My hands shake. This is not excitement. This is all fear. She is sitting under the sun, face turned up, eyes closed. Students buoy around her, talking, laughing and I am amazed, over and over again, how they fail to be struck dumb by the sight of her. I look away. Sunshine hurts my eyes.

If I go over there, she will smile, and complain about her math teacher, and ask me about my day. We will sit next to each other and laugh, like we have on days like these in weeks past, but none of it will be the same. I will put on my “Ashley knows best” face and tell her that her math teacher is taking his sexual frustration at home out on his students, and she will scrunch up her face in fake disgust and then laugh, and shake her head saying that I bring sex into everything, and then we will be making plans for later on that night and talk of clothes and – and we will be looking at each other the entire time, saying something completely different with our eyes. And everyone around us, all the jaded, knowing, disapproving eyes will notice the change, too. Spencer doesn’t know the rules of the game. Spencer still doesn’t know that you have to lie to live. And when I look at her, when she smiles at me, she makes me forget there is a game being played out there, and that it is a spectator sport.

I can’t forget for long. Cue in Madison with her splenetic taunts. Notice the quiet glare of the homeroom teacher when Spencer leans in to close to me, and giggles. He is not upset about the noise; his gaze is on the hand she has laid on my arm, and left there, and I twitch under his eyes, and move my arm away. See the involuntary sneer on unknown faces as our hands brush when we walk by them. The rules change when you move from the sidelines and join the game.

And then there are the stares. I’ve gotten used to the thrumming wave of whispers in school corridors, the thin-lipped disapproval and the occasional bump-in in the hallways that is just strong enough to make it clear that it wasn’t unintentional. It’s a part of the daily routine now, and I have learned to give as good as I get. Some days it is almost fun – to see how many of them I can make back down. Some days you simply must find something to laugh about.