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  I leaned against the entry and smiled. I wasn't sure, but I was also beginning to think he didn't have a funny bone in his body. He was dry as a bone in a desert. “Most people use those things on their teeth.”

  He stopped scrubbing, holding it up and looking at it. “They work well for various cleaning jobs.”

  I shook my head. “Joke.”

  He smiled, setting it down on the counter. “Sorry. Are you ready for school tomorrow?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Blah.”

  “Don't like school?”

  “Not really my gig.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Not big on social institutions.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I hear a philosophy in there somewhere.”

  “Not really. I'm just not into being a drone.”

  “How does an interest in school make you a drone?”

  “Conformity. I don't need somebody to tell me what I should be.” I looked at him, remembering he was part of it. “No offense.”

  He nodded. “Your mother mentioned your band.”

  “My ex-band. And yeah, she thought it was cute until I took it seriously; now she just hates it.”

  “I heard you singing upstairs. You have an amazing voice.”

  “Not many teen clubs around here, huh?”

  “None. There is the school choir. Award winning.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Don't like singing choir songs?”

  “Actually, I like singing anything. I just don't like group things. Rules and stuff.”

  “Give it a thought, huh? It might do well for you.”

  “Is this the counselor talking or the dad talking?”

  He furrowed his brow, thinking. Nothing was a simple answer for him. “The dad. I heard your voice. It is beautiful.”

  Heat flushed my face. “Thanks.”

  He picked up the toothbrush. “I can give you a lift tomorrow morning if you'd like.”

  Though I wasn't the type to be concerned about what other people thought, having the school counselor take me to school on my first day was weird. “I'm walking. Thanks, though.”

  He nodded. “We'll try to get you enrolled in a driver's ed course. Your mother said you didn't get enrolled in time back home.”

  “If that's the reason she gave, then I'm sure that's the reason.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  I nodded. “I have a question.”

  He smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “What do you do in your study every night?”

  “Write.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I'm working on a book. As a matter of fact, I started it the day you arrived.”

  “You write?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Published?”

  He looked down. “No.”

  “Wow. That's cool. What's it about?”

  He took a breath. “Well, it's about a girl who goes to live with her father.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Don't even tell me …”

  He smiled. “Joke.”

  I sighed. “I didn't think you had one in you for a while there. What's it really about?”

  A guarded look passed over him. “It's a text on youth. A self-help book of sorts.”

  “Can I read it?”

  “I'm only twenty pages into it.”

  “I don't care. I can read as you go.”

  He smiled. “I've a feeling you might not like it.”

  A self-help book for teens that a teenager wouldn't like. Standard procedure. “I'm not that bad, am I?”

  He paused. “I'll let you read it if you agree to think about choir. At least check it out. Mrs. Baird, the choir teacher, is a nice woman.”

  I figured there would be no harm in that. “Deal.”

  “Good, then. Maybe we can both benefit. But one thing. You have to be honest if you decide to comment on it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No problem there. It comes out in uncontrollable spasms anyway.”

  He smiled. “I've noticed.”

  Chapter Five

  The first day in a new school requires three things. Paper, pencil, and armor. I put my school ID card around my neck, grabbed my bag, and headed to class. If I could handle Oak Grove Preparatory School and the snobs there, I could handle a podunk wine town with a bunch of rich kids in it. They probably had wine-tasting raves in their parents’ sitting rooms and ballroom-danced to Mozart until bedtime. Ooh la la.

  As I left the house and stepped on the front porch, I looked over and saw Velveeta standing at the exact spot I met him the first time. He had that big and goofy smile on his face and the same baseball cap backwards covering his wiry red hair, but he'd at least changed his clothes. Today's ensemble included an untucked flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off (he must have a thing for no sleeves), a pair of faded jeans, and Vietnam-era combat boots, half laced.

  I figured the huge tobacco bulge in his lip was ever present, and before he said anything, he spit a stream. “Hey, Gouda. How's it going?”

  I looked at him. “What?”

  He smiled. “You speak-o no English-o?”

  Then I remembered what I told him my name was. Gouda Provolone. I smiled. A sucker was born every day. “Oh, fine. Sorry.”

  He pointed to my backpack. “Looks like you're all ready for school, huh?”

  “Well, it is the first day.”

  “Wanna go together? I could show you the way.”

  I looked down the street. “You walk?”

  “That's what my feet are for.” He turned away. “I rode my bike last year, but somebody ruined it. Bent the wheels all up.”

  I looked at him for a second, not sure I wanted to know how it happened. He'd said it like it was just something that happens every once in a while out of thin air. “Sure. Come on.” We walked, and after a block or two of silence, I finally gave in. He might be a sucker, but he was nice. “My name is Poe.”

  “I know.”

  I looked at him. “Then why'd you call me Gouda?”

  “I'll call you anything you want to be called. Don't matter to me.”

  “Poe is fine.”

  “Sounds French. You shave your pits?”

  I laughed. You couldn't tell what was a joke with this guy. “Yeah. And no, I'm not French.”

  “So then how'd you get a name like Poe?”

  “My mother's favorite poet is Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah. A doctor who likes poetry about death.”

