Free Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes

outside. OUTSIDE! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY! Never mind that we were just outside, like, two hours ago.
    After about fifteen minutes of elation leading to amusement leading to boredom, we are dutifully hustled back in and there is nothing really to report.
    Except.
    Remember my ice-cream Pop Art I was telling you about?
    Well, that’s been replaced.
    Well, it hasn’t been replaced, actually, just set aside.
    For a greater work.
    I know. You’re dying to know what it is.
    You and everybody else in the class. Including Stoner Art Teacher, who I do believe is freshly stoned.
    This is what is currently gracing my easel: Imagine, if you will, a painting made of white, oil, glass, mirror shards, more glass, more white, even some newspaper and magazine scraps painted over white. All of this stuff is on the canvas. And so, when you first look at it, it kind of just looks like a bunch of white stuff that catches the light and sparkles and is sorta kinda dazzling.
    But then, look closer, now you see what the picture actually makes. The shards and the glass and the painted newspaper and the oil all come together to make an image, a very faint image, of a girl. Of a girl with jagged cheekbones and a square boy-jaw and purple raccoon eyes with white-blonde hair and gray-blue eyes who looks kinda sorta like . . .
    â€œIt’s you!”
    It comes out from the hesher section of the mob.
    â€œHey, Anika! That’s you!”
    â€œIt totally is!”
    â€œDid you make that?”
    And now everybody’s looking at me. And now I’m just shaking my head. I mean, what am I supposed to say? (1) I’m not that talented, and (2) Yeah, I just made that when we were all standing outside together freezing our faces off—with my mind.
    Now comes Stoner Art Teacher.
    â€œHm. This is actually kind of interesting . . . Mixed Media. Monochromatic. Yet, there’s something almost frenetic about it, kind of like a Jean Dubuffet . . .”
    Wow. I guess Stoner Art Teacher actually read some books along the way between bong hits.
    And now he turns to me.
    â€œWell, Anika, looks like you’ve got yourself a secret admirer . . . A very talented one, at that.”
    I say a silent prayer in which I thank God Becky’s not here. If she were, there would be swift and immediate punishment. Both for being the subject of this tribute and for the tribute being, I’m certain, made of trash in Becky’s eyes.
    But it isn’t trash.
    And when I think of the diabolical way in which its author ensured its delivery, I feel that magic in the air. Electric. Like there is a live wire nearby.
    No one knows the artist’s name.
    But I know the artist’s name.
    I smile.
    Logan.

seventeen
    I know you probably think Shelli bones all those guys because she’s in love with them, but here’s the funny thing, I don’t think that’s it. I think she just does it to spend time with them. Like, they all go out and all the guys are wondering the whole time, which one of them gets to bone Shelli. So, it’s like she gets all this crazy attention while they hope they’ll be the one. She bones down with one of the guys, then just leaves him, like doesn’t say good-bye or kiss him or anything. She just jets out of there like a house on fire and never talks to the guy again. Ever. Doesn’t call. Doesn’t write. Doesn’t stalk.
    What’s funny is that this makes them like her more. Like she just has this superhot sexy sex with them, ditches them, and then all of a sudden they’re in love with her .
    I gotta hand it to her, it’s kind of genius.
    I know I couldn’t do it. Especially ’cause I’m totally petrified of contracting some grody disease. You never know with these guys. Some of them look like they are like straight out of juvie. I don’t know how Shelli keeps ’em straight, but they do all keep trying to fondle