If it wasn’t one of them in Gym or Bio, it was Brenna and Sam in English, Trevor and Matthias in Spanish. Often there was nothing more than a Hey, Venereal, but there was never less, and sometimes they got creative. Sharp triangles of folded paper pitched against the back of her head, a stack of venereal disease brochures left on her desk. (Her own father’s brochures; she’d typed the originals. She didn’t think they knew that.)Verna liked eating lunch on the loading dock with Layla and Justinian and Criss, sitting on the rough concrete and knowing that she was safe. At the mall with Layla, she spent all of her birthday money on a pair of high black boots. The next day, seeing her own black-booted feet among the others on the loading dock pleased her. As did the wood-shaving smell of the art studio, talking to Jared, the knowledge that the day was almost over. She felt smaller every day. In Biology, Kyle Dobrowski and Brad Anastero kept up the endless whispers. Hey, Venereal, you ever do a helicopter?