  He laughed. “I shaved mine once. My pits. Got all itchy and stuff for like a week. Felt like I had a bunch of red ants in ‘em. Drove me crazy.”

  “I'm not even going to ask why you did it.”

  We turned the corner and he spit again. “I was into heavy lifting. You know, weights. All the bodybuilder guys shave. Makes it so you can see the muscles better.”

  “Oh. That makes sense.”

  “Not really. I still lift, though.” He held up an arm and flexed. Spaghetti with meatballs.

  “Impressive.”

  “I know I ain't big yet, but I will be. One day.”

  “Cool. So you came here last year?”

  He nodded, staring at the pavement while we walked. “Yep. At the beginning of the school year. My parents got killed in a car crash. Bam. Just like that. Dead.”

  “Sorry.”

  He smiled that goofy smile, but the corners of his mouth turned down. “That's what life gives you if you don't watch out. No use complaining about it, I guess. Yer dad said I should grieve more, but I don't see it.”

  “My dad?”

  “You didn't know he's the counselor?”

  “Yeah, I do. It's just taking some time to get used to, I guess.”

  “Everything does. Take time to get used to, I mean.”

  “You like the school?”

  He shrugged. “School is school. This place is different. You'll prob'ly get shit for looking like you do. Everybody looks
the same here.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Bunch of high-minded people runnin’ around, but it's not that bad. The food is better than back home. You get to pick here. Like a buffet-type thing. You like buffet?”

  I hitched my pack further up on my shoulder. “Where are you from?”

  “Lucerne Valley.”

  “Out past Bakersfield in the Mohave Desert?”

  “Born and raised.”

  “Cool. I like the desert.”

  “Hotter'n shit in the summer, but it's all good. That's where my girl is.”

  I didn't want to touch that one. “You have your schedule?”

  He shook his head. “They give it to you in homeroom. That way all the new kids can look like idiots running around trying to find classes five minutes after they find out where they're supposed to go.”

  I blinked at that and realized Velveeta was more savvy than he let on. We walked the rest of the way talking about classes and what teachers he liked and didn't like, and I found out that Velveeta was pretty much a good guy if not the biggest dork I'd ever met. He didn't even have a bad thing to say about a teacher who didn't like him, Mr. Reed, his social studies teacher from last year.

  There were six hundred students at Benders High, and they were bused from three surrounding communities in the area—other tourist towns dotting the highway. With an open campus and five buildings spread around a courtyard, the main two-story building rose above the rest like a glorified and modern-day concrete box. Behind that was the gym and sports fields: a baseball diamond, a football field, tennis courts, and a running track. The gems of Benders High.

  Velveeta told me they'd built the school three years earlier, and as I saw it, it had all the personality of a dead guy.

  Clean lines, organized, institutional, and boring, Benders High, just like all the other new schools I'd seen, portrayed everything they expected its students to be: all the same and nothing to remember. If you took the signs down proclaiming it a school, it could be any government building built in the last ten years. I preferred to think of it as a low-risk detention center for nonviolent felons. Open and airy, but still a prison.

  Velveeta left me with directions to my homeroom, which was B112, and I found it without much hassle. Compared to the other schools I'd gone to, Benders High was small. Tiny, really. The enrollment at the high school I'd left topped three thousand, and if you ever wanted to get lost, it was easy. Even after a year there, I still couldn't find some places.

  I walked into the room, and twenty-three other sophomores talked and grouped and gathered in the usual hud dles around the place. I took a second to look for the punker/ skater/ stoner/ loser group and found a lone guy sitting at a desk in the back row of chairs.

  Call me a conformist to nonconformity, but I sat next to him, setting my pack down and once again missing my friends back home. His hair was long, dark brown, straight, and feathered down his shoulders heavy-metal style. He wore an old-school Black Sabbath T-shirt. He looked at me, ran his eyes over my outfit, paused at my Converse All-Stars, then smirked. Green eyes. He looked like he should be in junior high. He tapped a pencil on the desk. “I'm in fected; stay away.”

  “What?”

  He gave me a droll look. “The Benders curse. It's contagious. You'll get it if you sit next to me.”

  I stared at him.

  “My parents didn't stand in the genetic enhancement line before I was conceived.”

  I wondered if something about vineyards made people whacked in the head. “Are you insane?”

  He shook his head, his voice lazy and lower than I would have figured. Sarcasm dripped around the edges. “No.” He gestured to the students around the room. “Genetically altered peons. If you find one standing and staring blankly wind them up and they'll start again.”

  I smiled. “Oh. I get it.”

  “Do you have a winder?”

  “Not the last time I checked. What's your name?”

  “Theo, but you can call me student number 31100.”

  “Poe.”

  He sat back, spreading his legs under the desk. “I've heard about you.”

  Oh God, it's already starting. “Small-town kind of thing?”

  He smiled. “Privacy isn't in the Benders Hollow dictionary. You're the counselor's daughter. Let's see … Oh yeah, you're troubled. You know, disenfranchised from the franchise. That's what the engineers say anyway.”

  “The engineers?”

  “Adults. The ones who program us. The winders of our winder things.”

