Read Geography Club for Free Online Page A

instead of feeling excited, I felt uneasy about something—something I couldn’t put my finger on. It wasn’t quite one of those feelings of impending doom you get every now and then, but it was close.
    Terese was the first to step up to our table.
    “Hey,” she said. She had her lunch in a greasy brown paper bag, but she didn’t sit down.
    “Hey!” I said, trying to sound all excited, despite how I felt. “Have a seat.”
    She looked both ways, like she was about to cross a busy street. Then she barreled straight ahead, pulled out a chair, and sat.
    Min immediately looked down at her food. That’s when it occurred to me that the two of them hadn’t ever been seen together at school before. It had to be weird for them.
    Ike came by next, sidling up to our table like a cat burglar trying to evade the police.
    “Great,” he said. “You guys made it.” But he didn’t sound like he thought it was great. He sounded like he sort of wished we’d forgotten.
    Ike took a seat, but with an empty chair between him and everyone else.
    We all sat there staring down at our food, and no one said anything, and I couldn’t believe this was the same group of people from the day before. How could something that felt so comfortable then feel so awkward now? Then I remembered my second meeting with Kevin at the stinky picnic gazebo. That had felt uncomfortable too, with neither of us able to think of anything to say. That’s when I knew that a conversation was like a child: you couldn’t just abandon it, then pick it up again a day later and expect it to be exactly the way it was before.
    But that was only part of it. This wasn’t the back booth in a dark, deserted pizza parlor. This was the high school cafeteria. And in high school, everyone eats lunch with the same people every day. The people like them. Birds of a feather and all that? The four of us were birds of a feather, but no one knew that, and they couldn’t ever know it.
    Terese glanced over at the table of Girl Jocks, all sweatshirts and ponytails. Ike wasn’t looking at the Lefty Radicals, with their piercings and Birkenstocks, but I could tell he knew they were there. It was like he wasn’t looking at them on purpose, so they wouldn’t notice where he was sitting.
    Terese and Ike both knew they didn’t belong at Min’s and my table. Min and I knew it too. How we all could’ve forgotten this, I don’t know. We’d all been caught up in the excitement of the day before, and it had slipped our minds. But it had been in the back of my mind somewhere, because it was part of what had been bugging me, my feeling of semi-doom.
    “’Sup?” It was Kevin, towering over us with his heaping tray of food and its three little cartons of milk. I breathed a sigh of relief. This was another thing that had been bothering me. I hadn’t been sure Kevin was going to show. The day before, I’d been well aware that he was the only one of us who hadn’t actually promised to come. But now that he had come, I wasn’t sure if he was actually going to sit.
    The funny thing was, I wasn’t even sure I wanted him to sit there. It was one thing that Min, Terese, Ike, and I had sat down together. Maybe Terese’s and Ike’s friends would notice, but no one else would. It was something else entirely for Kevin Land to sit down with us. Everyone would notice that.
    Kevin didn’t sit. He didn’t look nervous, but then I saw that he had such a firm grip on his tray that his knuckles were white.
    “So,” I said. “Here we are.” You guessed it. The only thing I could think of to say.
    This time, no one said anything, not even Min. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Wendy Garr at the Girl Jocks table pointing over at Terese. Terese wasn’t looking, but I knew she saw it too.
    We were all having one of those “What were we thinking?” moments. What had we been thinking? Why hadn’t we seen this coming? We were all citizens of different countries. Did we really think we could