Free Looking for X by Deborah Ellis Page A

knew I was with X! Why didn’t she say so? But she said nothing. She just sat in the chair and looked at her hands.
    I stopped being afraid then and started getting angry.
    â€œI will not give you her name,” I said, loudly and clearly, looking the principal straight in his little pig eyes. He looked like someone from the secret police. No wonder X was afraid of them.
    â€œThere is no friend,” Tammy finally spoke up, but what she said horrified me.
    â€œKhyber has an imaginary friend she calls X, but there really isn’t such a person. She makes sandwiches for herself to eat in the park after school, but she tells me they’re for her friend X so I won’t think she’s eating more than her share. We’re on a tight budget,” she explained.
    Tammy’s words made me cold and numb all over.
    The principal spoke. “In that case, (unmentionable name), you leave us no choice. You’re a bright girl, and we’ve bent over backwards to give you every advantage, but you’re choosing instead to waste your talents. You are unable or unwilling to clear your name. I’m sorry to have to put the burden of your misbehavior back on your mother, but you have forced us to do this.”
    He stood up, as if he were about to issue a royal decree.
    â€œThis school no longer has a place for you. Consider yourself expelled.”
    Expelled! “You can’t expel me,” I shouted, “because I quit!”
    I turned and left the room. I tried to slam the door, but it had one of those slow-closing things on it. It’s impossible to slam doors like that.
    I moved through the office so fast, I knocked piles of papers off the desk and slammed into a teacher who was unscrewing the lid of a jar ofgreen paint. The paint splattered all over the teacher’s sweater. Unfortunately, I was too angry to enjoy it.
    My anger gave me power. My rage made me giddy. I was glad they had expelled me! I’d never have to go back there again!
    I got my stuff out of my locker — all that I wanted of it, anyway — crammed the padlock into my back pocket and gave the locker door a good, hard slam. You can slam locker doors, and I slammed mine two or three more times — not out of temper, but just because I felt like it.
    A teacher stuck her head out the classroom door and said something stern, but I didn’t care. I laughed and laughed my way out of the school.
    Then Tammy caught up with me, and I stopped laughing.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re acting like this,” she said. “Now, on top of everything else that I have to deal with, I’ve got to find another school for you. Plus, I have to pay for the windows you broke. How am I going to do that?”
    I stopped walking. “Mom, you know I didn’t break those windows!”
    â€œI don’t know that, Khyber. You lied to me about where you were and what you were doing last night, telling me you were with some imaginary friend, which you really should have outgrowna long time ago. You come home covered in mud, and you disobeyed me by being out in the first place. No, I certainly do not know that you didn’t break those windows.”
    It felt like I was walking with a stranger, with someone who didn’t know me.
    It was a very lonely, very sad feeling.
    The gutters along the edge of the sidewalk were filled with muddy rainwater. Bits of garbage floated by.
    â€œYou are unable or unwilling to clear your name,” the principal had said.
    A clear name. I pictured a cold mountain stream, running fast, but clear enough to see straight through to the pebbles at the bottom.
    My name is like the water in the gutter, I thought. I have to get it like the mountain stream. I have to clear my name.
    Until I did, my name was Mud.

CHAPTER TWELVE
TAKING LEAVE
    Mom and I didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the day.
    I stayed out of her way, on my bunk, but I didn’t feel like reading and I