OH LOOK ITS ANOTHER CHAPTER HAHA

Sorry about that, I think I just got bored with this story but someone commented on my other story asking about this so I thought might aswell carry on, not much left of it anyway :)

so here it is enjoy!


They were alone as they were the only ones in school.

At least that's how it seemed in the following days.

As Nick went about his day, he felt her going about hers. He sensed her movement, her presence in distant parts of the building. When he was walking the halls between classes, he didn't have to see her, Nick knew she was there: unseen in the mob heading his way, about to turn a corner five classroom doors down. Nick homed in on the beacon of her smile. As they approached each other, the noise and the students around them melted away and they were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.

And then one day Nick began to discover that they were more alone than he had dreamed.

It was Thursday. Normally on that day, after third period, Stargirl and Nick would pass each other on the second floor around the teachers' lounge. They would smile and say hi and continue on their way to their separate classes. On this day, impulsively, Nick fell in alongside her.

"How about an escort?" Nick said.

She grinned slyly. "Anybody in mind?"

They touched little fingers and walked on. Her next class was on the first floor, so they went down the nearest stairway. They were walking side by side. That's when Nick noticed.

No one spoke to them.

No one nodded to them.

No one smiled at them.

No one looked at them.

A crowded stairway, and no shoulder, no sleeve brushed them. Students climbing the steps veered to the railing or wall. Except for Stargirl jabbering in his ear, the usual raucous chatter was absent.

Mostly what Nick noticed were the eyes. Faces turned up from the steps below, but the eyes never connected with them. They went right on through them as if they were gamma rays. Or they nipped their ears and rattled off among the walls and other eyes. Nick had an urge to look down at himself, to make sure he was there.

At lunch Nick said to Joe, "Nobody looks at me."

He was staring at his sandwich.

"Joe!" Nick snapped. "Now you're doing it."

He came up laughing. He looked Nick square in the eyes. "Sorry."

Usually there were others at the table. Today there was only Joe and Nick. Nick leaned across my lunch. "Joe, what's going on?"

He looked off, then back to Nick. "I was wondering when you'd notice. Kinda hoping you wouldn't."

"Notice what?"

He stalled by taking a bite of tuna salad sandwich. He took his time chewing. He drank orangeade from a straw. "First of all, it's not you."

Nick pulled back and held out his hands. "It's not me. What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's who you're with."

Nick sat there, blinking, staring at him. "Stargirl?"

He nodded.

"Okay," Nick said. "So?"

He stared at him some more, chewed, swallowed, sipped, looked away, looked back. "They're not talking to her."

The words didn't stick. "What do you mean? Who's 'they'?"

He cocked his head at the sea of tables and eaters. "Them."

"Who them?" Nick said, too unhinged to laugh at his grammar.

He wet his lips. "All of them." He shrugged. "Well, almost." His eyes drifted over Nick's shoulder. "There're still two girls sitting with her."

Nick glanced back. At the height of Stargirl's popularity, kids had been pulling chairs from other tables to squeeze around hers. Now it was just Stargirl, Demi Munroe, and a ninth-grader.

"So," Nick said, "exactly what is going on?"

He sipped from his straw. "The silent treatment is going on. Nobody's talking to her."

It still wasn't stinking in. "What do you mean, 'nobody's talking to her'? What, did everybody have a meeting in the gym and vote on it?"

"It wasn't that official. It just happened. Got up steam."

Nick gaped at him. "When? When did it start? How? Why?" He was beginning to screech.

"I don't know exactly. After the basketball stuff, I guess. That really ticked off a lot of people."

"The basketball stuff."

He nodded.

"The basketball stuff," Nick repeated dumbly.

He put down his sandwich. "Nick, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. Cheering for the other team? What did you think, people thought that was cute?"

"It was her, Joe. It was harmless. Weird maybe, but harmless. It was her."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah, well, I guess that's what I'm saying. It's not just one thing she did. It's everything. Don't tell me you never noticed. Remember a certain tomato?"

"Joe, a couple of months ago everybody stood and cheered in the auditorium when she won the oratorical contest."

"Hey"-he gestured defensively-"tell them."

"One person threw the tomato. One."

Joe snickered. "Yeah, and a thousand wanted to. Did you notice the cheers when it happened? People blame her. For the team losing. For our undefeated season going down the toilet."

Nick wasn't sure if Joe was still talking about "them."

"Joe-" Nick felt himself pleading. "She was only a cheerleader."

"Nick"-he was pointing-"you asked me what was going on, I told you." He stood up and took his tray to the belt.

Nick stared at his empty chair until he returned.

"Joe…the Happy Birthday songs, the Valentine cards, all the nice things she does for people…doesn't that count for something?"

The bell rang.

He got up, gathering his books and shrugged. "I guess not."

For the rest of the day, and the day after and the day after that, Nick grew increasingly paranoid. When he was walking with her in and around the school, Nick was intensely aware that the nature of their aloneness had changed. It was no longer a cozy, tunnel-of-love sweetness, but a chilling isolation. They never had to veer, never had to make way for someone else; everyone made way for them. Hallway crowds fell away from them. Except for Selena Russo. Whenever they passed her, she tilted toward them with a gloating smirk on her face.

As for Stargirl, she didn't seem to notice. She jabbered constantly in his ear while Nick smiled and nodded to her, frost formed on the back of his neck.


"The Amish in Pennsylvania have a word for it."

"What's that?" Nick said.

"Shunning."

Nick was at Archie's. He had to talk to someone.

"Well, that's what's happening."

