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said.
    “Shuddup,” Megan muttered.
    “How would you know?” the girl asked. Her blue eyes were outlined with thick streaks
of black eyeliner.
    “I was with her,” I said.
    “That’s right. I heard you liked the carousel,” Darren said and laughed, so I guessed
he must have made a joke. I laughed too.
    Then Darren and the girl with the black eyeliner laughed even more.
    Megan did not laugh. “Shuddup!” she said really loudly. She stood, even though the
bus was moving. Her hands had tightened into fists.
    “Isn’t that sweet—one freaky weirdo standing up for the other freaky weirdo,” Darren
said.
    It happened fast. One second Darren stood laughing in the aisle, and the next he
was lying on the floor, and everyone, even the bus driver, was screaming.
    Darren swore and sat up. His nose was bloody, and I saw tears in his eyes. He rubbed
his arm across his face, smearing the blood. “I’m gonna get you for this!” he said.
    The girl with the black eyeliner had started to cry, and her eyeliner ran down her
cheeks in inky rivers.
    The bus jerked to a stop. Fortunately we were at the school. The doors swung open
and the bus driver yelled, “Everyone get off!” He shouted that fighting on the bus
wasn’t allowed and that he would tell the principal and the police. He said that
kids today were totally out of control, particularly after the fair had been to
town.
    But nobody got off right away except Megan.
    Megan stood and walked past Darren without even looking at him. She stomped down
the aisle, her boots clumping in the eerie silence.
    Even though the bus was crowded, everyone made room for her. Even the bus driver
stopped shouting, saying only, “I’ll report this, you know.”
    “Whatever,” she said.
    And Megan strode across the field with her backpack swinging and her chains clanking.

Six
    I didn’t see Megan until lunch. Actually, I hadn’t expected to see her because I
thought she might be suspended.
    But at lunch I went to my favorite stairwell—the one that used to go up to the second
floor in the old wing but doesn’t now that the upper floor has been closed and boarded
up.
    Megan was leaning against the wall, eating a slice of bread without butter or peanut
butter. Her hair hung forward, half covering her face.
    Megan often ate bread without anything on it. I liked this, because that way it had
no smell.
    “Why are you here?” she asked.
    “I come here every lunch,” I said.
    “You do?”
    I nodded. Then I sat and took out my sandwich and started to eat it. It was quiet
except for the noise of chewing and the sounds from the hallway.
    “You know,” she said after I had finished my sandwich, “I don’t know whether to be
mad because you haven’t even asked if I’ve been suspended or glad that you’re not
nosy like everyone else.”
    I didn’t say anything because this was confusing. I counted the ceiling tiles.
    “I am suspended, by the way.”
    I knew that, in school, suspended meant a student was not allowed to attend school
because he or she was in trouble.
    “For the fight?”
    “Duh.”
    “Why did you hit Darren?”
    “I was mad.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “Are you for real? He was calling you names.”
    “People often call me names,” I said.
    “Yeah, well, I don’t let people call my friends names.”
    Friend—a person one knows well and is fond of.
    I pictured the word in the dictionary. I saw it in tiny bold print with the letter n , which stands for noun , in brackets.
    I counted ten ceiling tiles.
    There are things I know are impossible for me. For example, I can’t be a garbage
collector.
    Or a cook.
    Or a lunch lady.
    At my old school, Hayley MacLeod had said that I’d never have a friend.
    That was two years ago on March 19.
    But I do , I’d told her. Cameron, Ellie and Shannon play with me every Wednesday at
recess .
    She’d laughed. You have a “social” group. The teacher bribes them with gold stars .
    “Do the teachers give you gold stars?” I