Lock and Key(32)

It would have been so easy to walk over and join them, but even after a few lunches spent with only my sandwich, I still hadn’t done so. Maybe because I wouldn’t be there long, anyway—it wasn’t like there was much point in making friends. Or maybe it was something else. Like the fact that I had a second chance now, an opportunity, whether I’d first welcomed it or not, to do things differently. It seemed stupid to not at least try to take it. It wasn’t like the old way had been working for me so well, anyway.

Still, there was one person at Perkins Day that, if pressed, I could imagine hanging out with. Maybe because she was the only one less interested in making friends than I was.

By now, I’d figured out a few things about Olivia Davis, my seatmate and fellow Jackson survivor. Number one: she was always on the phone. The minute the bell rang, she had it out and open, quick as a gunslinger, one finger already dialing. She kept it clamped to her ear as she walked between classes and all through lunch, which she also spent alone, eating a sandwich she brought from home and talking the entire time. From the few snippets I overheard before our class started and just after it ended, she was mostly talking to friends, although occasionally she’d affect an annoyed, flat tone that screamed parental conversation. Usually, though, she was all noisy chatter, discussing the same things, in fact, that I heard from everyone else in the hallways or around me in my classrooms—school, parties, stress—except that her conversations were one-sided, her voice the only one I could hear.

It was also clear that Olivia was at Perkins Day under protest, and a vocal one at that. I had strong opinions about our classmates and their lifestyles but kept these thoughts to myself. Olivia practiced no such discretion.

“Yeah, right,” she’d say under her breath as Heather Wainwright began a long analysis of the symbolism of poverty in David Copperfield. “Like you know from poverty. In your BMW and million-dollar mansion.”

“Ah, yes,” she’d murmur as one of the back-row jocks, prodded by Ms. Conyers to contribute, equated his experience not making starter with a character’s struggle, “tell us about your pain. We’re riveted.”

Sometimes she didn’t say anything but still made her point by sighing loudly, shaking her head, and throwing why-me-Lord? looks up at the ceiling. At first, her tortuous endurance of second period was funny to me, but after a while, it got kind of annoying, not to mention distracting. Finally, on Friday, after she’d literally tossed her hands up as one of our classmates struggled to define “blue collar,” I couldn’t help myself.

“If you hate this place so much,” I said, “why are you here?”

She turned her head slowly, as if seeing me for the first time. “Excuse me?” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s not like it’s cheap. Seems like a waste of money is all I’m saying.”

Olivia adjusted herself in her seat, as if perhaps a change of position might help her to understand why the hell I was talking to her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but do we know each other? ”

“It’s just a question,” I said.

Ms. Conyers, up at the front of the room, was saying something about the status quo. I flipped a few pages in my notebook, feeling Olivia watching me. After a moment, I looked up and met her gaze, letting her know she didn’t intimidate me.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“No choice in the matter,” I told her.

“Me neither,” she replied. I nodded. This was enough, as far as I was concerned. But then she continued. “I was doing just fine at Jackson. It was my dad that wanted me here and made me apply for a scholarship. Better education, better teachers. Better class of friends, all that. You happy now?”

“Never said I wasn’t,” I told her. “You’re the one moaning and groaning over there.”

Olivia raised her eyebrows. Clearly, I’d surprised her, and I had a feeling this wasn’t so easy to do. “What’s your name again?”

“Ruby,” I told her. “Ruby Cooper.”

“Huh,” she said, like this answered some other question, as well. The next time I saw her, though, in the quad between classes, she didn’t just brush by, ignoring me in favor of whoever was talking in her ear. She didn’t speak to me, either. But I did get a moment of eye contact, some acknowledgment, although of what I wasn’t sure, and still couldn’t say.

Now, lying on my bed Saturday morning, I heard a crash from outside, followed by more beeping. I got up and walked to the window, looking down at the yard. The hole was even bigger now, the red clay and exposed rock a marked contrast to the even green grass on either side of it. Jamie was still on the patio with the dog, although now he had his hands in his pockets and was rocking back on his heels as he watched the machine dig down again. It was hard to remember what the yard had looked like even twelve hours before, undisturbed and pristine. Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.

Downstairs in the kitchen, the noise was even louder, vibrations rattling the glass in the French doors. I could see that Cora, now dressed, her hair damp from the shower, had joined Jamie outside. He was explaining something to her, gesturing expansively as she nodded, looking less than enthusiastic.

I got myself some cereal, figuring if I didn’t, someone would give me another breakfast lecture, then picked up a section of the newspaper from the island. I was on my way to sit down when there was a bang behind me and Roscoe popped through the dog door.