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I’d read the e-mail and it had said the time and place, but I didn’t remember anything about the back of the school.
    There was no point worrying about the people out front, anyway. I couldn’t gossip about it, which meant I couldn’t even ask anyone what was going on. Someone might have known, but Vi would give me her disapproving frown if she heard me asking about it.
    So I got in line behind the last person, craning my neck to see if I could see my friends on the bus and hoping they would save me a seat. After last night, they may have decided I was too boring to hang out with all the way to Four Cedars Park and invited someone else to sit with them.
    I should have known better. There, in the third row, sat Sydney and Jessica, with Vi in the seat behind them. That brought me to a stop midway down the aisle. Was that spot for me? If so, did that mean . . . ?
    Did that mean Vi was speaking to me again?
    Feeling hopeful for the first time in more than a day, I started forward again. I plopped down on the seat next to her like nothing had changed at all. I thought, for a second, she might have been saving this for someone else, but then it hit me that if she were, she couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t say a word. She’d be stuck with me all the way to the park.
    Vi didn’t speak. She just kept looking out the window and I wasn’t sure she even knew I’d sat down. I faced forward, looking past Syd and Jess. Sure enough, Trevor andSarah sat in the row in front of Sydney and Jessica. They weren’t holding hands.
    “I thought you’d never get here,” Jessica said, spinning around in her seat to look at me. “What took you so long?”
    I didn’t explain to her that I went to the front of the school. I felt like a big idiot, especially compared to Vi, who managed to make it to the right place even though she was absorbed in studying for midterms. In fact, it looked like everyone on this bus had known to come back here. I had clearly missed something.
    “I had to park my bike,” I told her.
    “We could have given you a ride.” This from Sydney, who had also turned around to look at me. I wondered if Vi had even said anything to them. Maybe she wasn’t speaking to anyone.
    “I didn’t mind,” I told Sydney. Mom usually only let me ride my bike on weekends, when there wasn’t much traffic on the roads. During the school week, she was sure some rushed commuter or parent would run over me on the way. But this morning we had to be here early, which meant there wouldn’t be much traffic. After I begged long enough, she finally agreed to let me ride it.
    “He’s in front of me,” Sydney whispered back to me. As if I couldn’t see.
    I nodded. “I can tell.” I looked over at Vi for approval. She was staring out the window, but I knew she had to have noticed my silence when I was clearly being invited to gossip.
    “Are they holding hands?” Jessica whispered.
    I played innocent, as if I had no idea what was going on. “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug.
    Vi still didn’t look at me, but I knew she had to be fully aware of what was going on here. She was listening to every word, so I had to be on my best behavior.
    Jessica looked at Sydney, who just shrugged. They both turned around to face forward.
    I looked at Vi. She was still staring out the window. There had to be some way to get her to talk to me. If I started talking to her, eventually she’d talk back. Or she’d listen, which is all I really needed her to do.
    “So . . . ,” I began, searching for something to talk to Vi about. What did we normally talk about? I know Vi didn’t gossip, but we always seemed to have more than enough to say. I would talk about things going on at school, maybe whatever was happening with Sydney and Jessica. Most of the time, I was talking and Vi was listening. I glanced at Vi out of the corner of my eye. Now that I thought about it, Vi rarely said anything at all. I just chatted away while she