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“What makes you think I’d want you to listen or it would matter to me if you did?”

He smiled confidently. My indignation caught fire again. I could feel my blood start to boil.

“You don’t appear to be deaf, and you don’t look stupid,” I said. “So I guess it’s that, like everyone else here, you’re just used to getting what you want.”

Before he could respond with any smart reply, I joined the Hassler twins, Vera and Mary. They were the sweetest, most unassuming girls in our class and without a doubt the most unattractive because of their unfortunate heavy hips and plain faces, with mouths a little too small and eyes too beady. They wore their hair too short, making their chubbiness more pronounced. Their parents were divorced, and they lived with their mother in what the girls here called a really middle-class house. From the disparaging way the other girls described it, someone would think they lived in a slum. The story was that their mother made their father pay the high tuition for Pacifica as part of her revenge. I supposed all that was why they were the shiest in our class and usually spent most of their time together. I tried to bring them into anything I could, but it never translated into other girls being friendly to them or inviting them to any parties or outings.

Right now, I felt as if going to them was retreating to a safe haven. I was sure Ryder was surprised at how easily I could walk away from him. I couldn’t help but be a bit like Kiera and make Ryder work hard now for any friendly smile or soft words from me, but as it turned out, even the Hassler twins were fascinated with Ryder Garfield. It was becoming almost impossible to go anywhere in this school to get away from him.

“We saw you talking to Ryder Garfield. He talks to you more than he talks to any other girl here,” Vera said, watching him walk away from us.

“Most of the boys talk to Sasha more than the other girls,” Mary pointed out. She was the sharper and sterner of the two. “Do you like him?” she asked me.

“I haven’t formed an opinion of him, but I can tell you that he’s not easy to like,” I said.

“He would be easy for me,” Vera said.

“Freddy Krueger would be easy for you,” Mary told her.

“Shut up. He would not.”

“Whether Ryder Garfield is easy or not, he’s not worth you two arguing about,” I said. “Did you get the paper done for Mr. Leshner’s class?”

“It took us so long to find all those references,” Vera said.

“Didn’t you use your computer?”

“Mary said we shouldn’t. Mr. Leshner might not like that.”

“He never said you couldn’t.”

“She’s not telling you the truth. We couldn’t use our computer because there’s something wrong with our computer, and my father hasn’t sent anyone over to fix it, and my mother won’t spend the money. She says it’s his responsibility,” Mary revealed. Vera looked embarrassed.

“Why don’t you tell your mother to have it fixed and send him the bill?” I asked.

“That’s a good idea,” Vera said, but Mary shook her head.

“He’ll procrastinate just to aggravate her, and all we’ll hear from our mother is why did we tell her to do that.”

Vera looked at me, perhaps hoping I could come up with some other solution.

“Then one of you call him yourself and complain.”

“Yeah, right,” Mary said. “That always works with my father. He has what are known as very holy ears.”

“Holy ears? What’s that?”

“Ears with holes in them for requests he doesn’t like or care to fulfill,” she said. “It’s my mother’s description, but it fits.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

The more I talked with most of these girls in Pacifica and heard about their family lives, the more I wondered if any of them was ever any better off than I was.

We entered the classroom.

“I have a copy of Flicks magazines in my bag,” Vera told me in a whisper, and nodded at Ryder. “His father is on the cover.”

“Vera,” I said, “unless he’s a fireman, he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like your father. Stop thinking of him as anything more.”