Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ripley Harper

  There’s a pep rally for next week’s homecoming game going on in the cafeteria, so Daniel and I are hanging out in our usual spot, the tiny patch of lawn behind the senior parking lot.

  The past few days have been perfectly uneventful, which is kind of weird seeing that I’m now officially one of those weirdos who believe in conspiracies and secret societies and, um, magic. But the training I’m doing every afternoon with Gunn doesn’t feel that different from our more recent ‘finding-your-inner-power-and-developing-mental-strength classes, and everything else in my life has been just the same as always, so I’m not entirely sure if Gunn’s revelation has even really changed anything.

  It’s another lovely day, sunny and weirdly warm for this time of year. Daniel is lying flat on his back, shading his face with one arm and staring at the clear blue sky. He’s been in a strange mood all week—dreamy and melancholy and kind of absent—which probably means he’s been to see his mom again. I know better than to ask though. By now I’ve learned to pretend not to notice when he gets like this.

  He lights a cigarette while I get out my phone and start flicking through my social media apps.

  “Anything interesting?” he asks as he takes his first drag.

  “Hmm. Josh Bankson seems to be having a good day.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He wants a diving board—because he’s drowning in tits and ass.”

  A faint smile. “Tell me more.”

  “Let’s see.” I scroll down. “Amanda won’t let yesterday’s disappointments overshadow tomorrow’s dreams.”

  “That’s pretty sensible, actually. Maybe she’s finally getting over Jonathan.”

  “Yes. Pity she had to add this, though.” I hold out my phone so he can read for himself: like this if your a beautifull strong white woman who dont need no man.

  “Ooh. She just had to sneak ‘white’ in there, didn’t she?” Another smile, wider this time. “How many likes?”

  “Fourteen so far.”

  “What else?”

  “All the cheerleaders seem to think Joey’s new nail polish is the dopest. Ethan hates all Apple products with the scorching heat of a thousand suns. Cayden reckons that everyone in The Great Gatsby is retarded.”

  He grins. “All, perhaps, reasonable opinions.”

  It’s so nice to see Daniel in a lighter mood again. that I quickly scan through more posts, looking for good ones. “Brooklyn admits that she—what? Oh. Apparently she’s got a substance-abuse problem.”

  “Seriously? Brooklyn Davis?”

  “Yup.” I widen my eyes slightly. “She’s completely addicted to Jesus.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  He laughs. “Awesome. What else?”

  “Okay. Let me see… That weird kid Jeffrey Black reckons the day of reckoning is coming and we must all prepare to pay for our sins.”

  “Ugh.” Daniel pulls a face. “If anybody ever goes full Columbine at this school, it’ll be that kid.”

  “Don’t even joke about stuff like that.”

  “Who says I’m joking?” He puts out his cigarette and turns to face me. “Do you think there’s anyone who doesn’t secretly suspect that he’s stockpiling semi-automatic handguns in his grandmother’s basement?”

  “Dude.”

  “Seriously, if that guy hasn’t got a thousand-page ‘manifesto’ somewhere, or at least a rage-filled rant, shakily filmed and posted on some dubious Eastern European site, then I don’t know anything about human nature.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re being so calm about this. Doesn’t it creep you out, the way he’s always staring at you?”

  “You noticed that too? It’s not just in my imagination?”

  “Nope. He stares at all the pretty girls, but especially at you.”

  Annoyingly, I feel myself flushing a deep red. “You think I’m one of the pretty girls?”

  “Not this again,” he groans. “I’ve told you you’re pretty, like, a million times.” He takes another cigarette out of the packet. “I swear, if you’re going to start with all that girly bad-self-esteem shit again, I’m going to find myself some proper male friends right now.”

  I snort. “Yeah right. You can start hanging out with Josh Bankson, and then you can both dive into—”

  I stop speaking because Daniel suddenly makes a high, panicked sound. “Shit! It’s her.”

  “Who?” I look around to see what’s going on.

