I looked away.

"What happened?"

"What did you hear?" I asked.

"What didn't I hear?" Tara held up her fingers and counted them off. "I heard that Caffeine broke her wrist punching you in the head. I heard that you broke her wrist using jujitsu. I heard that she broke it punching a wall. Oh, and Linda Romas gave Bobby Marisco a blow job under the gym bleachers."

I let out a deep breath. "I didn't need to hear that last one. Did anyone say Caffeine just slipped and fell?"

"Oh, the official line. Sure. But nobody believes that. Everybody heard what she did during PE and how you showed her up. And the girls who left the shower said Caffeine was 'bringing it' when she came in."

"I didn't touch her!"

Tara raised her eyebrows.

"Really, I didn't. She charged me, but I dodged and she ran into the wall and then slipped and fell. I skedaddled."

"You 'skedaddled'?"

"I'm not stupid. Would you have stayed?"

"Oh, no. I, too, would have 'skee-daddled,' or perhaps I would have 'va-moosed.' Or 'high-tailed it.'"

I felt my shoulders drop and the corners of my mouth twitched. "You're sassing me, that's what this is. Or should I say 'disrespecting'?"

"Sassing works for me. Some words are just timeless. Unlike, say, 'skedaddled.'"

I swung at her arm but she skipped back out of range.

"Nice skedaddling," I said.

There was a buzzing noise and she took a beat-up cellphone out of her hoodie pocket and glanced at it.

"Jade wants to know if it's all clear."

I raised my eyebrows.

"See, for all we knew, you're as psycho as Caffeine. Uh, Jade hates confrontation."

I raised my eyebrows even higher.

"Okay, so maybe you're not psycho. But we just met you. Been burned before."

"What are you going to tell Jade?"

"Java, East of Krakatoa."

"The coffee place?"

"Right. For homework, but we'll have to move. The tables go quick."

"Uh, I'll have to check in."

"You want to use my phone?"

"Sure." I dug into my pocket for the card with the house's new phone number, installed especially for school registration. I punched in the number but Tara had to tell me to push the "call" button.

Mom answered.

"Everything all right?"

I gave her our all-clear phrase, "Good as can be expected." If I was making the call under duress, I was supposed to say, "Great."

"What's up?"

"We're going to the coffee shop to do homework."

"First person plural. Who makes up the plurality?"

"Jade and Tara. Tara is in my biology class. She's a sophomore. Jade is a junior. I will learn how to interact in an informal social environment, gaining valuable insights into the local customs and mores."

Tara rolled her eyes.

Mom chuckled. "Very nice, dear. Find your father, though. He was going to pick you up to go car shopping, so you should let him know what's going on."

I grimaced. Dad would probably want to do a big postmortem on my day. Well, he could wait.

"Got it."

Dad was waiting around the corner, on the side of the school that faced toward our property.

I introduced Tara and told him what was going on.

"Oh." He blinked and started to say something, but then shut his mouth. Finally he said, "Okay. You have any input on the car thing?"

I shook my head. We didn't need a car, of course, but it would look strange if we didn't have one.

Tara blurted, "Green. Not the color, I mean. High gas mileage. Low carbon emissions."

I jerked my thumb at Tara. "What she said."

Dad nodded seriously. "Very good."

I hugged him. "What's that smell?"

Dad shrugged. "Diesel," he said. "And, uh, smoke."

I raised my eyebrows but didn't want to ask for details with Tara there.

Dad said quietly, "Home for supper, right?"

"Right."

"My mom works until 6:30," Tara said. "She's a radiology tech, mostly CAT scans. Anyway, no reason for me to be home until later."

"This is the good time to be here," Jade said. "The sports teams are still at practice, and Pep Squad and Dance Committee is still going. When that crowd moves in you can't hear anything, much less find a seat."

We were on the upper landing, at a table by the railing with a view of the tables below and the front door. Big photos of rain forests and Indonesian temples decorated the brick walls.

"What does your father do?" I asked Tara.

Her face closed down and Jade looked anxious.

"I said something wrong, didn't I?" Damn.

Tara clenched her teeth. I could see the muscle bulge at the corner of her jaw. Then she blurted out, "I don't care what my father does as long as he does it far away from me!"

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

Tara visibly exhaled. "You didn't know. Far as I'm concerned I don't have a father. And the courts agree. Single-parent families for the win."

"We don't talk about him," said Jade. "Clear?"

I nodded. "Clear."

Jade looked back at Tara with the worried look on her face. Tara stared at the table top.

"So, I'm unsocialized and very likely to say the wrong thing. Just want you to know that I was raised in a box, right? I'm not trying to be mean-I'm just stupid that way."

Tara's mouth twitched and Jade's shoulders dropped lower.

I looked at Jade. "Any other awkward topics? Your parents?"

She shook her head. "Nah. They're all right. But we'll have words if you dis my sense of fashion."

Tara said, "Fashion? Is that what you call it?"

Jade jabbed her elbow into Tara's ribs. "Shut up, you."

We did homework. They drank tall espresso chocolate drinks with whipped cream on top. I stuck with water, but bought cookies to share.

Jade was helping Tara with her algebra and offered to help me, too, until I showed her my worksheet. "Oh. Never mind, genius. You should be helping us both." Tara raised her eyebrows. "She's in precalc," Jade explained.

I finished the worksheet, then wrote a humanities essay. I looked up to see both of them staring at me.

"What? I did something wrong, didn't I?"

Tara blinked. "You just wrote four pages ... and your print is tiny. In like twenty minutes."

"Sorry? I thought we were doing homework?"

"That's homework? It's not like journaling? That's an assignment?" Tara said.

"Humanities essay."

"Ms. Grey's assignment?" said Jade.

I nodded. "Are you in my humanities class, too?"

"Different section, same level. That's not due for two weeks."

"So? I'm done with my other assignments."

Jade blinked. "You're doing it wrong. You never write an essay like that!"

I felt my stomach sink. What had I done now?

"You're supposed to wait," said Tara. "Sometime next week you should start thinking about it. Then, put it off some more."

"Yeah," said Jade. "You never write an essay until the night before."

"At the earliest," Tara added.

"The true essay is written the morning it's due, or even the period before," said Jade earnestly.

I stared back and forth at them. "Uh, well, it is just a draft." Were they insane?

They both burst out laughing.

"Oh," I said. "I have read of this phenomenon. You are ... what do they call it?"

They both giggled some more.

"Kidders?" said Jade.

"Procrastinators?" said Tara.

I shook my head. "I believe the technical term is 'assholes.'"

They tried to look offended but instead we all laughed so hard that the kids at the tables below glared up at us. Which made us laugh even harder.

The place really filled up at five, as more kids finished after-school activities, but we stubbornly held on to our table, despite pointed glares and even inquiries of, "You leaving soon?" from older and bigger kids. To justify our occupation I bought another round of drinks, decaf this time, but the baristas could care less. The place was doing brisk business and the noise level was so high that I barely heard Tara when she said, "Isn't that your dad?"

It was Dad, sitting in the far corner on the main floor below, with a coffee. He was facing away, but there was a framed picture on the wall at just the right height. I could see his face reflected in the glass, so I knew he was watching us. He'd taught me that trick-to use reflective surfaces to check behind me without seeming to. I felt a deep stab of resentment. I didn't know how long he'd been there-I'd been having a good time.

Tara added. "Do you think he bought a car?"