by Schow, Ryan
I’m about to respond when Damien and Brayden join us. For a second, I find myself irritated with the boys’ timing, but then my attention shifts completely and I’m inexplicably consumed with Brayden and his transformation.
His buzzed hair is darker, dyed a deep brown that almost looks black. He looks edgy and sexy, but not snobbish. And his eyebrows! They’re dyed, which really makes his eyes pop. Then, on closer inspection, I see it’s not just his eyebrows that have been worked on.
“Are you wearing eyeliner?” I ask.
Grinning, he says, “It’s actually called guy-liner and it totally makes my eyes stand out, right?”
“Yeah, they’ve definitely got presence. What happened to you?” I ask, forgetting I’m not supposed to know him. “I mean, everyone else is well…normal. I mean, no one at this school is normal, but they’re not like you.”
“Go ahead and say it, everyone at this school is so perfect you find yourself both bored and constipated. Me, too!”
Like the old days, I’m laughing at how much he can’t stand these people. “Not everyone’s perfect,” I say. “Besides, looks aren’t everything.”
“Unbelievable,” he says, “you’re beautiful and enlightened. Now, if only you had some edge to you…”
“I’ve got edge.”
“That’s what every girl without edge says,” he teases.
Among other things, last semester I started a food fight the likes of which no California high school has seen in years, and though I consider making a second run just to prove I’m not the little prude everyone’s accusing me of being, it just wouldn’t be the same. Suddenly I’m looking for a way to prove myself, but then I realize what he’s doing: he’s trying to get me to sell myself to him. Usually girls are rejecting him, now they’re working for his acceptance. OMFG. Brilliant!
“You really don’t know me,” I say, barely able to keep from laying out the list of my more notorious stunts. “But if you did, we’d be besties for sure.”
“That may be true, but being white and doing your makeup like you’re from Mexico City doesn’t qualify you as having edge.”
“Neither does cutting your hair and wearing girl’s makeup,” I counter.
“Touché,” he says. “What do you drive?”
“An Audi S5.”
“First off, that car is a rolling orgasm, and seeing you behind the wheel would make most guys lose their wads, but I just don’t go for that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, so what do you drive?” I ask this knowing back home his father bought him an Escalade when he turned sixteen.
“I just sold my Escalade and bought a 1941 Cadillac Hearse. It’s custom painted matte black with thick white walls, custom cathedral doors and all rounded edges. It’s dark and unique and it has everyone talking. Unlike your Audi. Which only you’re talking about.”
I remember seeing it in the parking lot when I first got here. I thought it was some leftover prop from someone’s Halloween party, but apparently not. “That’s the one with the bumper sticker that says, ‘I see dead people?’”
“The one and only.”
“I have to admit, you driving a hearse, it definitely has me thinking twice about you.”
“Yeah,” he says, “how so?”
“It’s tasteless, but in a good way. Like maybe it fits this new persona of yours.” For a minute there, I find myself smiling at who Brayden has become and it’s quite exciting to witness.
“It’s not a persona. It’s an avatar.”
So this must have been his father’s Christmas present to him. A new identity. “I asked around and someone said you used to be part of the ugly squad.”
“Janine’s ugly six,” he says.
“What happened?” I say.
“I met a man who changed my life.”
3
My fourth period Investigative Journalism class is interesting to say the least. I expect some sort of assignment like last semester’s assignment, where we visit a local cemetery and do a biography on a random gravesite, but it isn’t as interesting. Maybe I missed the announcement on this semester’s assignment. It would be easy considering I missed nearly a month of class. I make a mental note to talk to Professor Rhonimus after class. We are still talking about the recent silencing of true investigative journalists and how it’s making it easier to spread propaganda when the bell rings. The thing is, my teeth are absolutely swimming right now, so rather than talk to my Professor, I hurry off to the nearest bathroom to pee.