  “No! Don’t look now! She’s coming over. Oh God, I’m going to die. Just look normal. Don’t turn around. I said don’t turn around…”

  I ignore his dramatics and look over my shoulder to see Chloe crossing the parking lot toward us.

  Oh, okay. This should be interesting.

  Now, a lot of people at school think Daniel is gay, mainly because he’s smart, his best friend is a girl, and he hates all sports. But despite those surefire, tried-and-tested indications of gayness, the truth is that Daniel is straight, sexually frustrated, and hopelessly in love with a person so many miles out of his league that he’s likely to remain a virgin forever. (So obviously that’s another thing we have in common.)

  The way Daniel tells it, he first fell for Chloe when he was six years old and her parents moved into the house next door. She was a goddess even then, apparently, all dimples and lashes and cornflower-blue eyes, and although her first neighborly act was to ride over his pet turtle with her bicycle, he fell in love with her from the very first moment he saw her. (The turtle survived, apparently, but was never the same afterward.)

  As far as I can tell, after Chloe crashed into his life, Daniel’s own fate wasn’t much better than that poor turtle’s. Chloe was like some kind of enchantress and he was helplessly, hopelessly caught in her spell: when she snapped her fingers, he jumped; when she wanted something, he got it for her; when she needed him, he came, and when she got tired of him, he left.

  Because they were neighbors, Daniel spent a lot of time with Chloe when they were kids, playing Minecraft and riding bikes and watching YouTube—that kind of thing. She stopped hanging out with him somewhere during middle school, however, and after she started dating Jonathan Pendragon in high school, she hardly ever spoke to him again.

  But he’s never stopped being obsessed with her, the poor, lovesick fool.

  Today Chloe is wearing a pair of artfully ripped black jeans, a plain white shirt, and over-long shimmery-silver earrings, and she looks so sensational that I immediately make a mental note to put together a similar outfit. The effect is obviously not wasted on Daniel either, because when I glance over at him, he’s staring at her with such naked longing that I can’t bear it.

  “Stop it!” I hiss through my teeth. “Get a grip, Rodriguez!”

  “I can’t help it,” he whispers despairingly as she comes closer. “She’s just so fucking perfect.”

  “She’s not perfect; she just looks perfect. We both know she’s a total A-grade—”

  “Chloe, hi!” Daniel jumps up to greet her. For a second he leans in for a hug, but at the last moment he thinks better of it and steps away, clasping his hands awkwardly in front of him. “What’s the good news?”

  What’s the good news? I raise an eyebrow.

  He sends me a quick warning look, then turns to her again, his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Chloe.” I give her a brief nod, but I don’t get up.

  “Jess.”

  “What’s the good news?” I ask, completely deadpan.

  She frowns, clearly irritated. “There’s no good news. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Aren’t I the lucky one.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  Daniel gives a distressed little cough and sends me another, more urgent warning look: Be nice.

  I flick my eyes heavenward, then give a faint little nod. Far be it from me to ruin Daniel’s (totally imaginary) chances with
his dream girl.

  “What do you want, Chloe?” I ask, smiling as politely as I can.

  “I want to speak to you.”

  “In that case, your wish has come true.”

  “Alone.”

  “Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of Daniel.”

  She doesn’t even bother to argue. Instead, she moves a bit closer to Daniel and gives him a smile so sinfully seductive that his mouth falls open and he starts blinking slowly, like a fish. “Danny …” Her voice is a low, flirtatious whisper, and when he leans closer, she places an open hand against his chest. “Would you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes?”

  “Of course not! Anytime! I don’t mind at all!” he beams, almost falling over his feet in his eagerness to get away. “Nice to see you, Chloe. Don’t be a stranger.”

  And then, bless his poor, lovesick heart, he shoots a finger gun at her before walking away.

  I frown at Chloe as she sinks gracefully down onto the grass. “You shouldn’t play with him like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh please, like you don’t know.” I put my hand on her arm. “Oh, Danny, would you mind jumping off a cliff for me?” I ask in a fake whispery voice.

