Bigger than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder Page B

perfect mouth.
    She looked me up and down.
    She crossed her arms and smiled, suddenly much calmer.
    “I was just saying,” she said, “that someone stole my coat.” She laughed. “What’s up, Becky? Are you
someone
now?”
    “No,” I said, not thinking.
    “You’re
not
someone?” She smiled meanly. “I didn’t think so.”
    “No. I mean, I didn’t steal it. I—I—”
    “What, you were only borrowing it?” she asked with a smirk.
    “No, really. I bought it. Online.”
    “
Sure
you did,” whispered Cat.
    The other girls were enjoying this. I glanced over at Megan. She avoided making eye contact with me. She chewed her thumbnail and looked at her hand intently as she did it.
    I squirmed. “No, but … well … maybe someone else stole it and posted it on eBay, and then I bought it without knowing,” I said.
    “I had it yesterday,” said Hannah flatly.
    “Maybe it’s not the same coat!” I said, grasping at straws. I tried to keep my voice from rising or shaking. I didn’t want to cry. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if I cried now. “And it’s just a coincidence that you got yours stolen when I happened to get mine.”
    “Unlikely,” said Hannah. “Since mine was one of a kind. Mine was special.”
    “We told her that,” Maya rushed to say, looking proud of herself.
    “Yeah,” said Cat. “We told her.”
    I felt like I might have a heart attack. Did twelve-year-olds have heart attacks?
    The other girls backed away slightly as Hannah, still laughing, moved in on me to inspect the coat. She ranher finger along the red stitching. Then, with a quick jerk, she pulled the neck of the coat out and peered down at the tag.
    I went limp. “It’s not yours!” I bleated, hoping against hope. “It’s a knockoff.”
    Hannah stopped laughing.
    “I didn’t steal it—”
    “Oh, Becky,” said Hannah, her voice serious, cold, thin, and as sharp as a razor. “It’s mine—look!”
    The other girls craned their necks and bunched around me to see, like dogs in a pack. They all stared at the back of my neck. Then they all stepped away from me.
    “You’re a thief,” said Hannah in that same steely voice, “and a liar, but at least now we know it. To think I almost felt bad for you yesterday. I
almost
apologized for saying that stuff about your dad.”
    Hannah jerked at the neck of the jacket, and I closed my eyes. The coat came off inside out, spilling those stupid plastic coffee cards everywhere. I heard them fall and hit the ground. When I opened my eyes again, I saw what everyone else had seen a minute before—her name,
Hannah Ross
, ironed neatly onto the tag by some mother who did things like that for her kid. Hannah’s mother.
    I looked around me. All the girls were smiling. Except Megan, who just looked surprised.
    I ran, pushing my way down the hall, through crowds of kids who would never be my friends.
    Behind me, someone yelled out, “Now I wonder where all that candy was coming from too!”
    A second voice chimed, “Yeah!”
    I pushed open a door and dashed into a stairwell, down into the basement, where nobody ever went. When I thought I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me, I turned a corner into a dark hallway. Quickly I grabbed for the first door I saw and threw myself inside. I looked around and saw that I was in a janitor’s closet. I locked the door.
    Then I sat down on an overturned bucket and waited silently.
    I
wasn’t
going to cry. I refused. I couldn’t give someone like Hannah—someone so shallow, so horrible, so dumb—any more of me. I wouldn’t waste my tears on her. I just sat in that tiny room, under those greenish fluorescent lights and surrounded by mops, and felt like crying.
    I wasn’t sure how long I could stand to sit there. It reminded me of that first day in Atlanta, in Gran’s attic. How long could I go without doing anything?
    I reached into my backpack for a pen and a notebook. At first I thought I might try to write a poem, but that just