her the script.

Candi stared stonily.

“I’ll take it,” the other girl said at last.

“What?” Astrid asked.

“I want the radio,” Candi said. “And the headphones.”

Despite herself, Astrid felt her cheeks flush, her breathing coming too fast and shallow. She knew—she knew all too well from her past experiences—that she had to somehow assert herself, make it clear that she wouldn’t be pushed around. But, having been on the other side of this situation—having been the bully—she also felt she had too few options. She wasn’t going to try to fight the other girl, obviously. She was seriously outnumbered. But placidly handing over the brand new Walkman that she had used all of her money to buy would only make it clear that she was ripe for future exploitation and abuse. She concluded that she’d have to fall back on what she did best.

Channeling her inner-Heather,8 Astrid said, “Um, what’s your damage? I don’t know how they do things in Elsewhere, but usually people in human society get to know each other, hang out and then, sure, maybe borrow each other’s stuff once they’re friends? Which, I have a feeling we are not gonna be. So, um, that’s a no.” She closed with a mock-sincere smile.

A gasp went up from the audience. Instead of angry, Candi looked more like an affronted teacher, her mouth agape in shock.

“It seems we have a misunderstanding,” Candi said, adopting her own fake-smile. “This is how we do things in Elsewhere.” She reached out a long arm and picked up the Walkman. But the headphones were still around Astrid’s neck and she was pulled forward over the table before the headphones came free from the device, snapping back at her.

Suddenly a male voice called, “Get her, Candi! Take her down!”

Astrid glanced over her shoulder. Her classmates, some with their arms folded across their chests, others leaning on each other jauntily, were no longer silently observing. They were murmuring, giggling. Astrid was alarmed to realize she didn’t understand what was happening. What did that guy mean by “get her”?

She regretted not scrambling away when the nerd at the other end of the table had. She was out of her depth with this girl, outnumbered in this crowd.

And yet Astrid couldn’t—or wouldn’t—completely abase herself here, couldn’t just walk away and let the other girl publicly rip her off. So, staying the course, she began to step out from the picnic-bench style cafeteria table9 saying, “Oh my God. Take a chill pill. I will loan it to you if you ask, but this is totally uncool.”

“You’re falling,” Candi observed, her voice neutral.

And she was right. As Astrid tried to slide out of her seat, her leg somehow became tangled in her backpack strap. Suddenly, her arms were pinwheeling and her legs were shooting out behind her.

Her half-eaten sandwich plopped to the ground beside Astrid as she landed painfully on her knees and hands, her palms pressing against the sticky floor.

It was silent for a beat and then, suddenly, shockingly, everyone started laughing. The entire cafeteria was screaming and hooting.

Astrid picked up her bag and scrambled to her feet, the blood rushing to her head, making her feel even dizzier. Her focus narrowed: She simply needed to escape this room.

Why did the doors seem so far away?

“You can’t stop falling!” Candi laughed.

Astrid felt what she imagined to be a hand pushing her from behind. This was when she flew, her arms outstretched Superman-style, before she found herself on the ground again, cheek to linoleum. Again, she pushed herself up with her palms, but now the floor seemed impossibly slippery, as if someone had spilled milk or juice. The general hilarity continued, more and more uproarious, as Astrid rose and again tried to move toward the impossibly distant cafeteria door. Unbelievably, she fell a third time, tripping over her own feet and pitching forward, knocking her head against a plastic bench.

Someone said, “She’s bleeding,” as though they were concerned, but nevertheless the laughter continued.

Astrid’s body would not cooperate. Nothing was working right. She could not get to her feet. She began to crawl on her hands and smarting knees, aware of how pathetic she must have appeared, but determined to escape.

She saw people’s shoes; her fellow students were at least parting to make a path for her. Something hit her with a soft thud and a small carton of chocolate milk came to rest beside her. As though floodgates had been opened, others now screamed with laughter as they pelted her with half-eaten lunches.

She closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of industrial cleaner, grease, and sneakers, before opening them and rising a final time, her hands outstretched, like antennae that would guide her to safety. She willed her legs to propel her through the doorway.

Astrid heard Candi’s voice, predicting, directing.

“You’re passing out.”

And then it all went dark.

1But we’ll get to that.

2The hard copies of Wikipedia. Big books in an alphabetical set, they covered lots of topics, but were limited. For example, there was no entry for anything really “contemporary” and there was no good sex stuff, much to the dismay of many middle schoolers.

3Once upon a time, if you had a good antenna on the top of your house, your television was able to “stream” (not what we called it) seven or eight stations. And that was it.

4Don’t ask Astrid how she knew what it was. She wouldn’t want to talk about it.

