​​Chapter Forty-One
Wren

“I thought she was going to eat us.”

“You? Miss ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’ You were afraid of little ol’ Leslie Buell?” I say.

“I think you may be exaggerating on the ‘little.’” Rhonda and I are sitting in the girls’ locker room, backs against wall. Her Dad, I mean Zinberg, had to finish up some paperwork which gave us time to roam. I invited her because lunch here has been lonely without Mareck.

“She doesn’t like herself. She doesn’t like that she’s a part of The Preps. She seems...tired.”

“Not surprising. It must take a lot of energy balancing on top of all those bodies,” Rhonda says. I think of a human pyramid, Leslie shifting her weight on the very top. Her metallic ballet flat grinding into the The Redhead’s crown.

I feel a little guilty.

I swallow hard and look at Rhonda. Rhonda with her cotton candy hair and pilled black sweatpants. She seems unmovable even though I’m sure far too many people have taken a stab at it. I can relate.

“You know what you said about Mrs. Ling. How she changed your life? What did you mean by that?” It smells like a sad attempt at showering off sweat in here. There’s a faint chemical scent beneath the body odor and the hormonal stench of fear. I don’t look Rhonda in the eye. I can already feel it burning inside me, what she’s going to say.

“Her faith. Her faith in something unseen, something I used to think was so so stupid. I’m not a God person. I’m a facts person, a reason person.” Rhonda sits criss-cross, her right leg bobbing in time. “But she is, too. I don’t know. She seems almost ethereal in the way she approaches life. And I felt so...base in comparison.”

“What changed?”

“Me. I was the roadblock. I had to get over myself. If I was ever going to believe something next level, I had to die to myself.”

“I have to imagine that was no picnic.” My legs are stretched out, crossed at the ankles, like they always were with Mareck next to my hip.

“What in life is?”