All Alone in the Universe by Lynne Rae Perkins

have said. She skipped school a lot. and when she did come, no one seemed to care what she did. The principals and teachers at school had already given up on Marie. They hardly even saw her, except as some kind of blemish. She could have stood on her head wearing a burlap bag, and nobody would have noticed it all that much. They thought she was stupid. She wasn‧t stupid.
    One Saturday in November, I saw the FOR SALE sign in the Prbyczkas’ front yard. Someone had mowed the grass, but everything else looked as ratty as ever. The car was not in the driveway, but I thought I saw someone moving past the window, and I thought it was Marie. All of a sudden I felt like talking to her. So I walked up the sidewalk and knocked. I stood there for a minute waiting. Then I heard footsteps, and Marie opened the door. No one else seemed to be at home. Marie wasn‧t wearing makeup, and I was surprised to see that she had freckles and fresh, clear skin. Her eyes looked naked and shy. She invited me in and offered me a pop.
    I followed her from room to room with my glass of pop. She was packing the clothes of all the Prbyczka kids in boxes. There wasn‧t much to pack, and most of what there was, was scattered on the floor or hanging from doorknobs.
    “But you just moved here,” I said. “Where are you going?”
    “Pine Township,” she said. It wasn‧t that far away, but it was a different school. Probably I would not see her much. Maybe not at all. Maybe never.
    There was a crescent-shaped redness just below Marie‧s lower lip. It looked raw or sore, like an injury. I was about to ask her what it was, or how it happened, when she bit down onto it, in a quick, nervous movement, like biting your fingernails. I looked away, down to where her hands were putting a little pair of slippers into a box.
    “At least you won‧t have to live with your dad anymore,” I said.
    “I wish,” she said. “Him and my mom are back together. They‧re acting like lovebirds. That should last a couple weeks.” She tossed a balled-up sock into the box.
    “Oh,” I said. “So why are you moving then?”
    Marie shrugged. “We can‧t afford this place, I guess,” she said. “I don‧t care, though. People here are boring. And stuck up. Not you. But most of them are.” She sat down on one of the beds and tapped a cigarette out of a pack that was lying there. She lit it and took a puff.
    “You should see the dump we‧re moving into,” she said. “You have to go outside to turn around.” She grinned and knocked some ash into an empty glass on the windowsill. “My mom is calling it a cottage,” she said, “but if you ask me, that‧s just another word for rathole.”
    She squinted at the smoke from her cigarette gracefully unfurling in a shaft of sunlight and dust in the still air. Her face was the face of a little kid under the spell of soap bubbles. Bobby‧s face, only prettier. She drew her knees up inside her sweater. I leaned back on my hands. We sat there watching the smoke make lazy, winding patterns.
    The spell was broken by the sound of a car dragging its muffler down the street outside. Marie bit down on her lip again. I winced. She caught me looking at her, and something passed between us. Understanding or friendship or truth or something, I don‧t know quite what it was. Then, instantly, she was the usual Marie, breezy and tough. She crossed her legs and stubbed her cigarette out in the glass. “You don‧t have to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”
    “I don‧t feel sorry for you,” I lied, or half lied. And since one of the reasons that I felt sorry for her was Larry Hlotva, I asked, “Do you think you‧ll still go with Larry after you move?”
    Marie nodded.
    “Oh, yeah,” she said. “He wants us to get married. We have to wait till I‧m sixteen, but he can quit school next year and work at his cousin‧s garage.”
    This sounded like a really lousy idea, but then I wondered if my own