5John Hughes made a bunch of ‘80s movies that, for many of us, really capture the ‘80s teen experience. Be warned, though, like a lot of ‘80s pop culture, they’re totally racist and sexist.

6This was actually high praise.

7A Walkman was a tape player you could carry around—this was a brand new idea in the early ‘80s! Later, there was a “Discman,” which played CDs, which were . . . oh forget it.

8Heather Chandler, that is, from the iconic 1989 cult classic, Heathers.

9Do these still exist or does everyone sit on ergonomic/hypoallergenic yoga balls at lunch now?

Chapter Two

Astrid had a cottony and foul taste in her mouth. Her right foot was cold and wet. Her clothes, too, were damp and sticky and smelled vaguely of dirt, sour milk, and sweat.

The air itself, however, smelled crisp, like freshly mown grass, which made sense because, as Astrid opened her eyes and looked around, she realized she was on the soccer field. It was early evening—not yet dark enough for the huge, looming field lights to be turned on—the sun just starting to set behind the large, almost-menacing school building.

She looked down to see that she was only wearing one of her Reeboks.

Slowly, she sat up. She blinked and ran her hands over her face before standing.

Her knees were wobbly and her stomach empty and upset.

But I’m okay. I’m alive, and I’m in one piece, she thought. Where is my other sneaker?

The shoe. This was a tactic that Astrid recognized. It was a show of power. In fact, Astrid recalled doing something similar once to Evie Rossillio, a girl at her old school. Although, Astrid had stolen not just a shoe but, Evie’s entire ensemble during gym and Evie had to wear her dorky gym uniform, including shorts that she had clearly outgrown, for the rest of the afternoon. Astrid pushed the memory from her mind and refocused on her own persecution.

How long had she been out? Had anyone missed her? Did her mother even notice that she wasn’t at home? Astrid could answer that last question easily: No.

Astrid shivered, but not from cold.

She bent to pick up her backpack, which was beside her, an unaccountable kindness. She unzipped it to see that while her books were all stacked neatly inside, the Walkman and headphones were not there. Candi had taken her prized possession after all.

Astrid kept her remaining shoe on and started to trot, limping away from the school, feeling every pebble through her thin sock. If she’d not been so upset, distracted, and generally distressed, she might have stopped to inspect some of those rocks, to see if there were any nice ones she might like to bring home. But she was in fact upset, distracted, and generally distressed, so she jogged mulishly off the field, past the school and then down Main Street. She didn’t stop until she could see the driveway of her new home.

Heart pounding and still somewhat dazed, she stumbled up the front steps. Once inside, she moved quickly, trying to bellow a hearty, “I’m home!” as she rushed to the staircase, hoping to avoid her mother and Cecile, her twelve-year-old sister.

They called back to her from the living room—a weak, “Come tell us about first day,”

from her mother, but neither one pursued her.

In the bathroom, she looked at her haggard, ashen face in the mirror. She had a gash in the middle of her forehead. Her fingers rose automatically to touch it. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t deep. But it was ugly, red, and angry-looking.

Unsummoned, another memory returned: shoving Evie Rossillio on the steps during a fire drill. Astrid remembered the surprising softness of Evie’s plump upper arm as Astrid had pushed her. She remembered calling out in a false-tone, “Sorry! Oh my God, are you okay?” when the other girl hit her forehead on the staircase railing. But Astrid and her friends hadn’t waited to see if Evie was, in fact, okay. They’d just galloped, laughing, down the rest of the stairs and out into the sunshine. Evie had gotten a gash, though. Astrid saw it the next day when she’d come into homeroom.

Astrid regarded herself another moment in the mirror. The cut looked like Halloween makeup. Her hair—which she had laboriously curled and teased up that morning, as though a cool hairstyle would have made her any friends—was flat and greasy against her thin, scowling face. Noting the dark circles around her eyes, she thought, sardonically, that she might just fit in in Elsewhere after all.

She stripped off her soiled clothes and got in the shower.

Under the hot water, she recalled her almost heartbreaking optimism as she’d marched to Elsewhere High that morning.

The thought of returning there ever again filled her body with a jangly, prickly dread.

After her shower, she lay in a towel on the bed, unable to turn her mind off and drift into unconsciousness.

It wasn’t as though she could run away. She didn’t have a car and she only had a learner’s permit anyway. Plus, she had nowhere to run away to. Although she was hoping to convince her mother to let her take the bus to the city to stay with her aunt and uncle for a long weekend later in September, that would only be a brief escape. She couldn’t stay with them permanently.

The fact was that she was undeniably trapped in this horrible place that was apparently stocked with a nasty, violent, inhumane mob led by a beautiful, cruel, teenage tyrant.

