“Stop that,” my mother says. She opens her trash bag, reaches in, and fishes out a red knit cap with hearts all over it. “Here,” she tells me, handing it over. “Wear this.”
I don’t understand how a hat’s going to make me stop itching. And I must look confused, because she says, “Just keep it on, okay? And don’t itch. If you’re itching, they’ll send you home. And you know I can’t be home today. I’ll see if Renee has any of that shampoo. It’ll be fine. But don’t get sent home. If you keep the hat on, no one will know.”
Now I’m sure I have lice, and my hair is full of phantom crawling. I’m not sure the hat will keep that in.
My mother knocks on the bathroom door, and my second brother opens it, wet-headed but dressed.
“Don’t miss the bus,” she tells us all. Then, when our backpacks have been retrieved from under the bed, she tells each of us she loves us, and wishes us a good day.
As the oldest, I figure I’m the leader. My brothers, Jesse and Jarid, think the hat is hysterical, but I ignore them. I access the location of the bus stop and start heading there, until Jarid stops me and says, “Hey, what about Jasmine?” I don’t even have time to ask who that is, because a voice from across the parking lot says, “Yeah, what about me?” I see a girl about my age coming our way. She looks right at my head and says, “I do not want to know what that’s about.” Then she leads us to the bus stop, like Wendy commandeering the Lost Boys.
It’s only when we’re waiting for the bus that I think of Rhiannon. I feel for my phone in my pocket, but of course there isn’t any phone in my pocket, and I doubt there will be one in my backpack. Hopefully there will be a computer at school. I remember I set up a new email—but then I can’t recall what it was. I can remember the barrage of thoughts I had, but none of them are particularly distinct. I remember running in circles around my room. I remember the look on the guidance counselor’s face as I straightened her frames. But I can’t remember what was in those frames. I can’t remember the furniture I was running around.
“Come on, Joe,” Jasmine says. I look up and it’s a city bus, not a school bus, that’s here. Jasmine takes out a bus pass, and I find one in my pocket, too. My brothers follow.
We don’t talk on the bus. We just look tiredly out at the buildings we pass, stare at the other people on the bus until we realize we’re staring. Jasmine closes her eyes, and for a second I think she’s asleep. But when she opens them up again, I can tell she was closing her eyes in order to think.
When she rings the bell to make the bus stop, I stand to go. When we’re off the bus, I follow her to school. My brothers go to one building and Jasmine and I go to another. When we get inside, I start to head for my locker, but stop when Jasmine chastises me and tells me I need to get breakfast.
I follow her to the cafeteria, where eggs are being scooped from a vat and garnished with a slice of white toast. At the end of the line, there’s a bowl of fruit; Jasmine takes an apple and hands me an orange. Then we sit down to eat, and as we do, she stares at my face so long that I’m worried there are bugs crawling down from my hair.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing,” she tells me.
The cafeteria isn’t like a lunchtime cafeteria—there can’t be more than two dozen of us here, and everyone’s keeping to themselves…or at least they are until two guys come to our table. Theo and Stace. Stace has already eaten half his allotment of eggs, and they’re in the middle of an argument as they sit down.
“I’m telling you,” Stace says, “there’s cheese in there. They definitely put cheese in. These are cheesy eggs, man.”
“There’s no cheese in here. There’s barely eggs.”
Stace takes another big forkful. “Don’t be a hater. This shit’s good. Cheesy good.”
“No cheese. None.”
“Fuck you. There is.”
Theo looks to Jasmine for help. “Will you please tell this fool that there isn’t any cheese in these eggs?”
“There could be,” she says. “Who knows?”
I’m taking a bite now, and I think maybe there’s cheese. But then I take another bite and I’m not that sure.
“You taste it, right?” Stace asks me.
And because for some reason I’m liking Stace more than Theo, I say, “Yeah, I taste it. It’s almost like a gouda.”
Stace, Theo, and Jasmine all look at me then.
“What the fuck are you talking about—a gouda?” Theo says.
“Are you making fun of me?” Stace adds, hurt.
“I don’t think he is,” Jasmine says. Then she looks at me and says, “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
* * *
—
I can barely concentrate in class. Now my head isn’t just itchy, it’s starting to sweat hard. It gets to the point that I have to sit on my hands to prevent myself from scratching myself into an obvious frenzy. The worst is when I imagine the lice marching down my neck, down my back, jumping onto the ground, walking up everyone else’s legs.
Only one teacher, my English teacher, asks me to take off the hat.
“Ma’am, I can’t,” I say. “Please.”
I’m pleading, and she hears it. She lets me keep it on.
I plan to go to the library to use the computers at lunch. But there aren’t any computers. There isn’t even a library.
“When did they get rid of the library?” I ask Jasmine over our pizza squares at lunch.
“When people stopped caring about us” is all she’ll answer.
I scratch my scalp then, through the hat. She sees me doing it, but doesn’t say anything.
She reminds me of Rhiannon, even though she doesn’t look anything like Rhiannon. I am seeing right inside, and that’s what looks like Rhiannon. I wonder if Joe sees her like this, too. At the end of lunch, she makes sure that all the homework she has to hand in is at the front of her bag, and she makes me do the same thing, possibly to make sure I’ve done it. At the end, I thank her, and she doesn’t look like it’s too out of the ordinary for him to thank her. Which gives me hope that Joe might, in fact, recognize what’s going on.
* * *
—
By seventh period, my head is unbearable. I reach under the hat to scratch, and come back with a small black bug pressed under my fingernail. I know I should go to the school nurse, but I heed my mother’s warning about being sent home. I wait until the end of the day, when being sent home won’t be a big deal—but then I worry that they’ll say I can’t come back tomorrow. Also, I figure I have to pick up Jesse and Jarid.