Untouchable by Scott O'Connor

in class. The Kid hadn’t even noticed her. She must have arrived while he was in Mr. Bromwell’s office. When Independent Reading Time was over, Miss Ramirez called her up in front of the dry-erase board and introduced her to everyone. The Kid didn’t hear her name. He was watching the drawing make its sneaky way around the room.
    The new girl was small and pale and incredibly skinny. She wore a plastic barrette in her blond hair, a little blue flower. She said she had moved to Los Angeles from Arizona. She said her father was in the military. The class began introducing itself, one kid at a time, and after each kid the new girl said, Hello , and then that kid’s name.
    The Kid knew where Arizona was, but he’d never been there, and he wondered if everyone in Arizona looked like her, sun-kissed and slight.
    “Hello, Rhonda Sizemore,” the new girl said.
    The Kid wished he’d held onto the drawing. He didn’t want the new girl to see it. He thought that this was someone who didn’t know anything about him, who didn’t know how disgusting he was. He thought that if he could get a hold of the drawing again, he could maybe keep her from seeing it and thinking those things about him.
    “Hello, Matthew Crump,” the new girl said.
    Arizona, The Kid thought. That should be the new girl’s name. He thought of the desert, bright white sun, clean sand stretching to each horizon. Images from a cowboy comic he’d once read. A new place, it seemed like. No buildings, no people. A place where nobody knew anything about anybody.
    The drawing was making another circuit, moving from desk to desk every time Miss Ramirez looked at Arizona instead of the rest of the class. When it reached The Kid he grabbed onto it, folded it once, twice, three times into a small, tight rectangle. Razz shook the back of The Kid’s seat again, Come on, Come on, and when The Kid didn’t pass it back he heard other kids whispering too, Come on, Come one, Razz whispering the loudest, an undisguised threat in his voice.
    It was The Kid’s turn to say his name, so Miss Ramirez said, Whitley Darby , to keep things moving along, to avoid the awkward delay of The Kid writing in his notebook and holding it up for the new girl to see. The other kids laughed, but The Kid was grateful that she’d saved him the embarrassment of explaining the notebook to a new person.
    The Kid’s desk was really shaking now, Razz trying to jar The Kid loose so he’d drop the drawing. The Kid didn’t want the new girl to see the drawing, but he couldn’t think of a place he could hide it. The shaking got worse, Come on, Come on , and when he felt the kicks starting, the kicks trying to knock over his chair, he folded the paper again, Come on, Come on , making it as small as he could and then he popped the drawing into his mouth, chewing fast. The kids around him erupted in angry yells, drawing a stern look from Miss Ramirez. Razz giving him a final hard kick. The Kid swallowed.
    “Hello, Whitley Darby,” the new girl said.
    The Kid took different routes home from school, alternate routes, attempts to confuse the enemy, to get home without incident. He had four of these routes, one for each of the first four days of the week. He followed them in sequence. On Fridays, he went back to the Monday route, which meant that the next week he would start with the previous Tuesday’s route, and so on. He kept track of all of it in his notebook. It was a complex safety system. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes he turned a corner and there they were, Razz and Brian Bromwell, waiting for him.
    Sometimes The Kid came up with different routes when an incident had occurred, or when there was something he wanted to see. Then he would take another way home, circuitous , his mom’s word, meaning a route that went way out of its way to get him home. This was one of those days. He made a new route through the neighborhood where the fire had been. He wanted to see what