Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn Read Free Book Online

says, and my heart sort of stutters.
    “Yeah?”
    “I wanted to tell you thanks for backing me up in civics class last week. During the immigration debate.”
    “No problem,” I say, but I remain edgy. What an odd thing to mention.
    She leans in, fingering the gold cross that hangs from a chain around her neck and lowering her voice. “It’s just, a lot of my family, they’re from Mexico, you know? So some of the things that were being said, well, they bothered me.”
    I give a quick nod. “They bothered me, too.”
    “Yeah?” She stares. “I guess I thought … I just figured you’d think differently, that’s all.”
    I don’t know how to respond.
    Jordan points. “You’ve got those wrist thingies on again.”
    This is true. “What about them?”
    “Well, you’re not going to get sick, are you?”
    I tense. I mean, what kind of question is that? Like my body is mine to master.
    “If I do, you’ll be the first to know,” I say stiffly.
    Her head tilts. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
    Confused, I stare a little shamelessly at her. Jordan doesn’t seem to mind. She pulls something out of her gym bag. A wrinkled study sheet of what appears to be Latin conjugations.
    “Classes are hard here,” she tells me as she tries flattening the paper against her knee. It looks like a lost cause.
    “Are they?”
    “Compared to my public school, absolutely. I have to actually, like, study. It sucks.”
    “Ad astra per aspera,” I say.
    Jordan looks up. “That’s Latin, huh? What does it mean?”
    “‘To the stars through difficulty.’ It’s the school motto.”
    She snorts. “Well, the most difficult thing around here is meeting people. Is there a motto for that?”
    “Probably.”
    Jordan leans closer. Close enough for me to smell her. “I mean, finding a seat on the bus shouldn’t be such a struggle, right? It’s got to be me, though. My own roommate ditches me to go home every weekend, back to New York.” She sighs. “You’re like the only person around here who’ll talk to me, Win. Even if you do your best not to.”
    Is she being serious? I don’t know and I don’t ask. Withdrawal’s a reflex for me, a protective one, like quill raising or those spiders that throw hairs. I scoot away from Jordan. As far away as possible. Our uniforms are sleeveless and my bare shoulder presses hard against the bus’s cool metal siding while I suck in autumn air rushing through the open window.
    I fix my gaze on the horizon and keep it there. Cider stands, corn mazes, pumpkin patches, all whip by at Mach speed. Even the moon is visible, very faint, a chalky smudge in the clear blue sky. It teases as always, with its shape and its secrets, but I feel closer than I ever have.
    Soon, my mind whispers.
    Very soon.

 
    chapter
    twelve
    antimatter
    We met up with our cousins on the third day. These were the daughters of my father’s younger brother and they lived in neighboring Lexington. Our grandparents kept their photographs plastered all over the house, and Keith schooled me on their names and ages: Anna was sixteen, Charlotte, fourteen, and Phoebe was eleven. I didn’t know them. Apparently, they’d visited us before, in Charlottesville, when I was younger, but I didn’t remember any of that. I didn’t remember a lot of things. Sometimes I wondered if my mind had been scrubbed clean of certain memories like in that weird movie with Jim Carrey. But if that was the case, why didn’t I just get a whole new life where I wouldn’t be reminded of the fact I’d forgotten things in the first place?
    Keith, on the other hand, had a flawless memory. Photographic, his teachers sometimes boasted, but Keith said it wasn’t anything good to have so much stuff stuck inside his brain. “It’s too crowded in there,” he told me. “I don’t have room to think.”
    We left the house early that afternoon and weaved through the summer crowds. Every day Concord crawled with hordes of travelers and tour buses