The Angel Goldfish Theory

angel goldfish: 07

CHAPTER SEVEN

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There was this one time when Indie Vega went to school with mud on her uniform and she smelled like horse shit. She was sent back home that day two hours later, but she didn’t seem to mind—I mean, she was smiling.

Indie was two years older than me. She was fifteen when my thirteen-year-old ass developed a stupid crush on her just because she went to school looking as though she wrestled with cows on a farm. When I stalked her that day it turned out that she might as well did. Indie walked to this farm not too far from school, and there she fed cows and drank coffee with an old, white-haired man.

I thought he was her dad until the old man asked her what she was doing there and what her name was, and there I heard her loud and clear.

“Indie,” she said. Her smile was so pretty it almost caught me off guard. “I’m Indie.”

I went home after hearing her name, and I didn’t stop thinking about her since. Even as I woke up inside Abby the following morning after Mom took Buffy away from me, I was thinking about her. My crinkled uniform with traces of grass and dirt in it just reminded me of Indie Vega that day, and it made me smile when I thought maybe I was slowly turning like her.

I’m sure if other people took their time to actually look at her, they would want to be like her, too, though maybe I was just weird.

Whatever.

Anyway, that morning, I had prepared myself to face Mrs. Noor, so I wasn’t really shocked to see her in the hallways again, obviously waiting for me. She had colored her hair black so it didn’t look graying anymore, though she was still wearing clothes that didn’t match.

“Hi,” I said. “I heard from—”

“I don’t want you to thank me, Kinsley.”

I sharply inhaled and nodded slowly. I said a small okay under my breath and chewed my lips.

“I just want to tell you not to waste this chance,” she said. Her voice was still the same—emotionless, cold, stern. Other students looked my way as she spoke to me. They were probably wondering why I was still there. I couldn’t blame them. “I hope you’d pick up yourself after this. I can’t imagine how Ms. Harper is feeling right now . . . she was a dedicated educator.”

Actually, she’s planning to bake cookies in Amsterdam but I didn’t say that. I nodded and made a face that I meant to look sympathetic, then I realized I was supposed to apologize. “I’m really sorry.”

Mrs. Noor didn’t really appreciate that. She just frowned. “Visit the club after class.”

“Okay.”

“And fix your uniform. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

I didn’t fix my uniform.

–

Holly was happy to see me. I’d told her everything and she was screaming and jumping as she said she belonged in that club, too.

“You are?” I said. She was good in Math and in writing? Was she some sort of goddess?

I wondered why she seemed happy. We weren’t even friends until a few days before, I was basically the reason why the arm of her favorite teacher was broken, and she was talking to me like I was the sweetest cinnamon roll she had ever seen. That made me smile, somehow.