Free Out on a Limb by Gail Banning

“Okay,” Devo yelled. “Let’s try this again.”
    I’d had all the joining in that I could stand. I wanted to be alone. Not that I hadn’t been alone when I was trying to talk to Kendra. Not that I hadn’t been alone when I was trying to play Capture the Flag. But I wanted to be alone in private. I went to the washroom and sat in a stall, reading the manufacturer’s directions for dispensing toilet paper. I left the stall and went to the sink, looking in the mirror at the face that no one, it turned out, loved at first sight. I washed my hands for something to do. In only four more minutes, recess would be over. I was making a tower of lather in the palm of my hand when another girl came into the empty washroom and stood at the sink next to me.
    She brushed her hair in the mirror. “Hi!” she said brightly.
    “Hi,” I said, amazed to have found a friendly person.
    “How are you
doing
,” the girl asked, and from the warmth in her voice, I could tell that she really cared.
    “Pretty good,” I said. “Well, sort of nervous, actually. It’s my first day at this school, and I don’t know anybody, and you’re actually the very first person—”
    “Hold on,” the girl said. “I can’t hear you. I’m in a washroom and there’s someone talking right beside me. Just a sec, okay Natalie?”
    The girl turned toward me, and that’s when I saw the cell phone mouthpiece curved around her cheek. Her warmth had been for someone else. She had not been talking to me at all. “Were you talking to me?” she asked.
    “Nope,” I said. “Just talking to myself again.” I faked another smile.

     

 
    NOTEBOOK: #10
    NAME: Rosamund McGrady
    SUBJECT: Breaking and Entering
     
     
    My first afternoon at Windward, I counted up all the instructional days in the school year. One hundred and ninety. One hundred and eighty-nine to go, I told myself after the first day. One hundred and eighty-eight to go. One hundred and eighty-seven.
    It was hard to leave the treehouse in the mornings. Before school I’d eat my breakfast out on our porch, in the gauzy sunlight that slanted through the oak tree. I’d breathe in the special September damp earth smell. I’d inspect the perfectly perfect spider webs in the branches, sagging with jewels of dew. I was homesick for the treehouse before I’d even left it. When it was time to go to school my spirits dropped like backpacks in a dumbwaiter.
    Miss Rankle was a crabby teacher, but class time wasn’t what bothered me. Recess and lunch were what I hated. What made them really bad is that they were supposed to be fun. Things that are supposed to be fun and are not are a lot worse than things that are well known to be awful. When things are supposed to be fun, you feel like a big loser for not enjoying them. I spent my recesses and lunches sitting outside against the brick wall, reading about cryptography. I’d stopped trying to join in, so no one bothered being mean. My classmates left me completely alone.
    Tilley could be a pain sometimes, just like every little sister. But at the end of each school day, I was always glad to see her waiting for me in front of Sir Combover with her little pink trail bike and her dinosaur helmet. I was glad to ride through the woods away from the world of school. When we got to the ramp I’d pedal so hard that my bike became airborne. My spirits would lift along with my bike. As I coasted down the ramp into the grounds of Grand Oak Manor, I felt that I was back in my own little world.
    There was only one thing that stopped me from feeling truly at home on the grounds, and that was Great-great-aunt Lydia’s new fence. The fence was complete by then, and delivering its unfriendly messages constantly.
Keep Out. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Private Property. Beware. Guard Dog on Duty .Warning
. It was insulting, that fence. One September day as we rode our bikes across the plank bridge, we saw a new sign. It showed a stick person being thrown