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Adora wants to like the new girl in Class 201. Mrs. Z seats her at Adora's table and she kicks her legs instead of looking at anyone. Adora tries, like she does with anyone she doesn't know, but the new girl doesn't want to sit with her on the rug or play at recess, and she just glares when Adora says she likes her backpack, so Adora doesn't know what else she's supposed to do.
"She's mean," Kyle says at lunch, watching the girl pick at her tray down the table from them. "She took the blue crayon during free draw and didn't share at all."
"If I was as ugly as her I'd be mean too." Lonnie raises her voice so she knows the girl will hear it. She doesn't look up, but she dips her glare a little lower on her tray, scowling at the pizza now instead of the apple. She doesn't eat either.
Adora knows what pretty is supposed to look like, and the new girl isn't that. Adora's never seen anyone with eyes like hers, one blue one yellow, like there was a mix-up when she was made, and her hair is the kind of frizzy that Adora's sister is always trying to avoid. Adora has trouble looking away from her all the same. She wishes she'd been listening when Mrs. Z told the class her name, instead of trying to figure out those eyes.
She tries again, during time-to-pack-up. "That's such a cool pencil bag," she says.
The girl shoves it in her backpack. Her teeth flash. "It's mine."
"Catra, your bus is number 6," Mrs. Z says, giving the girl her bus tag. Adora rolls that name around in her head.
"We both have R and A in our names," Adora says, when she sees Catra's name on her tag. "Oh, two As!"
Catra wrinkles her forehead at the bus tag like she's never seen one before. "It goes on your backpack," Adora says, showing Catra hers. "I can help you put it on."
The monitor for bus six calls from the door. "Leave me alone," Catra says before she walks away. Adora looks at the chair she's left and tries to think about what she needs to do different next time.
"Maybe she just doesn't want friends," her friend Glimmer says on Saturday, when Adora asks her what she's doing wrong. "She sounds mean anyway."
"Kinda." Catra got in trouble yesterday for telling Rogelio to shut up, and at recess the day before she told Kyle stay the hell away from me when he tried to get the ball out from under the bench she was sulking on. She had to go to the office and didn't come back until recess was over. "Sometimes."
Glimmer shrugs. "Well, my mom says I shouldn't play with mean kids, so it's probably good that she wants to be alone."
"Yeah," Adora says. "I guess."
When it's time for free draw, Catra draws big, with purples and reds and blues. Sometimes she hunches over her work, arm curled protectively on the top of the page, and Adora has to try to imagine what she's made. Sometimes she forgets. Adora wishes she knew how to draw that good. It's always the cat that looks like a lion, mane blue and rippling or spiky red. If she could make crayons look almost translucent, she wouldn't draw anything else either.
"Is that your pet?" Adora asks once, when she forgets that Catra didn't actually show her.
Catra jolts, like she hadn't realized anyone else was there, even though the classroom is usually pretty noisy during free draw. Her face seals back into the scowl quickly. "They're magic," she growls, "and they can fight you."
Across the room, Mrs. Z says, "We use nice words in this classroom," and Catra shrinks a little in her chair, wrinkling the edge of her paper. Mrs. Z's been saying that a lot in the last few weeks.
"I hope they want to be friends instead," Adora says. "I think they're cool."
Catra crumples up the paper and throws it away and gets a color down for being out of her seat during working time, and even when Adora apologizes her frown doesn't go away. She twists a lock of hair on her shoulder, over and over. Adora would probably know the answer when Mrs. Z calls on her if she wasn't trying to figure out if Catra's hair is as soft as it looks. She pulls the paper out of the trash after Catra's bus leaves, and folds it small enough to hide in her pencil case, and she's pretty sure she's not supposed to feel like her stomach's melting when she thinks about having it.
"Not everyone's going to like you," her sister Mara says, when Adora asks her. "That's okay."
Adora doesn't know how to put into words how much she wants Catra to like her. Glimmer and Bow are best friends, and they give each other bracelets and have playdates after school and sit together when they play with Glimmer's Xbox. Adora wants that with Catra. When she tries to explain, Mara says, "We don't have an Xbox."
"I know." Adora feels smaller and dumber than usual. "I just - I want us to be friends, I think."
"There's a lot of kids at your school," Mara says. "Second grade is hard. Maybe you should make other friends if you're lonely."
Mara's fifteen, nearly eight years older, and she always gives Adora good advice. "Yeah," Adora says. "Maybe."
Catra's good at school, when she pays attention. Adora notices the days when she finishes her work faster than everybody else, and the days when instead she flips her paper to draw spirals that get tighter and tighter until Mrs. Z says that time's up. Today is a spiral day, and her color's down to orange before morning recess. Catra runs out ahead of the other kids and is throwing a kickball back and forth at the wall before the rest of the class even gets there. Everyone knows better than to remind her that she's supposed to share.
"Something's really wrong with that kid," Lonnie says, passing their ball to Rogelio. He nods in agreement. "She's gonna go to jail or something when she grows up, maybe even before that."
"Or hurt somebody," Kyle says.
Lonnie curls her lips at him. "Of course you're scared, crybaby. I'm not scared of her or anybody."