My fifth period class, Branding and Media Relations, taught by Astor Academy’s resident Fashionista Barbie (as evidenced by her bony shoulders, her Miracle Bra tits and her elegantly styled black hair) is all about branding yourself. Professor Coralyn Justice talks about Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj. She says, “The first thing you have to do is change your name.”
Okay, check.
“Then you’ve got to change your appearance.”
Check.
“Then you need to get into the public eye and into as many venues as you can. You need exposure.”
Uh, no. Looks like Savannah, or Abigail, is never going to be a brand name. I don’t exactly drift off to sleep at this point, but I do start daydreaming a little. Daydreaming about boys. About kisses. About fifty shades of Damien. Or maybe fifty-one shades of Caden.
Am I the kind of girl who wants to be tied up?
Maybe.
I think about being spanked and my temperature spikes. Holy sh*t, I have to stop thinking like this! Squirming in my seat, the heat building in lower, more private places I try not to consider, I do everything in my power to think about my friends, my frenemies, Gerhard. If there’s anyone who can flip my sexual switch off, it’s Astor Academy’s own Dr. Frankenstein.
When the bell rings and Professor Justice dismisses us, I’m thinking about the day and I’m like, okay, so far so good…
Then I hit sixth period Psychology, and that’s when everything changes. His name is Professor Jake Teller. My hottest teacher ever. The way fat guys have their eye on all the desserts at an all-you-can-eat buffet, that’s how I’m looking at Professor Teller.
Jake.
I had him last semester, and he was smoking hot then, but now, everything about him seems sexier, more seductive. Like the man I knew in black and white last semester is now in hi-def color. We’re talking early twenties, Godlike physique and dressed to the nines, like he screws royalty on weekends and holidays. I feel myself salivating. I imagine licking his neck, his lips.
How Miss LeBeau was having an out of body experience earlier, that’s what it must look like to others, me falling in lust with my freaking Psychology teacher.
I feel overwhelmed by my new DNA. He’s looking at me, and I’m not exactly looking away. The sexualized, irrational part of myself that is out of control and not really my fault, she’s got stalker eyes and absolutely zero discretion. Then it hits me and I’m like, WTF?—get a hold of yourself!
I blink myself back into the world and that’s when my regular old self has the good sense to drop the Jeffrey Dahmer vibe and just be a decent human being for like ten seconds.
“You must be Abigail Swann,” he says, greeting me warmly like he did last year when I was all dimples and grease-slicked blubber. “Welcome to Psychology.”
“Thank you Professor Teller,” I say.
“Everyone calls me Jake,” he says with the kind of charisma that makes every other girl in the room sopping wet.
“Okay, Jake,” I hear myself say.
“Why don’t you see me after class, and I can get you caught up on what you missed.”
“Sure,” I say, trying to act like it’s no big deal when it’s a very big deal. After all, he’s a man among boys, and so very, very yummy. At this point not even thoughts of Gerhard can stay the nymphomaniac evolving in me.
Note to self: wring Gerhard’s neck for doing this to me.
Jake talks about how understanding a person’s motivati
ons in life, in love, in their career, can allow you to lead them where you want them to go.
I raise my hand and say, “That sounds like manipulation.”
“It’s only manipulation if you’re using it to intentionally harm someone. If you’re using it to better understand a person, then the argument can be made that it’s simply an enlightened form of communication.”
“So it’s circumstantial then.”
“Most schools teach Psychology under the guise that it provides a means of understanding and helping people in their recovery, but here at Astor Academy, this course teaches us to understand people and human nature so as to affect a desirable outcome, no matter your motivations. For men, it’s usually power, money and women. For women…well”—and this is where that incredible smile melts all of us lusting females—“I won’t pretend to understand all the things women want.”
