over his face and eroded his expression. He began to speak to Blue, his lips parting in slow motion and bubbles of air without sound floating up into the sky.
Blue mouthed back slow-motion, water-laden words. âI canât hear you,â he said.
âNo one can,â Oliver mouthed back.
Blue had always been a boy of few words and ever since being banished to remedial English heâd been called âdumb,â stuck in what other kids charmingly referred to as âthe retard class.â âYou look like a gaping fucking fish,â one of the guys laughed. âWho the hell are you talking to?â Blue didnât care: he was learning to speak without sound, finding a way to communicate with his fatherâthe man on the other side of the fence who no one but him could see.
Emma was a person of few words herself, but unlike Blue sheâd adopted a waif-like and distressed posture early on; after
Dr. Nelliganâs Diet Book for Girls
, sheâd shed pounds of innocence and adopted an appearance that made people think her mysterious or badly nourished, but not stupid. But, six blocks away from Blue, at McArthur High, her classmates were persecuting her as well.
âSuck my cock, Vladivostok,â boys in the schoolyard taunted. âYou fuckinâ Commie.â
The kinder-whores dressed in tube tops and high-tops preferred calling her âPrincess Commie Big Shitâ and they still werenât relenting on âLezzy.â
Still, being a Princess Commie Big Shit Lezzy was at least better than being a boring old Emma Taylor in her mind, even if it meant everybody hated her. Everybody, that is, except her brother and her new best friend, Max.
The first time Emma saw Max she didnât know whether Max was a boy or a girl. Max had a blonde brush cut and wore army fatigues and looked like her earlobes had been repeatedly punched with a staple gun. She wore steel-toed boots, had an all-purpose jackknife chained to her studded belt, and rarely looked up when she shuffled past people. Maxine was her name, but since she thought she was a boy, she went by the name Max.
If Emma thought she had it bad, Max had it far worse. The kids at school didnât know what to call her: it was more often âfaggotâ than âlezzy,â but most often âfreak.â And when Maxine and Oksana became friends, they started to call them both lezzies.
Oksana would lie with her head on Maxâs belly in the park and read aloud from a copy of the
Scum Manifesto
, which Max had given her. Max would listen, staring at the sky and blowing smoke rings over Oksanaâs head in the heat of the late afternoon.
âWhy the fuck do they call us lezzies?â Max asked angrily one day. âI mean, Iâm a guy and youâre a Russian princess. Thereâs nothing lezzy about us.â
â âCause theyâre a bunch of fucking mutants,â Emma said.
âHigh school sucks.â
âYou said it.â
âLife sucks.â
âSure does.â
Elaine actually took notice of Emmaâs new friendship and asked her, âWhoâs that strange girl I see loitering in the front yard?â
âThatâs Max. Maxine.â
âWell, youâve changed since you started hanging out with herâand not for the better.â
âWhat do you mean?â Emma mumbled as if she had a mouth full of mashed potatoes.
âYouâve become rebellious. That girl looks like she needs a bath. I donât know if sheâs quite right,â Elaine said, as she plopped down a plate of takeout Polish cabbage rolls in front of her alien children one interminable Saturday night.
âI donât care, Mum. Sheâs my friend, okay? At least I have a friend.â
âWhatâs that supposed to mean, Emma?â
âNothing,â Emma muttered into her paper plate.
Elaine let it go. She remembered fourteen all too well. All she could hope
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley