Immediately the playground supervisor hurried over, gathered up the kid, and rushed him toward the nurse’s office. Gazzy went back to making a nice collection of hefty rocks. Weapons, if he needed them.
“What’d you do that for?” someone asked belligerently.
Gazzy looked up. “What?”
A larger kid was leaning over him angrily. “Listen, spaz, when some wingnut says he’s gonna fly off of something, you tell ’im, ‘Get the heck down from there!’ You don’t say, ‘Let’s see it!’ What’s the matter with you?”
The Gasman shrugged, but he was actually a little hurt inside. “I didn’t know.”
The kid stared at him. “What, you grow up under a rock?”
“No,” said Gazzy, frowning. “I just did
n’t know.”
The kid made a disgusted face and walked away. Gazzy heard him saying, “Yeah, he didn’t know. ’Cause he’s from the planet Dumbass.”
Gazzy’s eyes narrowed, and his hands formed into lethal little fists.
“Where did you get your hair done?” someone asked.
I turned to see a pale, skinny girl smiling at me. I pushed my lunch tray farther down the line. “Um, my bathroom?” Was she speaking in code? I had no clue what she meant. A recurring theme in my life.
She laughed and put a green apple on her tray. “No, I meant the blond streaks. They’re awesome. Did you have it done in DC?”
Oh. My hair had blond streaks? Right. “I guess the sun did it,” I said lamely.
“Lucky. Oh, look—banana pudding. I recommend it.”
“Thanks.” I took some, to be nice.
“My name’s J.J.,” she said, seeming completely comfortable with this social interaction. My palms were sweating. “It’s short for Jennifer Joy. I mean, what were my parents thinking?”
I laughed, surprised that she would confide in me like that.
“Max is a cool name,” J.J. said. “Sporty. Sophisticated.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I said, and she laughed some more, her eyes crinkling.
“Here’s a couple spots,” J.J. said, pointing to an empty lunch table. “Otherwise we’ll have to sit next to Chari and her gang.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t mess with them.”
I was halfway through lunch before I realized that J.J. and I had been talking for half an hour, and I apparently had not seemed so freakish that she’d run away screaming.
I had made a friend. My second one in fourteen years. I was on a roll.
45
“Capital of Paraguay?” the teacher asked.
Asunción. Inhabited principally by the Guarani. Explored by Europeans starting in 1518. Paraguay is a landlocked country in South America. Population, six million and change—I raised my hand. “Asunción?”
“Yes, that’s right. Very good. Tonight I want you all to read about Paraguay in chapter eight of your world studies textbook. And now let’s take out our science workbooks.”
Feeling like a busy little student bee, I took out my science workbook. What further surprises would the Voice have for me? So far, it had been up on any number of subjects taught in the ninth grade. How handy. For once.
As I flipped past the bone structure of frogs, someone knocked on the classroom door. The teacher went over and had a whispered conversation, then turned to me. What?
“Max? They need you in the office for a moment.” She gave me an encouraging smile, which somehow I didn’t find all that encouraging.