League of Strays

by Schulman, L. B.

  Kade shook his head like he still couldn’t believe what had happened. “I was walking by Reid’s door when I heard him say that Richie should’ve been expelled. He was telling Harper he didn’t want Richie’s ‘kind’ polluting our school.”

  “His ‘kind’?” Nora let out a breath. “Whoa.”

  “He didn’t have the balls to say it to Richie’s face,” Kade said. “That guy has it coming to him. He can’t get away with treating people unfairly.”

  “Sometimes he watches us,” Richie added.

  “He thinks we’re lovers.” Kade’s lips curled into a seductive smile. “So we give him what he wants.” He circled an arm around Richie’s waist. Richie grinned and dropped his ear onto Kade’s shoulder.

  “Look at the charming couple,” Zoe said, pretending to snap a picture.

  The part that still didn’t make sense to me was how Mr. Reid could be such a jerk. Kennedy High was more or less a liberal school. But then Reid did seem a bit uptight and old-fashioned. He wore a tie to school every day, even in the summer. He was awkward, for sure—but a bigot?

  “It isn’t fair,” Richie said, lowering his eyes.

  Kade slammed the glass in his hand down on the bedside table. “Since when is high school fair?” he asked.

  THE INTENSITY OF THE MEETING MADE THE QUIET DAYS that followed seem painfully dull. In between classes, I searched through my locker, the pockets of my coat, the pages of my books.

  No notes. Nothing.

  Back in the orchestra practice room during lunch, I tackled Paganini. Thoughts of Kade and the League wove through the less-demanding parts, causing my hand to press down on the strings so hard that they left dents in my fingertips.

  By the fourth day of waiting, I was in a downright foul mood. I was on my way to speech class when someone tugged on the hood of my jacket. I wheeled around, prepared to unload on the offender.

  Nora leaned out of the language lab. “Hi, Charlotte.”

  I was shocked at how happy I was to see her. “Hola, bonjour, and guten tag.”

  “I was just wondering, well, have you gotten any … you know, correspondences?”

  “You mean notes? No, have you?”

  She shook her head. “Nada. OK, well, maybe you could let me know if you do.”

  “Sure.”

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder. Kade towered over us. “It’s fine to e-mail each other or meet after school, but please don’t speak in school.”

  “Why not?” I asked. Friends who couldn’t talk in school? School was when you needed them most.

  “I’ll explain later. Just trust me.”

  All I heard was later. When? I wanted to ask him. When was later?

  He released his grip, but his hand stayed on my shoulder. “We’ll meet at the bleachers at a quarter to five.”

  My heart started racing, even though there were four more hours to go. I felt my bad mood slip away like dirty water down the drain.

  “Actually, I have two tests to study for, thirty-five pages of reading to do, and an in-depth essay on the value of city curfews for urban teens,” Nora said. “But I can find time.”

  Oh, no, I thought as I reviewed my own schedule. Friday afternoons I had my viola lessons with Mr. Watson. “I don’t think I can make it today,” I told him. “I’ve got a private lesson.”

  Kade’s eyebrows shot up. He looked as if he’d never heard of a private lesson before. I was about to clarify that it was for my viola when he said, “OK, Charlotte, we’ll have to meet without you.”

  Meet without me? “Could we do it on Saturday or Sunday? I’m free anytime …” I blushed, realizing I’d just admitted that I had no plans on the weekend.

  Kade plucked his backpack off the ground. “It will never be easy to get us all together if we don’t make it a priority.” He started to leave.

  “No, wait. Maybe … maybe I could call in sick this one time.” I hadn’t missed a lesson with Mr. Watson in months. And people did get sick in February.

  “I really want you to be there,” he said. His uncompromising gaze caused my heart to leap in my chest.

  “OK. See you then,” I whispered.

  “Great!” He smiled and the dimple on his cheek made a special appearance.

  When he was out of earshot, Nora said, “Hot one minute. Cold the next.”

  Mostly hot, I thought, watching him tuck a thumb into his back pocket before fading into the crowd.

  “Charlotte, are you with us?” Mr. Holmquist asked.

  I forced my eyes to focus. “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s try again. Would you please identify the cause of the growing distrust between our two characters?”

