Okay. That was strange, but there were things I preferred not to discuss either, so I didn’t push the subject.
Three weeks before school started last year, Fletcher knocked on my front door.
“Come here,” he said as soon as I opened it, and then he turned, expecting me to follow him. Annoyed yet curious, I hurried behind him. Fletcher took wide, swift steps down the street while I struggled to keep up with him, nagging him the whole way.
“Fletcher, what’s going on? Where are you taking me?”
He didn’t say a word as we walked, and I was almost tempted to turn and walk back home, but I had to know what he was up to. Finally, we stopped at the woods, not far from the spot Fletcher had come from the day of the bus accident.
He paused and took a deep breath before stepping amongst the trees. I followed, but now I was more scared than curious. Why was I following this weirdo into the woods? Why was he bringing me there?
The sticky summer heat made my dress cling to my body, and I longed to be back in my air-conditioned bedroom. An eerie feeling crept down my spine, making me shiver despite the warmth.
Something was off. The calming scent of pine had been disturbed by a sour odor I had never smelled before. The chirping chatter of birds and insects was noticeably missing. Nature going mysteriously quiet was never a good sign.
After a few minutes of walking, Fletcher stopped. He stood a few feet ahead of me, staring at something.
“Fletcher, what—” My stomach lurched, and I lost the words I was going to say. My ninth-grade algebra teacher, Mrs. Chin, lay on the ground. Only she didn’t look like Mrs. Chin anymore. She had been torn apart. The top part of her body leaned against a tree, and the bottom half was a few feet away. Her eyes, vacant and open, stared at the other part of her body as if wondering why it was so far away. Her intestines and other insides lay spilt somewhere in between.
Ms. Chin looked like one of the equations she used to challenge us with. Her body halves were equal parts of the gruesome statement.
I glared at Fletcher. He stared at me as if waiting for my reaction. Why had he brought me here? I wanted to punch him, but instead I turned and tore out of there.
At the edge of the forest, I threw up everything I’d eaten that morning. My mouth was dry, and my eyes burned as I continued to gag, but nothing else would come up. Once I caught my breath again, Fletcher stood beside me.
I shoved him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
He started to say something, but I didn’t want to hear it. I patted my pockets for my phone, but I had been so quick to follow Fletcher that I had forgotten to grab it.
I rushed toward the nearest store, Gerdy’s, with Fletcher on my heels asking me what I was doing. I ignored him. At that moment I wished I had never laid eyes on Fletcher.
A bell jingled noisily over my head when I whipped the door open. The three people in the store, Gerdy included, stared at me apprehensively.
“You all right, Arden?” Gerdy asked as I approached the counter. Her brown curls were pulled up in a messy bun as usual, and she was sweating as if she had been unpacking boxes.
I shook my head. I was definitely not all right. “No. I need to use your phone. It’s an emergency.”
Gerdy nodded slowly and then handed me a black cordless phone from under the counter. “Sure, honey.”
I grabbed the phone from her and dialed 9-1-1 for the second time in my life. The second time in a month. “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
“Yeah, this is Arden Moss. I just saw Mrs. Chin, the algebra teacher at Everson High, in the woods. She’s dead. Very, very dead.”
Gerdy gasped, and someone in the store dropped something made of glass that shattered. Gerdy ignored it and stared at me like she was waiting for me to tell her it was all a joke. I wished I could.
I told them where to find Mrs. Chin, then I hung up and handed Gerdy back her phone. She stared at me wide eyed. “Mrs. Chin?”
“Yeah. Uh . . . I have to go.” I split from the store as fast as I could. I wasn’t sticking around for the police to question me again. I wanted to get home and hide underneath my covers. I wanted to hide from whatever had done that to Mrs. Chin.
Fletcher, who had been waiting outside, followed me as I marched home.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said once we reached my yard.
“Done what?” I hadn’t meant to scream, but I couldn’t help it.
“Called the police.”