"The shunnee, so to speak, has gotten himself in dutch with the church, so he's excommunicated. The whole community is in on it. Unless he repents, nobody speaks to him for the rest of his life. Not even his family."

"What?"

"That's right. Not even his family."

"What about his wife?"

"Wife. Kids. Everybody." His pipe had gone out. He relit it with a stick match. "I believe the idea is to drive him away. But some stay, continue working the farm, having dinner. If he passes the salt to his wife, she ignores it. If the bishop had his way, the pigs and chickens would ignore him. It's as if he doesn't exist."

Nick nodded. "I know the feeling."

They were on the back porch and Nick stared out at Senor Saguaro.

Archie said, "Does it happen to you when you're not with her?"

"No," Nick said. "At least I don't think so. But when I'm with her, I feel like it's aimed at me, too."

A small pipe cloud left the corner of his mouth. He smiled sadly. "Poor dolphin. Caught in a tuna net."

Nick picked up Barney, the Paleocene rodent skull, he wondered if someone would be holding Cinnamon's head 60 million years from now. "So, what should I do?"

Archie waved his hand. "Oh, well, that's the easy part. Stay away from her: your problem's kaput."

Nick sneered. "Great advice. You know it's not that easy."

He did know, of course, but he wanted Nick to say it. Nick told him about the valentine, the night in her driveway, and the walk in the desert. The question that came to mind then sounded silly, but it persisted: "Do you believe in enchanted places?"

He took the pipe from his mouth and looked straight at Nick.

"Absolutely."

Nick was confused. "But you're a scientist. A man of science."

"A man of bones. You can't be up to your eyeballs in bones and not

believe in enchanted places."

Nick looked at Barney and he ran his fingertip along the hard line of his two inch jaw, rough like a cat's tongue. Sixty million years in his hands. Nick looked at Archie. "Why can't she be…"

He finished for Nick. "…like everybody else?"

He stood up and stepped down from the porch onto the desert-for his back yard, except for the shed where he kept his digging tools, was the desert. Nature did the landscaping. Nick put down Barney and joined him.

They ambled toward Senor Saguaro.

"Not like everybody else," Nick said. "Not exactly. Not totally. But…Archie…" Nick stopped. Archie stopped then Nick turned full-face to him. His thoughts and feelings were a wild, conflicting jumble. After staring stupidly at him for a long time, Nick blurted, "She cheers for the other team!"

Archie pulled the pipe from his mouth, as if to better digest his words. He raised one finger in the air. He nodded solemnly. "Ahh, yes."

Nick and Archie resumed walking and walked on past the tool shed, past Senor Saguaro.

Occasionally Nick picked up a stone and flung it toward the purple Maricopa's. Archie said, almost in a whisper, "She's not easy to put into words, is she?"

Nick shook his head.

"An unusual girl," he said. "Could see that from the first. And her parents, as ordinary, in a nice way, as could be. How did this girl come to be? I used to ask myself. Sometimes I thought she should be teaching me. She seems to be in touch with something that the rest of us are missing." He looked at him. "Hm?"

Nick nodded.

He turned the mahogany bowl of his pipe upside down and rapped it with his knuckle. A small stream of ash spilled onto a thicket of dead mesquite.

He pointed the pipe stem at Nick. "You know, there's a place we all inhabit, but we don't much think about it, we're scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day."

"What's that?" Nick said.

"It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then…"

He pulled out his pouch and repacked his pipe. Cherryscent flew. He struck a match. The pipe bowl, like some predator, or seducer, drew down the flame. "…and then-ah-we open our eyes and the day is before us, and"-he snapped his fingers-"we become ourselves."

Like so many of Archie's words, they seemed not to enter through Nick ears but to settle on his skin, there to burrow like tiny eggs awaiting the rain of my maturity, when they would hatch and Nick, at last would understand.

They walked in silence. Yellow blooms had appeared on a cactus, and for some reason that made me incredibly sad. The purple of the mountains flowed lik watercolour.

"They hate her," Nick said.

He stopped then looked intently at Nick. He turned Nick around and they headed back. He put his arm around his shoulder. "Let's consult Senor Saguaro."

Shortly they were standing before the derelict giant. Nick never understood how the Senor managed to convey a sense of dignity, majesty even, considering his stick-rickety, see-through skeleton and the ridiculous, leathery crumple of hide about his foot, his fallen britches.

Archie always spoke to him with respectful formality, as to a judge or visiting dignitary.

"Good day, Senor Saguaro," he began. "I believe you know my friend and charter member of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone, Mr. Borlock." He whispered an aside to Nick: "I'm a little rusty, but I think I'll use Spanish now. He prefers it on delicate matters." He turned back to the cactus. "Parece, Senor Borlock aqui; es la victima de un 'shunning' de sus companeros estudiantes en el liceo. El objeto principal del 'shunning' es la enamorada del Senor Borlock, nuestra propia Seborita Nina Estrella. El esta en busqueda de preguntas."

As Archie spoke, he looked up toward the elf owl hole. Now he turned back to Nick and whispered, "I asked for questions."

"Questions?" Nick whispered. "What about answers?"

But he was turning from Nick, tilting his head toward the great cactus, his finger on his lips-"Shh"-his eyes closed.

Nick waited.

At last he nodded and turned back to Nick. "The esteemed Senor says there is only one question."

"What's that?" Nick said.

"He says it all boils down to this-if I'm translating correctly: Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others'? The Senor says everything will follow from that."

Nick wasn't sure he understood the Senor any more than he understood Archie half the time, but Nick said nothing, and he went home. In bed that night, as the moonlight reached high tide under his chin, Nick realized that in fact understood the question perfectly.

Nick just didn't want to answer it.


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