Free Girls in Trouble by Caroline Leavitt Page B

about the baby, and about Danny.
    Danny Slade.
    Sara had met Danny over a year ago, a bright sunny May day when she was fifteen. Like everyone else, she had spring fever. All that week Sara hadn’t been able to concentrate. She meant to go to the library, and instead found herself at a shopping mall, drawn to all the filmy dresses, the blouses made of cheap, shiny material. She had spent days trying to finisha paper at home, but the scent of the roses came in from the open window and drove her crazy, and when she got up and shut her window, their perfume grew even more powerful. It was more than spring fever, she told herself. This was possession.
    She was in the science lab, measuring chemicals into a test tube for a project she was doing. She was the only one in the lab besides the science teacher, a middle-aged woman who insisted all the students call her Dr. Kubin, and who wore a white lab coat every day as if any moment she might be called to perform surgery. Dr. Kubin was saying something to Sara, but Sara felt drugged from the weather, and Dr. Kubin’s voice seemed muffled.
    “Should I ask you a third time?” Dr. Kubin snapped.
    “Ask me what?”
    Dr. Kubin sighed. “Again, Sara? Those test tubes aren’t clean.” Dr. Kubin tapped one of the tubes, and Sara shut her eyes until there was a loud, sudden crash.
    Sara’s eyes flew open. Her books were now on the floor, and there was Dr. Kubin, her hands on her hips. “Now, do I have your attention?” Dr. Kubin said acidly.
    “I’m sorry—” Sara bent to retrieve the books, but Dr. Kubin kicked them out of her way with the toe of her pump. “Get out of my lab,” she said.
    Sara needed to finish this project. It was the kind of thing that would be a real plus on her resume. And it was her project, her baby.
    “Dr. Kubin?” Sara said, but Dr. Kubin ignored her and sat down at another computer, pulling up Sara’s program. “Dr. Kubin?” Sara repeated, and Dr. Kubin waved her hand, as if she were shooing a fly, and Sara grabbed her books and ran out of the room, fighting tears, and there, leaning against a building, smoking, was Danny Slade.
    She knew him. Walk past the principal’s office and there was Danny Slade. Be late to school, and there was Danny Slade, outside, smoking, taking his time, so beautiful you could die just looking at him. He always wore the same musky patchouli oil, so strong that sometimes you could walk into an empty corridor, and you’d know he had just left it. She knew the stories about him. That except for Danny, his family was superreligiousand conservative, and that Danny was the black sheep, a boy who was smart enough, but didn’t give a damn about school, a boy who actually said things like “God is dead” in class and didn’t flinch when he was sent to the principal for it. A boy whose father had died in some scandalous accident that Danny wouldn’t talk about, which made it all the more mysterious. “I want him,” the girls stage-whispered when thev saw him, and even though Danny could have had any one of them, he kept to himself and that made them all want him more. He had long, glossy dark hair and strange eyes, bright and green as a traffic go signal, and now they were staring at her, as if he recognized her from somewhere a long time ago. That look worked its way into her bones. “Sara,” he said.
    She was startled he even knew her name. He glanced at her books, taking another drag of his cigarette, lowering his head so his hair fell into his eyes. “You’re always reading,” he said. She thought he was making fun of her, the way some of the kids at school did. Every time report cards came out, someone would always jeer at her, “What’d you get, all As again?” as if being smart were a terrible disease you might never recover from. Every time her name or the name of another honors student was announced on the PA system for winning an award, there would be snickers. Eves would roll.
    “Don’t ruin those