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Feeling guilty for blowing up at him, I followed him down the hallway. He didn’t have to help me after all. But here he was.Why?
I didn’t have much time to come up with a reason before we reached that same wooden door from earlier. Birdie was standing in front of Ralphie’s cage, saying something I couldn’t quite hear. When the guy knocked on the door, she looked up, smiling at him. But when her eyes traveled my way, her smile fell.
“Oh, honey,” she said, frowning. “Let me get you a fresh set of clothes.” She patted the guy’s arm. “Thanks for bringing her here, Diego. I’ve got it.”
Diego. I rolled the name over in my mind, wondering if it matched his personality.
He seemed to stall, like he didn’t want to leave.
“Everything okay?” Birdie asked.
He glanced between her and me, biting his lip. “You know what you did for my sister?” he asked.
Understanding sparked in Birdie’s eyes. She nodded.
“I think you need to do it again.”
I didn’t know why they were talking about his sister when I was covered in soup and mustard, but luckily, Birdie said, “I will,” and Diego left her office.
She reached into her cabinet and got out a fresh uniform. “Come with me.”
Thinking I had reached rock bottom, I followed her across the hall and into the gymnasium. The orangey-yellow hardwood floor had Drafters written down the sides in navy-blue paint with an emblem of a feather quill.
We reached a door on the north side of the gym, and she said, “This is the girls’ locker room. You can change in there. Towels are by the shower stalls.”
She passed me the uniform packaged in a clear bag with a 3XL sticker on top.
“How did you know my size?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Your mom picked up your uniforms two days ago—still fresh on my mind, I guess.”
Not wanting to spend any more time covered in food than I had to, I walked into the locker room, praying no one was in there. But when I rounded a wall of lockers, I froze. A girl with turquoise hair sat on a cement bench, eating a packed lunch with her phone playing a TV show.
She jumped at the sight of me, then seemed to relax when she realized I wasn’t a teacher... or a jock. “You scared me,” she accused.
“Didn’t mean to,” I mumbled, getting a towel and then locking myself in the bigger bathroom stall. First, I slipped out of my shoes, peeled off my wet knee socks. I sucked in a breath, dropping the wet mess to the floor. There were already red spots on my leg from where the soup had hit. Then I unbuttoned my skirt and let it fall to the floor, kicking it aside. I twisted, eyeing the mess. Hopefully it wouldn’t stain.
I ripped open the plastic bag, put on my new outfit, and then went to the sink. As I checked myself in the mirror, I could see the girl’s eyes on me.
“Someone dump food on you?” she asked.
I reached for a paper towel, watching it turn dark brown under the stream of water. “Bumped into someone.”
The wet brown paper felt heavenly against my leg. I ran it up and down the burn, from my mid-thigh to a third of the way down my calf.
“No one to bump into down here,” she said and took another bite of her sandwich.
“Except you,” I replied, a slight smile on my lips.
She lifted her eyebrows in concession. “True.”
We were both quiet for a moment, and I tossed the paper towel, going back to the bathroom stall to finish changing. With the door shut and locked, she said, “I’m Sadie.”
I focused on the buttons of my shirt. “April.”
“I know. I saw you in current events.”
I hadn’t seen her; my head had been down through most of my classes anyway. I finished changing and laced my shoes back up. Carefully balling my clothes so the wet, dirty parts were on the inside, I walked out of the stall. I wasn’t sure what I should say to Sadie, but she was looking at her phone again.
