Skinny(42)

People start scooting together to make room. Jackson slides onto the bench beside Whitney and, more important, beside me. I freeze with a chicken nugget halfway to my mouth.

“Hey, Ever,” Jackson says like it’s not even unusual that I’m sitting here. I smile back at him and put the half-eaten nugget back down on my tray. I’m eating lunch with Jackson. I glance down the table, trying to take it all in, and catch Rat looking back. He’s not smiling anymore. He gives me a subtle thumbs-up sign. Just for me. I nod ever so slightly. It’s happening. I’m at the popular table. I’m sitting beside Jackson, not on top of a broken chair with everyone laughing at me. It’s all good. Right?

“You’re just a freak show,” Skinny whispers. “They’re just >grateful for a little entertainment, Frankenstein.”

I look down at my food, blinking a couple of times to clear my head. Jackson’s hand is there, lying on the table right beside my chicken nuggets. The same hand that touched my face. Stroked my hair. So very close. If I just moved my arm a little to the left I would touch him.

“You going to eat that?” Wolfgang asks, jolting me out of my daydream. I shake my head and he pulls my tray across the table to line it up beside his, scooping mashed potatoes up and over to his plate.

“This is going to work out great,” he says, between bites of my leftover chicken nuggets.

After school, I sit on my front steps, tying my shoelaces in advance of my run. Roxanne is sitting beside me with her leash >in her mouth, trying to wait patiently, but her whole backside is wiggling on the concrete. I look up to see Dad turn in the driveway in his sheriff’s car, and I give him a wave. He joins me and Roxanne on the steps. “How was school?”

It’s his go-to question.

“Good.” That is my go-to answer.

“Have any homework?” Question number two. Like clockwork.

“I already did it. Arrest any bad guys today?” My turn for the routine question. His answer to this question is never the same, which is always my favorite part of our first conversation of the evening.

“John David Kelly. Shot his son because he wouldn’t get off the phone and go feed the cows,” he says, pushing Roxanne’s enthusiastic welcome away from his face.

“Dead?” I figure he isn’t or Dad wouldn’t have told me about it. He keeps the serious cases to himself.

“Nope. It was buckshot. Painful, but not lethal.”

“Is he going to jail?”

“Probably not. He’s ninety-two and his son’s not pressing charges. I told him he needs to think about putting his dad in one of those assisted-living places, though. One without shotguns.”

“Or phones,” I say, and laugh. I stand up and stretch my calves out with a lunge on the step.

“How’s the running going?” Dad asks.

“I can make it all the way to the mailbox now without stopping.” I grin at him.

“You look wonderful.” He stands up and gives me a quick hug. “I’m proud of you, Ever.”

“He’s proud of you because of the way you LOOK,” Skinny whispers in the earbud of my iPod when I push it into my ears. I turn up the music loud — “I Am Changing” from Dreamgirls — and wave good-bye. Dad stands on the porch and watches Roxanne and me. We jog slowly off down the sidewalk.

Mrs. Burns waves at me from her flower bed and I see her mouth moving. I pull out an earbud. “What?”

“Looking good!” she calls out.

I smile back at her, the unfamiliar feeling of pride soaring into my heart and quickening my steps. “Thanks!”

I pass dead Cat Lady’s house and keep running, wiping the sweat off my face with the shoulder of my T-shirt. Roxanne’s tongue is hanging out of her mouth as she pants happily along beside me. I think about my day and I keep running. Jackson talked to me and said I looked good. I sat at the popular table.

When I reach the mailbox, I’m not out of breath. I start to think about the flyer for musical tryouts. Rat is right, but then he is always right. Drama class is the only thing keeping me from that stage and getting Jackson back. If I want a part in the musical I have to take drama. Drama class means silly acting exercises in front of a whole class full of critics. If I were someone like Gigi, I would love it. But the thought of all those eyes fills me with dread. Skinny would have a field day.

I keep going for five more blocks before I slow down into a walk. I have a 3.95 GPA average in all honors classes, how hard can one stupid drama class be?<

That night, when I step off the scale, I add the three more pounds lost on my chart and record the exercise. I wish Rat were here to see it.