Free Unbecoming by Jenny Downham Page B

shuffle closer, try and make herself smaller as they walked by?
    Mary really must remember to teach her about courage in the face of adversity. A subject at which she was expert.

Nine
    Maybe the sun bleaching through the exam room window messed with Katie’s head, because time definitely slowed down. She could actually feel the dull thump of each passing moment. Never had vectors or Newton’s laws of motion felt so torturous and even though there were only two questions she struggled with, it felt as if days had passed when Mechanics was finally over.
    She was going to slink away as quickly as possible, but a couple of the boys said they were going to get a Coke from the machine by the common room and was she coming or what? This was so entirely weird, that she tagged after them. They sat on the wall outside and went over questions they remembered.
    She’d mucked up coefficients of friction big time, but she’d remembered to convert to radians per second when working out linear speed round a circle and yes, she’d used Newton’s Second Law to find the equation of motion in the radial direction. Not too bad …
    The boys even told her about some party a friend of theirs was having after exams were over and she put the details on her phone. Why not? If she studied really hard, Mum might let her go.
    It was so nice to be included that Katie felt herself relax for the first time in days. The breeze ruffled her hair. Birds twittered overhead and it was so hot it looked as if water beamed at her from thewalls of the main school buildings across the playground. They actually looked rather beautiful, as if waterfalls swept their sides.
    Another exam done and a whole week of half term coming up. Only one more exam after that and now a party to look forward to. She was lucky. She must keep thinking this. She was not Mum making difficult phone calls. She was not Chris. She was not poor dead Jack. She was not Mary, trapped in the flat with no choice about anything. She was Katie Baxter – blessed to be alive and healthy on such a sunny day.
    She felt positively optimistic as she threw the empty can in the bin, said goodbye to the boys and picked up her bag. So optimistic, that when she saw Esme and her friends over on the grass by the drama block she made a decision.
    She’d casually walk up and ask how exams were going. Then she’d ask if they had any plans for the afternoon. She didn’t want to hide away like Pat. She wanted to risk her heart like Mary.
    The girls would admire her courage and include her again. Simple.
    When there’s a collision between two objects, Newton’s Third Law states that the force on one of the bodies is equal and opposite to the force on the other body. B ut there weren’t two bodies, there were five of them and only one of her and how could she ever have thought they’d be inclusive or that things would be equal?
    She knew it as soon as she veered off the path towards them.
    ‘Hey,’ one of them said, nudging Esme, ‘here comes your friend.’
    Ex -friend. Which is why Esme looked so horrified. Which is why she did a backwards collapse on the grass, like a sniper had got her. Katie felt a fierce burning flood her face. How could a friendship go from something to nothing? More than nothing, in fact – a negative, because they’d lost the thing they had.
    It was palpable the way the others judged Katie as she got close – their eyes flicking up and down, checking out her complete lack of tan or makeup, her inability to do anything with her hair apart from shove it in a ponytail. But if she turned round and walked away she’d look a total loser and make everything worse. She had to go through with this, had to make them change their minds about her. She’d keep it short, not say anything too mad and pretend she hadn’t noticed Esme blanking her.
    But maybe Esme ignoring her gave the other girls permission to be meaner, because there was a certain electric energy in their eyes as they