Astrid had quickly slid under her blankets and shut off her light when she heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs; alas, she was not quick enough.

“Hey, sweetie,” her mother said, standing in the doorway.

“I’m sleeping,” Astrid said.

“I saw your light on a second ago.”

Astrid hadn’t had an actual conversation with her mother in days, and although she told herself she was simply curious to see how long they could go without speaking, she was actually hoarding this information greedily, to be weaponized at a later date: “Remember the time we didn’t speak for four whole days? Oh, no, of course you don’t, because you didn’t even notice.”

The mattress squeaked as her mother sat at the foot of her bed.

“Enough sulking,” her mother said, gently squeezing one of Astrid’s feet. “Tell me about your first day.”

Astrid was almost alarmed; perhaps someone from the school had called home. But no, her mother seemed way too laid-back to know about her encounter with Candi.

With a heavy sigh, Astrid heaved herself up and switched the light back on.

“What happened here?” She ran a finger over the cut on Astrid’s forehead.

“I fell in gym class,” Astrid lied.

Her mother’s brow furrowed. “And you hit your head?” she asked.

Astrid shrugged. That she couldn’t tell the truth somehow made her even angrier with her mother. That she couldn’t say, “I was attacked in the cafeteria and then I was knocked unconscious and left on the soccer field and no teacher bothered to intervene or call you,” somehow seemed to be her mother’s fault.

She looked at her pretty and sharp-featured mom, who didn’t wear make-up and didn’t always remember to tend to her curly hair, who was so skinny because she forgot to eat, who was always so busy thinking deep thoughts that she neglected to think the shallow ones, even though they were sometimes important too.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Astrid said, adding, “Except maybe that you somehow invented a time machine and took us back, like, fifty years ago to a place that is totally weird and awful. And then you get to get back in your time machine every day and go to the real world and me and Cecile are stuck here with all the freaks and weirdos.”

“Listen,” her mother said plaintively, running her hand up to Astrid’s calf and giving it a soothing stroke. “Let’s just give it a little time. Let’s give it the school year. You’ll be going away to college. Okay? Just a year.”

“Whatever,” Astrid said. She moved her leg away from her mother’s hand. Despite her resolve to be stoic and suffer through her punishment, she couldn’t help but want to punish her mother as well. “Maybe I could just go live with Dad in Germany or something,” she said.

“Astrid,” her mother said, warningly. Astrid’s mother knew that Astrid would never go to live with her dad, that the threat was just a shortcut to hurt her.

“You don’t get it, mom,” Astrid said. A tear rolled down her cheek and she batted at it.

Her mother tried to wipe the tear from her face, but Astrid pushed her hand away. “I know I don’t,” her mother said.

Her mother was working hard to pretend she wasn’t noticing Astrid’s mounting irritation.

“Sometimes it takes a while to feel settled somewhere,” she said. “You know, to make friends and find your niche. Maybe if you and Cecile got out more, went hiking, that sort of thing. Oh,” she said, remembering something. “I got you this.” Her mother had been carrying a small paperback book—which was unremarkable, as her mother was more likely to be carrying around a book than not—and now she placed it next to Astrid on the bed. “Field Guide to the Greater Triantic New York Region,” her mother said. “There are obviously amazing rocks around here.”

“I mean, Elsewhere is like 90 percent sandstone from what I’ve seen,” Astrid said, grudgingly.

Her mother ignored her. “And when you’re not off doing solitary rock-hunting, maybe you could check out, I don’t know, the lake or something. And I was thinking we could go to the movies this weekend. Saturday? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Astrid shrugged, non-committal. She did want to go to the movies, but she also didn’t think she’d ever be leaving the house again.

“Sounds rad,” Astrid said, sarcastically. “Going to the movies with my mom.”

“There are worse things,” her mother said.

“Um, yeah. I’m aware.”

Chapter Three

Her mother eventually took mercy and, with a final pat on the leg, left Astrid to stew and worry in peace. And that she did.

She fully indulged the familiar swelling anger that she felt toward her mother. While what had happened in the cafeteria clearly wasn’t her mother’s fault—and what had happened in Queens certainly wasn’t—her mother had made the decision to move to Elsewhere unilaterally.

That past spring, Astrid’s mother had finally gotten a big career break: a tenure-track position at a reputable college.

This is how it happened.

Astrid’s mother, like her father, was a philosopher. Many people, Astrid knew, were surprised to discover that such a career actually existed. And look at Astrid, fortunate enough to have not one, but two of them, in her own family.

