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was being drawn up—a silent contract that said something was going to happen between us. A hush seemed to fall over the Honeyeaters’ table. Sarita looked from Craig to me to Fleur. Fleur had been cutting her pineapple ring with a knife and fork. Now she looked at me with gunfight eyes. I pictured her spitting into a spittoon. “ Hombre—are you ready to DIE? I’m gonna string you up like a Chinatown chicken . ”
In real life she leaned into Craig. “I learned those songs you sent me. When are we going to practice?” She fluffed his hair. His eyes stayed on me. I slammed my book shut and got ready to leave. Fleur was thin and pretty, but she had ice queen written all over her. Chloe says access beats beauty every time.
“Where are you going?” Craig wanted to know.
“Who cares?” Fleur said.
“She’s going to have a cigarette,” Sarita whispered.
As I walked away I tried to picture what they saw: my crazy curves, my straw bag swinging, my hat in my hand sweeping the air. I bet they’d never seen a big girl so confident. Boom-boom-BOOM. My mules clacked on the cork floor like castanets. Arriba !

11
Lucky Smoke
I walked across the plain looking for a place to smoke. There was Fraser’s house, but I’d eaten too much to walk that far, and I didn’t want to run into Bird, whose special duties no doubt included tattling on wayward campers. Then, just past the shower block I found the spot—a bench behind an old incinerator. The site afforded a clear view of the plain, but was far away enough to hide the evidence should the enemy approach. I sat down and lit up. I had a few seconds of grand defiance, but then that good feeling started to slide. Even though I was hidden, I felt conspicuous. What was I doing? Sucking smoke into my lungs and blowing it back out again? The heat had died down a little. The sky had gone orange.
Dylan came windmilling down the gravel path. He was fast. He looked deranged. He parked next to me and pulled a smoke from behind his ear. He was wearing fingerless leather biker gloves. They were so anti they made me smile.
“Match me,” he said.
“What?”
“Match me; light my fire.”
“Oh, okay.” I lit his cigarette. He didn’t thank me; he simply puffed away and stared at the streaky sky. The campers started to pile out of the mess hall. They bolted and skipped and chased and dawdled across the plain. Dylan and I sat side by side. As soon as I stubbed my cigarette out, Dylan offered me his pack. I noticed that he had a lucky smoke turned upside down. I liked that. I didn’t suppose the Wheelchair Boy would be much on luck, but there it was, third from the end. I took the one next to it. Then I remembered that his last name was Luck. I wondered how he felt about that. I was wondering about his “accident,” too. I almost asked: what happened to you? But something stopped me. He probably had to answer that question all the time. I wouldn’t ask it. I’d never ask it. If he jumped sixteen floors he must have had a good reason.
I studied him again and this time I didn’t care if he knew. If I could stare him into conversation, well, that had to be better than all this sit-and-no-talk business. His chair looked banged up. It had a series of scratches along the side, like days marked off in fishbone lines of five, hundreds of them. And then there were the DIY Playboy mud flaps— so trucker fucker. I decided that Dylan was an ally with a highly developed sense of irony. The YL vest over his Kreator T-shirt made a nice contradiction. His bag was graffed up with band names I didn’t recognize—lightning bolts and heavy-metal umlauts.
“Are you a metal-head?” I asked him.
Nothing. Dylan’s muteness was starting to make me feel irrelevant, so I went all out, interviewing him. I threw random questions in the air and watched them disappear with the cigarette smoke.
“What really happens when you play Led Zeppelin backward?”
“What’s your porn star name?”
“Do you have