Good Luck, Fatty

what.” I get the Schwinn going (admittedly slowly, since I’m not really trying to flee him).
    “Maybe I do,” he says coolly, following me in a nice straight line, his bike upright and all business as I sway mine playfully from side to side.
    “I told you my policy.”
    He snorts. “What if I hated you, like them? ” he says, the word them sounding as if it’s infested with maggots.
    “What if?” I shake my hair in the breeze, pretend not to care.
    He buzzes ahead of me, waits for me to catch up. “Your policy is dumb,” he says. “I mean, it’s dumb that you have a policy.”
    As I go to pass him, he cuts me off and skids to a halt, forcing me to stop too. Barely. I dig my toes into the dirt and say, “Can we change the subject?”
    I pause long enough to really look at Tom (not my usual M.O. ), something about the way his pale eyes shimmer in the setting sun weakening my defenses.
    Another thing seducing me is the aching strum of cricket wings bowing against one another, their songs consuming the early autumn air. It’s been nine years since my parents dumped me (quite literally) on Gramp’s stoop in their harried rush to catch a midnight flight to Uganda. I stopped sensing the crickets seven years ago.
    But tonight they return. “Do you hear that?” I say, my voice tinged with awe.
    Tom cocks his head, strains as if he’s listening across a great distance. “Hear what?”
    I rock my bike closer to his until we’re side by side, near enough to touch. “The crickets,” I whisper. “They’re singing.”
    He chuckles faintly, leans in and says, “Yes, they are.” Awkwardly he lays a hand on my arm. Then, with supreme boldness, he kisses me, his lips as moist and warm as I’ve ever imagined any boy’s.
    It’s my first time.

 
     
    chapter 2
     
    I MISSED nineteen days of school last year. If you miss twenty, you automatically flunk and repeat the grade. The fact that I got so close to the wire wasn’t an accident. It was a plan. A dangerous one, since a bout of food poisoning nearly shoved me over the line at the end of May. But there’s no way I can spend even one extra minute in a place that has so soundly rejected me.
    Tom is an outcast too, but for different reasons than I am. He’s all overgrown and gangly, nothing but arms and legs and an upside-down peanut of a head. I suspect he reminds people of an insect.
    It doesn’t help that he has a mind of his own, either. Not too many kids our age appreciate that kind of thing, unless you’re blessed with the immutable good looks of a pop star or an underwear model.
    Today I have somehow made it past the closing bell at school without anyone messing with me. But as soon as I hustle the Schwinn off Industry High property, Malcolm Gates starts in.
    “Cotton!” he bellows from a few steps behind me. I don’t answer. “Yo, Cotton!” He sounds agitated, which makes me wonder what kind of hassle I’m in for. Truth be told, I prefer the kind where the jerkwad and I slip off for a quick screw to the kind where said jerkwad belittles and intimidates me for the whole world to see.
    And I’m in luck.
    Malcolm catches up and steers me by the handlebars of the Schwinn down a dead-end street where a bunch of old folks hibernate behind their neatly manicured lawns and freshly sealed driveways.
    I’ve been down this road before. Several times, in fact. A hundred yards beyond the last house—a golden rancher with a scattering of pink flamingos in the yard—is a dilapidated tree house at the edge of the woods, probably a relic from a time when the geezers on this block had kids my age.
    I shoot a glance over my shoulder, back toward school. Right before it happens, I get a surge of adrenaline. A final tug of conscience. A whisper I’ve trained myself to ignore.
    I prop the Schwinn against the trunk of the tree and start seesawing up the makeshift ladder. From the ground, Malcolm cups my ample bottom in his hands (girly hands that are three sizes too small) and gives me a helpful boost. Then he scampers up behind me.
    As always, the tree house is drowning in refuse: a mountain of stubby cigarette butts; jagged, menacing beer bottles; fast-food wrappers galore; a number of spent condoms.
    I’ve been on The Pill since I was twelve, when Denise carted me off to the clinic for a “big girl” checkup. There was nobody else to take charge of such matters except Orv and, back then, Gramp, both of whom were pretty old-school when it came to