Astrid’s father had years ago left her mother for a young graduate student. Astrid would be lying if she told you she didn’t care that he’d abandoned the family. He was, unlike Astrid’s mother, a “successful” philosopher. He and his latest child bride taught at a university in Germany, a place where people seemed to still value geniuses.1

There were some people who thought that Astrid’s mother was a genius too, but that was not the general consensus. In fact, most of her colleagues thought that Astrid’s mother was—their word—a “crackpot.” Reviewing her second book, one esteemed scholar wrote that, “It is neither ethical nor humane to pretend that the ramblings of a disordered mind have academic merit.”

And so, her mother, the crackpot, taught part-time at several colleges, always scrambling to get together grant applications and book proposals, sign adjunct contracts, and grade papers. And then things weren’t looking much better for Astrid’s mother career-wise when she had to cut back teaching so she could homeschool Astrid for the remainder of her junior year.

And yet!

Somehow the stars had aligned. Her mother had landed a longed-for tenure-track job at a college in Upstate New York.

She was ecstatic. Astrid was not.

Especially when she discovered that they were not moving to the college town her mother had gotten the job in, but a nearby, even smaller town, lacking even the basic college-town amenities, such as futon shops, records stores, and access to cable television.

However!

Although Astrid had never admitted it to anyone—in fact, had loudly protested the move to Elsewhere—there had been a part of her that had hoped for redemption. That hoped a new place, a new school, and a new start might mean new friends, a new attitude, and a new Astrid.

It turned out, she thought wryly, that this really was going to be a new chapter for her.

Ha. It was beginning to look like living in Elsewhere might be a very precise kind of justice.

Driving into town, snaking up and around mountains, they’d passed a sign: “WELCOME! YOU’RE IN AN ELSEWHERE STATE OF MIND!”

“Isn’t that, like, plagiarism?” Astrid had muttered to herself in the back seat, thinking of the Billy Joel song. And then, because she couldn’t resist: “Not a good sign.”

Although nestled among picturesque mountains, Elsewhere, like many towns in the region, had clearly seen better days. The “commercial district” was one street unimaginatively called “Main Street.” Among the boarded-up shops on one end of that eponymous street there was a general store/pizza shop, a furniture store, a diner, an old-fashioned soda shop with a sign that read “Sweet Shoppe,” and the town’s crown jewel: an art deco theater that appeared to show surprisingly current movies. The town library, which even Astrid had to admit was a beautiful old building, concluded the thoroughfare.

The high school resided on a rocky hill overlooking it all.

Many of the homes were weather-beaten Victorians or dilapidated ranches, set far enough apart from each other to remain somewhat secluded, with a few tackily decorated trailers shoehorned into small lots here and there. The nicer homes were on Lake Crescent—a half-moon shaped body of water near the edge of town—while second-tier homes like Astrid’s abutted Fremont Forest. Everything seemed walkable, Astrid’s mother had informed her. And their house, Astrid had to admit, was pretty nice.

It was also “really well-priced,” which Astrid’s mother explained, meant “dirt cheap.”

It was a run-down three-story Victorian on two acres of land. Like something out of a children’s book, it had the perfect combination of unruly ivy, hidden window seats, peeling paint, pocket doors, and charming nooks.

So there were perks. Astrid would no longer have to share a room with her sister. They could run the rock tumbler, blast their music, and have screaming arguments, all without worrying too much about their neighbors. Astrid could, if she was still around in the spring, think about starting a garden.

But none of it made up for the fact that Astrid had been assaulted in the cafeteria. That they’d set upon her, that they’d treated her like some kind of loathsome creature, less than an animal. Or that it would be awfully hard to claw her way back up from that sort of low.

Astrid wished she didn’t already know it, all too well.

1She was not actually a child—just a grad student.

Chapter Four

The next morning, Astrid dressed quickly and hustled out of the house.

“Will you walk your sister to the bus stop?” her mother called as Astrid pulled the front door shut behind her, leaving without saying good-bye.

“That would be a no,” Astrid grumbled to herself.

Although she’d wanted to get the hell out of her house, she didn’t actually want to go to school either. And so, her feet were heavy, as though encased in lead, as she trudged the half mile to EH.

A thought occurred to her: Is this how it was for Evie Rossillio? Is this why she couldn’t bear the idea of returning to school? Is this why she . . . ? Astrid felt, for a moment, as though she were literally Evie, marching toward her tormentors, and she was so shocked by the sensation that she stopped walking altogether. No, she assured herself. That had been different. What had happened back in Queens was not unfolding again in Elsewhere.

I don’t deserve this, she thought, willing one foot and then another forward. But then, Neither did Evie. She argued with herself: I didn’t know she was going to do what she did. I wouldn’t have given her such a hard time if I’d known she was so . . . sensitive. It wasn’t my fault. Not all of it, at least. She silenced the part of herself that rose up to object further.

