Eighteen (18)(4)

I scan the field for the picnic tables, find them, and wander over. “Hey,” I say to the two girls sitting on the bench. The Hispanic one has those crutches that attach to the arms. Her legs are bent in a weird way. The African-American one is wearing the thickest coke-bottle glasses I’ve ever seen and she’s holding a white cane between her legs, so I can only conclude she’s legally blind. “I’m Shannon. Is this the modified class?”

They both smile at me, the blind girl squinting. “Yeah,” the one with the arm crutches says. “I’m Mary and this is Josie. Those guys over there are Lewis and Albert.”

Lewis and Albert don’t have recognizable disabilities, and they don’t even acknowledge me, so I ignore them back. “Is this it?” I ask, looking around.

“This is it,” Josie says. “Why are you in here? We haven’t had a new student in… what?”

“Two years,” Mary says.

“Oh,” I say, pointing to my leg. “Bad knee. I faked the excuse, actually. I just don’t want to sweat during school, if you know what I mean.”

They both laugh and I take a seat next to Mary. “So what do we do? Do we have a teacher?”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler is always late. Sometimes he never even shows up.”

“Really?” I get a little excited as I wonder how much that happens. I could skip and go hang out at the arcade.

“We just throw darts or do lawn bowling,” Josie says.

I’d laugh, but I don’t think she’s joking.

“Drake!” a blond guy wearing cargo shorts with a preppy polo shirt yells as he walks up to us. “You Drake?”

“The one and only,” I say back.

“OK.” He looks over at my new friends. “Hey, girls. Looking good this semester. You know what to do, so choose your weapon.” He nods to a box of lawn bowling equipment. “Drake, run three laps around the track.”

“I’m not running laps. I’ve got a bad knee.”

Fowler looks up from his roster and scratches his head with a pen. “You’re lying. We all know you’re lying, we just don’t feel like fighting about it. So you’re here. Congratulations on making it into modified PE. Now you’re going around that track three times at the start of every class or you’re gonna fail. Got it?”

Jesus Christ. I cannot cut a break.

“Josie and I will walk with you,” Mary says.

I look at her legs dubiously.

“I can’t go fast though,” she says, noticing my gaze.

“OK,” I say. I’m up for company. I need friends and at least these girls are nice. So the three of us set off to walk laps. They talk incessantly and I half-heartedly listen to them as everyone stares at us. It takes the whole period to walk those three laps, but I can think of millions of worse ways to spend a morning. So I don’t complain.

Fowler disappears after attendance. Good to know. I will be cutting this class regularly.

After that my day is economics, then lunch, then English, science, and driver’s ed rounds out the day.

Everyone takes driver’s ed in tenth grade here, and I’m a senior, so that teacher makes me his assistant. I like driver’s ed. I can feel this guy’s very low expectations of us the minute he opens his mouth. Plus, the person in the seat next to me is interesting as fuck. She’s a tiny Filipino girl named Quinn who is married at fifteen. Last month, that might’ve shocked me. This month, no way. I’m so out of my league, I just accept it and move on.

Quinn looks like she’s in training to be a CEO with her skirt suit and black pumps and she spends the entire class complaining to me about her in-laws as we pretend to watch a movie.

When the final bell rings I make my way to the farthest building on campus where my locker is located. Usually the seniors get lockers in the main building where the offices are. But I’m new, and it was December when I got here, so I’m in no-man’s-land.

After that I walk all the way across campus to the front and start heading across the street to the arcade. I have a few acquaintances there from school and I’m just starting to wonder if any of them might have a joint to share when a horn honks and scares me half to death.

Mr. Bowman smiles as he eases his car alongside of me. “Going over to Gilbert, Miss Drake?”

“Shit,” I say.

“You forgot?”

“I did. Mr. Bowman, I don’t have a ride and I don’t even have bus fare—”

“Get in.”

“What?” I say, looking around.

“I’ll take you. But I can’t take you every day, Shannon. You’ll have to figure this out.”