I wanted to shake Fletcher. Why had he taken me there? He was the reason I had seen that horrible thing I would never forget. “Why didn’t you call the police when you first saw her? Why did you come get me? Why did you have to show me that?”
His face softened, and he looked sad all of a sudden. “I-I just wanted to tell you it was okay. That I knew, but I would keep your secret, like you kept mine. I won’t tell anyone what you did to Mrs. Chin.”
Sirens blared from somewhere nearby. “What I did? Are you crazy?” I stared at his pretty face, trying to read him, but I couldn’t. “Maybe you did it. How did you find her? What were you doing in the woods? What were you doing there that day you got hit by a bus?”
He opened his mouth to say something, then stopped, then started again. “You shouldn’t have been the one to call the police. Someone else would have found her eventually. Now they’ll be suspicious of you.”
The phone rang loudly from inside my house. “What? Why would they be suspicious of me? Anyone with eyes can see an animal did that to her.”
Fletcher backed away from me, his eyes wide. “Yeah, an animal.” Then he turned away from me and raced toward his house like he was making an escape.
The front door swung open, and Mom stuck her head out. “Arden? They want to see us down at the station. What’s going on?”
I couldn’t answer her as Fletcher disappeared around the corner. I wanted to know what was going on myself.
That was the summer before tenth grade. When we went back to school, everyone was solemn, lamenting the poor teacher who’d been mauled by some vicious animal in the woods. No one had any idea why Mrs. Chin would have been out there to begin with or what animal had pulled her apart. The school built a small rock garden as a memorial to her, and we went on with our lives, writing it off as a freak, isolated incident. And it was, until the next summer rolled around and it happened again.
Chapter Three
This Summer
The Sunday night before the first day of school was always the most depressing day of the year. My season of freedom was coming to an end, and the next nine months of my life would be filled with back-breaking amounts of homework, barely edible cafeteria food, and kids who hated me simply for existing.
I spent each summer hoping to reinvent myself and become a better version of Arden Moss, one that would have friends, but that never worked out. Fletcher made everything about school better, but it would have been nice to have a couple of girls to hang out with, or someone who was somewhat normal. Fletcher was my best friend, but there were just so many things he didn’t get.
I stood in my bedroom mirror examining my first-day-of-school outfit. One of the things that kept me from having friends was the fact that I made my own clothes. It didn’t help that they weren’t normal clothes, usually long vintage-looking dresses, always with pockets so I didn’t have to carry a purse. My dresses looked like something Wendy from Peter Pan would wear.
It was just my style—what I felt comfortable in. I hated jeans and any kind of pants. They made me feel closed in and confined. A few years ago, Dad had given me a top-of-the-line sewing machine for my birthday, and I kept it down in the basement. Whenever I got the chance, I would hole myself up down there, listening to ’80s music on Dad’s old cassette tapes, and go to work on another creation. Creating—there was just something inexplicable about it. Taking a roll of fabric and turning it into something beautiful and useful was my favorite thing. It gave me a purpose, even if everyone else t
hought I was useless.
I wasn’t trying to be popular. To me, popularity seemed like a curse more than anything. I didn’t need people worshipping me or making a news story of my every move. I just wanted to be cool enough for Bailey to want to hang out with me again. If we were still friends, the two of us would have been in her bedroom right then practicing first-day hairstyles on each other. We’d been best friends from the second through eighth grades. Bailey and I had spent the summer before freshman year trying to give ourselves an upgrade. We had been losers in middle school. But we were determined to leave that behind in high school.
Something happened that I still can’t explain. It felt like the world flipped upside down and Bailey had become a totally different person. My family and I had gone on a two-week vacation to the Florida Coast, and when I came back, Bailey had suddenly become best friends with Lacey Chapman, the queen bee of everything. Bailey hadn’t kept her part of our promise—that no matter what happened, we would never leave each other behind. Bailey had left me behind and never looked back.
