Read The Talents for Free Online Page B

bright pink lipstick. Being close to the car made me feel a little better, and I thought for a minute about asking her to stay, at least until the bus pulled up.
    But no one in high school waits with their grandma for the bus. I’d made a huge fuss that morning about her leaving as soon as I unloaded my trunk, and she’d agreed that she would. I guess she figured she’d already won the war by getting me to try Delcroix, so she’d let me win this one battle. Now part of me wished she’d fought a little harder.
    Reluctantly, I waved back, and she slowly drove away. I didn’t have any choice then, so I turned around and started checking out the kids who would be there to witness my doom.
    I mean, my freshman year.
    They arrived in a line off Highway 78 in big SUVs and fancy new Subarus, tires crunching on the gravel. I wondered if I would be the only kid who didn’t have a trust fund. Okay, to be honest, everyone around here drives Subarus, and some of the kids looked downright normal, but I didn’t waste time looking at them. I focused on the super-rich ones. Isn’t that what anyone would do?
    A small group began forming on one end of the parking lot: girls wearing ultralow shorts and tight T-shirts that showed off their perfect boobs and flat stomachs, and boys standing a few feet from them wearing jeans or lowrider shorts, pretending that they weren’t checking out the girls. Their trunks were scattered around beside them, lots of shiny black boxes with silver rivets at the corners, and overstuffed duffle bags that looked ready to burst. Some trunks were painted bright colors, or decorated with team logos or skateboard stickers. None looked quite as old and dingy as mine.
    As I looked around, I realized the crowd was different from what I used to see at my middle school. Other than the rich kids, the groups I was familiar with—the jocks, the nerds, the brains, the goths—weren’t there. I mean, there were kids you could probably throw into those categories, but they were hanging out in cliques of two and three, while all these other types of kids kept arriving. There were long-haired girls in leotards, boys with dreadlocks, a girl holding a pair of drumsticks, kids with lots of piercings in unusual places, and nerdy-looking guys with button-down shirts tucked into pants that practically came to their armpits. They were all different ethnicities too, whereas Danville was mostly white.
    A few guys started throwing a Frisbee back and forth, and a sporty-looking girl wearing Adidas soccer shorts and running shoes joined the game. She was the kind of girl I hate on sight—long straight brown hair in a perky ponytail, perfect body, tanned skin, and seemingly no fear of dropping the Frisbee or making a fool of herself.
    â€œDo you play?”
    I was focusing so hard on the girl I had decided to hate (her name would have to be something sweet and charming, like Beth or Sarah), the voice at my side startled me.
    â€œHuh?” I tore my eyes from Perfect Girl to examine the much more normal specimen at my side. This girl, I was relieved to see, was short and had hair almost as curly as mine. Only she apparently hadn’t learned not to comb it, so it surrounded her face like a black cloud at least two feet in diameter. She wore a white button-down shirt and jeans, despite the fact that the sun was August-hot even at nine o’clock in the morning, and they’d told us to wear comfortable clothes because we’d be doing some of our orientation activities outside.
    â€œFrisbee. Do you play Frisbee?” She had a cheerful voice and broad smile.
    I shrugged and tried to look standoffish. “Not really.”
    â€œMe neither! I’m hopeless at Frisbee. I aim one way and it goes the other. My name is Esther, what’s yours?” She seemed oblivious to my attitude, and grinned as she dropped a backpack on the ground beside us. It was made of soft brown