by Anita Oh
“Besides,” he said, “anyone who’s ever met you would realize that it’s not really you posting that stuff. You’re not the kind of person to hold back on saying something directly.”
I shrugged and edged my way into the clearing. “You seem to be the only one who thinks that.” I wasn’t sure how close to him I could get. Things felt natural with him, so much so that it was strange. We hadn’t really spent time together since before he had vanished, not really, so much had changed between us that it shouldn’t feel so easy to be around him. I wasn’t sure where the boundaries were with him anymore, because before there hadn’t been any at all.
“I’m not, and anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t worth your time.”
“That’s a nice concept,” I told him. “You can put it into practice next time everyone you know turns against you and let me know how it goes.”
He flinched. I felt a bit bad, but not very bad because really, it wasn’t about him and if he actually cared, he could’ve shown it a bit sooner.
I sighed and turned away. This conversation was pointless and confusing. My feelings about Sam seemed to change each time I took a breath. I loved him and wanted to be close to him but I had all this pent up resentment as well. There were all those issues with our parents and families and everything was just too complicated. I just wanted to rewind back to the time when we’d just been Lucy and Sam, and everything had been good and simple. I’d been there for him and he’d been there for me. We’d been like one mind sharing two bodies, I’d always known what he was thinking and feeling. He was a mystery to me now, a stranger. I didn’t like it and I didn’t really know how to deal with it.
“Lucy, wait,” he said.
I hesitated but didn’t turn back.
“I just wanted you to know…”
I sensed him get up, move toward me, but I still didn’t turn back.
“I’m working really hard to get myself under control, to control my powers, so that we can be… So I can be your friend again. I know I haven’t been there for you but I'm trying my best.”
I could feel the heat from his body, and I wanted to lean back into it, but I couldn’t. I had to be strong. He wasn’t ready and I knew that part of me wasn’t either. I nodded to show him I understood and then fled the clearing.
Chapter 5
Seeing Sam had given me a sense of perspective on things. It didn’t matter what all those vultures thought, if they believed I’d lie and manipulate and whore myself. If I let it get to me, I was letting the bullies win. I mean, I couldn’t help my initial reaction or feelings, obviously, but I could control my own thought process and actions moving forward, and I wasn’t going to spend any more of my time on this BS. I messaged my brothers to warn them and then I went to class. I really wanted to talk to Hannah. I was sure after she thought about it, she’d realize I’d never say those things about her, but I could understand her being upset and wanted to straightened the whole mess out.
Mr Porter barely looked up as I snuck in late to English class. I could probably not even show up to class and still get top marks, after everything that had happened, but that would do me no good in the long run. Hannah was hunched over her desk in the back corner. She didn’t look at me as I sat down, even when I tried to catch her eye. Mr Porter was talking about Jane Austen and her “feminist principles”, which I had very strong opinions about, but my friendship with Hannah was more important. I ducked my head, trying to get her to look at me, but she turned away. I twisted around in my seat, but she wouldn’t look at me, not even when I waved my arm out right under her nose.
“Yes, Miss Connor?” said Mr Porter. “Did you want to share something?”
I looked up, half out of my seat and limbs sprawled everywhere.
“No,” I said. “No, I really don’t want to share anything.”
“That’s not what your Twitter profile says,” somebody muttered.
I had a Twitter as well? Man, who even has time to make multiple fake social media accounts? If they have that amount of spare time, they should do something constructive. Get a hobby or go to Africa and build a well or something and leave me alone, sheesh. These people made me so sick with their judging me even though they had never even worked a day in their lives and just sponged off their parents.
Hannah still wouldn’t look at me, and the class settled down as Mr Porter went on with the lesson. As I sat there, silently disagreeing with everything Mr Porter said, I began to get super angry. I’d shared a room with Hannah for months, surely she should know me well enough to know those posts weren’t by me. I didn’t see the point in shortening “you” to “u”, for one thing. I mean, how much time did you save with that? If you used predictive text, it was exactly the same, probably less because automatically you’d type the “y” and then have to backspace. Man, it drove me crazy when people wrote “u” instead of “you” because they were just trying to look as if they were all nonchalant when they were in fact full of chalance. They were chalant all over the place. Posers. It seemed as if she knew me at all, she would know that, it was like representative of my entire personality.
