Cloudburst (Storms 2)

“Mrs. Caro thinks you should have oatmeal today. She’s at the stove,” she added, and started out.

“Is Mrs. March up yet?”

She paused in the doorway. Although she tried to hide it, I saw worry in her face.

“No, and maybe you should not disturb her,” she added, and left.

I rose like Lazarus from the grave, stunned and surprised that I could move, and headed for the shower. Under my breath, I mumbled curses at Kiera for waking me after midnight. That conversation seemed to be more like a dream anyway. Later, at breakfast, even though just the thought of swallowing anything was exhausting, I forced myself to eat most of the oatmeal and the piece of wheat toast with her homemade jam that Mrs. Caro insisted I have. She had my daily vitamin

s set out as well. I didn’t have one foster mother, I thought—I had three now. It was as if all of my bad habits were under surveillance from the moment I awoke to the moment I fell asleep in this house.

By the time I was ready to leave for school, Jordan had still not come down. The only times this happened were when she was sick with a cold or the flu. Generally, though, her health was very good, as was Mr. March’s. Mrs. Duval stepped into her shoes and took on the duty of seeing me off, warnings and all.

“You drive carefully,” she said, “and no speeding,” she added, just the way Jordan would.

“Is Mrs. March all right, Mrs. Duval?”

“She’ll be just fine,” she said, which was her way of telling me she didn’t think so.

Whom had Jordan seen last night? What was troubling her? I wondered as I got into my car. Was it just her husband’s intensity about his business now? It was true that there was no blood relationship to tie us together, and my status was still that of a foster child, but time, the hard experiences I had had with Kiera and her friends, the Marches’ generosity, all of it, had drawn me closer and closer to the family I had every right to despise. I couldn’t help myself. I cared about them all now at least as much as most of the girls at school cared about their families. I tried to put it all aside as I drove.

It was only about a fifteen-minute drive. On rainy days, it might take five or ten minutes more. Nevertheless, I was usually one of the first to pull into the parking lot, even when I rose later than Mrs. Duval and Mrs. Caro would like. They had their act together in such a way that they were able to move me through the morning and out the door at just about the same time.

I was surprised to see Ryder and his sister arrive only moments after I had. He had looked so unhappy during the time he was here yesterday, and after finishing the day with an argument with his sister in the parking lot, he had seemed to me to be a good candidate for late arrival or perhaps no arrival at all. I had thought there was a real possibility that he had gone home and complained about Pacifica so much that his parents had given in and had let him transfer back to his old school or some other school. Wouldn’t the girls be disappointed? Wouldn’t I?

It wouldn’t be impossible for Ryder to withdraw. Parents of the students at this school struck me as the sort of people who bought their way into happiness, no matter what. If they were annoyed with their cars, no matter how small the annoyance, they traded them in instantly. If they didn’t like the decor in their homes, they brought in a decorator and paid top dollar to make changes quickly. If it was too cold for a week, they hopped on a plane and went to Hawaii. Inconveniences were stamped out like roaches. How many times had I heard the girls in my class moan and groan about the electricity being off for a few hours because of a storm or the batteries daring to die in their iPods and cell phones? Tragedy had a new definition here. It was defined by as little as a broken fingernail.

Surely a family as well known and as successful as Ryder Garfield’s was no different. Rather than hear his complaints, his parents could surely just buy him into another school. Yet here he was, and early, too. I sat in my car and watched him in my rearview mirror as he emerged from his. From the way his sister glared at him and hurried off, I knew their argument hadn’t ended. Perhaps he had complained about her to his parents and she had been punished in some way she thought cruel and unusual, such as the confiscation of her MP3 player. He stood there for a moment watching her saunter off.

When I got out of my car, he turned toward me. I wasn’t sure what I would do. I was about to raise my hand and say hi, when he lowered his head, turned, and walked slowly toward the school entrance. Whatever friendly overture I had read into his two words to me after English class yesterday had obviously been misunderstood, I thought. He had no interest in being friendly. However, it occurred to me that he might be in my homeroom and perhaps the same morning classes as well. I couldn’t wait to see how he would treat me then, if he bothered treating me any way at all.

More often than not, our school lives were like a teenage soap opera. Maybe that was why so many of us were addicted to them. Here, we were on a stage of our own making, and all of us, including me, walked and talked with one eye on our immediate audience but another on everyone around us to see who was looking at us, who was listening to us, who was waiting to see what we were doing.

Me! Me! Me!

I felt like screaming it after Ryder as he approached the door.

Hey, Mr. Big Shot. Look at me!

For a moment, I thought I might have done just that, because he turned at the door and looked back at me. It was just a glance. He wasn’t waiting to hold the door or anything, but pathetic me, I was excited by it. I hurried on. He was in my homeroom, but he was assigned to a seat in the rear. When I walked in, he was taking his seat and didn’t care to look at anyone. Before I could say or do anything to get his attention, my girlfriends began arriving right behind me. I did see him glance my way while they talked excitedly about what they had seen or done last night. I thought he smiled, but maybe it was a sneer. With him, it looked as if it would always be difficult to tell the difference.

We did have some morning classes together, but in all of them, we were too far apart to talk, and before lunch, I had instrumental music. As more of my girlfriends found him distant and disinterested, their overall opinions were beginning to cement with the most obvious conclusion taking the headline quickly: “He’s very stuck-up. He’s in love with himself.”

Those thoughts were logical here. Very few of my friends could envision any boy being so aloof and indifferent to them for any other reason. His parents were really famous, so he didn’t want to lower himself enough to have any sort of conversation with anyone here, least of all a relationship.

“He’s just out-and-out boring,” Joey Marcus decided. That pleased them even more. Jessica was the last to fall in line, but not before she looked at me to see if I was going to be in agreement. I said nothing, so she chanced it, and then, looking for confirmation, asked me if I agreed. We were all gathered outside the library. Some of us had study hall there. We still had another minute until the bell rang for class.

“It’s too easy,” I said.

For a moment, it looked as if they had all been put on pause. They stood there staring at me.

“What’s that mean? What’s too easy?” Sydney Woods asked first.

“It’s too convenient to say he’s conceited. You don’t have to think about him at all after that.”

“Maybe we don’t want to,” Barbara Feld said. They all started to nod.

“I don’t believe that. You probably had an orgasm thinking about him last night,” I replied. It was vintage Kiera, for sure. Their mouths fell open. “Better get to class,” I added, and hurried away. Some of them would be late. They were that stunned.