Surfacing - Book One in the Swans Landing Series

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

“That’s her.” The voice drifted toward me during my walk toward gym class. I knew before I even looked that I wouldn’t be able to tell who had said the words. The speaker blended into the other students in the hall and no one acknowledged my presence when I looked at them. All day the same conversations had been going on around me.

“That’s the new girl.”

“Where’s she from?”

“Why is she here?”

“Do you think she’s one of them?”

There was always curiosity about a new student at my old school in Tennessee. But some of the looks sent my way bordered more on the hostile side than curious. No one ever spoke to me, although they all spoke plenty about me.

The school gym was barely big enough to hold the full sized basketball court that stretched across the shiny wood floor. A few students already lounged on the bleachers, dressed in their gray and blue Fighting Swans gym uniforms. The conversations in the room fell into silence when I entered the groaning double doors. I hurried inside, my head held high and ignored the looks from other students.

In the locker room, I kept my gaze on my locker or my clothes to avoid making eye contact with anyone that still remained as I changed. The silence in the room made it clear that I was not one of them and was not welcome here.

I found a seat on one of the lower bleachers, putting several feet between myself and the other kids in my class. I was looking down at my phone, pretending to check for messages that would never come, when I felt someone standing over me.

Sailor planted her hands on her hips, sneering down at me. “Oh, joy,” she said. “I get to put up with you in every class all semester.”

Why didn’t anyone tell me she was in this class? All day she had gone back and forth between ignoring me or shooting dark glares my way behind Dylan’s back. On the way to lunch, she had slammed hard into my shoulder in the hall, knocking me against a group of younger kids walking by. She then claimed it was an accident, but it was obvious I was being hazed as my welcome into town.

“Oh, joy,” I mimicked. “I get to put up with the bitch patrol all semester.”

Sailor’s eyebrows creased into a scowl, but before she could say anything, the teacher, Ms. Sheffield—who was also my math teacher—came in and blew her whistle. “All right, girls,” she said. “Let’s line up for basketball drills.”

The class was combined ninth through twelfth, but still, that only made up a class of twelve girls. All of my classes today had been much smaller than I was used to. I’d had blending in and being invisible down to an art at my old school over the last few months. When you were watching your mom die slowly at home, listening to the latest gossip or rumors was a lot less important. But here, staying hidden would take a lot more work.

Ms. Sheffield split us up into four groups, one group to each of the four basketball goals hanging from the ceiling. I breathed a sigh of relief when Sailor and I ended up in different groups. Ms. Sheffield assigned her to the goal to the left of mine, so she hadn’t gone very far away, but at least she was far enough that I didn’t have to talk to her.

My group consisted of two girls I knew from my earlier classes, Elizabeth Connors and Jackie Armstrong, and a younger girl that I didn’t know.

As we all started off into our groups, Elizabeth planted herself in front of Ms. Sheffield and said, “I’d like to request a different group.”