"Bet you wouldn't tell her to share that ball," Kyle says, gesturing to where Catra's switched to kicking.
Lonnie rolls her shoulders, eyes going narrow. "I'll make her share."
"She's not hurting anybody," Adora says, stomach feeling tight, "and we don't need another ball."
Lonnie's head snaps to her. "Oh, so you're scared too."
"I'm not scared."
"Then you do it. Go tell her that no one wants to play with her because she's such a selfish brat."
Adora's grandma says not to lie. She's bad at it anyway. "No."
"Fine," Lonnie says, laughing a little. "Be a baby too."
Lonnie grabs the ball when it bounces back from the wall, and Catra's face twists like putty. She lunges for it and Lonnie dances back. "That's mine," Catra says.
"It's everybody's," Lonnie says, smiling the way she does when she's won the game.
Catra's fists tense. "Then it's mine too."
"Well, everybody would rather play with this than play with you, so you can't have it."
Adora must have blinked, because Catra's on Lonnie on the ground, tearing the ball out of her hands and bringing it down on her head. Lonnie's yelling and Daveed from 202 is screaming that a girl is killing somebody and Adora doesn't realize she's pulled Catra off until Catra hits her in the chest with the ball, eyes wild.
"Stop," Adora says.
The recess monitor is almost there, booming her excuse me that makes every other kid freeze. Catra throws the ball at Adora and she catches it. "Screw you," Catra snaps before she stomps away.
When they get back to the classroom, Catra's backpack is gone. Mrs. Z says she had to go home. "That's what happens when we can't be friends at school," she says. Adora's clip on the color chart is always at green, amazing, and Catra's is still where it was before recess, think about your choices. If Adora thinks about Catra any more she thinks her head might explode.
"Some people make a wall out of their anger," Razz says, when Adora asks her what to do. "If they're already pushing people away, no one can hurt them."
"I'm not gonna hurt her though," Adora says. The thought of that makes her stomach ache. "She knows that, I'm nice to her. Not everyone is, but I am."
Razz runs a wrinkled hand over Adora's hair. "It sounds like she's having trouble believing you, dearie. It's possible she never will."
Razz is decades older than anyone else Adora knows. She's forgotten more things than Adora thinks she will ever learn. If anyone knows what they're talking about, it's Razz.
"What do I do?" Adora asks, fingers twisting in her lap. "To make her believe me."
Razz sighs. "Some nuts aren't worth the work it takes to crack them, Adora. Are you sure she is?"
Adora thinks about spirals and freckles and the laugh that makes something flutter under her ribs, the handful of times she's heard it. A few days ago, when she looked at the corner of the playground where Catra likes to sit, she saw her lying on her stomach, watching something small on the ground, face quiet. Adora wants to be able to lie next to her and ask her what kind of bug she thinks it is. She wants to know what stories Catra will tell when they play.
"Yeah," Adora says. "She is."
Adora twitches all through math, all through guided reading. Catra's having a better day, the kind when she finishes her worksheets in silence before she starts a line of tiny Xs along the side.
When it's time for free draw, Adora pulls the picture out of her backpack, pushing it at Catra. Kyle watches from the other side of the table, eyes wide.
Catra's eyebrows fold, when she looks at it. She doesn't say anything.
"It's your cat," Adora says. She doesn't have the same colors at home, and she studied how Catra layered and overlapped them but still doesn't really know how she makes it look like she does, in the end. She knows she did a bad job, but she tried, and she thinks it mostly looks close enough.
"They can't be your friend," Catra says. She blinks, more than once. "They're mine."
"I don't want to be their friend." Adora feels like holding the monkey bars and finally stepping her feet off the bar to dangle. "I want to be yours."
Catra blinks again. Her finger traces Adora's outline. "Melog," she says. "They're called Melog."
"That's a great name," Adora says.
"It's a stupid name." Catra picks up the blue crayon and makes a shape on her blank paper. "They're not even real."
Adora had an imaginary friend, when she was younger, a flying unicorn called Swift Wind who liked to sing with her. Maybe if Catra keeps talking to her, Adora can tell her about him. "Well, I like it," she says. "I like them."
Catra scoots her chair a little closer, enough so Adora can see what she's doing. "You did this part too dark," she says. "If you do this part light and then press hard here then you can get their mane right."
Adora messes it up the first two times she tries, but Catra doesn't snap or glare or tell her that she's being an idiot. "Lift your hand up a little," she says, "so it's just barely touching."
Adora tries again, and it's closer, this time. The bell rings for recess and when Adora goes to the door, Catra hangs back, eyes darting.
Adora puts out a hand. "Are you coming?"
She doesn't know what the expression on Catra's face is, when she holds her hand and lets Adora lead her to stand in line together. When Adora asks her if she's ever played Princess Battle before, Catra shakes her head. "It's so much fun," Adora says, "you gotta play it with me."
"Okay," Catra says, shoulders straightening out. "How do you play?" Adora feels like a balloon, filling full of something she can't name, ready to float into the sky.
Adora goes home with another picture in her backpack, clean folded lines this time instead of crumples. When Catra draws Adora's hair, it looks like it glows.