Absent (Katie Williams)

them gently to the ground.
    Evan arrives at my shoulder. “That was something.”
    “It was nothing,” I say tersely.
    But I look at the door, suddenly worried that Wes will bang through it, tardy as usual, with his stupid crooked grin and stupider jokes. I tell myself that it might not have even been me, the girl he drew. She hadn’t even looked like me. Not really. I didn’t have those eyes. Not that smile.
    “Well, at least we found the next rumor about you,” Evan says.
    “You see how she is? Who knows what she might decide to say next.”
    “Actually, it was her friend who found—”
    “The sick thing is she doesn’t even know me. She knows nothing about me. She’s just saying things for . . . I don’t know why. Why do people say things like that?”
    I shoot an evil look in the general direction of the ponies, but my eyes land on the table by the door. I hadn’t seen it before, because it is small and situated in the corner and it holds only one student sitting by herself.
    Greenvale Greene is looking right at me.
    Our eyes lock. Hers are so light they’re nearly colorless. Her clothes—the same jeans and hoodie as anyone else’s—appear somehow ill-fitting and out of style, like wrinkled hand-me-downs. Her hair, lank and unbrushed, falls in her eyes.
    Greenvale Greene, I think.
    Paige Wheeler, a voice whispers in return.
    I glance over my shoulder to see what Greenvale is really looking at, surely someone else behind me. But no one is there except for Evan and the blank wall. And when I turn back, Greenvale isn’t there either. A flash of bony elbow, the sole of an off-brand shoe, and the door to the art room slams shut.
    “Who was that?” Mr. Fisk looks up. “Who just left?”
    “Harriet Greene,” someone says. This is followed by a ripple of the word Greenvale, spoken almost as a superstition, like throwing salt over your shoulder or touching the points of the cross.
    “Maybe she could ask for a hall pass next time,” Fisk says.
    “Maybe she really had to go,” someone suggests, which elicits laughter.
    I wonder if they’d still have laughed if they’d seen her face before she ran from the room. Eyes wide, mouth open in fear.
    It was as if she’d seen a ghost.

8: THE RESISTANCE OF FALLING OBJECTS
    “ IT’S YOUR IMAGINATION,” EVAN SAYS BEFORE I’VE EVEN FINISHED explaining. We stand in the hallway outside the art room, Greenvale nowhere in sight.
    “It’s not. She looked right at me.”
    “It’s happened to me before, too,” Evan explains. “You’re just seeing what you want to see. You think they’re looking at you, but really they’re always looking at something else.”
    “Trust me. If I wanted someone to see me, it wouldn’t be Greenvale Greene. Besides, there was nothing behind me, just the wall.”
    “Maybe she was looking at the wall.” Evan tilts his head. “Who is this again?”
    “You know, Greenvale Greene. She was sitting right by the door.”
    “I didn’t see anyone by the door.”
    “I didn’t see her at first either. She was practically in the corner.She’s pygmy-short, starvation-skinny, bangs in her face, huge eyes under the bangs.”
    He shakes his head, no recognition. “Is she a well-rounder or a biblical or—” I’ve taught Evan all of Usha’s and my nicknames.
    “No group. She’s . . . well, she’s crazy. Like, certified. Sophomore year she had some sort of breakdown and wouldn’t leave her bedroom. Her parents sent her to a place . . . a facility or whatever you call it.”
    Evan adjusts the cuffs of his sweater so that they’re even on his wrists. “Greenvale is a strange name.”
    “Her name isn’t really Greenvale. Technically, it’s Harriet. Greenvale is the name of the place where they sent her, and her last name is Greene, so everyone calls her Greenvale Greene.” I frown. “Unfortunate coincidence, I guess.”
    Evan looks up from his sleeves. “If the place hadn’t been named Greenvale, they would have come up with something else to call her.”
    I think of the nicknames Usha and I devised for our classmates with a tug of guilt. It wasn’t the same, I tell myself, calling someone a well-rounder or a pony or a testo. Besides, I wouldn’t have come up with the names if people didn’t try so hard to fit in their tidy boxes. Except Greenvale, I realize. She didn’t have a category, a group.
    The bell rings, and the classroom doors pour out students. Evan and I back away from the crowds, but