by S Doyle
Locke leaned over toward me and whispered, “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
I jerked at his words. Obviously, he’d been watching me as I’d watched the others.
It made him a little creepy and a little scary.
I ignored his taunt and went back to not paying attention to the teacher but rather planning what I was going to say to Fitz.
Class ended and Janie headed off to her next class, while I made my way to Fitz’s locker. I’d knew he’d be there because his next class was a free period so he would need to drop off some books and pick up new ones.
“Hey,” I said in way of greeting.
He turned and smiled at me. “Bennet.”
It was odd. I didn’t feel the same jolt of anger and disdain I normally felt when he said my name like that. It felt more like a bond between us now. He was Fitz to me, and I was Bennet to him, and he knew something about me nobody else in school knew.
It connected us. Was he actually becoming my friend?
That couldn’t be possible, could it?
“What’s up?” he asked.
I took in a deep breath and just blurted it out. “I’m quitting the fashion show. Doing the whole co-MC thing.”
He frowned. “Why? What happened?”
“Apparently petitioning Miss Havisham didn’t work, so they decided to take it up a level.”
His frowned deepened. “Up a level how?”
I rolled my eyes because it was both embarrassing and pathetic they were acting like this over something so trivial. “The Snobs have been bumping into me in the hallways. Like literally pushing me around. Wick—”
“Wick?” he snapped. “Wick bumped into you? Intentionally? To hurt you?”
“Not to hurt me, I don’t think. It wasn’t like a full-on assault. He just bumped into my shoulder. Him and Jeff. Locke said he overheard some Snobs talking and it’s some kind of plan to make me back down. Little did they know, all they needed to do was ask. Because I don’t give a shit.”
He said nothing, but his expression was furious.
I could only assume he was angry with me.
“Look, don’t be like that, okay. I’m not backing down from them or letting them push me around. I just don’t need this hassle in my life right now. You, more than anyone, know that.”
“No,” he said coldly. “You don’t. I’ll handle this.”
“Handle what? I’m just letting you know I’m going to tell Miss Havisham today— What are you looking at? Are you not paying attention to me?”
“Stay here,” he said, looking behind me at something.
I turned and watched him run down the hall, weaving in and out of students until he finally found his target. The next thing I knew Wick was being shoved up against the lockers, made to bear his weight on his toes, while Fitz’s forearm was shoved against Wick’s throat.
“Oh, shit.” I ran after him. Students were already circling like vultures and I had to push my way through them to hear what Fitz was saying.
“…think you are? It’s not enough you can’t get a girl your own age to even look at you, now you’ve resorted to physical assault.”
“It was a prank,” Wick rasped.
“You touch her, you look at her, you breathe air around her, I will hurt you. Badly and without mercy. Do you understand me?” Fitz snarled. “You don’t have any breath left to answer. So you can just nod your head.”
I held my breath as Wick remained unmoving, but then eventually jerked his head in a nod that Fitz accepted. He backed off and Wick put his hand over his throat as if checking to see that his head was still attached.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” Wick again rasped out. “I didn’t even hurt her.”
“And you won’t. Go tell your friends the same holds true for them.”
“What? Are you fucking her now or something? Talk about downgrading.”
Fitz raised his fist as if to deliver a punch, but I ran up behind him and grabbed his arm.
“Don’t! You’ll get suspended for fighting,” I said. My strength was pointless against his. If he wanted to throw the punch, he would have. Wick’s flinch must have satisfied him enough.
“Get out of my sight, you prick.”
Wick flipped him the finger, but quickly walked away. A few seconds later, the crowd that had circled them dispersed.
“Are you insane?” I asked him, thinking of what could have happened. “Was that seriously necessary? Forget being suspended, if you’d hit him, he could have charged you with assault.”
He looked at me, his expression still fierce. “Yes. It was necessary. You’re not quitting the show. Anyone looks at you funny, you tell me.”
“What are you going to do, Fitz? Beat up the whole school?”
“If I have to. You need to get to class.”
He was right. The bell had rung minutes ago. “This isn’t finished. I didn’t tell you I was quitting so you could fight my battles. I can take care of myself.”
He bent down low and dropped his voice. “Like you said, you’ve got enough on your plate. Maybe you can let a battle or two go.”
I shook my head not believing his white-knight act. At least not on my behalf. “This has nothing to do with me. You just can’t stand Wick because you think he’s behind the List.”
Fitz nodded. “You’re right. I can’t stand Wick. I do think he’s behind the List. And this has everything to do with you. Now, go to class.”
He followed this statement with a light slap on my ass.
I blinked a few times because instead of hauling up and slapping him like I should have been doing, I actually kind of liked it.
“Did you just slap my ass?”
“Get to class, Bennet. Wouldn’t want to get detention for tardiness.” He said this while walking backward away from me. Then he gave me a smile that I’m sure was intended to be charming but instead was infuriating.
