The girls tossed some guy’s hat in the air and scrambled to take pictures of their own cleverness.

“Or,” Kira said, “maybe her parents are fine, her life is great, and she’s just awful because she can be.”

Joellen always reminds me that mean kids who seem to have perfect lives may very likely be enduring some unseen tragedy. Which is obviously true of anyone, everyone has sadness they don’t go around blabbing about. But my sympathy has worn thin, because the meanest kids I’ve encountered in the nearly twenty schools I’ve attended in my life were never us. Kids in foster care aren’t having the greatest time in life, but we are never afforded leeway to be assholes; we are expected to be perfect every goddamn day or we’re instantly and indelibly labeled out loud and in our files: Trouble. No longer people. We are problems. Kira wasn’t wrong. It seemed equally as likely to me that at least some kids like Tiana have known, instead of unseen tragedy, nothing but comfort and safety their whole lives, and they simply feel entitled to hold on to their flimsy self-esteem and high school social status by humiliating anyone they feel superior to. It’s not like they’ll get kicked out of their house for run-of-the-mill bullying. In fact, bullies’ parents typically roll up to the school to defend their unsavory offspring, no matter what. Makes it pointless to ever ask for help from an adult.

“I don’t know,” Kira sighed. “I’m trying to do better with…people.”

I watched Sean make his way among the crowd. “What’d they do?” I asked. “Katiana?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing I haven’t done to myself.”

Interesting.

She pulled her phone from a black backpack at her feet. “Well. Back down in the mines. That toast isn’t going to butter itself.” She held up her hand in a sort of wave and walked through the trees to the road, where she stopped and turned.

“Muiriel?”

“Yeah?”

“Boys your thing?” she asked, matter-of-fact.

“Yeah.”

“Because he likes you. Sean.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

I tried not to smile. “Okay.”

She turned and kept walking.

“Hey,” I called. “Do you take the bus to school?”

“I walk.”

All the best people do.

“Do you want— Could I walk with you? On the first day?”

She faced me and walked backward. “What’s your number? I’ll text you.”

“Don’t have one.”

She stopped. “Don’t have what?”

“A number. No phone.”

A car passed.

“Okay, just come to Blackbird later, we’ll figure it out.”

“All right.”

“Muiriel?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I call you Muir?”

“Sure. Yes.”

She walked away, down the street and to the water, back to Blackbird, and yelled to me, without turning around, “Not having a phone is fucking weird.”

It was that, more than anything, that made me want to be her friend.

Chapter Seven