by K. M. Hayes
Grass thrown at her on Thursday, telling her to eat it.
On Friday they gave up on being creative and knocked her lunch tray onto the floor.
On Monday, after Jake sat me down at their table for lunch yet again, I braced myself for whatever I would have to witness today. I hated seeing them do that to Skye—it brought back memories of every horrible lunch period I’d experienced—and yet I stayed silent. Sometimes I thought about sticking up for her, but I was too afraid I’d get made fun of, too.
And while life wasn’t perfect, I had to admit that it was nice not being constantly mocked at school. I hadn’t realized how often I was on edge until I didn’t have a reason to be. People would ask me something in class during a group discussion, and I’d prepare for my answer to be laughed at. But it wasn’t. Some people waved to me in the halls, and it still took me a moment to realize a fist wasn’t coming my way and I didn’t have to flinch.
In fact, Jake was laughing at my “skittishness” at that very moment. He ruffled my hair like I was his kid brother. “You’re like a little rabbit, dude. Calm down, no one’s gonna hurt you.”
“I am calm,” I lied. It wasn’t hard to spot Skye’s hot pink pony ears almost at the front of the lunch line. My heart raced as she stopped at the cashier.
“Sure you are.” Jake shook his head. “Anyway . . . so freshman tryouts are next week. You been practicing?”
I bit back my cringe. Jake had offered to help me practice a couple of times, but I really didn’t want to. Since he wasn’t getting my obvious attempts at avoidance, it was time to say it. “Look, Jake, you guys have been cool to take me in, but I’m not gonna go out for the team. Football is not my thing. Sorry.”
Jake pursed his lips, taking in this information. “Then what is your thing?”
“I . . .” Had no answer to that. Football and injuries had been my whole childhood. Middle school had been the aftermath of failing something I was supposed to have been good at. I’d spent so much time surviving that I hadn’t gotten to the bit where I figured out what I wanted in my life.
“Hey, Pony Freak!” someone yelled before I answered. Not even a football player this time, but a guy who wore punk clothes and sported a mohawk. I didn’t know his name, but I was pretty sure he and his buddies had some kind of band. “If you’re gonna wear costumes, can’t they at least be sexy ones?”
The guy’s friends snickered, and another joined in, “Do you wear pony underwear, too? How ’bout you show us?”
“Shut the hell up, Teagan.” Skye kept walking, her head held high. I had to hand it to her—she was strong as iron. She made it look as if nothing fazed her, and so far she stuck to her passion even when it made her a target. I admired her for it. I definitely didn’t have the guts to stand out like that.
Chapter 7
“SO MY PARENTS really want me to go to a private religious school.” Emma had found me at my table in the library. She had her fantasy book out—now almost done with it—and she would randomly start talking about whatever came into her head while reading. “They think public school is poisoning my soul. They might be right. I don’t know. I can never tell what is and isn’t evil and they seem to know so clearly. What do you think?”
In the last week, I had learned that Emma’s father was a pastor and her mother directed the church’s choir. They were very religious, which I didn’t have a problem with, but it was clear in everything Emma wasn’t saying that she didn’t share her parents’ devotion.
“Well, I wouldn’t do anything unless you felt strongly about it,” I said.
“That why you’re not trying out for the football team?” she asked.
“What?” I tore my eyes from my science homework. People were talking about me? They knew who I was? Of course they did, but I had tried to pretend otherwise. So much for that.
She blushed. “It’s just . . . people were talking about it in one of my classes. They heard you weren’t trying out—everyone figured you would ’cause your dad’s the coach.”
This wasn’t supposed to be my confession time. I didn’t mind her telling me stuff, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it to go both ways. “Yeah, that’s basically it. I hate football. For a long time I pretended I didn’t, but it got to a point where I couldn’t lie about it anymore. Mostly because I didn’t want to break any more bones.”
She smirked. “That bad, huh?”
“Yup.”
A flash of pink flitted across the window, and we both looked. Skye held more cloth, this time in a deep purple color.
“What is she even doing?” Emma said, bitterness in her voice but longing in her eyes.
I wondered the same thing. “You wanna go see?”
Emma’s eyes went wide. “No!”
“You do. You’ve been dying to know,” I said, hoping I wasn’t just speaking my own thoughts.
She pursed her lips, looking out the window. “I can’t. What if she sees us?”
“Us?” I pointed to myself. “I never said anything about me going. I don’t even know her.”
This was the wrong thing to say because Emma’s face lit up with an idea. And I wasn’t going to like it. “You should go! If you were walking down the hall behind her, she wouldn’t even notice or care! Then you could see what she was doing and come back and tell me.”
“What? No! I’m not being your spy!”
She stood up and grabbed my arm, forcing me to stand up. “Hurry! My mom’s coming soon. It won’t take you that long.”
“I’ll look like a creeper!”
“You will not.” She pushed me towards the library door.
I sighed. Emma asking this of me gave me an excuse to do what I’d wanted to for the last week. I pointed at her. “You owe me.”
“Fine! Go!”