Lacey Chapman had given me my name, my school name—Dust. It happened the very first day of our freshman year in the girls’ bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror giving myself a quick check before the bell rang for first period. Bailey and I weren’t going to be hanging out because she’d been accepted into Lacey’s hive, so I needed to make a new friend. Still, my stomach dropped when Lacey and her minions, Trista Pimentel and Marley Madden, sauntered into the bathroom with Bailey in tow. Actually seeing Bailey with Lacey was a blow to my gut. It felt like she was cheating on me, but then I reminded myself that Bailey wasn’t my friend anymore.
Judging by her drastically upgraded appearance, she’d made some changes in her life, and they hadn’t included me. I imagined the girls spending hours in Lacey’s room making Bailey over. She’d always worn her raven hair the same way since I’d met her, in a shoulder-length bob with bangs. That day her bangs were gone, and her teased hair reached the middle of her back. I couldn’t believe her ultra-conservative mother had let her get extensions.
Taking a deep breath, I decided to play it cool. Twisting the cap closed on my lip gloss, I dropped it into my pocket. “Oh, hey, Bailey.”
“Hey,” Bailey muttered in a voice that was barely audible. The girls stopped in front of the mirror, two on either side of me. Lacey had been very strategic in choosing her worker bees. Each girl looked completely different. Bailey’s slick black hair, Marley’s thick red curls, and Trista’s dark-chocolate waves contrasted nicely with Lacey’s golden locks. Aside from that, all four girls were stick figures with boobs. I guessed I couldn’t talk much, since I was a stick figure without boobs.
Lacey dropped her designer bag on the metal shelf that ran over the sinks. “Oh, you can say hello to Bailey, but not anyone else? So rude.”
What would be the point in speaking to them? They would have ignored me anyway.
Paying no attention to Lacey, I gave myself one last glance over and headed for the door. Lacey stepped in front of me, looking me up and down. “Get a load of you. Someone’s got a little makeover since last school year. I don’t know what for.” She tugged one of my curls. “You think dabbing on a little makeup and throwing some curls in your hair is going to make you somebody? You are a nobody, and no matter what you do to yourself, you will always be a nobody.”
“Lacey, leave her alone,” Bailey said in an almost whisper.
“Shut up!” Lacey snapped. Bailey shut her mouth and turned back to the mirror, where Marley and Trista applied mascara and smirked.
Lacey glared at me. I had an idea of why she was so angry. It was my hair and makeup, or she wouldn’t have mentioned them. Lacey was low-key jealous of me. I fell in that weird space. Maybe not the prettiest girl in school, but pretty enough to make Lacey feel insecure, which was the real reason she hated me. If she hated me, that was reason enough for everybody else to.
I tried to step around Lacey, but she moved in front of me again. “You know what you are? Dust. Insignificant. No one sees you or pays attention to you. All you do is clog my sinuses and annoy the hell out of me. As a matter of fact, that’ll be your new name, Dust.” She went back to the sink to grab her purse. “Let’s go,” she barked.
Obediently the other three girls zipped up their bags and followed her toward the door. Lacey made sure to hip check me extra hard. I lost my balance and landed on the floor. My lip gloss and lunch money tumbled from my pocket.
“Bye, Dust,” Marley and Trista said in perfect unison.
Bailey offered me her hand as the others left. I allowed her to pull me up. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling as if I were the most pathetic thing she’d ever seen. I didn’t need her feeling sorry for me. “Just stay out of her way, okay?”
Stay out of her way? I had been in the bathroom minding my own business when Lacey decided to harass me. Bailey gave me a small hug and quickly ran after the others. By lunchtime everyone was calling me Dust.
Since then, the only contact I had with Bailey consisted of half smiles she managed to sneak in when Lacey wasn’t looking. I missed Bailey. Ninth grade had been a very lonely year for me, but then Fletcher and I became friends, and he made my sophomore year bearable. Now that we were beginning our junior year, I expected it would be just the two of us again, and I was actually okay with that.
