Page 42 - My FlipBook

L IS A J. L A W R E N C E

Greta said it just to humor him, especially given Ash’s I’m
asleep routine. Maybe it was a little fun. They crossed over
a river, frozen and piled with snow. On road signs the kilo-
meters to Whitecourt slowly, painfully decreased. Farmland
gave way to forest. She forgot where they were going for a
minute, craning to see the sway of old pines, their branches
caked in white. The glaring sun of early morning shifted to
a matted gray. Nate continued talking. About what, Greta

didn’t know.
With nothing to do but watch pine trees and sky, Greta
thought about them, about when things were good. She’d
been at West Edmonton High for almost two months
when Rachel spoke to her for the first time. Greta had
been assigned to Rachel’s biology group, along with a girl
named Priya and a guy named Scott, who never spoke. They ADVANCE READING COPY

sat on stools around a table the shape of a kidney bean,
with a poster of a uterus on the wall and a pickled tape -
worm in a jar beneath it. Rachel and Priya were talking
about their Halloween costumes. They were dressing up as
the Spice Girls with two other girls, Samantha, or “Sam,”
and Chloe.
“We just need Sporty Spice now,” Priya said. “Then we
have all five.”
Greta was the only one actually doing the biology work-

sheet. Pulmonary artery: carries deoxygenated blood from the
right ventricle to the lungs. It helped, being good at school.
It distracted her from how lonely she’d been since the
beginning of September.

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