Camo Girl (10 page)

“Casino chips?” I say.

“I found them on the grass,” he says. “How cool is that? Twenty bucks, baby.”

“Awesome,” I say, trying to recall the last time I had twenty bucks in my hand. Unable to. “Can I touch them?”

Bailey turns them over into my palm. I've seen casino chips before. Grammie sometimes brings a few home from her Mondays in Vegas.

“You gonna keep them or cash them?”

“Kids aren't allowed in the casinos,” he says. “How are we gonna turn it into money?”

“Oh, right.”

“Maybe I'll keep 'em a while. For luck.”

I nod. “A little luck never hurt anyone.”

Bailey grins. “You want to hold one?”

“Really?”

“Don't say I never gave you anything.” He plucks one from my hand but leaves the other. “Anyway, luck is luckiest when it's shared, right?”

I wonder where he heard that, or if he made it up.

The bell rings. Time to go to class. “Let's go inside,” Bailey says, but I hang back.

“I'm going to wait a minute, okay?”

Bailey shrugs. “Catch you later,” he says.

I look over my shoulder as Z gathers his boxes into his backpack and comes toward me. I wait because I know he'll come and that we'll walk inside together. Which he does, and we do. Like always.

There's something deep down that won't let me leave him. Like I know he's not going to be okay.

Z
and i are standing in the hallway by
our lockers. He hasn't uttered a word all morning, but I linger, hoping he'll change his mind and decide to speak to me again. I lean my shoulder against the lockers, waiting for him to finish dialing his combination, when suddenly someone's book bag slams me hard in the face. I'm startled into dropping my armful of books. My nose aches. My eyes start to tear. I blink, staggering backward, right into the wall. It knocks the wind out of me. The nose of a padlock digs hard into my spine.

I struggle to open my eyes, find myself staring into the face of the enemy.

“Watch where you're going, Camo-Face,” Jonathan Hoffman says. Behind him Brandon and Miles are laughing.
His backpack dangles from his fingers. I know he did it on purpose.

Out of nowhere, Bailey appears. His body brushes past me, a blur. His fist flies, landing solidly in Jonathan Hoffman's face. The
thwack
practically echoes in the corridor. Jonathan cries out, a shocked, pathetic whimper. Then he narrows his eyes and throws a punch toward Bailey, who takes it on the chin.

Bailey dives at Jonathan. They roll and grunt, a thrashing mess of fists and elbows, muscles and knees. The sound of clothing tearing.

“Fight!” someone cries out, even though everyone in the hallway has already turned to look.

Bailey is bigger, stronger. He presses Jonathan down with his whole body, punching him. “Say it again,” he gasps. “I dare you.”

“Wh-what?” Jonathan stammers. His upper lip is bloody. It begins to smear his cheeks.

Bailey's face is hard. For a moment he looks so much older than all of us. Jonathan cowers on the floor, and I see how weak he is.

Mr. Pettigrew, our history teacher, pokes his head out of his classroom, then comes racing down the hallway. Another teacher wades through the crowd to take hold of Jonathan.

“All students to their classrooms. Now!” Mr. Pettigrew bellows. Kids scatter. I hang back, pressing against the lockers. Z is nowhere in sight.

My eyes water as I kneel down to gather my books and papers. I can't believe what I've just seen. I can't believe what happened.

I try to catch Bailey's eye as Mr. Pettigrew leads him and Jonathan past us down the hall toward the office. But he keeps his head down, his hand on his bruised jaw, and I decide it doesn't matter. My heart soars anyway. It soars because I can't believe he was fighting for me. That he threw himself between me and Jonathan, and for a second I didn't have to worry. When my tears start to blur his face again, I blink them away, because I want to see. I want to see my hero.

I
can't focus on anything next period. all
that matters is what Bailey did. How everyone knows now that he's on my side. Bailey and Ella. Ella and Bailey. Us. We. E+B=4EVR.

My seat is near the classroom window. I see Mrs. James arrive, wearing an office-looking outfit, clicking the car locked as she hurries toward the school. Shortly after, she's back, with Bailey.

