Finding Sky Read Online Free

grades. No one has to be just one kind of thing.’
    ‘Except the misfits.’ I glanced over at the group she had indicated. They weren’t really a group, more a collection of oddballs who had no one else to sit beside. One girl was muttering to herself—at least, I saw no evidence of a hands-free headset for her phone. I felt a sudden panic that I would be among them when Tina got tired of me. I’d always felt something of an oddity; it wouldn’t take much to knock me over into the group of the seriously weird.
    ‘Yeah, don’t mind them. Every school has them.’ She opened her yoghurt. ‘No one makes a big deal about it. So what was your last school like? Hogwarts? Posh kids wearing black gowns?’
    ‘Um … no.’ I choked on a laugh. If Tina could’ve seen us at lunch in my comprehensive, she would not be reminded of Hogwarts but a zoo as two thousand of us tried to fight our way through to the cramped dining hall in forty-five minutes. ‘We were more like this.’
    ‘Great. Then you’ll soon feel at home.’
    Being new is something I’d had a lot of experience of in my life before Sally and Simon adopted me. In those days I had been shuffled from home to home like a chain letter no one wanted to keep. And now I was back to being a stranger. I felt horribly conspicuous wandering the hallways, map in hand, completely at sea as to how the school functioned, though I guess my obviousness was all in my mind; the other students probably didn’t even notice me. Classrooms and teachers became landmarks to orientate by; Tina a kind of rock I could cling to when I washed up in her area from time to time, but I tried to hide this as I didn’t want to put her off developing friendliness into friendship from fear that I would crowd her. I went hours without talking to anyone and had to force myself to ignore my shyness and make conversation with my classmates. Still, I had the impression I’d arrived too late; the students of Wrickenridge High had had years to form groups and get to know each other. I was on the outside, looking in.
    As the school day drew to a close, I wondered if I was always going to be doomed to this feeling that life was a shade out of focus for me, like a poor quality pirated film. Dissatisfied, and a little bit depressed, I made my way out of the main doors to head home. Threading through the crowds pouring out of the building, I got a glimpse of the bad boys Tina had mentioned at lunchtime. Caught in a shaft of sunlight in the car park, there was nothing fuzzy about these guys, though they certainly looked illegal. There were five of them, lounging against their motorbikes: two African-American boys, two white guys, and a dark-haired Hispanic. At any time, any place, you would have identified them immediately as trouble. Their expressions matched—a sneer at the world of education as represented by all us good students dutifully filing out on time. Most pupils gave them a wide berth, like ships avoiding a dangerous stretch of coast; the remainder shot them envious looks, hearing the siren call and tempted to stray too close.
    Part of me wished I could do that—stand there, sure of myself, flipping off the rest of the planet for being so uncool. If only I had legs from here to eternity, quick cutting wit, looks to stop people in their tracks. Oh yeah, and being male helped: I could never carry off that hipshot look, thumbs linked in belt loops, kicking the dirt with my toe caps. Was it natural to them, or did they calculate the effect, practising in front of the mirror? I dismissed the thought quickly—that was something losers like me would do; they surely had such inbred coolness they were their own little ice age. The Hispanic fascinated me in particular—his eyes were hidden by shades as he leaned, arms folded, against the saddle of his bike, a king in his court of knights. He didn’t have to struggle with the conviction that he was lacking in any way.
    As I watched, he mounted his