  She yanks her arm away. “So I asked him nicely. So what? Would you have liked it better if I’d ordered him to leave?”

  “There’s a difference between asking nicely and manipulating someone.”

  “You think that was manipulating?”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “No, you don’t.” She flicks her shiny dark hair over her shoulder, her pretty face stiff with contempt. “You don’t have the faintest clue what’s going on in this school; you never have.”

  I’m not in the mood to be insulted, so I turn my back on her, throw my stuff into my bag, and start to get up.

  “Sit down.” She grabs my arm, pulling me back down beside her. “I didn’t come all the way out here to Loserville just for the fun of arguing with you, you know. We found out who was behind that creepy website.”

  I shake my arm loose. “Really? Who?”

  “It’s kind of a long story. You know that weird kid, Jeffrey Black? It turns out—”

  The bell goes and she bites her full bottom lip.

  “Look, just meet me after school at Maggie’s house. And don’t be late.”

  Jeffrey Black has dark hair shaved so short you can see the exact shape of his skull. His eyes are spaced a little too close together, and his lips are thin and pale. His skin is pale too, and he’s so skinny you can see his shoulder bones sticking out through his T-shirt. He looks a bit sick, actually, because of the dark circles under his eyes, which are as black as bruises. Every now and then he makes strange, twitchy movements with his head, twisting it to one side as if he’s dodging an invisible missile only he can see. When he looks directly at you, which rarely happens, the expression in his dark-brown eyes is sad and wary.

  For the past fifteen minutes, Jeffrey has been telling me, Chloe, and Maggie how the Alphas are hatching a plot to humiliate us, plus Amanda and Taylor, at the homecoming dance on Saturday night. I’m finding the whole thing kind of difficult to follow, not least because of Jeffrey’s strange, emotionless tone and his refusal to make eye contact. But as far as I can make out, the plan basically boils down to the Alphas hijacking Principal Sweeney’s welcoming speech by replacing his trusty PowerPoint slides with naked pictures of the five of us, while at the same time sending the pictures to every single student’s phone.

  To be honest, Jeffrey’s story seems completely ridiculous to me, but unfortunately also just about cruel and childish enough to be true.

  “I don’t get it,” I say when he finally stops speaking. “Why would they do that? What did we ever do to them?”

  “I can’t tell you what their reasoning might be.” His voice is surprisingly deep and resonant, coming from such a frail chest. “I’m only telling you what I overheard in the gym last week. They didn’t know I was there, so they were talking openly, laughing and joking about it.”

  “What were you doing in the gym?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral and pointedly not looking at his skinny body.

  He looks down at his hands, which are lying palms down on his knees, awkward and lifeless like two dead fish. “I sometimes go there. There’s a spot at the back… If you sit on the floor, nobody can see you.”

  His pale skin flushes an angry purple red, and I suddenly feel really bad, like, almost sick, imagining what this poor kid’s life must be like. I mean, yeah, I’ve been picked on at school too, but Jeffrey Black has been hounded and humiliated and made fun of every day, for years and years, and none of us ever did anything to stop it.

  I certainly didn’t.

  I think back to all those lunches I’ve had with my friends, laughing and joking about our “loser” status at school, and I realize that I’ve never once seen Jeffrey in the cafeteria. Because he’s been in the gym. Hiding on the floor, in a corner where nobody can see him.

  “Who did you overhear?” I ask after a few awkward seconds of silence. “That day in the gym. Who was talking about it?”

  “Josh and Tyrone.”

  “Tyrone?” I frown. “You mean Ty?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” Another twitch. “Why do you look so surprised?”

  “I don’t know.” I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, but the truth is that I am. Maybe a little hurt too. “It just doesn’t seem like his kind of stunt.”

  Jeffrey gives me a bleak look, his eyes like flat brown buttons on his face. “I thought it was him who got you suspended a while ago.”

  “Yeah, he did,” I concede. “But afterwards he seemed genuinely sorry that things had gotten so out of hand. He even apologized.”