With nothing left to be indignant about, I hurried to my next class.
Fitz
“Heard you almost laid out Wick,” Ed said as we stretched out before practice in the middle of the football field. Meanwhile, the track and field team was running sprints along the track that circled the field.
“News travels,” I said as if I could care less.
The truth was I’d been seething all day. A bunch of guys, guys on my own team, schemed to push Beth around then actually did it. It wasn’t going to happen again.
If anyone was going to physically touch Beth, it was going to be me.
And my purpose wasn’t going to be harm her.
I wondered if she was catching on to that yet.
That I’d reached certain…conclusions about us that I think had probably always been there in the back of mind.
Maybe I needed to make things clearer.
Like sticking my tongue down her throat.
God knew I wanted to the other night, sitting with her in my car, talking about sex. But as I’d started to realize things were changing between us, I’d also decided I needed a plan.
Beth and I had seen each other as adversaries for years. I needed to change that impression first. Needed to make her understand that this dance we’d been performing since we were too young to understand what it even might be was nothing more than foreplay.
The other night, when she’d opened up to me about her father, I knew was an important first step. It meant she trusted me. Which only proved there was more of a connection between us than either of us realized.
Something told me I would get only one chance to make this right with her. One shot at becoming what I wanted us to be.
Because suddenly it was very clear to me, I wanted there to be an us.
I hated that Gigi knew it before I did.
“They really pushed Beth around?” Ed asked. He was trying to reach his toes with his fingers, but as lean as he was, he wasn’t that flexible.
I, on the other hand, could fold my body practically in half.
“Yes,” I b
it out as I felt the tension in the muscles in the back of my legs as I stretched.
“What the fuck is happening in this school? We’re betting on freshmen losing their virginity and pushing girls around over fashion shows. I can’t wait until I graduate. I’m so done with this place.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got two years to go. And while we’re here, it’s up to us to stop this shit from happening.”
“You ask Wick about the List like we talked about?”
I shook my head. “I was too busy crushing his windpipe. I just wish I had some proof I could confront him with.”
“Nobody is talking to me,” Ed said. “I even made a suggestion to someone that I wanted in on the action. He looked at me like he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I didn’t buy it for a second. They know we’re tight and everyone knows you’re pissed about it.”
“Look over there,” I said as I got to my feet and pointed at a strange meeting.
Wick, dressed in his pads for practice, was jogging off the field, over the track and into the first row of stands.
Locke was sitting there, blowing out plumes of steam from his vaping pen. I could only imagine what he was vaping. Locke seemed to be an equal opportunity drug user. Sure, most upper classmen were drinking and smoking pot by now. Some were into more hardcore shit.
But Locke seemed to be into the weirdest shit.
The other day he asked me if I’d ever tried something called absinthe. Like I would even know what that was. Maybe it was a British thing.
“Do you trust him?” Ed asked me.
“Who? Locke or Wick.”
“Locke. Reen’s fascination with him aside, maybe we shouldn’t overlook that there is a new guy in school and suddenly a betting ring has started up.”
“Why tell us about it then?” I asked him.
Ed shrugged. “To deflect attention away from him? Make it seem like he’s on our side.”
I considered that. It wasn’t inconceivable. Get close to us, make us think he’s working with us all the while running the show behind our backs.
“We need to follow him,” I said.
Ed snorted. “What are we private investigators now? I doubt we’ll know how to do that.”
“Not us. We just need to get someone who naturally wants to be close to him.” I smiled, waiting for Ed to figure it out.
“She likes him,” he insisted. “Reen’s not going to spy on him for us.”
“No,” I corrected him. “It’s what you said before. She’s fascinated by him. There’s a difference. I’ll talk to her.”
“Great, so now we have two suspects. Wick and Locke. You’re going to get Reen to follow Locke, then what are you doing with Wick?”
I smiled as my current plan was playing itself out.
“What the hell,” Ed growled as we watched another person join Wick’s circle. “Aren’t you going to do something about that?”
Gigi had walked over to where Wick and Locke were still talking. What had piqued Ed’s outrage was watching Wick put his arm around Gigi’s shoulder and pulling her against him. Gi was smiling up at Wick, like any a girl infatuated with her first boyfriend would.
“Nope. Gigi’s got a good head on her shoulders. She knows what she’s doing.”
Ed’s jaw dropped. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I asked innocently. “Come on, we’ve got to start drills.”
11
Beth
“Beth!”
I glanced up from the book I was reading as I heard Star call my name. I was home, settled in an overstuffed loveseat in what my mother liked to call the formal living room. This had sort of become known as my room, as it had no TV, no video games, no Alexa, nothing that generated any distractions from what I was working on.
Mary took to her bedroom, the twins preferred the great room off the kitchen along with my mother and Star was rarely at home these days, so this had become my solitary space where I could do homework or read. Or sometimes think about ways we could track down my father and make him give us some of the money back.