This gets everyone laughing, and at this point I’m probably thinking the same thing every other honey pot in class is thinking: will he break the rules and date a student? Looking around, I’m the best looking girl in class. I can’t exactly take credit for this because I’m a GMK (Genetically Modified Kid) and everyone else has God and their parents to thank or blame for what they look like. Anyway, the point is, maybe I have a chance. Or maybe he has a girlfriend. Oh, sweet Jesus, I pray he isn’t gay. Or a freaking rule-follower.
These days, you never really know.
At the end of the hour, after everyone is dismissed, I head to the front of the classroom where Jake is waiting for me. He says, “What did you think of your first class, Miss Swann.”
“Please, call me Abby.” Jesus, did I just say that?
“Okay, Abby.”
“I liked it.” I’m about to say more when my gosh damn mind goes blank because inside my head I’m envisioning us naked together. I start to sweat and that’s when things fall apart.
“You look a little red in the face,” he says, a knowing look in his eye. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, I’m just going through, I mean getting over, some weird…I don’t know, travel sickness? Or something? No! I don’t mean I’m sick. It’s just…maybe I had the flu recently?”
Good God, is this crap really coming out of my mouth right now? He’s smiling, watching me get flustered, not understanding that which cannot be understood.
“What I mean to say is, well…you’re really hot Professor Teller, and though I feel bad saying this out loud, I sound like an idiot trying to think up an excuse and it’s embarrassing. Holy shit, did I really just say that out loud?”
He nods, grinning even wider, and that’s when my feet can’t decide whether to stay or go, so I apologize and leave quickly, remembering in the hallway that he was going to catch me up on my homework.
Sh*t, sh*t, triple s-h-i-freaking-t!
Not a Decent Drop of Blood
1
I don’t really have any friends, and the way my body just about jumped Jake Teller without my mental consent, I have GOT to see Gerhard. I head straight to his office, not even paying attention to Caden Reynolds as he calls my name like three times. I burst into the office thinking my panic is a thing other people can taste. And by other people, I’m talking about the two semi-ugly boys sitting in the waiting room practically undressing the lovely, mysterious Russian block of ice with gorgeous amethyst eyes.
“Now what?” Nurse Arabelle says, forgetting she doesn’t hate me anymore. She’s reading one of her romance novels, which she has to put down on my account.
“Aren’t we supposed to be friends now?” I ask. Her eyes clear, like the sight of me initially rendered her amnesic to that fact, but only momentarily.
A smile breaks through the chill and it has a warming effect on the thirty-something robot goddess. I feel my own expression changing to match hers.
“I forget sometimes these things,” she says with a low, hearty laugh, something you almost never hear from Russians, except maybe Netty because she’s been Americanized. “What I can do for you, Abigail?”
I kind of lean in and say, “My hormones are all screwed up.”
“How do you mean?”
I look over my shoulder and the two boys are checking out my ass, and maybe eavesdropping.
Speaking in even lower tones, I say, “I want to have sex with everything in sight, but that isn’t me. Whatever Gerhard did to me, I need him to make it stop.”
She leans forward and says, “You are like lots of other girls here, Sava…I mean, Abigail. Many young girls like sex for first time at your age. Some try it when they are much younger.”
“Nurse Arabelle,” I say, very serious, very quietly, “I want to kiss you right now and I’m not even close to being a lesbian. Whatever’s going on with me isn’t natural.”
Her skin blushes and—reclining back into her chair—she gives a nervous, almost broken laugh. “I will now get him.”
2
I sit down beside the two boys and the way they’re looking at me, I feel like a piece of meat. Finally I turn and say, “So what are you in here for?” and I can tell these two freshmen are like, mum’s the word.
Both of them look at each other, then shrug their collective shoulders.
I’m about to say something when the door to Gerhard’s back rooms opens up. Looking up, my eyes find the man who has brought me so much beauty and so much pain. You’d think ours a love/hate relationship, but mostly we just hate each other. In fact, I’m sure if he could, he would kill me. Or not. Who knows? He had the chance to let me die recently, and here I am, so…
“I trust you have not angered Nurse Arabelle this morning?”