As Astrid slogged through the early September heat, the school, like a distant fortress, began to appear over the tops of the trees. The building was actually quite grand and beautiful: pre-War Depression-era public-works construction, stately, with long, tall windows and arched doorways. Before, Astrid might have admired it. Now, she considered the similarities between school and prison buildings.

Upon entering the cool, cavernous foyer, she was immediately intercepted by the school principal, Mr. Barton. He was a large, chinless man wearing a gray suit and a light pink tie.

“Miss Friedman-Smith? My office,” he said, his voice booming and ricocheting off the high stone walls.

Astrid started to speak, but the principal had turned to walk. She followed him up the central staircase—two sets of stairs forming a parenthesis in the main lobby, shining white and grand and, like everything else in the school, spotless. In fact, a skinny woman—a girl, really, not much older than herself, Astrid thought—was in the process of cleaning the marble steps with a scrubbing brush. She was pale and birdlike, with a beakish nose and large brown eyes, and she scowled as Barton and Astrid passed. Astrid thought that was what Cinderella would have wound up looking like if she’d never been swept away by the prince: sickly, beat-down, annoyed.

Cinderella sure was doing a good job, though. Astrid hadn’t seen any graffiti or litter in the school. Partly it could all be explained by volume, she knew. Everything here was built big, to house lots of people. There just didn’t seem to be enough people to go around. It reminded her of the scene in the movie Watership Down,1when the main rabbits come across another rabbit colony. The new colony is mysteriously, insidiously underpopulated.

Astrid tried to shake off the gloom. In the main office, Principal Barton gestured at a pasty-faced woman whose huge plastic glasses magnified her eyes grotesquely. She glowered from behind a desk. “I’m not sure if you’ve met Mrs. Spicer yet,” he said. “She’s our office administrator but also teaches the Home Ec. classes. We’re short-staffed, perpetually. So this office is generally your first stop if you’re ill, if you’re in trouble, if you have,” he cleared his throat and picked up a stack of folders, avoiding her eye, “lady problems. No guidance counselors, unfortunately.”

The woman nodded, unsmiling.

Astrid, who hadn’t realized her mouth was hanging open, snapped it shut again.

They continued into a spacious office with a window, a stately wooden desk, and an abundance of long-suffering houseplants: an ivy’s dead vines extended across a bookshelf and an enormous philodendron drooped miserably by the window. Several spider plants looked burnt to a crisp. Astrid felt thirsty just looking at them.

“I’ll be frank,” Barton intoned, as Astrid sat on one side of the desk and he situated himself on the other. “I wasn’t happy to hear about what happened yesterday.”

Astrid nodded and waited for him to continue. She hadn’t been planning on snitching, but if someone else had already told him, she wasn’t going to deny it either.

“It’s extremely troubling that you managed to cause problems on your first day of school,” he said.

It took her a minute, hearing his words and seeing his furrowed brow, to realize that he somehow seemed to believe that Astrid was to blame.

“I was . . . attacked,” Astrid said, aghast.

He cleared his throat.

“I think that’s a bit of an overstatement,” he said. “And it’s also my understanding that you provoked . . .”

Astrid interrupted. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Excuse me, Missy,” he returned. “You need to get something straight:

none of the nonsense that you pulled at your previous school is going to fly here. We have a zero tolerance policy for bullying at Elsewhere High.”

“This is so bogus!” she spluttered. Astrid swallowed, willing herself not to cry.

She took a deep breath and focused on the dying plants, tuning the principal’s lecture out. She wondered if she could sneak back into the office and water the plants while he was in a meeting or something. Or throw them out. A mercy killing, really.

He paused and she tried to meet his eyes, but her own were wet and running. She hated how easily her body betrayed her. She looked back to the plants.

“Look, Astrid,” he said, impatiently. “I won’t be emotionally manipulated by you.”

Again, Astrid tried to object to this unjust accusation, but he cut her off. “We’re very

impressed that you’re from downstate,” he said sarcastically. “And that your mother is a professor. But you need to know your place. How dare you behave disrespectfully to Candi?”

Astrid grimaced. Her voice quavering, she blurted, “Disrespectfully? I was minding my own business and she—”

“I did not call your mother,” he continued, speaking over her. “Although frankly, you should probably be expelled.”

“Expelled?”

“For your own safety, if for no other reason. But I’m giving you a second chance. And Candi’s not coming in today. She has to get ready for tonight. However, I don’t want to have to speak to you about this again. I’ll see you at the carnival.” The first bell rang. “And now, you should get to class.”

“Carnival?” Astrid asked.