It was like she didn’t even care whether I had actually said those things or not, she just wanted to believe. Maybe she had secretly been hating me this whole time and was just looking for an excuse to end our friendship. The thought made me feel as if a super fat and sweaty man was sitting on my chest, crushing me and making my eyes water.
But when I looked over at her, even though she sat so her hair hung down, hiding her face, I could see that her cheeks were red and she was biting her lip. She didn’t look as if she was filled with a secret joy at getting rid of me, she looked as if the fat man was sitting on her too.
Mr Porter handed back our midterm papers, and then class ended and I figured that was my chance. Hannah tried to push past me but I caught her by the sleeve.
“Hold up,” I said. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all this BS, Hannah? Come on! You know me better than that!” I tried to catch her eye. “I thought we were friends.”
She ducked her head so that I couldn’t see her face and pulled her arm away, rushing from the room.
“You should just leave her alone,” said Fatima.
I spun around to see her standing behind me, staring at the paper in my hand, my English midterm, trying to see my grade.
“She has to know I didn’t write those things.”
Fatima shrugged, looking up at me though her eyes kept straying back to the paper. “I don’t think she cares, she’s probably realized you’re more trouble than you’re worth.” She gave up all pretense and craned her head to see my grade.
“Just ask if you care so much,” I said, annoyed at her for turning against me when I’d thought we were kind-of friends.
Her shoulders stiffened and she gave me a haughty look. “I know you got an A, you’re Mr Porter’s favorite.”
If I was annoyed at her before, it was nothing compared to the wave of anger that went over me at the implication that I didn’t work for my grades. It rose up in me like a fire and I took a step toward her.
“Come on, Fatima,” said Hannah quietly, standing in the doorway, resolutely not looking at me. “Let’s go to lunch.”
As I stared after them, watching them leave together, leave me behind. Even though I was angry at them both, it still felt lonely and awful being left there alone.
I’d even lost my enthusiasm for lunch. That had never happened to me before. I far preferred to eat my feelings. Feelings were delicious, especially if they came in the form of the little cheesy pastries on the lunch menu. There must be something seriously wrong with me if I was too sad for cheesy pastries. Maybe I was dying. I felt a bit as if I was dying, there was something hard and twisted buried deep in my chest. Like the fat man had grown talons and sunk them deep into my flesh. Maybe I was just sad because I hadn’t eaten. That kind of thing seemed possible, a vicious cycle of non-eating that made you feel sad and not hungry. Maybe pastries
would perk me right up. It seemed legit, so I headed to the dining hall despite my reservations.
I didn’t make it to the dining hall.
A group of students – it seemed like everyone in the school — waited for me out in the courtyard. At first I thought they were just milling around. I don’t know why anyone would mill around in the freezing cold but then I clearly didn’t understand much about the world if whatever was going on at this school passed for normal. They blocked the entrance to the dining hall, and for a moment I stood and waited for them to move out of my way. They didn’t move. Instead, they turned toward me, moving as one and reminding me eerily of that time they were all possessed by some bad juju and wandering through the forest like a bunch of animated corpses. I shivered.
I didn’t need this crap and I could get into the dining hall from the other entrance. I turned to leave but they’d moved to encircle me. Wow, that seemed ominous.
I looked around the circle, pressing in toward me. There was no good way out of this. I could either make a break for it, possibly forcing a physical confrontation, or I could wait for whatever this was to begin. Neither option seemed appealing. I zipped my bag up and slung it onto my back so that it couldn’t fall into the clutches of the evil mob.
The entire world seemed frozen, cold and inactive. I stared at everyone and they stared back at me, unmoving, as if waiting for a signal. I huffed. They were cutting into my lunch time and I wished they’d get on with it so I could go eat.
