Rodent by Lisa J. Lawrence Page B

me by the elbow to a group of three. Damien! I feel a burst of relief at seeing his pink streaks, stupid grin.
    “Isabelle! We already know each other,” he says to Ms. Furbank.
    “Oh, good. Isabelle, this is Zara, our class leader.” Small upturned nose. Dark hair pulled away from her face. Wire-framed glasses. Everything about her is small and tidy. She gives me a tight smile and nods.
    “Hey,” I say.
    The other member of the group is Nimra, who wears a light-green hijab and black-framed glasses. Shy smile.
    “I’ll leave you kids to it,” Ms. Furbank says, gesturing to the empty classroom. “You’re welcome to use this space for meetings, if you like.”
    As she heads for the door, Will and Amanda squeak through at the same time, in mid-conversation. Something twinges in me. I should have been part of that conversation too, instead of standing here like a wart, wanting to disappear.
    The minute Ms. Furbank’s heels clip-clop out the door, Zara announces, “We only have two weeks to put this together.”
    In the same breath, Damien says, “It’s boring here. Let’s go somewhere else.” We all turn to stare.
    “What?” Zara says.
    “I know a better place we can meet.”
    “Does it really—” Zara begins, but Damien’s already out the door, his hairy legs zipping by in a pair of striped shorts. We trail after him, Zara sighing behind us.
    The hallway crowd has thinned out. Everyone’s in the cafeteria or has left for lunch. Damien’s blond-and-pink head bobs ahead of us. We pass into a part of the school where I’ve never been, near the band and cosmetology rooms. Never had a reason to come down here before, scurrying between my classrooms and the library.
    He pauses in front of a light-blue door—the same color as my locker—and knocks lightly before trying the knob. As I go in, I see the placard on the door: Drama . Damien flicks on the lights, and a high ceiling appears. There’s a low wooden stage against the far wall, and chairs scattered in small clusters around the room.
    “What—” Zara begins.
    “No, not here.” Damien beckons us through a door off to the side of the drama room. “ Here !”
    We shuffle through and find ourselves in some kind of a large closet lined with musty clothes, old shoes, flamboyant hats. It smells like twenty years of sweaty polyester.
    “We’re meeting in the closet?” Nimra beats Zara to it this time.
    “No, not a closet. It’s a prop room ,” Damien corrects. “It’s the perfect spot.”
    Zara looks as if someone just picked their nose and wiped it on her. “No way. I’m not working in here.”
    “Think about it,” he says. “It’s perfectly secluded, creative. Who would find us here? We could be totally focused.”
    He had me at Who would find us here? “Looks good to me!” I say. Damien perks up.
    Will shifts next to me, ducking his head away from the overhanging wigs and boxes spilling from the high shelves. Amanda looks like she’s trying not to laugh.
    “Fine. But I pick the meeting place next time,” Zara sniffs. No one objects.
    With no room for chairs, we sit cross-legged in a circle on the floor, Will on my right and Nimra on my left. Will’s leg presses against mine, warm through his jeans. Should I move away? I notice that his other knee touches Amanda’s, though, and Nimra’s knee bumps me on the other side. I stay put.
    “Okay.” Zara pulls out a clipboard and clicks her pen into action.
    On cue, Damien jumps up and flits around the room. “Props! We need props.”
    Zara drops the clipboard into her lap and throws back her head, en route to a full-scale temper tantrum. I’m starting to wonder if this meeting is like one of those dreams where you start out for Disneyland and end up trying to find a pair of matching socks and eventually follow a firefly down a long tunnel instead.
    Damien picks out a gray Stetson for Will, which actually kind of suits him. Tall cowboy type. He drops a moldy-looking boa in Zara’s