Absent (Katie Williams)

she’s so edgy just because she broke up with Lucas Hayes and got a piercing at the mall.”
    “Meh. She’s not that bad,” Usha said. “Just kind of obvious.”
    “Usha Das!” Mr. Cochran called from the edge of the roof.
    “She is that bad,” I argued, “and then some more bad.”
    Usha shrugged then kissed my cheek with a smack before marching out to Mr. Cochran. Her contraption, which she held under one arm, was a cardboard replica of an old-fashioned plane, like the ones the Wright Brothers flew. It even had tiny paper-fastener propellers that spun. It must have taken hours to make, but it didn’t meet any of the assignment criteria; it wouldn’t protect her egg at all. Usha heaved it unceremoniously off the roof.
    A giggle came from Kelsey and the ponies. It always sounded like they were laughing at you. I shot them a glare and accidentally met Kelsey’s eyes, peering at me over the ponies’ heads. Her eyes were wide and hazel and framed in flourishes of liner. I imagined Lucas gazing into those eyes. I looked down at the box in my hands, picturing the egg—perfect, white, seamless—in its center. I wondered what Usha would think if she knew I was hooking up with Kelsey’s ex-boyfriend. I wondered what she’d think if she knew he’d stood me up.
    No, I knew what she’d think of that.
    “All right, Paige Wheeler!” Mr. Cochran called with a wave. Usha passed me on her way back and said happily, “Crash landing! Total yolk!”
    The closer I got to the edge of the roof, the bigger the sky seemed, the smaller the roof. Even smaller, me. It must have shown on my face, because when I reached Mr. Cochran, he clapped a reassuring hand on my back. “You okay there?”
    “Agoraphobia,” I mumbled.
    “You mean acrophobia.”
    “Right,” I agreed, though really I’d meant agoraphobia. It wasn’t that the building was too high, but that the sky was too big. The empty sky, my empty stomach, so big that I’d be lost in them. The parking lot was below, beyond it the road where shiny cars, not yet dimmed by the stipple of winter road salt, drove steadily to the strip mall or the on-ramp or the Gas-N-Go, and then home, always eventually home. I stepped a foot up onto the lip of the roof, testing my fear. My heart thunked; the sky stretched itself wider.
    “Hey, now.” Mr. Cochran clucked at my foot. “Feet on the ground.”
    His words were underscored by a squeal of hinges. Mr. Cochran and I both turned at the sound of a door swinging open. The rest of the class had turned, too, and was squinting at the shadowy figure in the doorway that led down to the school. I blinked, trying to see who it was. When he stepped out into the light and I saw who he was, I blinked again, this time from surprise.
    “Lucas Hayes!” Mr. Cochran shouted. “What are you doing up here?”
    Lucas looked past Mr. Cochran, his eyes snagging mine, which filled me with something more expansive than my fear of the roof, more encompassing than the cold sky. He came here to see me. A smile worked its way onto my lips. As soon as I realized, I yanked it off my face. I refused to beam dumbly at the boy who’d just stood me up. After all, I wasn’t a no-respect burner girl. I wasn’t poor, dead Brooke Lee.
    “Coach C!” Lucas called. “I need you to sign this for me.” He waved a paper in his hand and looked past me like I wasn’t even there.
    Suddenly it felt like it was true, that I wasn’t there. And that made me feel embarrassed and resentful and tired, so completely tired that I wanted to lie down on the roof and stare out at the world with its toy cars, ribbon road, and twig trees. I turned away from Lucas and the rest of them, my arms still holding the egg contraption straight out into the big empty sky.
    “Stay here,” Mr. Cochran said to me, and I nodded. Where else would I go? Behind me, Mr. Cochran’s voice faded as he started across the roof to sign Lucas’s form. I looked down at my feet, the buckles of my boots dull under the hazy sky; one foot was still up on the roof’s lip. And, almost as if I were watching myself do it, my other foot stepped up to join it. The horizon retreated an inch more, another row of houses now in my view. It was a victory over my fear, I decided. A victory of twelve inches, but a victory nonetheless. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid anymore, not of the height, not the wide sky, not Kelsey Pope’s whispers or Lucas’s smile, which I could almost feel behind me, wedged between