Field Investigations

Chapter 32:

I still sat with Melanie at lunch, but I was starting to make other friends, too. After what happened in math class, I got to be just a little more confident, enough to try starting a few conversations with the other students.

There was Quinn, an athletic sixteen-year-old who had been at the AFS for a year and was still in all basic classes. He swore that he could've moved on ages ago if he'd wanted to, and that he was only staying behind out of spite. Like me, he couldn't remember how he'd gotten here. Unlike me, although he couldn't know for sure, he was convinced that he'd been kidnapped.

"It's the only explanation for the facts," he insisted. "'Cause I know myself. I'd never choose to come to a place like this."

And as much as I hated to admit it, he did have a point. Maybe he was right that we didn't come willingly, but kidnapped sounded like a bit of a stretch to me.

"Your parents might have sent you here," I argued.

He scowled. "Hey, what are you saying? I get along with them just fine. You really think they'd send me off to some boarding school without even telling me?" He walked off angry at me for suggesting that, I walked off angry at me for suggesting that, and that was the end of our conversation.

And in Field Studies, I had a considerably more positive interaction with a girl named Carrie. She was exactly one year and three days younger than me, the youngest person at the AFS. She'd just arrived only a day after I did, and she was already friends with almost everyone.

"Except Tania," she told me. "Oh, and Andrea."

"You know Andrea?" I asked.

"No, I don't. I was just saying how she's one of the only people I don't know. And you were on that list, too, until about ten minutes ago."

"Oh." I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be an insult or a complement, so I just nodded politely. At least I wasn't on her list anymore.

And then there was Peter, a fifteen year old boy from Chicago who was in orientation with me. We passed each other in the hallway that morning and he recognised me from class. We didn't talk for very long; we were both in a bit of a rush to get to our English class. He was by far the most positive about this place, and although he didn't remember how he'd gotten to the AFS either, he claimed that he didn't care.

"I mean, say I was taken here against my will. Why does that matter, anyway?" he argued. "If I'm happy here, that's all I need to know."

"But don't you miss-"

"I don't miss Chicago," he snapped back. "I'm alright here. I'm fine."

When we got to class, I went to sit by Melanie and he went to sit with his group of friends on the other side of the room. And it felt like I couldn't talk to him anymore, like now that our conversation was over that was it.

I was going to English class as I thought about all of this, about how I'd been wrong. I used to think that maybe, once you talked to someone once or twice, you wouldn't have trouble approaching them anymore. I guess I thought that to comfort myself - no, to convince myself - that if I could just get up the courage to introduce myself to someone, I'd automatically have them as a friend. That wasn't true; I knew that now. It took more like ten conversations to really get to know someone, I thought. And the most I've had with anyone here is three.

The English teacher, Ms. Apter, had bright pink hair with streaks of green running through it, the colors perfectly matching those of the pattern that was spray-painted on the ceiling. She couldn't have been more than five or six years older than me.