“Let’s just say I’ll be busy for awhile.” She walked fast paced, looking straight ahead. “Which doesn’t matter, since I’ll have nothing else to do anyway.”

Oh. She was back to mourning California. We walked silently for a couple of minutes, swept away by the tide of students moving to the door. I didn’t know how to cheer her up—or if that was even possible. I figured it wasn’t a list of activities that she missed anyway. It was her friends and probably a boyfriend. It was memories and that comfortable feeling you have when you’re home. It was fitting in.

We’d reached the school’s front door and went outside and down the front stairs. “If you give it some time,” I said, “you’ll like it here.”

She rolled her eyes.

“In the winter, there a lot of great places to ski. Have you ever been skiing?”

“Waterskiing.”

“Well, it’s the same thing except it’s downhill.”

“And it’s in the frozen wilderness instead of a warm, sunny beach.”

Josh was waiting for us at his car. Elise climbed into the front seat, and I got into the back. “I’m just saying we’re never bored.”

Elise leaned against her seat like she had a headache. “Of course you’re not bored. You’re too busy cultivating a sense of wonder to ever be bored, aren’t you, Cassidy?”

Suddenly it hit me. Elise’s evil, psychotic twin sister was back, and I was trapped in the car with her. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

She let out a disgusted huff. “Like you don’t know.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Except I suspect you may be unbalanced and never make sense for long anyway.

I looked at Josh to see what his reaction to all of this was, but I couldn’t tell from his back. He’d started the car and was guiding it through the parking lot with one of his arms calmly draped across the steering wheel. He was probably used to these outbursts.

Elise shot me a look over her shoulder. “Those were the words Mrs. Harris said while talking about Macbeth. She said we should cultivate a sense of wonder about the artistry of the language.”

I vaguely remembered this, but I couldn’t see why Elise was so upset about it. Shakespearean English was artistic. Poetic. Something you couldn’t gulp down but had to take in slow, savoring sips.

“I told you I wanted to drop Honors English,” she said. “I was going to skip that class and get my homework done. But no, you dragged me into English in front of the teacher.” Elise looked up at the car’s ceiling. “I bet I could have gone for months before they caught me. And then I could have said I misunderstood my schedule and thought I had a study period. So not only did I not get my math and biology done, I have to write a paper comparing and contrasting Shakespearean heroes.”

Josh didn’t say a word about this, just looked straight ahead as he pulled out onto the road.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you can’t skip class for months—you have to take four years of English to graduate. What if they made you take summer school to make it up?”

She grunted. “I’d like to see them try.”

“That’s easy. If you don’t do what they want, they don’t hand you a diploma.”

Another grunt. “Who cares about graduating?” She shoved her backpack off the seat and onto the floor. “Forget this. I’m not doing my homework. I’m going to go find someplace to party.”

“At three o’clock on a Tuesday? Good luck with that.”

“Anything is better than contrasting Shakespearean heroes.”

“Actually,” I said, still trying to make her see reason. “I can think of a lot of things that are worse. Like washing dishes for a living because you didn’t graduate from high school.”

She stared out the window, her chin raised stubbornly. “I didn’t expect you to understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t understand.” I don’t understand how I let myself get trapped in this car with you, and I especially don’t understand why I introduced you to my friends when I had an inkling you were insane all along.

We rode quietly in the car for a while. I studied the back of Josh’s neck. It bothered me he hadn’t said anything, that he hadn’t taken a stand one way or the other. I couldn’t determine whose side he was on. Judging from the fact that he had quoted Shakespeare this morning, I guessed he wasn’t the type that skipped classes, but his silence seemed to indicate otherwise.

Elise turned around again, “Seriously—is getting shiny new As on your report card all you want from life? You’ll jump through whatever hoops your teachers and your parents wave in front of you just so you can get a little bit of praise?”

“Those As on my report card are going to get me into a good college. Hopefully with a scholarship.”

“So you can do the whole thing over for your professors. Has it ever occurred to you that no one in real life cares about the similarities and differences in Shakespeare’s heroes? No one cares about most of the stuff they force us to learn and regurgitate. It’s just a waste of time.”

“Learning isn’t a waste.” Jump in any time to support me, Josh. “Mrs. Harris isn’t trying to teach us about the differences between Hamlet and Macbeth, she’s trying to teach us how to think.”

Josh never said a word; he just kept driving. He may have even slowed down to prolong the agony of the conversation.

“Some of us already know how to think,” Elise said. And with that, she turned forward and ignored me. Graveyard silence filled the car. At last we reached my house. I nearly leapt out onto the sidewalk.

“Bye, Elise.” Thanks for nothing, Josh.

I shook as I walked inside. Elise hadn’t just attacked Mr. Harris’s homework assignment, she’d attacked me—who I was. I cared about those shiny little As on my report card. According to Elise that meant I didn’t know how to think.

Mom was in the living room with her sketch pad. “You’re home early.”

I dropped my backpack on the floor and sank down on the couch. “I got a ride home with Elise. You know, the psychotic new girl on our street.”

“Did she flip you off on the way home?”

“No, she told me I was jumping through hoops to get the praise of my teachers and parents.”

Mom made sweeping lines on her paper. “Like that’s a bad thing.”

“I don’t jump through hoops,” I said crossly. “I do a thorough job because I care about my education.”

Mom looked up from her paper. “I was just joking.”

I didn’t answer and Mom went back to her drawing. “Maybe you shouldn’t hang around with Elise. I don’t think she’s the type of friend you want.”

“You’re telling me.”

Mom paused, then glanced up at me again. “I talked to Rachel Taylor today, and she told me some things about Elise. It seems she got expelled in California. She and some of her friends vandalized their school. The police were involved.”

“Oh,” I said. That must be what Samantha knew. She was keeping her distance because she thought Elise was one of those kids who would constantly be in trouble. Maybe she was right.

I went up to my room to do homework. I always did homework right after school. That way the information was still fresh in my mind and I could do a better job. Besides, I liked having it out of the way so I had time to do whatever I wanted in the evening.

Only with Anjie gone, I didn’t have much to do in the evening.

As I did my homework today, I kept thinking about the things Elise had said. She was wrong, I told myself. Clearly wrong. Expelled wrong. So why did her accusations keep running through my mind?

I didn’t care about my grades too much. It was normal, wasn’t it, to do homework right after school?

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I’d never have another best friend because I didn’t socialize enough. First I’d start talking to myself, then to the cat, and before long I’d be communicating with people through the great beyond.

When I got to my English homework, I flipped through The Works of Shakespeare to decide which characters to compare and contrast to Macbeth. Last year we studied Othello, Hamlet, Romeo, and Julius Caesar. They’d all died hideous deaths, which meant either Shakespeare or Mrs. Harris liked to see men in misery and ruin.