But Principal Barton had already risen and taken two long strides to the office door, which he flung open. Astrid stood and, with an apologetic glance at the plants, and made her way to the door.

He slammed it shut behind her.

The secretary—Mrs. Spicer—was already leaning toward an old-fashioned microphone and reading announcements. Astrid listened as she walked through the mercifully empty hall.

“Attendance at tonight’s carnival and renaming ceremony is mandatory,” the woman intoned dully. “The event begins promptly at five o’clock.”

A school-mandated carnival. How incredibly fun.

1Astrid had seen the 1978 movie on television. She’d read the novel a few years later and had been really taken by it.

Chapter Five

Candi might not have been in school that day, but Astrid nevertheless soon discovered that things were as bad as she might have expected.

She was an object of scorn.

People pointed and whispered and laughed. A tall, thin dude—think Ichabod Crane—dressed head to toe in black except for his red shutter sunglasses,1 walked right up to Astrid before body slamming her into a locker. “Dweeb,” he hissed and onlookers guffawed. Astrid had yelped “Hey!” small and weak and ridiculous in her outrage as she watched him continue down the hall, strutting with exaggerated slowness.

The rest of the day had the emotional texture of a nightmare.

It was as though her new classmates had read her diary and were using all her old tricks against her. With Evie, the harassment had started out small too. The push in the stairwell, the stolen gym clothes. But like the fuse on a cartoon bomb, it travelled quickly and rapidly down the line before exploding. And the collateral damage hurt everyone in the vicinity. Of course, Astrid was the one left holding the bomb. Then with a flash of painful self-awareness, she realized that Evie was the one who was hurt, after all. Astrid wondered what was wrong with her, why she couldn’t seem to remember she wasn’t the victim of what happened to Evie. That Evie was the one who had truly paid the price.

When Astrid was swapping out books at her locker, someone slapped the wall beside her head, the noise sharp and echoing. She literally jumped and whimpered. Whoever it was laughed and kept walking. Someone else spat at her feet when she entered math class. When she sat down in English, the people sitting around her made a big show of wrinkling their noses before getting up and moving to seats farther away. Even the teacher acted like she was beneath contempt. Astrid kept her head down, but the teacher called on her anyway, using this smarmy, nasty tone, as though catching Astrid unprepared. When Astrid gave what she thought was, all things considered, a decent answer, the teacher barely even looked at her and responded, her voice dripping with unconcealed disgust, “I wonder what it is they’re teaching down in those city schools. Anyone else?”

When the final bell rang, Astrid went to the bathroom to hide until after the surge of departing students had subsided. The hall was quiet when she got to her locker, which was a mercy because she couldn’t remember her combination. She stood there, twisting the dial over and over again, and yanking to no avail for several minutes.

Again, she realized that perhaps this was a penance. She was being made to feel how Evie had felt, being made to experience ostracism and fear and shame.

She felt badly about what had happened to Evie. She really did. But it wasn’t like she was the only one who teased Evie. She hadn’t been a solo operator. Why was she the only one being punished?

It was totally unfair.

1And somehow these came back in the early 2000s.

Chapter Six

Astrid’s little sister, Cecile, was sitting on the plaid couch in the living room, watching what appeared to be an “Afterschool Special”1 and eating a bowl of Froot Loops.

“Hey,” Astrid called. She dumped her bag, kicked off her shoes, and joined her sister on the sofa. “Mom home?” Before Cecile could answer, Astrid added, “That was a joke.”

Cecile made a face and ate a spoonful of cereal. She talked out of the side of her mouth. “She said she had, like, a department welcome party, but that . . .”

“Let me guess,” Astrid interrupted again. Her relief at having survived the school day was suddenly replaced with rage of a seemingly unknown origin.2 “She’ll make it up to us next weekend? We should just . . .” Astrid did her best impersonation of her cheerful, scatterbrained, absent mother, “Order yourselves a pizza, girls?”

Cecile nodded with grudging admiration. She drank the milk from her cereal bowl.

“Pretty much,” Cecile said. “Although she said she’d make it up to us tomorrow, not next weekend.”

“Mom is unbelievable,” Astrid said, allowing her mouth to fall open with annoyance. “Like, at this point, this is neglect. You’re only twelve—”

“I’ll be thirteen in a few months—”

“And you’re basically raising yourself—”

“I don’t know that I’d go that far—”

“Why did our parents even have kids? Neither of them seems to want to have anything to do with us. Don’t even try to tell me I’m wrong.”

Astrid watched as Cecile blinked hard, no longer playful. “Astrid,” she said.

Astrid swallowed down the lump that had somehow appeared in her throat. She didn’t want to argue with Cecile. And yet, it seemed she couldn’t help herself.