I watch as they walk through the parking lot. She's shaking her head and talking fast. He holds his head down. Then she hugs him and puts him in the car.

The Mirage casino chip finds its way into my palm and rests there.

“
Don't say I never gave you anything.”
As if he hadn't already given enough.

E
veryone's talking about the fight. i
weave through the crowd toward the lunch line. Bailey's name is on everyone's lips. I don't hear my name anywhere yet, but that doesn't matter. Everyone saw. Everyone knows. Today, thanks to Bailey, maybe it'll be okay to sit somewhere new. At least until Z comes around.

I carry my tray toward Millie's table. I refuse to feel bad about it. Z doesn't want much to do with me today, anyway. He made that perfectly clear this morning. And Millie and Bailey both said I could.

“Hi, Ella,” Cass says as I approach. “There's plenty of room.” I slide my tray down. Could it really be this simple?

At the guys' end of the table, the conversation is going strong, still about the fight.

“How'd it even start?” Kurt says. I hold my breath.

“Jonathan majorly dissed the army,” Max says. He sighs. “Right in front of Bailey. Total punk move.”

“Yeah,” Rick agrees.

My heart sinks low. That's not how it happened. Is it? Or what if it is? What if it wasn't about them calling me names? What if what Bailey hates is Jonathan talking down camo—an army thing. Maybe he doesn't care at all about me.

“His dad's a war hero, you know,” Rick says. “Hoffman didn't stand a chance.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Max says. “His dad got some big medal for saving this whole platoon of soldiers who were marooned between a bunch of enemy tanks. And another time, he fought his way out of an Iraqi prison with one pistol and only two bullets.”

Max glows on about Bailey's dad's escapades. “He taught Bailey everything he knows, so it totally makes sense that he would, like, dominate. Jonathan just didn't know what he was messing with.”

I pick at the lump of gray-brown casserole on my tray. For a guy who doesn't like to talk about it, everyone sure seems to know a lot about Bailey's dad.

Millie chooses that moment to arrive, plunking her tray next to mine with a cheerful “Hey, Ella.” As if all is forgotten because, for once, I've chosen her.

But I haven't. This was just a trial run, and a Big Fat Failure at that. I grab my tray and jump up, fleeing the scene.

I land beside Z, who steadfastly refuses to return my gaze.

In time, things will go back to normal. Right? I'll find a way to let Z know that I'm done with trying to be things I'm not. I'm a little bit Ella and a little bit Eleanor, and that'll be just fine for now, thank you.

The casino chip still buried deep in my palm begins to ache. I flatten my hand so it falls, tiny, on the tabletop.

Z cuts his eyes toward me, toward the chip, actually. “It's not special,” he says dully. “There are many more where that came from.”

I push my tray toward him and lay my head on the table. It's all I can do not to die on the spot.

I
t's a long walk home after that. a long, slow walk.
Alone.

For a minute there, things were almost going great. Everything was about to change. I wanted it to so bad. So bad I messed things up with Z. All for Bailey, when none of what happened was really how I thought it was.

I'm so stupid. How could I think for one second that I had anything in common with someone like him? He's Bailey James. Basketball Star. Hero. King of the Popular Table. And who am I?

Plain old Ella.

Camo-Face.

Friend to freaks and losers.

I squeeze my backpack straps with tight fists.

This is why I need Eleanor. This is why I need Z. For all the moments when the rest of the world turns as ugly as I am and it gets hard to manage it.

How could I forget that? How could I believe things could ever be another way?

Because of Bailey, that's why.

Who does Bailey James think he is, coming in and acting all friendly when, really, he's just one of
them
? Why'd he have to mess with me? Things weren't perfect around here, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. Why'd he have to come in and show me how different things could be? Why couldn't he have just left well enough alone?

I swing my leg hard, as if there was anything there to be kicked. Throw up my fists and fight with the air for a minute. How did it feel, I wonder, when Bailey put his fist in Jonathan Hoffman's face? It had to feel great. Only now, it's Bailey who I hate. It's Bailey whose face I want to put my fist in. Bring on all his war hero moves. Whatever he's got. Why did he have to lie? I hate him.