Then, finally, somebody stepped forward. I’d expected it to be one of the T-son fan club or maybe Astor or one of the other polo guys, but it wasn’t. It was Fatima.
Even though we hadn’t been on the best terms, I still felt it like a slap in the face. I could understand her standing up for Hannah or being jealous of my grades, but I’d thought underneath it all we were still more or less friends, that we were cut from the same cloth. But I was definitely not cut from backstabbing bully cloth.
Hannah was nowhere to be seen, but Fatima glanced back at the others as she stepped forward, at Olivia and Charlotte and Stephanie Von Whatsit, and I got it. Well, I didn’t really get it, but I saw what she was doing. She’d mentioned to me once before that she wanted to move up to the Green House, that she wanted the power that came with status and connections. She obviously saw this as her way in. Basically, I’d thought she was Hermione but she was Wormtail. Man was I a sucker.
When she looked at me, her eyes were cold, and I wondered how I’d ever counted her as a friend. There was no friendship in that look, no compassion. She’d be completely ruthless in dealing with me if it meant getting what she wanted.
“You’ve gone too far,” she said, in a loud, clear voice that carried across the courtyard. “I was one thing when you were just annoying and making an idiot out of yourself, but you’ve really upset a lot of people. You don’t belong here. You bring down the entire tone of the school and you need to leave now.”
A few people gave little cheers. I could feel all of their eyes on me, piercing me like ice picks. Bunch of jerks. They didn’t even know me, they didn’t know a single thing about me, but they thought they could dismiss me and treat me however they liked just because I was poor, because I wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. But what could I do? There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say that would change how any of them thought. I was completely helpless in this situation, I had no way of fighting back.
It made me so mad that tears sprang to my eyes. I tried to blink them away in case anyone got the wrong idea and thought that I cared what they thought. I didn’t care one bit. I just hated the unfairness of it all. I tried to be a good person. I did my homework and tried to be nice to people, even when I thought they were jerks. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t deserve this.
“You have to be kidding me. Are you actually crying right now?” Fatima rolled her eyes. “That’s not going to get you out of this.”
Charlotte stepped up beside Fatima, shaking her head at me. “Girls like you are the worst. You don’t know your place.”
The circle began to close in, and for the first time I really started to worry. Angry mobs were no joke when you were in the middle of one. They were going to lynch me for real and there was not one thing I could do about it. Man, what even was the point of having werewolf buddies if they never jumped in to rescue you at times like this. Sure, I’d been learning to fight but I was only one skinny girl. It would take a flame thrower to get these losers to back off.
Although it was only lunchtime, the day was already growing dark. Ominous clouds gathered over our heads, blocking the sun and lending to the apocalyptic atmosphere I felt with everyone closing in on me.
Somebody shoved me from behind and I stumbled forward, closer to the T-son brigade.
“You’re ugly and poor. Why do people like you even exist in this world?” said Olivia.
“You should just die,” said Charlotte.
Somebody grabbed me and that seemed to be the sign they were all waiting for. They converged on me as if they were one entity, only it was freakier than that time they were being controlled by magic because this time they were doing it of their own free will, each and every one of them.
Wow, I thought as they all started pulling at me, dragging me off my feet, people really suck a lot. I didn’t know what they were doing, if they had some sort of master plan, but I didn’t think it would end well for me. I mean, if a bunch of super rich kids decide to gang up and kill the poor scholarship kid, would anybody even do anything about it? They’d just bury me in the woods and be like “What? Lucy who? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and their parents would pay some people off and it would be like I never existed. Oh man, that sucked so much. Dumb rich kids and their dumb group murder.
I didn’t have too much time to think on it though, as they dragged me down the steps to the marble fountain. It was kind of painful and horrific, with people scratching and grabbing and poking at me. My legs scraped along the ground, and every time I tried to stand, somebody kicked my feet out from under me. They pulled my hair and laughed at me. It was basically Lord of the Flies and I was Piggy but I didn’t even have their stupid conch so I didn’t know why they couldn’t leave me alone.
