"So what, now we're going to live together?" Jamie takes another step towards me. "That's your idea of a good plan?"
Unwilling to back down, I poke a finger at his chest. "This is my family's house. Not yours. I have every right to be here."
"Newsfl...
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Naomi turned to face me, and I thought I saw a flicker of guilt in her expression. It was gone in a second.
“Hey.” I was perfectly polite. Distant. “Where are the others?”
“Balloon dart game. They should be back soon.” For once, she didn’t speak like she was hurling the words at me.
We fell silent, standing there with this awkward thing in between us. Maggie glanced back and forth between us.
I couldn’t take it any longer. “That was a sucky thing to say.”
Naomi’s eyes went wide, but before she could respond, Reyna called my name from somewhere behind me. I looked away from our stare down. Reyna, Danny, and Jamie were walking back from the balloon dart booth.
“Check it out.” Reyna tossed me some kind of spiky ball that grew large in the air and then folded in smaller when I caught it. “Danny won this plastic toy thing for me so now I guess I have to be with him forever.”
“We’re practically married,” Danny joked.
“Mazel tov.” I forced myself to let go of the stiffness in my shoulders, but I couldn’t look at Jamie. It’s kind of pathetic, how she’s always hanging around. “Hey, after this, I promised the boys I’d go to the talent show to hear Bad Karma play.”
“Are you a secret groupie?” Jamie teased.
I smiled as widely as I could manage and aimed it in his general direction. “More like the mascot.”
“Did you guys see Cory?” Maggie asked, while Naomi moved in close to whisper something to Jamie. Was it about me?
“Nah. He’s probably hiding from my wicked arm.” Danny threw a fake punch at Jamie, who pretended to be devastated by the blow. Then he said, “Hey Nomi, isn’t that your dad?”
Under any other circumstances, Naomi probably would have hit him for calling her ‘Nomi’, but at the mention of her dad she’d gone pale. I looked where Danny was pointing and saw Mr. Blum, our old history teacher. Naomi’s father.
The memory of some drama involving Mr. Blum came to mind. He’d been fired recently, I remembered, and people had been gossipping about it. There were all sorts of wild stories, including a claim that a student had come forward and accused him of harassment. The truth had something to do with him being fired over a technicality, I thought, because he was due for a raise the school couldn’t afford. I’d heard multiple people say it was because the money had gone to one of the principal’s vanity projects instead.
Now, Mr. Blum looked miles away from the neatly groomed teacher I remembered. His hair and beard had grown too long, he wore rumpled sweatpants and a ratty old jacket, and he was stalking towards the food truck where Principal Whethers was chatting up booster club members. He looked like a man on the warpath.
