Page 89 - My FlipBook

T R A I L O F C R U M B S

Even though she’d moved at the pace of a turtle, her breath
came short and shallow. At the door she paused and looked
the room over. Sam—Baby Spice—sat near the front. Greta’s
eyes whipped through every row, checking for the others.
No one she recognized. Her chest loosened.
Then Sam turned in Greta’s direction, giving her a tight
smile before snapping to face forward again. Et tu, Sam? Et
tu? That definitely wasn’t an invitation to sit in the empty

desk beside her. So much for being the nice one.
At lunchtime Greta crouched low in the cafeteria,
hunched in her and Ash’s usual corner, behind a ficus tree.
Greta had suspected it before—but had never fully realized
till now—that the table with Dylan, Matt, Rachel, Priya,
Sam and all their hangers-on was the hub of the whole cafe-
teria. Really, the whole school. She’d been there, sitting right

there, and now she had to crouch behind a ficus tree to eat
her microwaved Mr. Noodles. Everything gift wrapped for
her—“on a silver platter,” as Patty would say—and she’d still
messed it up. Why had she ever gone to the cabin?
Rachel had driven her there, nearly an hour outside the
city, with the windshield wipers beating against the steady
fall of fat November snowflakes. A layer of white coated a
line of empty cabins nicer than anything Greta had ever lived
in. Rachel pulled in behind Matt’s dad’s suv, beside a small

A-frame cabin.
Dylan had swung the door open and leaned against the
doorjamb. He wore a loose plaid shirt over a white T-shirt,
baggy jeans. It was obvious he’d already had a couple.

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