Unearthly by Cynthia Hand Page A

all her playful talk about how much of a pain Tucker is, is she sensitive about him? I guess I can understand why. I can make fun of Jeffrey all I want, but if somebody else messes with my little brother, they better watch out.
    â€œSo, Elvis then? I’m running out of options here.”
    â€œSure.” She leans back against the wall and stretches her arms over her head, as if the conversation has exhausted her. “Nobody really cares.”
    â€œYeah, well, you’ve been here forever,” I remind her. “You’re accepted. I feel like if I make one wrong move, I might get chased off school property by an angry mob.”
    â€œOh please. You’ll be accepted. I accepted you, didn’t I?”
    That she had. After two weeks I’m still eating lunch at the Invisibles lunch table.
    So far I’ve identified two basic groups at Jackson Hole High School: the Haves—the pretty people, comprised of the wealthy Jackson Holers, whose parents own restaurants and art galleries and hotels; and the much smaller and less conspicuous Have-Nots—the kids whose parents work for the rich Jackson Holers. To see the great divide between these groups, you only have to look from Kay, in all her coiffed perfection and French-tipped manicured fingernails, to Wendy, who, though undeniably pretty, usually wears her sun-streaked hair in a simple braid down her back, and her fingernails are polish free and sports clipped.
    So where do I fit in?
    I’m quickly starting to figure out that our large house with a mountain view means that we have the big bucks, money Mom never mentioned back in California. Apparently we’re loaded. Still, Mom raised us without any idea of wealth. She lived through the Great Depression, after all, insists that Jeffrey and I save a portion of our allowance each week, makes us eat every morsel of food on our plates, darns our socks and mends our clothes, and sets the thermostat to low because we can always put on another sweater.
    â€œYes, you accepted me, but I’m still trying to figure out why,” I say to Wendy. “I think you must be some kind of a freak. Either that or you’re trying to convert me to your secret horse religion.”
    â€œDarn, you got me,” she says theatrically. “You thwarted my evil plan.”
    â€œI knew it!”
    I like Wendy. She’s quirky and kind, and just solidly good people. And she’s saved me from being labeled as a freak or a loner, as well as from the sting of missing my friends back in Cali. When I call them, already it feels like we don’t have much to talk about now that I’m out of the loop. It’s obvious that they’re moving on with their lives without me.
    But I can’t think about that or whether I’m a Have or Have-Not. My real problem has nothing to do with being rich or poor but instead with the fact that most of the students at Jackson Hole High have known each other since kindergarten. They formed all their cliques years ago. Even though my natural inclination is to stick with the more modest crowd, Christian is one of the pretty people, so that’s where I need to be. But there are obstacles. Huge, glaring obstacles. The first being lunch. The popular crowd usually goes off campus. Of course. If you have money, and a car, would you stay on campus and dine on chicken-fried steak? I think not. I have money, and a car, but the first week of class I did a 180 on the icy roads on the way to school. Jeffrey said it was better than Six Flags, that little spin we took in the middle of the highway. Now we ride the bus, which means I can’t go off campus for lunch unless someone gives me a ride, and people aren’t exactly lining up with offers. Which leads me to obstacle number two: Apparently I’m shy, at least around people who don’t pay much attention to me. I never noticed this in California. I never needed to be outgoing at my old school; my friends