Free Dark Blue: Color Me Lonely with Bonus Content by Melody Carlson Page A

today.”
    “Not when I treat for pizza,” he says with surprising authority. “Don’t we have some kind of unspoken agreement that you lay off on pizza days?”
    She nods. “Yeah, you’re right about that. Besides, we needed to initiate Kara.”
    “Don’t let Amy scare you, Kara,” says Felicia. “We’re not always like this. Some days we just sit in here in absolute silence and eat and do art.”
    “Yeah, and some days I make an effort to wake these guys up,” says Amy. “Someone has to.”
    Well, I feel more awake today than I’ve felt all week. But I’m not sure which I like better—sleepwalking or being jolted back to my unfortunate reality by someone like Amy Weatherspoon. The truth is, Amy scares me a little. She’s like this loose cannon and you never know who she’ll blast next. Felicia, on the other hand, feels much more even-keeled. I’m guessing she keeps the lunch bunch balanced and from killing each other. I’m not quite sure what to think about Edgar anymore. At first, I’d written him off as a nerd and a goofball. Now, I think I may have been too hasty and misjudged him. I’m curious as to who he really is and what he really thinks.
    As I walk home from school, by myself as usual, I try to imagine what Jordan would say about my new friends. Okay, calling them
friends
is probably stretching it. But at least they included me today. Or sort of. But I can just imagine Jordan’s take on Amy. She’d probably chime in with her new friends: “Goth Girl,” “fashion disaster,” “garage-sale geek,” “witchy wannabe,” and all sorts of other mean and unflattering things. More interestingly, I wonder what Amy would say to them—especially if she knew the kinds of things they say about her. Maybe she does know. Maybe that’s why she is the way she is.
    And then there’s Edgar. Oh man, I can just imagine how Jordan would react to him. “See, Kara,” she would say to me (if we were talking, that is), “I told you those art kids were nerds and geeks andfreaks. And that Edgar Peebles, give me a break! He’s the nerdiest geek of them all. I’ll bet he even picks his nose.”
    Of course, I take some satisfaction in linking myself up with the kind of kids that Jordan would
not
approve of. I almost wish the art lunch bunch would consider me their friend now, just so I could flaunt them in front of Jordan—perhaps even embarrass her in front of her shallow new friends. Amber would probably say something like, “I can’t believe you used to hang with that loser girl, Jordan. Just look at her and her weird little friends. What a bunch of geeks!”
    Even the neatly dressed and academic Felicia Wong would draw their poison darts—perhaps even more than the others, I think as I approach my apartment. They would pick on her the most simply because she is closer to being like them than Edgar or Amy. It hits me as I go up the stairs that this is really true. The “cool” kids can laugh and joke casually about kids who are “out there” so far that they’re not anything close to a threat. But when other kids wear clothes that are similar, or heaven forbid,
the same
as the popular kids—watch out! It’s weird really. And I wonder if the bigger world is going to be anything like this. And, if so, what’s the use? If people are going to be so hard on each other, so mean, so superficial, why put up with all the pain? Why not just go off to some deserted island or a cabin in the woods and become a hermit?
    I’ll tell you why. It’s simple. I couldn’t stand the loneliness. I can’t. It’s eating me alive.

eleven
     
     
    O KAY , J ORDAN WOULD SAY THAT I’ M DESPERATE AND PATHETIC, AND maybe I am, but I have stayed with the art bunch during lunchtime every day of this entire week. First of all, I think it was amazing that I survived the previous weekend. I was so lonely and blue on Friday night that I wanted to go jump off a bridge somewhere. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on