“Oh, please. Dad didn’t even remember my birthday this year.”

“He sent a card . . .”

“As if. He sent it after Mom called him. I heard her on the phone. But whatever. We’re better off without him. Mom is better off without him.”

“Maybe. But Mom is doing her best. This hasn’t been easy for her,” Cecile said. She rubbed at her eyes.

“This hasn’t been easy for her? What is your damage?” Astrid snapped. “Why are you always on her side?”

“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Cecile said, her voice quavering.

Astrid felt pathetic for upsetting her little sister—as though it mattered what “side” Cecile was on. And yet, surrendering to her anger felt in some ways like scratching a mosquito bite or licking chapped lips: irresistible and almost pleasurable, even though she knew it would be painful later.

“Look,” Astrid said, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m glad that Mom finally got a good job, that we’ll have a little more money and maybe she’ll not be a laughingstock anymore or whatever, but this isn’t a Virginia Slims ad.3 She hasn’t arrived. If you think that this job means she will work less, then I hate to break it to you: you are dead wrong. She is going to be working more than ever.” Astrid spit these words at her sister. Cecile opened her mouth to object, but Astrid stopped her, shaking her head. “We are just not her priority, kiddo. Face it.”

“God, Astrid. Why do you have to be like this?”

“What should I be like, Cecile?”

“Not so mean all the time. It’s like the only person you care about is yourself.”

“Well, Cecile, if I didn’t care about myself, nobody would.”

Astrid rose. Rather than exhausting itself, Astrid’s rage increased. She kicked the side of the couch and Cecile’s shoulders jumped. “Astrid,” she said, in a placating voice.

“It’s her fault,” Astrid surprised herself by yelling. “It’s all her fault. I’ve lost everything. All my friends, my school, my home . . .”

“Astrid,” Cecile said again, a little louder this time. Astrid focused on her sister, curled up and tiny on the couch. Cecile said, her voice filled with confusion and shock, “You’re not actually blaming Mom for what happened back home, are you?”

It was as though Astrid were a balloon and her sister’s words, a sharp pin. It was all she could do to get out of the living room before Cecile saw her collapse completely.

1Cheesy—and yet often compelling—movies designed to teach kids and teens important lessons on topics like drugs, sex, pesticides, and Shakespeare.

2If Astrid had stopped to think, just for a minute, the origin might have revealed itself: a sense of loss and a longing for her mother’s presence and attention.

3A cigarette company that targeted women. Their slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” suggested that being allowed to smoke cigarettes was another victory of women’s liberation. (Insert eye roll)

Chapter Seven

“Um, Astrid,” her sister called through the door.

“What?” Astrid asked from under the pillow.

“So, I have to go to this school carnival thing,” Cecile said, her voice muffled and tentative. “I can get a ride home with this girl Roberta. I just met her today at school. She’s super nice. But can you walk me over? I think you’re supposed to go anyway, so . . .”

Astrid let out a performative groan. She hadn’t forgotten about the carnival, but she was planning to skip it—she didn’t think she could face her classmates again that day.

After a moment, Cecile tapped gently again. “So, will you walk me over or . . . ?”

“Give me five,” Astrid called. She could bring Cecile to the carnival, show her face to whatever administrator necessary, and then bail.

Heaving herself out of bed, Astrid agonized for longer than she would have liked over what to wear in order to appear effortlessly cool. She opted for denim shorts and a white tee, chunky striped socks, and Doc Martens. To complete the look, she threw on black suspenders and a ton of rubber bracelets. She teased out her hair and pinned it over in a modified side-pony. All things considered, she thought she looked pretty rad.1

“Let’s go,” she said to Cecile as she pounded down the stairs and toward the front door.

“So, what happened to your forehead anyway?” Cecile asked as they stepped into the early evening. The world outside their house felt almost overwhelmingly ripe and clean and vibrant. The air was fragrant with blooming trees and freshly cut grass, and the birds were almost drowned out by the late-summer songs of the katydids and crickets. The slanting light was orange and lovely. For a moment, Astrid almost felt soothed.

“Fell,” she answered, dismissively.

As they walked, Astrid turned her head slightly to regard her sister. Cecile looked a lot like Astrid: smallish and dark, with their mom’s black hair and their dad’s green eyes. But Cecile’s thick hair was curly while Astrid’s was straight; her face was round and dimpled while Astrid’s was long and thin; her disposition was sweet while Astrid’s, she thought, was sour.

She fled the room. She’d been shocked to see that Cecile was afraid of her, like Astrid was an abusive husband or something. And after she’d cooled off, she was left with dry, crackling remorse. Astrid wished she hadn’t been mean to Cecile. She wished she’d been generally nicer to her mother as well. She wished she’d acted differently in the cafeteria with Candi. She wished she hadn’t persecuted Evie Rossillio back in Queens, turned the whole school against her, relentlessly teased and tormented her.

