Free 13 to Life by Shannon Delany

exchanged it for my gym uniform, emblazoned with the Junction High name and mascot.
    The Junction Jackrabbit glared out from my shirt, hind legs twisted to kick an unseen opponent, the rabbit’s teeth so big and pointy my dad had proclaimed it a beast worthy of a Monty Python sketch. Although I never considered myself a morning person—most mornings I felt I wasn’t much of a person at all—the morning was progressing nearly normally except for the additions of Pietr and Max.
    I slipped my necklace over my head and set it on the locker’s top shelf and gave my jeans pocket a squeeze to reassure myself that my worry stone was still there. I hated not having it, but gym class had rules about jewelry and “accessories.”
    Sarah caught up to me and I asked what she was reading today. “I’m already deep into
Great Expectations
. Have you read it?”
    I said, “No,” although I thought I had.
    Even at my fastest, I couldn’t consume books as she now did. Something had flipped a switch in her brain after the accident and she’d come out of it hungry for words.
    “It’s amazing. It’s all about moral self-improvement. The character Pip wants to be a better person and works really hard at it,” she said, glowing.
    “Sounds great,” I said. “I’m all about the self-improvement.” More important, I hoped Sarah was big on that same theme. We exited the locker room and entered the broad and open expanse of the gym. Coach Mac took a shot from the foul line with a basketball, Pietr in his shadow.
    Pietr nodded at me. Girls glared in my direction, eyes daggers at the idea Pietr might have found some special connection with me. At least there were fewer of them stalking him today than yesterday. Popularity like he’d had earlier neared paparazzi-level.
    The ball swished into the basket, and Coach Mac said, “Yep, Petey, that’s the way we do it at Junction.
Sswish!
” Coach squeezed Pietr’s shoulder before pointing to the locker room. “Derek!”
    Derek swung around. “Yeah, Coach?”
    “Get the fresh meat a uniform and assign him a lock.”
    “No problem.” Derek smiled in a way that left me wondering, even as Sarah maneuvered me to the stands.
    I watched Derek and Pietr disappear into the locker room together. Sarah said, “Sit,” and I sat, eyes stuck to the locker room door. “What’s going on with you?” Sarah waved her hand in front of my face and I gasped, jolted out of my trance.
    “What?”
    “What’s wrong with you, Jessica? I’ve never seen you like this before.”
    “Sure, you have. Everyone has. You probably just don’t remember,” I said gingerly. I ticked the times off I’d been precisely like
this
on my fingers, “Bobby Constantine in fifth grade, Aaron Johnson in sixth grade, Matt Greene in seventh grade, and Derek—”
    Sarah shook her head in denial. “Yeah, you probably got a little nutty over each of your crushes, sure. But you’re, like—like—” She searched for the right word, and I knew a snappy piece of vocabulary was going to be thrown my way. “You’re totally
vacillating
between love and hate.” She smiled.
    “What?”
    “You’re totally up and down over him. You can’t decide to love him or hate him.”
    “What?”
I tried again. “I
totally
adore Derek. You know that.” I rolled my eyes.
    The locker room door popped open, and Derek strode out, looking sour.
    “I’m not talking about
Derek,
” Sarah insisted.
    But I didn’t pay attention because Pietr threw the door open and stepped into the gym, a dark look twisting across his face. Even so, I never thought a person could look decent in our gym uniform, but Pietr had pulled it off.
    “What do you think they talked about in there?” I asked, leaning into Sarah’s shoulder.
    “What do guys ever talk about? If it’s not about themselves, or sports, it’s girls.”
    Stella Martin leaned forward, wedging her face between us. “Maybe they whipped out their
stuff
and compared sizes.” She