I’d made my final decision to wear the dress I’d named Penelope. I gave names to all my dresses because everything important should have its own name. A sudden knock on my door made me jump. “Dinner, loser. Mom said now.”
My sister, Paige.
I quickly changed out of my dress and dashed downstairs. When my mother said now, she meant now. On the way down, Paige’s stupid cat, a black Siamese named Sheba, hissed at me, and I hissed back. That was routine for us every time we crossed paths.
Everyone was already at the table. My ten-year-old sister Quinn filled our glasses with water while Paige carelessly threw the silverware on the table. Paige was thirteen and starting the eighth grade. All summer she’d been bragging about finally being the big fish in the little pond.
Paige was popular and, from the sounds of things, the Lacey Chapman of Everson Middle. My sister sometimes knew things about kids at my school that I didn’t even know. There was nothing like hearing gossip from your little sister who didn’t even go to your school to let you know how far out of the loop you really were.
Dad looked at his phone as Mom placed the plates on the table. As soon as Dad’s plate hit his placemat, he put his phone away. Mom had a strict policy against phones or any type of technology during dinner.
Pot roast, potatoes, and carrots were our typical Sunday meal.
Paige and Quinn chirped happily about how excited they were about their first days of school. Quinn bragged about how she’d gotten the best fifth-grade teacher in the school and that all her friends would be in her class. I wished I could be as excited as they were. For me, it was just going to be another year of crap.
I stayed quiet, as I usually did during dinner, and dug into my roast beef while Mom and Dad discussed Dad’s upcoming business trip.
Looking around the table, I considered myself the Wednesday Addams in a family of Barbies. Mom, Dad, Quinn, and Paige were all blond with blue eyes, except Dad’s eyes were green. Their skin held a perfect golden tan except for in the winter. I, on the other hand, had hair black as coal with eyes to match. My skin was pale, and lately I didn’t tan so much as burn. Without me, my family looked like they belonged on a brochure advertising some magical family vacation.
Being the family oddball was one of the reasons Bailey and I connected back in the second grade. Bailey’s parents were White, and they had adopted her from China when she was seven. Obviously she looked nothing like her overprotective parents and often felt as out of place as I did.
Mom must have sensed what was on my mind. “Have you spoken to Bailey lately?” I immediately wished she would go back to talking to Dad. She al
ways asked about Bailey, hoping we would become friends again. Although I was hoping the same thing, I told Mom not to hold her breath.
I stuffed my mouth with roast beef so I’d have to talk with my mouth full because Mom hated that. If she was going to annoy me with questions about Bailey, I should be able to annoy her back. “Of course I haven’t spoken to Bailey. We haven’t spoken in almost two years. Why would that change all of a sudden?”
Mom pointed her fork at me. “Arden, do you think anyone wants to see your chewed food? Anyway, the phone works two ways. You don’t have to wait for her to call. Pick up the phone and call her. Maybe she’s waiting for that.”
“Mom, the Bailey-ship has sailed. She wants nothing to do with me, and I’m not going to chase anyone to beg them to be my friend.”
Quinn was making mush of her carrots, smashing them with her fork like she always did before eating them. “How come she doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I replied, trying not to sound defensive. I really hadn’t done anything unless you count going on vacation as an unfriendable offense.
“That’s right,” Dad said. “Sometimes when people grow up, they grow apart, that’s all. It’s a part of life.”
Thank you, Dad.
Mom rolled her eyes. “I disagree. When you’re truly friends with someone for years, you don’t just stop being friends for no reason.”
“Why is it so important for Bailey and I to be friends?” I demanded.
Mom shrugged. “I ran into her mother at the nail salon the other day and we got to talking.” I’d love to hear how that conversation went. “I just think she was good for you, that’s all.”
I knew good and well the only reason she wanted me to be friends with Bailey was because Bailey was popular and had a butt-load of friends. Mom hated the fact that I was a loner and spent all my time with Fletcher, who they had yet to meet because he refused to set foot in our house for some reason.
A Girl Called Dust Page 2
