Cloudburst (Storms 2)

“Ryder has a sister entering the eighth grade,” Dr. Steiner said. “Her name is Summer. I hope you will all give them both a warm welcome. Please don’t hesitate to come see me if you have any problems or questions, Ryder,” she added.

He didn’t turn to her or respond. Dr. Steiner nodded at Mr. Malamud, and he returned to the front of the classroom.

“We were just about to begin the chapter titled ‘The Mole,’ ” he began. “Can anyone tell me what a mole is?”

A dozen hands went up, mostly girls who were eager to show off for our new celebrity student.

I saw Ryder begin to thumb through the text, so I leaned over and said, “It’s under the heading Chemical Reactions.”

He glanced at me.

“No kidding, Dick Tracy,” he said.

I recoiled like someone slapped. Many of the boys in this school could be unpleasant, especially if they were with their friends and wanted to show off by belittling someone. Normally, I would send it right back to them threefold. I had a reputation for the quick comeback. Since they knew of my former life, they were always a bit wary of me, anyway. Ray Stowe was the latest victim who could testify about it. Who knew how rough I could be considering the world from which I came?

But for a brand-new student to be this way to me immediately took even me by surprise. From the way he sat there staring at the text, I thought he might be very angry that he had been enrolled at Pacifica and just wanted to take it out on anyone who made himself or herself available. Right now, he looked more like someone sulking, someone ready to jump down anyone’s throat.

“Well, pardon me,” I muttered, “for caring enough to offer you some help.”

He acted as if he hadn’t heard me. He never looked at me again, nor did he look at anyone else, for that matter, during the entire class. Mr. Malamud didn’t call on him or ask him to read anything. I had the feeling that if he had, Ryder would have ignored him anyway. Even though he had acted as if he would, I saw that he didn’t take a single note during class. When the bell rang, he got up quickly and started out, still avoiding looking at me. He spoke to no one. Some of the girls sped up to walk beside him in the hallway. I saw Jessica speak to him. He looked at her, shook his head, and kept walking, even a little faster. She stopped dead in her tracks, looking after him.

“What did you ask him?” I asked when I caught up to her.

“What class he had next and if he needed any help to find it,” she told me. “He just shook his head, but did you see his eyes? Did you ever see eyes so blue?”

“Maybe they’re tinted contacts,” I told her, and headed for English class.

He was in my English class, too, which meant that he would also be in my math class, the last class of the day. By the time I entered the room, Mr. Madeo already had given him the anthology of English literature and was showing him to the last desk in the first row, which, again, was just across from mine. I took my seat without looking at him.

“Another class with Dick Tracy,” he said, just loudly enough for me to hear, but still not looking at me.

I turned to him slowly. “Are you addressing me?”

He jerked his head around. “Sure. I thought you’d tell me what page to turn to,” he said, turning to the correct page, Act II, Scene 1, of Hamlet. Obviously, Mr. Madeo had already told him where we were.

“Looks like you already asked Sherlock Holmes and don’t need the help of poor Dick Tracy,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him nearly smile. It was nearly, because as soon as his lips began to relax, he seemed to catch himself and return to his deadpan look.

Mr. Madeo always had a little twinkle in his eye when he called on students in his class. He knew whom he would catch unawares and who would probably have the answer. There were some students in the class who hadn’t been introduced to Ryder, but most knew who he was by now and had already whispered about him to others. Some gaped at him without any pretense. They had gaped at me, too, on my first day but not like this, I thought. I was sure he wished he was somewhere else. However, I wasn’t surprised to see Mr. Madeo call on him about halfway through the class discussion.

“Let’s hear from a new voice,” he said. “Ryder, what do you make of this line, ‘for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’?”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Ryder said.

“Not to everyone. Enlighten us.”

“What’s good to someone might be bad to someone else, depending on what they bring to the situation. Hamlet’s depressed about his father’s death and his mother marrying his uncle, so the world of Denmark looks like a prison to him but not to his friends.”

“Sasha, how do you rate that answer?”

I glanced at Ryder. “It’s good to me but maybe bad to you,” I said. “Thinking makes it so.”

Mr. Madeo laughed.

Ryder looked at me and, this time, couldn’t stop his smile.

He didn’t say anything to me when the bell rang, but on the way to math, he walked by and said, “Neat answer.”

He kept going, not waiting for my response. We were on completely opposite sides of the classroom in math. He was closer to the door. When the bell rang to end the class and the day, he practically shot out the door like someone already late for an appointment.