  Which characters? What book? “Not really.”

  The kids who were still awake snickered.

  “Chapter sixteen will definitely be on the final—” The bell killed the rest of his sentence.

  I was making my escape when he called out, “Charlotte?”

  I muscled my way through the bottleneck at the door, pretending not to hear him.

  In front of the library, I pulled out my phone to call Mr. Watson. Thankfully his machine picked up. “Hi, it’s Charlotte. I’m not feeling so great. I have a sore throat. And a fever. And I’m pretty sure it’s contagious. So anyway, I can’t make my lesson today, but I’ll practice twice as hard for the next one, OK?”

  I went to the choir room to practice Schumann’s “Fairy Tales for Viola,” hoping it would somehow make up for the lie I’d just told. The piece was mysterious, a perfect match for my mood. Waiting for the League to meet again had been pure torture, and now it was almost over.

  Fifteen minutes later, I abandoned Schumann, my thoughts overpowering the music. I stretched out on the piano bench and imagined the kind of poem Kade might write for me one day. I hoped it would be like the one he’d written for that other girl, full of pure desire.

  By four thirty, the school was empty. Jocks had showered and left. Detention detainees had been released. On the way to my locker, I saw Nora. I slowed, Kade’s warning not to talk in school still hissing in my ears.

  We heaved our overloaded backpacks onto our shoulders and headed through the hallways, around the buildings, to the weed-strewn footpath that led to the football field. I didn’t say anything to her, not even as I climbed the bleachers by her side.

  A minute later, Zoe clomped up the tiers. “Hey, girls!” She dropped into the narrow space between us. “Ready for more intrigue?”

  Nora pulled out a fat textbook. She flipped it open, balancing it on her knees. “I’ve got to study for—”

  “He’s here,” I said breathlessly.

  Our heads swiveled to the left like synchronized swimmers. Kade and Richie were cutting a diagonal path up the bleachers. Nora shut her world history book, ditching it in her backpack.

  Zoe beat a drum roll on the metal bleachers. With her mittens on, it sounded more like the thud of a bass drum than a snare. “All rise for King Kade and his Royal Representative, Richie!”

  “How alliterative,” Nora said, rolling her eyes.

  I watched them approach, Kade bypassing an entire row with each long-legged step. When he reached the bench below me, he stopped. Richie almost crashed into his backside, then plunked down at Kade’s feet.

  “Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming.”

  “Listen, Harlin, about the name, League of Strays. Are you saying we’re like a pack of dogs?” Zoe asked.

  Nora crinkled her forehead. “Strays? Uh, I have a home.”

  “Or maybe it’s just a house,” Kade said.

  She leaned back, locking her arms across her chest.

  “I’ve seen you at school, Nora, wandering around, waiting for someone to pat you on the head,” Zoe said.

  “Whatever.” Nora’s mouth twitched as she fought a smile.

  Kade reached up, scratching her behind the ears. Nora growled, and we all cracked up. I was glad he hadn’t done that to me. I might’ve rolled onto my back with my legs in
the air, which wouldn’t have been pretty.

  “Anyway, I thought that after what I put you through last time, you all might want to ask me some questions,” Kade said. “Like a Q-and-A. You ask first, then I get a turn. Sound fair?”

  Zoe groaned, but I, for one, was game. What was he going to ask me? And how was I going to wade through the hundreds of questions in my head to pick just one for him?

  “So, are you going to come clean with us?” Zoe asked. She tried to stare him down, but her eyes slipped off his face like butter in a nonstick pan.

  What did she mean, come clean? True, Kade had a flair for the dramatic, but he’d already told us this was a friendship group. An alternative one, maybe, but sometimes you had to go with the flow. Try something different. And besides, this was more interesting than being holed up in my bedroom, reviewing vocabulary words from Macbeth.

  Kade didn’t ask what she meant. He looked at her, silent and pensive. Nora slid her ring on and off, on and off, on and off. I waited for him to speak, my breath shallow. The air felt as heavy as a humid summer day, even though right now my hands were a patchwork of red from the cold.

