As Dead As It Gets

I glanced at the teacher, whose shirt was covered in doughnut crumbs. He gave me a wave. “I have no authority here,” he said. “Carry on.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.

She turned and looked at the board. “We’ll probably put it after the junior class photos. Just try to have it finished by Valentine’s Day, because, no offense, it’s probably going to need some tweaking.”

“Wait—have it finished? Me?”

“Yes, you. Who else? We’re understaffed. Here, let me give you the specs.” She reached for a pad of paper. “We’ll need a PSD with all the layers, and include the files of any exotic fonts you use. Eight by ten and a half, three hundred DPI, and obviously nothing with a copyright, please.”

I stared at her, not even sure where to start. “Um…what’s a PSD?”

“It’s”—she blinked, momentarily stu

“Please,” I said. “Isn’t there any way someone who knows about that stuff can do it?”

Elliot sca

Chad turned to us and shrugged, then went back to his work.

“He looks like a hoodlum, but he’s brilliant with graphics,” Elliot said.

“Thank you. Again.” I still couldn’t believe she’d changed her mind.

Her eyes were lit up, like she was enjoying this. “So. Chad does your layout, you do something for us.”

“But…I don’t know how to do any of this.”

“You know how to take pictures.”

True.

“Here’s the deal. We devote two pages to making Lydia Small look like a dearly missed pillar of the school community, and you take on some photography work. Chad’s pictures suck, anyway.”

Without taking his eyes off the monitor, Chad held up his middle finger in our direction.

I was about to say no…and then I remembered Mrs. Small.

“Fine,” I said.

“Great,” Elliot said, looking pleased. “Perfect, in fact.”

“What am I going to be shooting?”

“Nothing too exciting,” she said, turning to walk back to her desk. “Clubs, teams, Student Council stuff.”

I followed her. “Um, I can’t do that.”

“Okay.” She sat and stuck the end of a pen in her mouth. “Then I can’t do your special project.”

“You don’t understand,” I said.

“I’ll bet I do,” she said, not even looking up. “You used to go out with Carter Blume. And now he’s dating Zoe Perry. And they’re both on Student Council. But somehow, you’re going to rise above all that and take really good pictures of them.”

I glanced at the teacher, hoping he would speak up.

“No authority,” he said.

I turned back to Elliot.

“Deal?” she asked. “Or no deal?”

I looked at the ceiling, thinking of the bird necklace Lydia’s mother was never going to get back.

“Deal,” I said, turning and walking toward the door with as much dignity as I could muster.

“Our weekly meetings are Thursdays at two thirty-five!” she called. “Don’t be late!”

SUDDENLY, MY LIFE WAS awash with meetings. On Thursday, I went to my first Wingspan staff meeting. And the following Tuesday, I drove across town to Sacred Heart Academy to join Megan’s new club, whatever it was.

I was ten minutes early, but the school day was well over, and the spacious, tree-covered campus was mostly deserted. A few kids wandered by my car, spectacularly preppy in their private-school uniforms, all plaid and blazers and kneesocks.

Me? I was in a blue-and-white-striped sweater with a hole in the shoulder and an unraveling hem, ripped jeans, and a ratty pair of Converse.

After a few minutes of people-watching, I got out of my car and found the community room, but I didn’t go inside. Considering I didn’t know what I was getting into, I wasn’t eager to jump in alone.

Megan arrived a few minutes later, limping up the wheelchair ramp, holding her books to her chest with one hand and keeping the other one suspended over the railing. She gave me a small smile and waved with the tips of the fingers that were wrapped around her books.

“Hi,” I said, hugging her. But she didn’t hug back; the most you could really say was that she let herself be hugged.

“Hey,” she said.

“Can I get your books for you?”

“No, I’m okay.” She turned to me, shifting them in her arm. Her mouth was turned down in a slight frown. “I wish you would have let me tell you what this meeting is. I wanted you to know what you were getting into.”

“I told you, I don’t care,” I said. “How bad could it be?”

“Yo.” A man in wrinkled khaki pants and a worn dark-blue polo shirt shuffled up the aisle between our rows of folding chairs. “What’s the word, young’uns?”

An uneven chorus of hellos echoed back to him as he took his place behind a podium at the front of the room.

“New face today—groovy,” he said, smiling at me. “Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Brighter Path family. I’m Brother Ben, and I hope that you’ll find all the support you need here. Never be afraid to speak up or ask for help.”

I pressed my spine against the vinyl padding of my chair and averted my eyes from Brother Ben’s by looking around the room. About half of the kids in attendance wore Sacred Heart uniforms, and the rest were dressed pretty much like me.

“First of all, thanks for coming.” Ben seemed like he was in his early forties, but his hair was blond and as fine as a baby’s, and his round face dwarfed his tiny, too-close blue eyes. “I know it’s not always easy to make a change, and I’m not kidding myself—we’re swimming upstream here. This culture wants you to believe that the easy way out is down a very dark and dangerous path. But we’re here to support each other on the brighter path.”

The way out of what? Was this some kind of twelve-step meeting? Maybe Megan had started drinking or doing drugs and wanted me here for support. I glanced at her, but she was staring straight ahead.

“I’m going to pass around the box.” He pulled out a shoe box with a clamshell top. “If you have anything you’d like to turn in, please drop it inside. Remember, no one is judging you. We’re all here to help each other get stronger.”

His eyes found mine.

“Think of the box as a safe,” he said. “Anything you might own or acquire—any books or trinkets or just anything, really, you can put in there and it will disappear.”

Books about drugs? Alcohol trinkets? Like…a bottle opener or something?

He handed it to one of the kids and looked around. “Now, would anyone like to speak?”

A mousy girl stood up and went to the front of the room, her head bowed so low that her chin practically touched her chest.

“I’m Sava

I waited for everyone to say, “Hi, Sava