Natural Selection by Elizabeth Sharp

over the last two days. Whatever it was, I just
wished they’d go away.
    My siblings rarely left my side at
school, walking me to classes and both of them sitting with me at
lunch. One of the football players made a snide comment about me
being a murderer, and Xander bloodied his nose without even slowing
his step. After that, everyone was afraid to meet my eyes, and
everyone shifted away from me in all of my classes. I felt like the
center of attention, since everyone was pointedly not watching me.
The room fell silent when I entered, and as soon as I left the
whispering started. I felt like I was living in a glass bowl, and
the whole world was watching.
    The one good thing about the horrible
experience was it helped Evelyn and me move past the weirdness
between us. She knew I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened and
promised to wait until I was. In the meantime, she moved along in
the silent bubble with me chattering as if everything was normal.
And eventually, I began to feel it was. The reporters wandered away
after only a couple of days, realizing there was no story
here.
    I thought the shock to my system
caused me to catch something because I was running fevers, had
frequent headaches and my entire body ached. I felt ill, faint, and
feverish, but I dismissed it. It’s not every day you find the body
of a friend murdered in some sort of horrific witchcraft
ceremony.
    I often sat out on the roof
at night, which actually made me feel better. In fact, I noticed I
felt better any time I was outside, so I started spending most of
my time in the tree or just sitting cross legged in the grass. I’d
finished Secrets and since the next book wasn’t out yet I moved on to another
book, Legion of Bats by Michelle Ferguson. I can’t believe I’d ignored the genre
for so long! I really was enjoying it and could definitely handle
the hunky heroes. Don’t get me wrong, you won’t see me reading
about sparkly vampires, but I shouldn’t have judged the entire
genre by one freakish success. I’m sorry, but vampires only sparkle
in the sun because they are about to ignite.
    Friday came with its typical load of
homework from teachers who felt teenagers didn’t need any time for
a social life or sleep—or anything silly like that. Evelyn was
waiting by my locker when I got out of creative writing, her
backpack on one shoulder and her duffel bag on the other. Our
football team had floundered as usual, and basketball hadn’t
started yet, so she was spending her first free weekend with me. I
was glad she’d decided to stick it out with cheerleading, though it
too seemed to be driving us apart. Why do high schoolers constantly
divide themselves based on the activities? What relevance does
being in the science club—not that I was in the science club, you
have to like science for that—have when it comes to my ability to
form a meaningful connection to another human being?
    I realized my mind had wandered off
again. It was dangerous for it to be wandering on its own, but it
had gotten tough to keep it from doing so. I snapped it back inside
of my skull where it was safe. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
I frowned at the random A.D.D. thoughts, and wondered if I was
cracking up. Maybe I really had cracked up, and all the weirdness
since the beginning of school was one big delusional fantasy. But
didn’t they say if you thought you were crazy then you had to be
sane because the insane never worry they were crazy?
    Someone bumped into my shoulder, and I
realized I’d stopped in the middle of the hall. I tucked my hair
behind my ear and made a beeline for my locker where Evelyn stood
staring at me like she was also worrying about my sanity. I choked
back a nearly maniacal laugh and quickly gathered my things for the
weekend. I managed to grumble about the fact that the only book in
my locker as I closed it was my Spanish book, because I always had
time to do the simple assignments in the time before class started.
Evelyn let