QUACK

In Which Ethan Steps Out of His Comfort Zone

THIS CHAPTER IS FROM ETHAN'S POINT OF VIEW.

I don’t need to tell you, I think, that I am not the kind of boy that gets invited to many parties. It doesn’t really matter what kind: pool party, house party, dance party. It doesn’t matter. The few I’d been invited to, I ended up not liking. The people were too loud or pushy, or the food wasn’t too good but it would be too rude to say so, or the venue is too crowded. I can come up with a thousand and one excuses and I still won’t be finished.

That being said, Sasha’s birthday picnic party was one such party that I actually liked. It was in the park she’d brought me to when we dumped Jerusalem in the pond. It was where we met her real dad, who is now almost always at our house, if we weren’t over there at their place.

The food was a nice combination of Sasha’s and my favorite food. The weather was neither too sunny nor too hot nor too much of anything but nice. The people were just the right number. More to the point, they were people I actually liked.

Though, if I was to be honest, and as I always am, it wouldn’t have been so bad either if it was only me and Sasha. Not that anyone asked. Not that I’d ever tell.

But, as things with me always go, someone or something just had to ruin it.

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It couldn’t be helped, that I react the way I do at the sight of James Tinsley walking over to where we are. While he and his cohorts have left me alone since Sasha and I started spending most of our time together at school, he still is one of my least favorite people in the world. For one thing, he still calls me retard when he thinks I can’t hear. For another, he still hasn’t given me back my cross.

I try to not show just how agitated I am by his presence, but my body doesn’t want to cooperate. Just outside the realm of my control, my fingers started to spasm, my wrists start to twitch. It isn’t as bad as how much I have started to sweat despite the cool weather, or that my heart is beating so much faster than usual.

He starts to walk away when Sasha call out to him. And then they walk away together, and I couldn’t help but make myself heard by growling. I don’t understand why such a reaction is appropriate for the situation, but this is exactly what I do.

For some reason, it feels so much worse than having my cross taken away from me.

Sal tugs on my sleeve and I jerk away from her. The last thing I want right now is to be touched. Or perhaps the last thing I want right now is a root canal, what with my perfect teeth, but I digress.

Aaron, who is standing behind me, gives my shoulder a little bump with his knee. I look up at him, ready to lash out, and he simply asks me to take a walk with him.

I look at Sal, not so much to ask if I can take a walk with this total stranger. More if it is okay with her to let this total stranger walk with me. I cannot comprehend the way they are surreptitiously looking at each other when they think nobody is looking.

She tells me, rather hesitantly, that it’s okay, so I get up and walk with Aaron a distance from our picnic. Predictably, he asks me about Jem, though not as directly as I would have wanted.

“James Tinsley’s a jerk and a big bully. He’s the biggest bully in our grade and-and-and he has my cross and he won’t give it back and I hate the way he looks at me and calls me a retard and I hate the way he looks at Sasha just because he’s her ex-boyfriend and I’m with her now and I don’t like him for her because I—“

I stop myself, mostly because I think I’ve said too much and because Aaron says he couldn’t understand what I was talking about anymore. And then he asks me who I want Sasha to be with.