“Have a good night,” I called out as they left, Marion still mad and not looking back, Steve waving jauntily out the door.

“Sheesh,” Scarlett said. “What a weirdo.”

“He’s not that bad.”

She leaned back against the step, smoothing her hands over her stomach. Though she wasn’t showing yet, just in the last week she’d started to look different. It wasn’t something I could describe easily. It was like those stop-action films of flowers blooming that we watched in Biology. Every frame something is happening, something little that would be missed in real time—the sprout pushing, bit by bit, from the ground, the petals slowly moving outward. To the naked eye, it’s just suddenly blooming, color today where there was none before. But in real time, it’s always building, working to show itself, to become.

Cameron Newton was probably the only person in school who was getting weirder looks than Scarlett that fall. He’d transferred in September, which was hard enough, but he was also one of those short, skinny kids with pasty white skin; he always wore black, which made him look half dead, or half alive, depending on how optimistic you were. Either way, he was having a tough time. So it didn’t seem unusual that he was drawn across Mrs. Pate’s Commercial Design class to Scarlett.

I’d missed one morning of school because of a doctor’s appointment, and when we came in the next there was Cameron Newton, sitting at our table.

“Look,” I said, whispering. “It’s Cameron Newton.”

“I know,” she said cheerfully, lifting a hand to wave to him. He looked nervous and stared down at his paste jar. “He’s a nice guy. I told him he should sit with us.”

“What?” I said, but it was already too late, we were there and Cameron was looking up at us, in his black turtleneck and black jeans. Even his eyes looked black.

“Hey, Cameron,” Scarlett said, pulling out the chair next to him and sitting down. “This is Halley.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello.” His voice was surprisingly deep for such a small guy, and he had an accent that made you lean in and concentrate to understand him. He had very long fingers and was busy working with a lump of clay and a putty knife.

“Cameron’s spent the last five years in France,” Scarlett told me as we got settled, pulling out all of our alphabet letters and getting them organized. “His father is a famous chef.”

“Really,” I said. Cameron was still making me a little nervous. He had the jumpy, odd quality of someone who’d spent a lot of time alone. “That’s neat.”

Scarlett kicked me under the table and glared at me, as if I was making fun of him, which I definitely wasn’t. Cameron got up suddenly, pushed out his chair, and stalked into the supply room. He walked like a little old man, slowly and deliberately. As he passed the paper cutter, a group of girls there dissolved into laughter, loud enough so I was sure he heard.

“You didn’t tell me you made friends with Cameron Newton,” I said in a low voice.

“I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” Scarlett said, cutting out an O. “Anyway, it was the coolest thing. I was here yesterday by myself, right? And Maryann Lister and her friends were talking about me. I could hear every word, you know, all about Michael and the baby and how I was a slut, blah blah blah.”

“They said that?” I said, swiveling in my chair to find Maryann Lister, who just stared back at me, startled, until I turned away.

“I don’t care now,” she said. “But yesterday I’d been sick all morning and I was kind of blue and you weren’t here and it just got to me, you know? So I start blubbering right here in Commercial Design, and I’m trying to hide it but I can’t and right when I’m just feeling completely pathetic, Cameron scoots his chair over and puts this little piece of clay on the table in front of me. And it’s Maryann Lister.”

“It’s what?”

“It’s Maryann Lister. I mean, it’s this perfect little head with her face on it, and the details were just amazing. He even had that little mole on her chin and the pattern of the sweater she was wearing.”

“Why did he do that?” I said, glancing back to the supply room where Cameron was pacing the aisles, putty knife in hand, looking for something.

“I had no idea. But I just told him it was nice, and pretty, and he kind of ignored me and then handed me his history book. And he just puts it in my hand, but I still didn’t know what he wanted me to do with it, so I handed it back to him. And right then she and her friends said something about him and me, like we would be perfect for each other or something.”

“I hate her,” I grumbled.

“No, but listen.” She was laughing. “So Cameron, totally solemn, takes the book, centers the little clay Maryann on the table in front of us, and then lifts the book up, drops it, and flattens her. Just like that, smoosh. It was so funny, Halley. I mean, it just about killed me. And then I took the book and pounded her, and he did, and we just pummeled her into nothing. I’m telling you, he’s a riot.”

“A riot,” I said as Cameron came out of the paper room with another wad of clay in his hands. He looked straight ahead as he walked, as if he was on a mission. “I don’t know.”

“He is,” Scarlett said with certainty as he came closer. “Just wait.”

I spent the rest of that week in Commercial Design getting to know Cameron Newton. And Scarlett was right: he was funny. In a weird, under-his-breath-as-if-totally-not-meaning-to way that made you think you shouldn’t laugh, even when you wanted to. He was incredibly artistic, truly gifted even; he could make a clay face of anyone in minutes, completely accurate down to the last detail. He did Scarlett beautifully, the curve of her face and smile, her hair spilling across her shoulders. And he did me, half smiling, my face tiny and accurate. He had a way of being able to capture the world, perfectly, in miniature.