Posted: List 1

Notes. At least a hundred of them. Pressed all over the freshly painted locker. Some clump together, overlapping like roof shingles. Others orbit like satellites, reaching up toward the wall.

That’s her name, swear to God. Ruby freaking Sandels. Yes, sandals aren’t slippers, which would have been worse, and it’s not even spelled the same, but it still counts as a form of child abuse, IMO. Might as well just fix her black hair into a permanent ponytail, buy her a shaggy terrier to stuff in a wicker basket, and teach her to sing about rainbows.

In fact, you can just assume that anyone I talk about isn’t a friend of mine unless explicitly stated otherwise.

She had a backpack covered in faux sapphires. You didn’t have to look close to tell the dark blue stones weren’t real.

Also, just so you know, this isn’t Ruby’s story. She’s what my chemistry teacher calls a catalyst. Something that jump-starts a reaction.

Everyone did it. And if I was lucky enough to have a phone (if it ever fit into “the budget”), I would have done it too. Which is why it wasn’t unusual to see Ruby taking furtive glances at her lap during class.

But she wasn’t the sort to look the other way when she saw the flash of light glinting off Ruby’s phone, or heard the nearly imperceptible click of Ruby’s painted nails on the screen.

“Take this opportunity to complete the problems on your sheet. Silently.”
We all nodded meekly.

But ask any incoming sixth grader with at least two forehead zits and a Great Clips haircut and he will tell you the prevailing image from his nightmares is standing in the middle of a buzzing cafeteria, tray in hand, desperately looking for somewhere to sit.

Mother’s intuition. Some people might call that a good thing. I’m not one of them. It was spooky how she could read my mind.

Even my backpack was the cheapest we could find, generic black with a little pocket for the phone I didn’t own.

I stood there by the Elmer’s glue display, imagining my body being ripped apart by ravenous beasts.

The whispering was like static in the halls.

Mr. Jackson was not a small man, as many of the crude drawings in the boys’ bathroom could attest to.

We learned about the Bill of Rights in social studies earlier this year—from a droning Mr. Hostler.

Most of the amendments only seemed to matter if you got arrested, which wasn’t in my foreseeable future (Mom would kill me), though Bench’s comment made me wonder if Mr. Jackson could have Ruby arrested for defamation of character or something. Verbal abuse. Assault with a deadly text.

“The First Amendment says nothing about reasonable consequences for sending texts calling your science teacher a—” Deedee tried to muster the courage to repeat what he’d read, but it was too much for him to say out loud.

“Mark my words—this isn’t over,” Deedee divined.

I’d never seen Wolf get flustered over much of anything, even the little shoves and digs that come with being in middle school, the needling comments and sidelong sneers. Wolf took them in stride, and he certainly took enough of them. Bench called him “composed,” which made a lot of sense when you thought about it.

I have this theory. I call it the theory of socio-magnetic homogeny. A bunch of big words, but it basically says that people gravitate toward people who share their interests and whatnot. Band kids will hang out with other band kids. People with pierced tongues will hang out with people with pierced noses.

I have this theory. I call it the theory of socio-magnetic homogeny. A bunch of big words, but it basically says that people gravitate toward people who share their interests and whatnot. Band kids will hang out with other band kids. People with pierced tongues will hang out with people with pierced noses.

Bench was BMS’s poster boy for student athletes; he brought the cumulative GPA of the basketball team up.

His dad is Indian, which Bench says should make him genetically inclined to love cricket, at least, but Advik prefers to fight dragons instead.

His dad is Indian, which Bench says should make him genetically inclined to love cricket, at least, but Advik prefers to fight dragons instead.

Deedee’s a polyhedral dice junkie. That’s what you call those dice with so many different faces. He’s got a collection of them tucked away in a wooden box shaped like a treasure chest under his bed. Clear ones and colored ones and ones that look like they’ve been chiseled out of marble.

Wolf was a bard. He stood in the back and played his music and tried to stay out of the way.
That’s called typecasting.
Wolf is short for Wolfgang, which is short for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, because, as Wolf puts it, he could never pull off the nickname Mozart.

What he is, though, is a piano prodigy. Three-time Falsin County award winner, juniors division. Wolf has been playing since he was five. Mostly classical. Some jazz.

There were others, sometimes. Nomads. People who hadn’t found their tribe yet.

They caused cancer. They could suck out your soul. They were the next step in mankind’s eventual demise.

A couple more eloquent students posted long messages, directed at the administration, asking them to reconsider.

My father sent me a picture of a marlin that he caught on a chartered fishing trip his first year down there.

We didn’t share the same pair of traveling pants or promise over spit shakes to be BFFs. We just kind of glommed together.

More often—in school, at least—it’s a label, thrown out on a whim, maybe, by some kid trying to get a giggle from the kid next to him.

He’s the one who introduced us—me and Frost. On a tedious summer Sunday, a glass of wine in his hand, sitting across from me on the porch and handing me a copy of Frost’s Selected Poems.

For starters, there were no illustrations. Plus the cover looked kind of prissy, all blue-and-white flowers.

That next winter, with my father and mother still haggling on the phone about what to do with the house that he didn’t even live in anymore, I came home with an assignment to write something for the thirteenth annual Branton School District Young Authors’ Competition.

One comment from my fifth-grade teacher and I became someone else, the junior poet laureate of Falsin County.

In the movie all the birds in this small California town go all avian apocalypse and start attacking people—plucking out eyes, blowing up gas stations, pecking everyone to death—just about the same time that this one woman shows up.

Whether or not she’s the reason the birds attack isn’t entirely clear. It could just be a fluke. Or maybe there is something about this lady that makes the birds batty.

Mr. Sword made a motion for Rose to elaborate.