Currently, I hadn’t come up with a single idea for that problem.
“In here,” I called out.
Star came rushing into the room, her face flushed.
“Is it true? That there was some plot to hurt you?”
I laughed. It still seemed so absurd to me. Although I supposed it wasn’t given the position it had put Fitz in. If he’d gone ahead and hit Wick, really hurt him…he had no clue the trouble that would have rained down on his head.
Not the least of which would be from his parents.
It wasn’t lost on me that Fitz was always held to a higher standard. It wasn’t enough that he performed well athletically, academically and socially. He had to do all of that and be completely above reproach.
In a society where, despite his wealth and privilege, he was still a young black man.
Fitz was always swimming upstream. It made me wonder if sometimes he just got tired.
Star bumped my hip to move me over and sat next to me.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“They didn’t want to hurt me. Just send a message. It was like you said. They petitioned Miss Havisham to toss me from the fashion show, but she refused. So they wanted to bully me into giving up.”
“And you said no, right?”
I laughed again.
“No, I immediately wanted to quit. As much as I love you, watching you showcase Vera Wang prom dresses is not my idea of a fun night. But Fitz wouldn’t have it. He threatened Wick and told him everyone better back off. Then he insisted I go through with it.”
“I was going to wear Badgley Mischka, but now I’m going to boycott in protest. I’ll get Chas to boycott, too. In fact, I’ll get the entire senior class to quit.”
“Calm down,” I said taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’re not boycotting. You’re going to wear your pretty dress down the runway proving, once again, you are the most beautiful girl in school and I’ll get to announce it with a smile.”
“I do want to wear the pretty dress,” Star admitted. “I hate how shallow that makes me.”
“You’re not shallow. You’re honest. I’m sure it’s going to be gorge.”
“What are you going to wear?”
Fitz and I had discussed this when I was at his house. I definitely did not want to wear the pretty dress.
A - I didn’t want to be compared to Star.
B - I didn’t want to be compared to Anne.
C - I didn’t want Fitz to see me in a dress when I was going to be the least best-looking girl on stage.
“Fitz and I will be in matching tuxes. We put together this little comedy skit. It should work.”
“Hmm.”
I knew my sister’s hmms. She was thinking about saying something that had the potential to upset me. So she was giving me advance warning with a hmmm.
“What? Just say it.”
“You and Fitz.”
“Me and Fitz what?”
“You’ve been spending time together…”
“I rehearsed a skit at his house one night.”
“He threatened Wick on your behalf…”
“That was more about Wick than it was about me.” At least that’s what I’d concluded at the time.
This has everything to do with you.
I was pretending I didn’t hear that part. I was also not telling my sister how he slapped me on the ass or that I liked it.
“I’m just saying,” Star said, her voice rising an octave as she did. “For two people who supposedly hate each other…”
“Stop doing that thing. That singsong voice thing. I don’t hate Fitz,” I admitted.
I something’d Fitz.
Like. Too weak.
Attraction. Too simple.
Envy. Too muddy.
It was…something.
“You’re really okay with what happened?” Star asked me, and I was grateful to move o
n to a different subject.
“Yes. Those people don’t scare me, Star. If anything, I consider them pathetic. Trapped in their close-minded circle where everything is a competition between beauty and wealth. Beauty that will eventually fade and the wealth they didn’t earn, but their parents did. I’ll do the event Sunday night, give a big fuck you to all of them and move on.”
“Okay. Once again, my hero.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t a hero. Just a high-school student trying to navigate some tricky political waters.
Because of, wait for it, a fashion show.
Auditorium
Sunday Night
“It’s going well,” Fitz said low into my ear. We were off stage, just beyond the curtain. A group of senior girls were walking back and forth currently modeling bikinis. I was surprised Fitz had the wherewithal to form coherent sentences. Those were really skimpy bikinis.
“If you mean by going well nobody’s dropped pig’s blood on me yet, then yes,” I replied.
“There’s still time. I imagine you would look hot in red.”
I blushed. Because he was doing that thing again where it felt like he was flirting. Which, of course, he wouldn’t be flirting. Not with me.
“Get ready.”
The group of girls left the stage, and, on cue, Fitz and I stepped out into the spotlight. The applause was dying down, and I was happy that we were coming to the end of the show. The plan for later was to head to a small after-party at Chas’s house.
A party where Fitz would be. Where I would be. Mostly likely with alcohol. That neither one of us really drank, but still, it would be there.
“Hey, everyone, as we wrap up tonight let me thank you all again for coming. Tonight has been a great success,” Fitz announced into the microphone. “And now for the big finale. What I’m sure many of you have come for, so don’t be cheap when you bid…”
“Fitz,” I said interjecting. “You’re going to remind them, right?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Because the whole point of this…”
“Yes, yes. Don’t be a nag.”
