Ollie in Between: Chapters 1–7

Like a perpetually molted mantis shrimp, I’m soft and vulnerable in all the wrong places.

Even though our gym group has been in health class since the end of winter break—yeah, like a whole three months ago—Mrs. Johnston is struggling to deviate from the attendance sheet.

Then Mrs. Johnston can impart some serious life wisdom, because you don’t have the internet and haven’t googled all these questions before.

Only instead of nodding and pursing her cardinal-red lips, Mrs. Johnston furrows her brow.

Conversations break out like wildfire until the noise is this raging inferno of weekend plans.

The pressure and warmth of a whole person against my back is claustrophobic. If it were anyone other than Cal, I’d shove them away, but her hugs wrap me in a blanket of what I assume it feels like to be normal.

I’m the viceroy butterfly to her monarch. A close copy, but a much less glamorous imposter.

I’m the viceroy butterfly to her monarch. A close copy, but a much less glamorous imposter.

Cal calls her the epitome of fashion, which means that her fair skin is rosy and flawless, her straight blond hair is parted the right way, and her clothes are always the right clothes.

Except I get through the pines behind the school, past the apartment complex with its balconies and sliding glass doors holding in entire lives I catch a glimpse of if I’m lucky, down Main Street, past the pharmacy and the strip mall where high schoolers hang out—or loiter, if you look at it from the perspective of the crabby mall cop—and through my neighborhood to the school and the park and the rink without seeing a single suspicious van.

So what if he doesn’t want to run surveillance with me? So what if he doesn’t go on creek walks or want to sketch plants...

My face morphs to his expression and I release my hands. Am I the bad guy here?

I’m talking to Nate, because he knows I don’t have telepathy, but he doesn’t look at me.

I pick at an old divot in the table.

Social adaptation is why you see loads of animals in packs, because the odds of any one wildebeest being eaten by a lion in a herd of one hundred wildebeests is a measly 1 percent.