Looks by Madeleine George

Author:Madeleine George
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Social Issues, Emotions & Feelings, Juvenile Fiction, New Experience, Friendship, Adolescence
ISBN: 9780142414194
Publisher: Speak
Published: 2008-11-15T14:25:06.589240+00:00

D period. Somewhere else in the labyrinth of the school, Social Studies is happening—American History I: Puritans are thatching roofs and striking soon-to-be-broken bargains with Native Americans—but Meghan is in the heart of the maze, floating, a dreamy minotaur, in the dark of the sick room. She feels expansive and unearthly, like a mist, pixilated into pure hearing, distributed everywhere in the murky room at once. All around her, the soothing rise and fall of Mrs. Chuddy’s information.

“I know. Well Rich thinks he’s doing it on purpose. Rich says Joe singles out his boys to punish just because they’re athletes, and if that’s true I tell you it breaks my heart. Innocent children shouldn’t be punished for no reason.”

A tiny pause while she lets Vivvie get a one-syllable word in edgewise.

“Yes but I heard Rich telling Deborah in the hall, I heard him say ‘Joe’s trying to destroy the basketball team. Joe’s got it in for the basketball team,’ he said. Well I don’t know why he’d do a thing like that, they’re good boys. They bring a lot of pride to this school. Those are the kind of boys you read about later, the ones who turn up in the paper ten years from now doing something interesting in New York or Washington. I hate to think of all that promise getting crushed because of something Joe’s doing out of spite.”

Pause.

“Of course it’s spite, what else could it be? Rich is just going up up up around here, Deborah said he’s gunning for a regional job soon and he’s laying the foundation right now, and Joe is . . . well you know I adore that man, I just think he’s the best and the sweetest, and I don’t like to say about someone that he’s on the decline, but . . .”

In the dark Meghan imagines a thin sparkling thread running from her finger out the door of the sick room, through Mrs. Chuddy’s office, out into the hall, winding through the corridors of Valley Regional, through the door of room A34 where Aimee is sitting in Algebra II. Meghan imagines the thread wrapped around Aimee’s narrow ankle. She imagines tugging on the thread to get Aimee’s attention, imagines Aimee’s head snapping up, her hand going up automatically to ask for a pass. She imagines Aimee following the thread back through the halls, hand over hand, all the way up to Mrs. Chuddy’s door. She could be coming through the door right now, Meghan thinks. Now. Or now. Any second now.

“He was never like this in aquarobics,” Mrs. Chuddy sighs. “We used to have just the most fun in that class. I tell you, that man can be a hoot and a holler when he wants to be.”

Meghan hears the clock on Mrs. Chuddy’s wall hiccup back a minute, then click forward two minutes. D period is draining away, and still no Aimee.

Tug—Meghan plucks the thread again in her mind.

“When a fellow like that starts to lose his shine, why that’s a hard thing to watch.

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