When we got to the fountain, they pulled me to my feet. I thought about making a break for it. If I got to the gardens, I might be able to evade them. But as soon as the thought crossed my mind, somebody grabbed me by the hair and shoved my head into the fountain. Not long enough to drown me or anything, but definitely long enough for me to swallow some of that water and probably get E.coli. I struggled against them and they let me go. I stood up, gasping for air. Water dripped all down my face, in my hair and my eyes. I couldn’t see anything but I sure could see that I needed to get out of there before this went any further.
Despite my best efforts, my bag had been pulled off my back and dumped into the fountain. Literally everything of value I had in this world was in that bag, and I couldn’t leave it there, but Astor and one of the other polo guys stood between it and me. No way could I overpower them, big meatheads that they were. I had to rely on my special Lucy-specific skills to get out of this. I didn’t know what those skills were, apart from maybe eating. I couldn’t eat my way out of this one though. The only other thing I was good at was pushing on through the obstacles, and that seemed appropriate to the situation. I let out a mighty roar and launched myself at the polo jerks. They seemed a bit surprised and moved out of my way.
A few of the girls yelled and grabbed for me and I leapt into the fountain and grabbed my bag. I felt like I should’ve maybe stopped and made some sassy comment to them like people did on TV, but I had no words for the situation. Plus, they were already moving into action and I had no time to waste. I splashed my way across the fountain and jumped out the other side, vaulting a hedge in my haste to get away from them.
I could hear them closing in on me as I ran down the path, the thunder of thei
r footsteps and their jeering calls. I had been chased through these school grounds by rabid werewolves – more than once – but that wasn’t half as scary as being chased by entitled rich kids. Their thirst for my blood was palpable. If they caught me, I was done for.
My wet bag was heavy and dug into my side as I ran. My whole body hurt from being dragged across the courtyard, but I didn’t even think of slowing down. I had to put some distance between them and me. Those polo guys were fast though, and one of the smaller girls, I think she was a professional tennis player. She was like a whippet, and I could feel her nipping at my heels.
I turned down the path toward the Red House, feeling my heart grow a little lighter as I pulled away from them, just slightly. I might make it. I could lock myself in my room and wait things out. I’d explain things to Hannah and the world would go back to normal. Maybe I wouldn’t end up in a shallow grave in the woods after all.
I ran smack bang into the fence.
Dammit, I had forgotten all about Tennyson Wilde’s stupid garden rebuilding scheme. Why did he even need a fence around it? Didn’t he realize what a massive inconvenience it was to every single person ever.
They were so close behind me, almost close enough to touch. I kicked at the fence, wishing it was Tennyson Wilde, and – like magic, only less creepy and annoying – a gate swung open right beside me. I flew through it just as Polo Guy #2 reached out to grab me and bolted it fast behind me.
They rattled the fence, banged on it. It was high and sturdy-looking but I thought it probably wouldn’t take them long to break open that gate. They seemed pretty determined. I didn’t want to stick around until they broke through.
Tennyson Wilde’s mysterious garden was not actually a garden at all, I realized as I looked around. It was a forest. A bamboo forest. The bamboo stood just higher than my head if I was on tiptoes, and was evenly spaced around 6 feet apart, except for where a stone path ran through. Most of the bamboo was still just a single cane, but I noticed a few shoots had already begun to spring up here and there. There was a strong smell of compost, which I assumed came from fertilizer underneath the bed of straw that lined the forest floor. Why ever would you build something so potentially creepy in a place where creepy stuff kept on happening? Didn’t he know it was the perfect place for evil things to lurk? Well, obviously he knew that, being an evil thing with a fondness for lurking. That was obviously his whole reason for building it. It was also a breeding ground for vermin, probably. And not really a fun place to wander around when you had an angry mob after you. I jumped at every little shadow, every noise. Rationally, I knew that angry mobs weren’t particularly stealthy, and yet I kept waiting for something to reach out through the bamboo stalks and grab me. Seriously, the only thing that would’ve been creepier was maybe a cornfield. On a par, probably.
