[9]
You're digging deep into the book when Amelia finds you. You didn't hear or see her coming, so she just appears like the ghost in The Signalman.
"Hi Daria! Oh, what book is that?"
You could ignore her but you could with a break. "It's the heartwarming tale of a gang who trash a girl's house and she's very miserable and nothing nice happens. Richard Cormier is a cheerful man. I can't wait for his magnum opus, How I Got Cancer During The Holocaust."
"Oh." Amelia looks a bit flustered. "I, uh, um. I don't… I don't really like Cormier."
"Quinn said that too, before I got her one for her birthday." You smile. "That was a fun day."
"I can't believe you took that horse and rode off without us!" gushes Amelia – clearly, you notice, changing the subject.
"I didn't. It bolted. That's why I needed the stitches."
"Oh." A long, long silence develops and Amelia starts to scratch herself absentmindedly. "Are you happy?"
Well. This is a new reason to avoid Amelia. "Do I look happy?"
"I'm not happy."
You start to feel a discomfort you can't put into words. There's a dark cloud coming and you don't know what it's going to unleash, if anything. "Amelia—"
"The other girls, the boys, Quinn pick on me. I know they do. And it's still better than home, really, none of them have called me a dyke yet." She's scratching herself hard here. "They don't stop. I try to, to keep my head down, like my brother says, it keeps happening, I go along with things I don't want to do and nothing changes, and and and I think I might be gay and I don't know if people can see that, or if they don't know but if they do—"
"Amelia—"
"That, that book, I have read it before, I had to stop, I—" She takes a big gulp of breath and you really, really want to run before she can speak again. "I kept thinking of kids at school doing it to my house, they would if they thought about it, they might, and I thought of doing it to them, and I thought I'd feel good thinking of that but I wanted to throw up after, and and and—"
SAY SOMETHING – GO TO 15
SAY NOTHING – GO TO 16