And then I was in the hall heading in the Skye’s direction. It wasn’t hard to spot her cotton candy pink clothes as she rounded a corner and disappeared. I sped up my pace now that she wasn’t in view. The halls were pretty much empty; one other person came towards me who I didn’t recognize.
I turned where Skye had gone. The school was still a bit unfamiliar since I’d only been there a week. I hadn’t had any classes in this area, and as I passed windows filled with splashes of color I realized why—this was where the art rooms were. As I peeked in a few windows, I wondered how I’d gotten into this at all. I did feel like a creeper, snooping around someone I had no business with.
She wasn’t in any of the rooms anyway.
I was about to give up and tell Emma I lost Skye, but a sound echoed through the hall at that moment. I wasn’t sure what it was except that it sounded like a machine, which seemed out of place for the art hall.
Following the sound, I ended up next to an open classroom door. My heart raced as I tried to see who was inside without being spotted myself.
It was Skye.
She was hunched over a sewing machine, her back to me, guiding fabric under the fast-moving needle. A moment later the sound stopped, and she cut threads off the fabric. When she held up her work, I realized she was making a dress similar to the other ones she’d worn.
So she’d made all those things? That must have been a lot of work . . . a lot of work to get mocked every day.
She grabbed a pincushion, folded the fabric over, and pinned it, completely immersed in her work. I found it fascinating and was a bit envious she had found something she loved doing so much that no other opinion mattered.
Because I watched her, I didn’t notice someone else was in the room.
An older woman with short, gray hair popped into view. A teacher maybe? I jumped back, startled, and she smiled. “Can I help you, young man?”
“Oh, uhh . . .” Behind her, Skye had turned and spotted me. She did not look happy. “No, I was just passing by and heard the noise. I didn’t realize what it was and was curious.”
The woman laughed. “Never taken a Home Ec class?”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”
; “And your mother doesn’t sew?”
I shook my head again, wanting badly to get out of there because now Skye stood with her arms folded. I had a feeling I’d be on the bad end of her biting comebacks if I didn’t leave soon.
“Sewing has become a lost art.” The woman sighed, looking back at Skye. “Well, not to all. Luckily.”
Skye gave the woman a happy smile and turned her scowl back on me.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said, turning quickly to make my way back to the library. I got halfway down the hall before I heard footsteps.
“Hey!” Skye yelled.
My stupid feet stopped. I should have kept going—part of me wanted to. And yet another part was honestly too curious for my own good. I turned around, and there she stood in all her pink glory, the happy yellow and blue balloons on her skirt a stark contrast to her furious gaze.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she spat out.
I looked to both sides, as if a good answer would appear to save me. “Um, walking?”
This reply did not improve her attitude. “Are you spying on me for them?”
Them? Well, I was spying for someone, but clearly she did not suspect Emma. So I ran with that. “Them who?”
“Your stupid little football team, duh.” She pointed at me, looking me over like I was dirt. “You can tell them that sending the runt of the litter isn’t gonna work. It’s way too obvious.”
I blinked a few times, connecting the dots. “So you think the football team sent me to stalk you and find more ways to make fun of you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. I may not be popular, but even I know who you are and what side you’re on. Go tell your buddies to leave me the hell alone, okay?”
Skye stomped off without waiting for my reply.
I was stunned. Hurt, even. Not because she was totally wrong, but because she saw me as one of the bullies. Me. The one who was at this school because his parents wanted to spare him four more years of torment. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t like that. I wanted to say I understood what she was going through. But it felt wrong when I had watched her get bullied and hadn’t spoken up about it.
Emma found me before I got back to the library. “There you are! What took so long? I gotta go, like, right now.”
“Got a bit turned around, sorry,” I lied. “She was sewing in the Home Ec room.”
Emma raised an eyebrow. “Sewing? That’s it?”
I nodded.
“That’s weird, though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t know she could sew.” Emma grabbed her backpack straps, looking sheepish. “I gotta run, but thanks. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Got nowhere else to go.”
She waved as she headed for the school doors. I went back to my table at the library. While I tried to do my homework, knots grew in my stomach. All I could think about was how Skye thought I was a bully. Was I a bully by association? By silence?
Maybe I was.
And yet the thought of changing it scared me even more.
Chapter 8
FRIDAY NIGHT WAS pizza night at Quincy’s house. I always made sure to be there. Good pizza was hard to get this far out of town. No one delivered, so Quincy’s dad would drive out to get three large pies to last through the weekend. Mrs. Jorgenson did not cook on the weekends—said she deserved to have a break, too.
“I’m back!” Mr. Jorgenson called from downstairs.
“Sweet!” Quincy paused the game. We rushed downstairs, my mouth watering by the time we sat down in front of the boxes. The pizza was always a tad cold, but it never mattered because it was the good, greasy stuff, not a frozen or homemade pie.
After a quick grace, we dug in. Quincy handed me three pieces of pepperoni and sausage, my favorite, and grabbed some plain old cheese pizza for himself. He was picky like that, didn’t like anything “too intense” in flavor.
I took a big bite. No matter how many pizza Fridays I crashed, I never got tired of it. “Mmm, thanks for having me again.”