  Jeffrey gives a strange little smirk and for the first time I glimpse some real emotion on his face: pure hatred. “The problem is that those people can’t be trusted.”

  “I didn’t say I trusted him. It’s just that before he’s always gone for the ‘harmless fun’ category of prank, even when it was thoughtless or in bad taste.”

  “How’s this any different?” Jeffrey asks, absentmindedly biting his thumb. His nails, I see, are red and raw, bitten to the quick.

  “Well, for one, not all of the photos are fake. Some are real and are being used without the girls’ consent. That’s an actual sexual violation.” I shrug. “Ty just never seemed the type.”

  “I still don’t get how this is any different from his usual shit.”

  “It is different,” Maggie says, “because this time there are real-world consequences. Once something is out there, on the internet, it’s there forever. You have no control over who sees it: your pastor, your parents, even your future husband and kids. It’s there for the rest of your life.” She blinks a few times, quickly, and for the first time I realize that she’s far more upset about all this than she’s been letting on. “And it doesn’t even matter if the photos are fake. It’s still embarrassing. Humiliating.” She swallows visibly, clearly close to the point of tears.

  “I’m glad you told us about this, Jeffrey,” she says once she’s got her emotions under control, “but I’m sad, and really disappointed in those guys. I can’t believe they’d do something so hurtful and low; it just breaks my heart.”

  Jeffrey frowns, and I notice his fingers are now twitching too, as if he’s typing on an invisible laptop. “Okay, I get why you’d be upset. But some people would say the other girls deserve it for taking nude photos of themselves.”

  “Exactly,” Chloe says angrily. “I can tell you what’s going to happen—nobody’s going to do anything to those guys, especially not if Jonathan’s involved. But we’ll all be branded as dirty, whorish sluts and probably get expelled for bringing the school into disrepute. Never mind that half the photos are fake. Never mind that the rest were stolen. That’s just the way this place works. It should actually be our town’s motto: ‘We blame the victim and excuse th
e powerful.’”

  Her face is filled with such hurt and such anger that, for the first time, I wonder what happened in Chloe’s life to make her so bitter.

  “Do you know who else is in on it?” I ask.

  “The Alphas,” Jeffrey answers without hesitation.

  “Seriously? The entire football team?”

  “Nah. I’m talking about the real Alphas—the top males.”

  “There are real Alphas and fake Alphas?” I ask, confused.

  Chloe rolls her eyes all the way to the ceiling, as if I’d just said the stupidest thing in the world.

  “No,” Jeffrey says solemnly. “You can’t fake it. You’re either one or you’re not. And it’s not enough just to make the team.”

  “So who are we talking about then?”

  “The real Alphas are guys like Jonathan and Josh Bankson. Yeah, they’re athletes, but they also have good looks and status and expensive clothes and everyone’s respect.”

  I pull a face. “Who the hell respects Josh Bankson?”

  “It’s not that kind of respect,” Jeffrey says, and I notice that his earlier twitching has disappeared. For the first time since we started talking he seems animated, almost normal, as if he’s enjoying the conversation. “What I mean is that he gets invited to all the best parties and he drives the best cars and he dates the hottest girls. It’s about status and prestige.”

  “The guy is a total Neanderthal! A stupid, mean-spirited jock who can hardly spell his own name!”

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter,” Jeffrey says, scowling. “Only popular kids have a say.”

  “My opinion matters to me,” I mutter. I catch Chloe’s impatient look. “But, whatever. Who else is in this ‘extra-special’ Alpha group?”

  Jeffrey looks at Chloe for confirmation before counting them off on his fingers. “Jonathan, obviously. Ty, unfortunately. Ethan Parker. Ricky. Cayden, probably. And Josh. That’s the real in-group in this school; the genuine Alphas.” He says it with something very close to admiration.

  “And they’re the only ones in on this?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “What do you think?” I ask Chloe.

  She pulls her mouth into an unhappy pout. “I think a bigger group wouldn’t have been able to keep it a secret. Those photos are just too juicy not to share. Somebody would have leaked it; it would have been all over people’s phones by now.”