Back in my own yard, I run to the basketball hoop. I grab hold of the metal pole, pushing, tugging, wondering how hard it'd be to pull it out, but it's in deep. It doesn't move a bit. I rest my head against it.

He fooled me and I fell for it. He had me believing—

It doesn't matter. It's over now.

Before, I felt left out. Alone. But that was before I met Bailey, when I had no idea what I was really missing. Now? Now the usual just isn't good enough anymore.

I
carry the basketball under my arm as i walk
down the street toward Bailey's house. I'll give it back, and that'll be that. It was never going to work out, me and him being friends. It's better this way.

I try to stay mad at him, but it's hard. The mad starts to fade into sad. Whatever else Bailey is—liar, popular boy, ultimate fighting machine—he's also the kind of boy who doesn't make fun of Z and who will maybe possibly get in a fight over you. Deep down, I still think that's what happened—and it's not easy to be mad at that. Plus, we had fun together. Maybe he was just messing with me the whole time, but I don't really think so.

Anyway, it's over now. I'll return the ball and say I'm sorry for getting him into a mess. And I also want to know why, if we are supposed to be friends, he will
tell everyone in the world about his dad, except me. I thought we knew each other. I thought we had this thing in common. I want to look at him and say, Did you ever really want to be friends, or did you just want to use my basketball hoop?

I ring the bell.

Bailey's mom answers the door.

“Hi,” I say.

Mrs. James gazes upon me, kindly enough. “I'm sorry, Ella. Bailey's grounded today.”

“Oh.”

She smiles apologetically and starts to close the door.

“It's my fault,” I blurt. “Don't make him in trouble.”

Mrs. James studies me for a moment. Then she steps out of the doorway. “Come inside.”

Bailey's house is unfinished. That's what I think when I look around. I step into a wide foyer that opens into the dining area and the living room. There's furniture that looks cozy, pictures on the walls, and knickknacks on the tables, but everything still somehow looks bare. In the dining room there's a tall pile of moving boxes and a square folding table with two chairs.

“Where's Bailey?”

Mrs. James shakes her head. “He's in his room. Grounded, remember?”

“Oh.”

“I'm steeping some tea,” she says. I stare at her. She smiles. “We also have juice.”

“Juice, please.”

I stand awkwardly in the hallway while she melts through the dining area into the kitchen. The soft clatter of dishes reaches me. I'm quickly losing the nerve to say the things I wanted to say. If Bailey came out from around a corner right now, I think all I would have to say out loud is hello.

A column of framed photographs hangs on the wall. I drift toward it, curious. Three photos that tell a story. At the top, a man and a woman. Bailey's mom. She looks young and calm and pretty, hugging the man in his military dress uniform while he leans in to kiss her cheek. The man has a friendly face, not handsome, but not ugly. Bailey's dad. The war hero.

Below that, the couple with a small boy: Bailey, several years ago. He's dressed in a miniature suit, clutching the staff of a small American flag. His dad, dressed in desert combat fatigues, has him held up close in his arms.

At the bottom, the mom and the boy, older, all alone.

“Juice,” Mrs. James reports from behind me. I whip around, caught in the act of looking too close.

“How did he die?” I blurt.

A horrible, wrong question. “Never mind. I'm sorry.”
I wave my hand, trying to rub it away. “I'm sorry.”

Mrs. James hands me the cup of juice and motions for me to follow her. We settle onto the couch in the living room.

“Did Bailey tell you his father died?” she says softly.

I nod, then think about it. “N-no. I guess not. But—”

“Okay.” She lets out a little breath. She seems relieved.

I know he's somewhere close by, behind a thin wall, but I've never felt further from Bailey. I sip juice from my cup. And out of nowhere I'm trying not to cry.

“Bailey talks about you a lot,” Mrs. James says. “That's why I thought we should sit down, so I could meet his new friend.”

Bailey talks about me? “He has lots of friends,” I say. “Everyone's his friend.”

Mrs. James smiles. “Hmmm.” She sips her tea thoughtfully.