The Pearl Inside of Anything

Tuesday, 12:02 p.m., Templeton second floor hallway

"Everybody is talking about your hair!" says Yammy. I glance at it in the tiny mirror of my locker and quickly shut the door.

She's right, all morning girls I don't even know have been coming up and asking what I'd done that it looked so good. "Just a little colour," I tried to be cool, but it was hard. Janna Beltzer, who has her locker next to mine and is in Grade 12 and has never once talked to me all year long said, "Nice hair, Riley!" And there was this huge circle around me out on the track at the beginning of P.E. going, "How long did it take? "Who did it?" Even Mrs. Johnson-Deville, who has never been impressed by a single thing I have done in P.E. all year let us talk hair for half the class. She tried to offer something about the aerodynamics of short hair for professional athletes, to make it educational, but mostly she wanted to know Tommy's number. When I said I had it done at Mirabella, everybody ooooohed at once. Everybody but Whitney Avery.

"Mirabella Salon?" she sniffed. "That place is expensive! You got that done at Mirabella? You?"

Nice. Not.

I suppose the "at" is debatable. It's not quite the same when you're "at" the Mirabella booth in a hair show. Hah! It's better! I had already told the Rumbergers about hair modelling this morning, so it's going to get around pretty fast. I just didn't want to get into it with Whitney. Anything she says to you is just bait and if you take it, you may as well dig your own hole. So I ignored her, which felt SO GREAT, and besides for once nobody was listening to her anyway.

Finally Mrs. Johnson-D. started looking a little antsy. She blew on her whistle and we had to get on the track for real. I ran faster than I have in my life, imagining how the sun looked on my hair, flying behind me. I totally forgot how much I hate the 12-minute run.

Best P.E. block ever.

"Yammy, I can't talk now, I have to hurry, I have Study Hall."

"Right," says Yammy scrunching her face. "I'll walk you. How's it going anyway?"

"Well, it's turned into kind of a, uh, campaign."

"A campaign?" says Yammy. "Huh. What's your study captain like? Good-looking, that's for sure."

"That's Ben, and he's not my captain!" Oddly, I feel my face flush when I say this. "But you think so? I hadn't noticed."

"Hah!" Yammy turns and stops in front of me. There's a gleam in her eye. "Wendy Riley, you are such a bad liar!"

"No, I'm not... I mean, I'm not lying. We're actually playing..." I lower my voice to a whisper and tell her.

"Dungeons and Dragons?" Yammy squeals. "I"ve always wanted to play that game! Can I?"

"Yammy! Nobody can know. Seriously! This can't get around. Oh, and it's not a game. It's a campaign."

"Okay, whatever you say, we never had this conversation," Yammy rolls her eyes and opens the library door for me, but she doesn't come inside.

I see him, same table as yesterday. Only this time, Dirt and Bran are here ahead of me. And Dirt does not have his head on the table. The three of them are laughing about something as Bran makes a little pile of the alfalfa picked out from today's sandwich on the wax paper in front of him. Ben looks over and meets my eyes.

"Nife hair Wenny," says Bran out of a full mouth. Dirt nods in agreement. Oh that, right. I press my lips together but I can't help smiling a bit at them.

All Ben says is: "Hi, Wendy, thanks for joining us," like nothing's different from yesterday. And then he stands and pulls out the chair for me next to him.