LITMIR.BIZ

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added, “In theory. Not always in reality.”

      Cruz gave her a sidelong glance. “I saw you with that boy, the tall, dark and crazy-good-looking one?”

      “Malik?” Shade was momentarily thrown off stride. She was not used to people as observant as herself.

      “He likes you.”

      “Liked, past tense. We’re just friends now.”

      Cruz shook her head slowly, side to side. “He looked back at you, like, three times.”

      “So, you’re a straight girl trapped in the body of a gay boy? Walk me through it.” Shade deliberately shifted the conversation back to Cruz, and she was amused and gratified to see that Cruz knew exactly what she was doing.

      Smart, Shade thought. Too smart? Just smart enough?

      “I am e), all of the above, trapped in a True/False quiz,” Cruz said. “You can quote me on that.”

      “Pronouns?”

      Cruz shrugged. “More she than he. I don’t get bitchy about it, but, you know, if you can . . .” Now it was Cruz’s turn to shift the topic. “You read a lot.”

      “Yes, but I only do it to made myself popular.” The line was delivered flat and Shade could see that Cruz was momentarily at a loss, not sure if this was the truth, before realizing it was just a wry joke.

      It took Cruz maybe a second, a second and a half, to process, Shade noted. Slower than Shade would have been, slower than Malik, but not stupid slow, not at all. Just not genius quick.

      “I’ll call us in sick,” Shade said, and pressed her thumb to her phone.

      “I don’t think you can do that.”

      “Please.” Shade dialed, waited, said, “Hello, this is Shade Darby, senior. I’m feeling a little off today, and I’m also calling in sick for—” She covered the phone and asked, “What’s your legal name?”

      “Hugo Cruz Martinez Rojas.”

      “Hugo Rojas. Yeah, she’s hurt. A couple of our star football players roughed her up. Yes. No. Uh-huh.” Shade hung up. “See? No problem. The school is already dealing with the swastika incident. They don’t want any more bad publicity.”

      “Swastika incident?”

      “Spray paint on the side of the temporary building, the one they use for music. A swastika and the usual hate stuff, half of it misspelled. It’s two ‘g’s’ not one. One ‘g’ and it’s a country in Africa. Sad times when someone does that, sadder still when they can’t even spell it.”

      Cruz had removed most of the blood from her face and neck, but Shade went to her, took a tissue and leaned in to wipe a fugitive blood smear from the corner of Cruz’s mouth.

      The gesture embarrassed Cruz, who turned her attention again to the bookshelf beside her. “Veronica Rossi. Andrew Smith. Lindsay Cummings. Dashner. Marie Lu. Daniel Kraus.” Reading the authors’ names from the spines. “And Dostoyevsky? Faulkner? Gertrude Stein? David Foster Wallace? Virginia Woolf?”

      “I have eclectic tastes,” Shade said. She waited to see what Cruz made of the rest of her collection.

      “The Science of the Perdido Beach Anomaly.” Cruz frowned. “Powers and Possibilities: The Meaning of the Perdido Beach Anomaly. That sounds dramatic. The Physics of the Perdido Beach Anomaly. Way too math-y for me. Our Story: Surviving the FAYZ. I read that one myself—I guess everyone did. I didn’t like the movie though—they obviously toned it way down.”

      “Mmmm.”

      “You’re very into the Perdido Beach thing.”

      Shade nodded. “Some would say obsessed.”

       Some. Like Malik.

      “And you like science.”

      “My father is a professor at Northwestern, head of astrophysics. It runs in the family.”

      “And your mom?”

      “She’s dead.” Shade cursed herself silently. Four years of saying those words and she still couldn’t get them out without a catch in her voice.

      “I’m sorry,” Cruz said, her brow wrinkling in a frown.

      “Thank you,” Shade said levelly. She had the ability to place a big, giant “full stop” on the end of subjects she did not want to pursue, and Cruz got the hint.

      “My father is a plumbing contractor,” Cruz said. “We used to live in Skokie, but, well, I had problems at the school. It was a Catholic school and I guess they like their students to be either male or female, but not all-of-the-above, or neither, or, you know, multiple-choice. I started out wearing the boys’ uniform and they didn’t like it when I switched to a skirt.”

      “No?”

      “It was a bit short,” Cruz admitted slyly, “but they don’t make a lot of plaid skirts in my size.”

      “What do you do when you’re not provoking violence at bus stops?”

      Cruz had a silent laugh, an internal one that expressed itself in quiet snorts, wheezes and wide grins, sort of the diametric opposite of Malik. “Are you asking what I want to be when I grow up? That’s my other secret. I’ve gotten to the point where I can mostly deal with the gender stuff, but writing . . . I mean, you tell people you want to write and they roll their eyes.”

      “I’ll be sure to look away when I roll my eyes,” Shade promised.

      “Yes, I want to be Veronica Roth when I grow up. You know she’s from here, right? She went to Northwestern.”

      “What do you write about?”

      Cruz shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It’s probably just therapy, you know? Working out my own issues, but using fictional characters.”

      “Isn’t that what all fiction writers do?”

      Cruz did a short version of her internalized laugh.

      Shade nodded, head at a tilt, eyeing Cruz closely. “You . . . are interesting.” Something in the way she said it made it a benediction, a pronouncement, and a small, gratified smile momentarily appeared on Cruz’s lips.

      After that they chatted about books, ate chips and salsa, and drank orange juice; they watched a little TV, with Shade leaving the choice of shows to Cruz because, of course, Shade was testing her, or at least studying her.

       Cruz actually is interesting. And . . . useful?

      The day wore on, the swelling in Cruz’s ankle worsened until it was twice its normal size, but then began slowly to deflate like a balloon with a slow leak. The pain receded as well, beaten back by ibuprofen, ice, and the recuperative powers of youth.

      All the while Shade considered. She liked this odd person, this e) in a True/False world, this person who tried to wear a skirt to Catholic school, this smart but not too smart, funny, self-deprecating, seemingly aimless creature who wanted to be a writer.

      Person, Shade chided herself. Not creature, person. She was aware that she had a tendency to analyze people with the intensity and the emotional distance of a scientist counting bacteria on a slide.

       Blame DNA.

      Shade needed help, back-up, support, she knew that, and her only currently available choice was Malik, who would resist and delay and generally try to get in her way. Malik was a chronic rescuer, one of those boys—young man, actually, in Malik’s case—who thought it was their duty in life to get between every bully and their victim and every fool and their fate. Had he been at the bus stop he would have launched himself in between the two football players and gotten a beat-down, and it would be his blood she was wiping away, and

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