Kids will accept almost anything if the person saying it sounds steady enough.
But after my mother left for work, he asked me from the bottom bunk, “Do you think they’ll take back my bed?”
I had to go into the bathroom and shut the door before I answered.
Because I hated that somebody else’s bad choice had put that sentence inside my little brother’s mouth.
The next day at school, I learned the internet had beaten me there.
I made it exactly fourteen steps from homeroom to first period before a boy from algebra called out, “Hey, bunk-bed girl.”
Not even mean.
Just interested.
Which somehow felt meaner.
Two girls near the water fountain turned and looked too fast away.
At lunch, a seventh grader I barely knew came to our table and said, “My aunt shared your thing. She cried.”
My thing.
As if our whole life had become a video of a dog being rescued from a ditch.
“Cool,” I said.
He nodded like I’d given him something useful and walked off.
Rina slid onto the bench across from me with her tray.