Am I that bad?
“We’re best friends, Dr. Gerhard. Ask her.”
He looks over at her and she’s reading a romance novel on the sly. His eyes returning to me, he says, “Well this is an improvement.” Nurse Arabelle looks up and I smile, easy, genuine.
When we walk back into his office, I sit down at his desk and say, “I think she’s warming her pearl pit for you doc, with the romance books I mean. It’s how girls do porn. We read it.”
He sits down, looks at me with a frown and says, “Don’t be preposterous.”
“I’ll be whatever you like, but one thing I won’t be is naïve.”
To that he lets out a boisterous laugh that goes on so long I have the gumption to be offended.
“Thank you,” he says, tears shining in his eyes, “I needed the laugh.”
“My hormones are out of control,” I say, angry he finds me humorous. I like him better when he’s seething.
“Why do you say that?” he asks, retrieving my file.
“Because I am…um…I’m sexually charged in ways I don’t understand and it has me looking at my…classmates—boys, I mean, not girls—as things to…satiate my sexual appetite, and not as people.”
“Well, Miss Swann, there comes a time in a young woman’s life—”
“Don’t give me the birds and the bees speech. I know what sex is and I know what a sex drive is. The one I have, the sex drive, it’s not mine. You need to make it stop.”
“Do you know why you are so aggressive?” he says, reclining in his chair, a glint of sadistic humor sitting like heat in his eyes.
“You’re the mad scientist, Wolfgang. Why don’t you enlighten me.”
“I spliced genetic material into your new makeup, material common to alpha males. You have elevated levels of testosterone and the tendency for aggressive, domineering behavior. One of the three donors I used to make you who you are is a man.”
“Oh dear God, you didn’t,” I hear myself say, breathy, stunned.
He snickers, pours himself a shot of Vodka. The way his hair is a little longer, and his smile shows off those teeth, he’s hitting a creep creep creepy factor of ten.
He shoots the Vodka, then wiping his upper lip, says, “Your father and I spent a great deal of time mapping out your genetic coding this time around. Not all of it, of course, but the key att
ributes. This is why you needed more than a month in stasis. He wanted you to be gorgeous like a woman, but driven like a man. Your father is going to leave you his estate once he passes and it’s important for you to build upon it rather than squander it.”
“Why would I squander it?”
“Because you’re a girl, and girls aren’t very good at business.”
“Says the chauvinistic Nazi.”
He laughs again, this time a low chuckle. “You are an amusing girl, Abigail.”
Tired of arguing with him, of not having my body right, I exhale loudly and say, “Can you adjust my hormones before I become the resident nymphomaniac or not?”
“Are you going to threaten me if I say no?” I just stare at him, cold but distant, unflinching and unafraid. Finally, he says, “Let me see what I can do.”
“Do you need anything from me? A stool sample? Fresh urine?”
A look of amusement lights his eyes and he says, “I have everything I need.”
“When?”
“Two days. Perhaps three at the latest.”
“I hope I’m not pregnant by then,” I say with a fair amount of resignation.
“This might be a good time to work on patience and restraint,” he says, closing my file. The bastard doesn’t even look at me when he says this.
“Where are my friends?” I ask. The sharpness in my voice has officially returned.
He glances up, holds my eye for a long time. “Confidentiality is critical in matters such as these,” he says. “If you are not family, you have no right to such information.”
“They say when the asteroid hit the earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, only the cockroaches survived.”
“What a curious thing to say,” he says, looking up at me with a frown.
“My point is, it seems you’re safe from asteroids.” When he fails to look entertained by my very clever insult, I say, “Tell me where my friends are and I’ll be a saint when it comes to the confidentiality agreements.”
“No.”
“I’m tired of blackmailing you, you stubborn prick, but I’m also tired of you being so gosh damn difficult. Why can’t it just be an easy relationship for us?”
