Free Black Box by Julie Schumacher Page A

water.
    “We’re in the same math and the same science,” Lila said, “and she used to cut class once in a while, but now it happens a lot. She wasn’t there last period. She missed yesterday, too.”
    Someone bumped into me with an armload of books. I looked at Lila’s perfect smooth straight black hair and the perfect clothes she had picked out that morning, the beaded necklace and bracelet that matched.
This could have happened to you,
I thought.
This could have happened to you instead of my sister.
    “I have to go,” Lila said. “But I wanted to tell you. You know, in case.”
    In case of what?
I had always liked Lila but now I wanted to uncap the marker I kept in my pocket and write something obscene on the front of her sweater. “Do you know where she goes?” I asked. “When she’s not in class?”
    Lila was already walking away. “I think she hangs out in the bathrooms sometimes,” she said.

42

    “Dora? Are you in here?”
    There were two girls’ bathrooms on the first floor, one on the second, and one on the third. It took me nine minutes, running up the stairs, to look in each one.
    “Dora?”
    No answer. I didn’t even know which classes she had decided to cut.

43

    “Don’t flip out on me,” Dora said. “I’m not ditching that often. I just need to think sometimes.”
    “Oh,” I said. “About what?” We were walking home from the bus stop. It was almost Halloween, and a couple of little kids in costumes were running around on the neighbors’ front lawn.
    “I can’t sit there hour after hour with people talking at me.” She moved her hands in the air like little puppets. “It all seems so pointless.”
    “Why is it pointless?” School could be boring sometimes, I thought, but as long as you went to class and read and learned things, it was hard to argue that it didn’t have a point.
    Mr. Peebles was waiting on the front porch for us, cleaning his whiskers and looking annoyed.
    “I think I’m failing French,” Dora said.
    I dug my house key out of my pocket. “You could get a tutor.”
    “Yeah. Except that I’m also failing chemistry. I hate Mrs. King. She’s a walking fossil.” Dora picked Mr. Peebles up and scratched his furry stomach. “You probably have all As, don’t you?”
    “No.” I had a B in biology. I opened the door; the house was quiet. “How are you ditching and not getting caught?” I asked when Dora put Mr. Peebles down. “Doesn’t the office call home when you’re missing?”
    “They only call if you don’t have a written excuse.”
    “And?”
    Dora paused, then opened her backpack and showed me a note on my mother’s new monogrammed stationery:
Please excuse Dora Lindt at 11:35 today; she has a doctor’s appointment.
    I looked at the signature; it was almost perfect. “You could get in a lot of trouble for this.”
    “Maybe. But the only way that would happen”—Dora tore up the note—“would be if someone found out and told the school.”

44

    “I think being at school is hard for her,” I said to my mother while we were folding laundry. It was Saturday and I had offered to help. Matching socks was generally acknowledged to be my specialty.
    “You worry about your schoolwork, and Dora can worry about hers,” my mother said. “You look like you’re turning into a statue.”
    I had started playing a mental game that involved touching each sock only once: after a sock had been touched, I had to find its mate without touching any other article of clothing first. I was holding a white gym sock in my hand; in front of me on my parents’ bed were about a hundred other white socks.
    “I’m not talking about schoolwork, though,” I said. “I’m talking about being in the building. For seven hours in a row—it’s pretty stressful.”
    “She can hardly stay
outside
the building,” my mother said.
    “Yeah. That would be weird.” I picked up another white sock—luckily it matched—and folded the two elastic tops together.