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I began to consider that I might really not be there. Maybe I was the one who had died in the car accident and this was my punishment, my hell, just as I had once told little Jake. Silly and wild imaginings like that kept occurring. Sometimes, they put a wide smile on my face, so wide and bright that Aunt Mae Louise was forced to ask me what I thought was humorous.

Interrupted, I looked at her as if I had just noticed she was there. It spooked her, I know, because she looked away or at Uncle Buster for help.

“Are you all right, Phoebe?” he would ask me softly.

“All right? Sure. I’m fine,” I would tell him and return to eating.

I knew Aunt Mae Louise warned both Barbara Ann and Jake to keep their distance from me and be in my company only when it was absolutely necessary. Neither ever came to my room anymore, and when they passed me in the hallway going or coming from the bathroom, they kept their eyes down and their lips pulled tightly shut. Barbara Ann’s puckered mouth was drawn up like a drawstring purse. She continued to ignore me completely on the school bus and walking to and from it. The two of them were keeping themselves in an invisible plastic bubble when it came to having anything to do with me. I didn’t real

ly care. It was just something curious because I wasn’t quite sure if they had the bubble around them or I had it around me.

I continued to behave the same way in school, only vaguely aware of how many of the students were laughing at me until one afternoon, while I was eating my lunch at an outside table, two girls approached me.

They were both white, the taller one prettier, with hair like spun gold and turquoise eyes as bright as polished stones. She had a runway model’s figure and a very confident air about her, telegraphed in her correct posture and the arrogant turn in her shoulders when she walked or spoke.

The other girl wasn’t as pretty as she was voluptuous, with a fuller figure, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes. Her features weren’t as dainty as the taller girl’s, but her lips were thicker, sexier, like someone who had gotten those cosmetic shots to make them so. I had the feeling she was a work in progress and would probably have her nose redone.

“Hi,” the taller girl said. “I’m Taylor Madison and this is Rae Landau. We heard about what happened with Ashley Porter,” she added, and sat.

“Yeah,” Rae said, sitting beside her.

I looked at the two of them and smirked. Pride tightened my throat and lifted my shoulders back.

“Big deal. I guess you’d have to be deaf not to have heard,” I said.

“Exactly,” Taylor said.

“So what do you want? More details to spread?”

“No. We want to tell you we feel sorry for you,” Rae said. “Ashley has been telling all sorts of stories about you, exaggerating and embellishing to make himself look better for sure.”

“I don’t care what he says,” I replied. Then I paused to scan their faces, searching for their real intentions, since they said they weren’t here to get more details. “Why would you two care so much, anyway?”

“He did something like this to me,” Rae revealed. “And it was just as unpleasant for me afterward. I almost had a nervous breakdown.”

I know I looked skeptical. I could see Ashley picking on a new girl, especially one like me who had no friends here, but not a girl who looked like she could buy and sell whatever she wanted, especially friends.

“A nervous breakdown?”

“She’s telling the truth,” Taylor said. “He tried to get me to go on a date with him after he dumped on Rae, but I wouldn’t give him the time of day so he spread rumors about me, disgusting rumors.”

“Like what? What do you think is disgusting around here?” I challenged.

“Saying I was more interested in girls and that was why Rae and I were such good friends.”

I raised my eyebrows and wondered if there was a seed of truth to any of it.

“Someone like Ashley thinks that’s the only reason a girl wouldn’t be with him,” Rae said. “He’s too egotistical to believe anything else. He can never be wrong or the cause of any trouble.”

“Yeah,” I said with a deep sigh, “I can’t deny I did agree to meet him in the nurse’s office. I can’t blame anyone else but myself for what happened.”

“You certainly can and should blame him,” Taylor cried, raising her voice. “You were here hardly forty-eight hours. He didn’t care if he got caught. He knew he would get away with it. They didn’t even suspend him, and guess what,” she continued. “He’s back on the basketball squad.”

“He is?”

“As of this afternoon. There was a hearing or something and his parents came and pleaded and the school decided he had suffered enough being suspended from the team this long.”

“I thought his daddy was a marine and was happy he was punished,” I said.