Mrs. Jorgenson smiled. “Of course, Drew. Wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“We’re used to feeding all our boys,” Mr. Jorgenson said. Quincy had three older brothers, two who were now married. “It’d be mighty lonely without you.”
“For reals,” Quincy said through a bite.
It was weird how I felt more at home at the Jorgensons’ than at my own house. I honestly didn’t even know what my parents and Holly did when I was here eating pizza and playing games with Quincy.
I was about to bite into my third slice when my cell phone rang. Pulling it out of my pocket, I stared at the screen in confusion. “It’s my dad.”
Quincy raised an eyebrow. “You gonna answer?”
I set my pizza down and hit accept. “Hello?”
“Hey, Son.” My dad’s voice was grumpier than usual. “So we just got a call from Holly’s sitter. She got a job and isn’t sitting anymore. We need you to come home and watch your sister.”
“What?” I babysat Holly once right after I’d turned thirteen. By the end of the night we’d torn the house apart fighting and my parents grounded us both for a week. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” He sighed, exasperated. “Look, normally we’d just stay home, but we have tickets to see a concert your mother doesn’t wanna miss. So I expect you home in ten minutes, or you’ll have her wrath to deal with.”
He hung up, leaving me with the command and no chance to argue.
“What’d he say?” Quincy asked.
“I have to go babysit Holly.”
Quincy’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “Come with me.”
“Hell, no!” Quincy ticked at the thought. “Your sister is crazy. And she always asks about my tics no matter how many times I’ve explained it.”
I sighed. Holly was crazy, an eight-year-old diva who thought the world revolved around her. She always tried to boss me around like I was four and not fourteen. “Aren’t friends supposed to have your back?”
Quincy held up his hands. “Sorry. You can’t guilt me into this.”
“She’s not that bad,” Mrs. Jorgenson said.
“Will you watch her then?” I asked. No reply. Even she was afraid of my little sister. I stood up from the table, knowing I had to get home although it was the last thing I wanted to do. “If I don’t come over tomorrow, call the police.”
Quincy laughed. “Okay. Good luck.”
“Yeah.” I trudged back to my house. Mom and Dad barely acknowledged me with the rush they were in, told me to feed Holly something, and then they left for their concert.
I approached the living room slowly, hoping to get a read on Holly’s mood before engaging with the beast. She sat on the couch wrapped in her baby blanket with her eyes glued to the television. It became my entire goal to keep her in this state for the rest of the evening—it was much better than talking to her.
I made my way to Dad’s recliner because I figured if I sat on the couch, she’d complain about me sitting too close to her. It had happened before, even with three cushions between us. Sometimes I even looked at her and was in the wrong.
Her eyes flicked to me as I sat down, and they narrowed. “You can’t change the show.”
I held up my hands. “I don’t even have the remote.”
Holly immediately scanned every surface in the living room, spotting the remote and pouncing on it. She wasn’t letting it go for anything.
I rolled my eyes. “Is that really necessary?”
“I know you won’t like my show.”
“Whatever.” I settled into the recliner for what would definitely be one of the longest nights of my life. Maybe I wouldn’t even make dinner and let her starve if she was going to be like this. The overly happy music ended, and Holly quickly started the next episode on our streaming service. In that quick flash, I realized she was watching the very show that caused so much trouble for Skye at school—My Little Pon
y.
As the episode loaded, the screen said “S3: E4 – One Bad Apple.” That meant Holly was in season three of this show. There were at least three whole seasons of these ponies, and who knew how many more?
The episode started with a tiny pony freaking out about meeting her cousin. Then it cut to this super peppy song about My Little Pony and friendship being magic and junk. My eyes were overwhelmed with the colors, but at the same time I couldn’t look away.
Some of the ponies had these things on their butts called “cutie marks.” Others didn’t have them and got teased for it by the mean ponies. The new cousin pony didn’t have a cutie mark, but instead of siding with the “blank flanks,” she started being mean to them with the jerk ponies.
That pit in my stomach over Skye grew about ten times bigger—I was that cousin pony. Okay, I wasn’t as mean as the cousin, but I could see the correlation. Although I tried to look disinterested, I watched in horror as the cousin pony, who was supposed to understand, tormented the little “Cutie Mark Crusaders.” I silently cheered on the Crusaders as they planned revenge and then felt awful when the older pony told them the cousin had been made fun of in her hometown for being a blank flank, too. She had come to visit to hide from bullies at home.
Just like I had gotten moved to a new school.
Why was the show being so . . . so real? I hadn’t expected to identify with any part of this cutesy, girly thing, and yet here I was, hoping this episode would give me an answer to my own problem.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders ended up saving the cousin and apologizing for turning into bullies themselves. They knew she had only been avoiding teasing. Then they made up and became friends. It looked so easy, but I wasn’t quite sure it’d work out like that in real life.
Holly went on to the next episode, and then the next, with hardly a pause. It turned out the older ponies were the real stars of the show, not the tiny ones. They were friends, but they were different. It made me curious—what were the previous seasons like? How did they become such friends? Now that I knew the characters, I wanted to know more.
I stood up abruptly, realizing that I was into the show. I could not like this show—it was a show for kids, for girls like my obnoxious little sister.