  I knew from that second on, we'd get along just fine. “So what do they say about you?”

  “Nothing anybody can hear. I'm invisible.”

  “Why is that?”

  He blew his bangs out of his eyes. “My dad.”

  “Who is your dad?”

  “The mayor. I'm exalted in my invisibleness.”

  I smiled. “Should I bow?”

  “Only if you drop something.”

  “I take it you're not in the popular crowd?”

  He laughed. “I'm in the no crowd. In the in because I'm a townie, but not in the in. Remember the curse?”

  “What's the curse?”

  “I was born with a polo shirt on and a golf club in my hand, but the doctor accidentally pushed the wrong button and I wound up with cognitive thought abilities. They don't like that around here, but since my dad is the mayor, they leave me alone. Invisible. If you stick around me too much, you become invisible, too. It's not that bad, but people tend to bump into you.”

  I smiled, the thought of being invisible not a bad one. “Got any glue?”

  “Not that close. We wouldn't want anybody to think I actually have a life.”

  “Poor you.”

  “Not really. I'm a master at making lemons out of lemonade.”

  “That's backwards.”

  He looked at me, then glanced at the door. The teacher walked in. “No, it's not. I can turn anything sweet into sour. It comes with the territory.”

  Chapter Six

  Being the new kid wore thin by third hour. I'd been the newbie before, and the looks, glances, snickers, whispered comments, and formal introductions to the class by teachers got old five seconds after it all started. Even though there were more than the usual share of clones at Benders High, I was disappointed to know that this school was pretty much the same as every other school I'd been to. I shouldn't have been surprised. School was like McDonald's. A Big Mac in Tulsa tasted exactly the same as one in Seattle, and there was a reason for it.

  But third-hour current affairs was an exception to institutionalized indoctrination. No seating chart. Free seating. I knew the teacher must be taking a big chance with that one. People have a tendency to wander aimlessly when they have to decide something for themselves, and I figured half the class would be spent deciding. Theo was in that class, too, and when he came in, he plopped down next to me in the back row. He popped a piece of gum in his mouth. He could even chew gum sarcastically. “Want one?”

  I nodded, taking a piece. “Thanks.”

  He slouched in his chair, bored with the world. “All the sheepherders making you feel comfy?”

  “It can't be that bad around here.”

  “It's not. At least for me. I try to be as negative and depressed as possible about everything. It's hard sometimes, but hey, it's a job.”

  “Your job?”

  “Yes, ma'am. My mother hasn't stopped smiling for seventeen years. She woke up one morning and her face stuck. Have you ever lived with somebody who's so happy it makes you want to eat your puke? Even my dad can't take that much sunshine, and he's the biggest glad hander I know.”

  I laughed.

  He nodded. “I'm serious. If I told her I wanted to slit my wrists up to my elbows, drink battery acid, and drive a car into a brick wall, she'd tell me to buckle up, have a good day, and grab a gallon of milk when I'm done. Reality and her don't go well together. I have to balance things out.”

>   “Sounds weird.” I glanced at the door, and Velveeta walked in.

  “No,” he said, pointing. “That's weird.”

  “He lives next door to us.”

  “I know.”

  I forgot how small this town was. “He's nice.” I watched as Velveeta stopped at the entrance, scanning the room. His eyes didn't stop on me, though. They stopped on a guy in the front row near the windows. Their eyes met. Velveeta made a beeline to the farthest seat from him and sat down, and the guy shook his head and smirked.

  “He's a lot of things.”

  I looked at Theo, and there wasn't any sarcasm there. “How's that?”

  “You don't even want to know.”

  “Yeah, I do.” At that point, the teacher walked in. A tall, pudgy man with a fifties-style businessman's haircut and dark eyes under thick eyebrows. He wore a white button-up shirt and navy blue tie.

  “Ask your dad, then. That kid is in his office more than anybody in this school.”

  “His parents died in a car crash.”

  Theo looked at me. “Yeah.”

  The teacher stared at us, and I checked out my schedule. Mr. Halvorson. He cleared his throat. “Theo, since you seem to be talkative on this afternoon of the first day of school, perhaps you could introduce Ms. Holly to the class?”

  Without pause, Theo stood, taking me by the arm and dragging me up. “This is Poe Holly. She's from Southern California, has a mommy and a daddy, likes skipping rope, eating crayons, drinking melted ice cream, and taking romantic strolls through the vineyards on warm summer evenings. She's joined the ranks of Benders High because she has a deep-seated need to be reduced to a mass of organic gelatin, compliments of the glorious administration and teaching staff of this wonderific and really special school. Furthermore…”

  “That will be quite enough.” Mr. Halvorson glowered. He looked at me. “Ms. Holly, welcome. Please take your seat.” He picked up a piece of paper and handed it to the closest student. “Please fill in your name at the corresponding desk on the chart, then pass it along.”

  Fifty-five minutes of class rules, current affairs curriculum, and grade requirements later, we were dismissed. As I walked up the aisle, Mr. Halvorson called me aside. He waited a moment for the last of the students to exit the room, then leaned against his desk and smiled. “It is nice to have you here, Poe.”