Astrid wished, quite simply, that she could just stop being Astrid. She’d give anything, really, to be someone else.

“So this thing is at the mayor’s house?” Astrid asked in a grumbly voice. She already knew where it was from the posters hanging in the school hallway.

“Yup,” Cecile said. She stopped and picked up a rock.

“Whattya got?” Astrid asked, with genuine interest.

Cecile held up a small stone.

“Just a quartz,” she said. She shrugged and put the rock in her pocket.

Rock collecting and polishing was one of Cecile and Astrid’s few shared interests. Every trip to Central Park, to the beach, to a friend’s summer home, was an opportunity to forage and collect treasures. Initially, it drove their mother crazy because the girls would come home with pockets full of rocks, which they’d often forget to empty before throwing their clothes in the hamper. (Between the rocks and forgotten crayons, they’d been banned from almost all the neighborhood laundromats). But finally, their mother surrendered to the obsession and even bought them a rock tumbler, a barrel-shaped machine that would replicate and speed up a process that usually takes over centuries to occur in a river, the water rolling the stones until they were smooth and polished. What their mom didn’t realize, of course, was that the rock tumbler was incredibly loud and had to run, literally, nonstop for months. The first few days in the apartment were brutal, with Astrid and Cecile and their mother having to constantly scream to be heard. And then a neighbor complained—about the screaming and about the constant banging of the tumbler—and the superintendent told them the tumbler had to be shut off. But like a river wearing down hardest rock, Cecile and Astrid’s tears and protests wore down the super, who allowed them to keep the tumbler in the machine room in the basement.2

“Let’s set up the rock tumbler this weekend,” Astrid said.

Cecile smiled broadly at her sister. “Great!” Astrid did her best to smile back.

As they approached the fancier part of town, they started to see clusters of people heading toward the mayor’s house. A group of big, beefy guys all wearing letterman jackets glowered at them, although, to Astrid’s great relief, no one jeered or said anything to reveal her outcast status to her sister.

They could smell it before they saw it: cotton candy, popcorn, meat on a grill. And then, at a bend in the road, Astrid and Cecile could see the house. It was a large, white Georgian mansion and every window was lit up, reminding Astrid of the houses in Christmas train sets. The carnival was taking place on the expansive front lawn: in addition to a small stage, there were game booths, food stands, a dunk-tank, and a small, dinky-looking Ferris wheel, spinning slowly. Pop music filled the air; Astrid recognized Wang Chung’s “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.”

“Wow,” Cecile said. “This is kinda cool.”

“Is it?” Astrid said. She had her doubts.

At the edge of the lawn, Astrid recognized Mrs. Spicer from the school office, her glasses giving her an owl-like appearance. Mrs. Spicer approached and checked something off on her clipboard. “Astrid,” she said. “Cecile?”

“Um, present?” Cecile answered. Mrs. Spicer nodded briskly and made another note.

“Astrid, you’re to report to the Sweet Shoppe tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Mayor Clifton will be expecting you.”

“What?” Astrid asked. “Expecting me for what?” But Mrs. Spicer had already turned and was checking off other arrivals. Astrid looked at her sister. “What’s that about?”

“Beats me,” Cecile said. “Wanna go on the Ferris wheel? There’s no line.”

Astrid looked up at the creaking structure. It was only about three stories tall. “You really want to risk your life on that thing?”

Cecile smiled, grabbed her sister’s hand, and began to tug her along. “At least if it collapses, we won’t have far to fall.”

They walked up the short deck of stairs and, with a nod at the sullen ride-operator, climbed into their little cart. A moment later, they were jerked upward to allow another pair to board. Astrid, who had been concentrating as much as possible on the ground in front of her in order to avoid making eye contact with anyone, couldn’t help but feel people around her watching. She saw one gaggle of girls pointing and whispering. A pudgy-faced boy Astrid recognized from some of her classes gaped at her with open contempt.

Then, a younger kid that Astrid didn’t recognize waved at them. Cecile waved back.

“Who’s that?” Astrid asked.

“That’s Roberta from school. The girl I told you about.” Cecile said.

“Well, I’m glad at least someone’s making friends.”

“You’re not making friends?” Cecile asked.

Although her sister’s question was innocent, Astrid felt embarrassed and annoyed. Their cart jerked upward again, with a force that felt almost aggressive. “I don’t want to be friends with any of these people,” Astrid growled. “They’re all awful.”

The sisters sat in silence as the ride began to move in earnest.