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  Chapter Two

  "Now, we don’t have enough teachers to make proper groups," Ms Ling, the youngest and newest teacher in Rockwell, was explaining. This was to be her first field trip. "So we’ll go with the buddy system. I will team you all up into groups of four. It will be a random selection . . ."

  Ned groaned. "I’m gonna get paired with a bunch of dorks, aren’t I?"

  "Should fit right in," I muttered.

  Ned playfully batted me on the arm. "If I’m going down, you’re coming with me, got that?"

  "Shush," I hissed. "Ms Ling just said my name."

  " . . . Rosenhart, if you would go with . . ."

  "Say my name, say my name, say my name," Ned begged under his breath.

  "Fred Detwiler," Ms Ling said.

  "Close enough," Ned shrugged, satisfied. "You can’t ask for everything, can you?"

  "And, um, Robyn Diaz and . . . let’s see Brooke O’Mackey, oh, yes!"

  "Oh, great!" Ned exclaimed, throwing his arms up. "We get stuck with a bunch of dumb girls!" He didn’t know Brooke or Robyn then.

  "Who are you calling ‘dumb?’" Brooke demanded as she marched over, a stormy expression plastered on her face, arms folded.

  "No one, no one at all, sir . . . um, ma’am," Ned said, shrinking behind me, eyes wide and scared. "Luke," he whispered. "Protect me, please, old pal of mine?"

  I crossed my arms. "Ned . . ." I shook my head. "Sorry, he has issues. Most of them in his head."

  Ned rolled his eyes. "Some help you are . . ."

  "Oh, well," Robyn said, gesturing almost unnoticeably with her arm, motioning for Brooke to cool it. "Hey, Luke, how’s Jemima?"

  "She’s good, tried to splash ice water over me this morning. She’s enjoying the first grade. The house gets invaded by her friends every Thursday. I’m getting sick of Flora the Adventurer."

  "They so don’t make shows for little kids like they used to," Brooke agreed.

  "You know them?" Ned interrupted, disbelievingly. I guess, when you live in the Downtown area of Rockwell, you don’t really get to meet people in the country or suburbs much.

  "Known them as long as I’ve known you," I said. "And they’re not dumb. This one could break your neck," I jerked a thumb in Brooke’s direction.

  Brooke huffed and folded her arms, her angry expression fading. "Doesn’t matter: let’s just go and check out this place."

  Brooke started walking and we were following, but Robyn wasn’t. She tugged on her friend’s sleeve and pointed to the teacher. "Ms Ling’s confused about something."

  Brooke shrugged, nonchalantly. "Probably can’t pro-nounce that new French kid’s name. The whole ‘Jean’ thing got me good . . ."

  But Robyn shook her head. "Listen."

  "...Um... it seems I miscalculated," she said. "Er... there’s someone left out..." Ms Ling frowned, bewildered, and whispered something to an older teacher, who was assisting her. The more experienced teacher took the clipboard out of Ms Ling’s hands, examined it, shrugged and nodded.

  Ms Ling didn’t look satisfied. "Well, he’ll just have to come with me, then. The new kid."

  "He can come with us," I heard Robyn call. She didn’t hesitate. Everyone in the lobby turned to see who had volunteered.

  I don’t know if Robyn knew who the new kid was when she made that in-a-heartbeat decision. Robyn is kind to everyone and would never let someone stay left out.

  Ms Ling didn’t show a smidgen of reluctance. "Okay, fine, alright," she said, glad to have one less worry on her mind.

  Robyn stood on tip toes, searching the faces in the crowd for the kid. She knew every face in town, even if she didn’t know the person it belonged to. She memorised them all. She must have spotted him because she waved him over.

  Maybe he was embarrassed, maybe he was just uncertain. But he didn’t take long to think it through. He walked over. He was a tall kid, nearly a full head taller than me. And skinny. Not skeleton skinny but skinny. A breeze could have knocked him over but I could tell that he was too quick for a breeze. He had brown hair that was slightly curly and brown eyes that looked sad, grateful and hopeful, all at the same time.

  When he joined our group, he looked completely out of place. He was used to being lonely in a crowd.

  He kept his head down and stared at his feet. No one said anything, the constant "rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb," drummed on in the background.

  The silence was uneasy, daunting. I decided to break it.

  "I’m Luke," I said, sticking out my hand to shake. He awkwardly shook it.

  "Smithy," he replied.

  The others got the idea and followed my lead, introducing themselves to Smithy and shaking hands in turn.

  "Robyn," she said, when it came to her turn. She smiled, gently. "Welcome to our little group."

  I stood there, taking in "our little group." And... I don’t know if it’s just now looking back that I remember it but... I was actually proud of "our little group." It felt good to have a team. I promised myself, somewhere in the back of my mind, right there and then, that we would always stay that way.

  I smiled. "C’mon, let’s get a move on. We’ve got all day."