Remember When **Under MAJOR Editing**

Chapter 21

Amid jabs of, "Skeered?" from other boys, Connor picked himself up off the floor and sat in his desk. I waited until Ms. Northam's lecture had absorbed the attention of the room again before I whispered over his shoulder, "Remember in tenth grade when Dade got suspended for starting a fight with Aaron Spears, I think, outside history class?"

Connor in front of me and Nate beside me both nodded.

"What set Dade off?"

"Aaron made a kung fu joke," Connor said. "Wait, that's not even Japanese. A karate joke."

Nate shook his head. "That was a completely different fight, last year with Jimmy Gillespie in back of Jamaica Joe's. When Dade got suspended, Aaron did his eyes like this." Nate placed his fingers at the corners of his eyes and slanted them up.

"That's right," Connor said. "On a positive note, if you ever want to get Dade suspended from school, just make a joke about Asians and stand there until he hits you."

"I feel heady with power," Nate said. He and Connor both said, "Bwa-ha-ha!" and rubbed their hands together like evildoers.

"Mya!" Ms. Northam called with her hands on her hips. "Please move across the room where you won't disturb your classmates. I do hope we're not making this a daily occurrence."

No, the daily occurrence was thinking about anything in English except English. After flopping my book closed and schlepping across the room to the back corner desk, I renewed my effort to be a good girl and pay attention to the lecture. I truly did. All the same, my eyes kept drifting from Ms. Northam to the door, impatient for Mckenzie to reappear.

She didn't come back to class until halfway through history. As she tiptoed to her desk across the room from me, she mouthed in my direction, I have to talk to you. I actually looked behind me to see who she was talking to, but I was sitting in a desk against the wall.

Well, that totally blew my concentration on the Boston Tea Party. She'd just spent the last half hour with Dade. Whatever she had to say must be about Dade, and about me. And whatever it was, good or bad, I was dying to hear it. I glanced at my watch five hundred times before the bell finally rang for break.

Lugging our backpacks, we walked toward calculus with our heads together conspiratorially. Which was very strange, because usually I walked fast to calculus to make sure I got across campus in time, and Mckenzie ran toward calculus to get some energy out, checking the status of practical jokes she'd slipped into lockers along the way.

"I talked to Dade for a long time," she said.

I nodded, fighting down the butterflies in my stomach and suppressing the urge to shake her to get the information out faster.

"I told him about that big fight we had yesterday. He got really mad at me. With that on top of his leg hurting, I swear I thought he was going to blow a gasket."

I laughed. "He doesn't know anything about cars," I said nonsensically.

"He said you always listen to me and put up with me," Mckenzie said, "and the one time you really needed me, I turned on you. He made me feel like shit.  So, I'm sorry." She stopped and held out her arms.

I stared at her for three full seconds before I realized she wanted to hug me. Then I stepped into her embrace. "It's okay."

"I just thought we were really good friends," she said in my ear. She pulled back to look at me. "I couldn't believe I had no idea something that big happened to you. People kept coming up to me asking how I could possibly not have known about your mother, like there was something wrong with me. It was embarrassing. But you went out of your way to hide it from me." She looked straight into my eyes, which she didn't do often either, waiting for an answer.