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on again.
My fourth hour class got out late, and the lunch table I always sat at was full by the time I arrived. Mike
was there, Jessica and Angela, Conner, Tyler, Eric and Lauren. Katie Marshall, the redheaded junior
who lived around the corner from me, was sitting with Eric, and Austin Marks older brother to the boy
with the motorcycles was next to her. I wondered how long they'd been sitting here, unable to
remember if this was the first day or something that was a regular habit.
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I was beginning to get annoyed with myself. I might as well have been packed in Styrofoam peanuts
through the last semester.
No one looked up when I sat down next to Mike, even though the chair squealed stridently against the
linoleum as I dragged it back.
I tried to catch up with the conversation.
Mike and Conner were talking sports, so I gave up on that one at once.
"Where's Ben today?" Lauren was asking Angela. I perked up, interested. I wondered if that meant
Angela and Ben were still together.
I barely recognized Lauren. She'd cut off all her blond, corn-silk hair now she had a pixie cut so short
that the back was shaved like a boy. What an odd thing for her to do. I wished I knew the reason behind
it. Did she get gum stuck in it? Did she sell it? Had all the people she was habitually nasty to caught her
behind the gym and scalped her? I decided it wasn't fair for me to judge her now by my former opinion.
For all I knew, she'd turned into a nice person.
"Ben's got the stomach flu," Angela said in her quiet, calm voice. "Hopefully it's just some twenty-four
hour thing. He was really sick last night."
Angela had changed her hair, too. She'd grown out her layers.
"What did you two do this weekend?" Jessica asked, not sounding as if she cared about the answer. I'd
bet that this was just an opener so she could tell her own stories. I wondered if she would talk aboutPort
Angeles with me sitting two seats away? Was I that invisible, that no one would feel uncomfortable
discussing me while I was here?
"We were going to have a picnic Saturday, actually, but& we changed our minds," Angela said. There
was an edge to her voice that caught my interest.
Jess, not so much. "That's too bad," she said, about to launch into her story. But I wasn't the only one
who was paying attention.
"What happened?" Lauren asked curiously.
"Well," Angela said, seeming more hesitant than usual, though she was always reserved, "we drove up
north, almost to the hot springs there's a good spot just about a mile up the trail. But, when we were
halfway there& we saw something."
"Saw something? What?" Lauren's pale eyebrows pulled together. Even Jess seemed to be listening
now.
"I don't know," Angela said. "Wethink it was a bear. It was black, anyway, but it seemed& too big."
Lauren snorted. "Oh, not you, too!" Her eyes turned mocking, and I decided I didn't need to give her
the benefit of the doubt. Obviously her personality had not changed as much as her hair. "Tylertried to
sell me that one last week."
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"You're not going to see any bears that close to the resort," Jessica said, siding with Lauren.
"Really," Angela protested in a low voice, looking down at the table. "We did see it."
Lauren snickered. Mike was still talking to Conner, not paying attention to the girls.
"No, she's right," I threw in impatiently. "We had a hiker in just Saturday who saw the bear, too, Angela.
He said it was huge and black and just outside of town, didn't he, Mike?"
There was a moment of silence. Every pair of eyes at the table turned to stare at me in shock. The new
girl, Katie, had her mouth hanging open like she'd just witnessed an explosion. Nobody moved.
"Mike?" I muttered, mortified. "Remember the guy with the bear story?"
"S-sure," Mike stuttered after a second. I didn't know why he was looking at me so strangely. I talked
to him at work, didn't I? Did I? I thought so&
Mike recovered. "Yeah, there was a guy who said he saw a huge black bear right at the
trailhead bigger than a grizzly," he confirmed.
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