Free Inland by Kat Rosenfield

“Everything! Do you like it here? When does school start? Do you miss your friends in Laramie?”
    I take a deep breath. I’m wondering if I can do now what I did in my letters, if I can pick my words just so, create the skeleton of a not-quite-lie, and let her assumptions fill in the rest. But as we turn the corner, and the humid air touches my face, I never get the chance to find out. My tongue has other ideas. And when the words come out, the voice saying them is clear and unapologetic. The truth rings like a bell.
    “I don’t miss anyone,” I say, “because I don’t have anyone to miss. I don’t have friends, Nessa. Not in Laramie, or anywhere else we’ve been. I said I did, but I didn’t. There’s no one. There’s never been anyone.”
    When she answers, she doesn’t look at me. I don’t know whether to be stung or relieved.
    With her eyes on the road, she replies, “I know that, baby. I know.”

C H A P T E R 11
    THE BIOLOGY TEACHER IS LOOKING at me suspiciously.
    —
    “Last name is Morgan?” he says.
    I take a deep breath, getting ready for the inevitable new-student tango and grateful that at least we’re alone, the first bell not yet rung. It’s been thirty-seven days since my last attack. I know this because I dutifully marked each one of them, slashing a proud, self-satisfied red
X
on the calendar while my father watched warily over his latest round of figures from the latest samples of the ocean floor. Thirty-seven days ago, he took my inhaler—“So if you have an attack, I’ll know,” he warned—and made me a bargain: one month of easy breathing, and he’d enroll me at Ballard without argument.
    I’m not sure who was more shocked when the thirtieth day rolled around.
    —
    “Yes,” I say. “Morgan, comma, Calypso.”
    He raises his eyebrows at my full name; I roll my eyes in return, the wordless stand-in for an embarrassed,
I know.
    “Creative parents, huh?” he says, and grins. “Well, I’d remember that one if you were on my list, but you’re not. My apologies, we’re not always the quickest with paperwork around here. And where are you coming to us from?”
    It’s the new-student dance, the one I’ve done a million times, but I don’t know this version—the one where I’m not being studied like a lab rat, where a sudden coughing fit doesn’t earn a deer-in-headlights stare from a freaked-out adult. In this version, there’s no curious ogling or wincing as I speak; my biology teacher has no wariness in his eyes, just a disarming, wide-open smile sitting between his comb-over and his shirt collar.
    “We lived in Wyoming,” I stammer. Is my throat closing up?
Please,
I think,
please don’t let me stop breathing just because someone was nice to me
. The teacher—Mr. Strong, it said on the door—looks down again at his papers, shuffling them again as though he expects my name might magically rise to the top, talking all the while.
    “That’s quite a trek. Quite a trek! Wyoming, huh? Horse country, isn’t it? You ever ride horses up there? You look like the outdoorsy type.”
    It’s not just the dance steps I can’t follow; now, I don’t even know the song they’re playing. I might as well have stumbled into another dimension. Dumbly, I shake my head.
    “Well, welcome to the dirty South,” he says, and the smile keeps shining on, bigger, brighter. Behind me, the low rumble from the hallway becomes a roar as the metal
clang
of slamming lockers starts to come in staccato bursts.
    “I’ll write you in here, and we’ll give the office a few more days to let your teachers know who you are, but you might have to give them a nudge, okay? Keep an eye on that, maybe stop in on Thursday to make sure you’re in the system. And here’s your syllabus.”
    The classroom door opens as he pushes a thick sheaf of papers across the desk, and a tumble of kids bursts through with shouts of greeting. They’re all grinning and waving, and I suspect that Mr. Strong’s good