  Kade’s expression melted into laughter, punctuated by Richie’s titters. “I guess we have our first question and volunteer. I’ll tell you everything you want to know by the end of this meeting, Zoe. I promise. I just need to make sure we’re all committed first.”

  I was confused. Since when did friendship require a formal commitment?

  “Definitely,” Richie responded. I wondered sometimes if Kade had his arm up Richie’s back, making his puppet talk.

  “If you could do anything without getting caught, what would it be?” Kade asked Zoe.

  She pondered the strange question. “I don’t know, um, drop a bomb on Kennedy High?”

  I was the only one who cracked a smile.

  “God, kidding.” Her hair fell over her eyes, and she flicked it back. “Maybe I’d just burn down the school. That seems easier than making a bomb. I’m lousy with Internet instructions.”

  “I have a question,” Nora said. “Why can’t we talk in school? I mean, what’s the point of having friends if you can’t even sit with them at lunch?”

  “It’s important no one knows we exist. Not as a group, anyway. They need to think of us as single, powerless entities,” Kade said.

  Powerless? Against what? And who were “they,” anyway?

  “So Nora, what’s pissed you off in the last week?” he asked.

  “That you didn’t answer Zoe’s question,” she said. Zoe grunted a laugh, and Nora’s eyes flitted back to Kade. He wasn’t smiling. “OK, so I found a photo album of my sister and her friends. She made it when she was thirteen. I asked my mother if she’d seen it before, but like always, she changed the subject. The weather was more important, apparently.”

  “Maybe it hurts too much to talk about it,” I suggested.

  “Whenever Kelly comes up in conversation, my parents clam up. It’s like she never existed.” Softly, she added, “Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean I can forget her, even if I wanted to.”

  I touched her arm and she flinched, pulling it back. “So who thinks we should be let off campus during lunch? I’m going to start a petition.”

  As the others discussed it, I silently rehearsed my own question, zeroing in on the part that was most confusing to me.

  “Why did you pick us to be in the League?” I interrupted. Maybe Kade really did want friends, but I still didn’t get the logic behind this specific roster.

  “Because we’re perfect together. We’re loners. We know what it feels like to be teased, harassed, and ignored.” Kade studied me like he was deciding if I was worthy of the truth. I tried to meet his eyes, unflinching. He seemed impressed by my momentary courage, even if we both knew it was an act. “The purpose is to get back at those who deserve it.”

  I looked around. Nora was taking rapid breaths. Zoe sat on her hands, staring at Kade. Neither of them looked half as surprised as I felt.

  “Get back?” I asked. “How?”

  “That’s for all of us to decide together.”

  “Who do you think deserves it?” Zoe said.

  “Everyone we talked about,” Nora said.

  “You and Charlotte have something in common,” Kade told her. “That PE teacher and Tiffany Miller didn’t respect your dreams. They ruined them because they could.”

  Nora nodded. “They’re on a serious power trip.”

  “People can’t get away with bad behavior because they’re jealous or in a lousy mood or they want to look cool. Someone has to stop them.” Kade made this observation calmly, like most things he said, but I detected a simmering anger behind his words.

  “They cut us down so they can look bigger,” Zoe noted.

  “I’m not going to let Wanda get away with what she did to you,” Kade said. I saw a tear glisten in Zoe’s eye before she glanced away. Kade guided her chin back with a finger. “Things are going to change for all of us.”

  I guess I was the only one who’d fallen for the friendship bit. Maybe because I’d wanted it so much. Kade hadn’t been shopping for friends; he wanted to make a bigger statement to the jerks of the world. I felt embarrassed for believing that he might actually want to get to know me.

  “Charlotte?” Kade was looking at me. Maybe he was afraid I’d bolt. For once, his intuition failed him. I couldn’t go anywhere, not with his eyes fastened on mine.

  I nodded, doing my best to appear like this new information didn’t faze me. Kade brought a fist to his mouth, and I realized he was hiding a smile. I pursed my lips, annoyed that he could read my emotions so effortlessly.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I chose all of you because I like you,” he said. “But I also knew we could right some wrongs together.” His eyes were like a drill, burrowing inside me.

  “Maybe as a group, we could talk to someone about this. Someone who cares …” I found myself suggesting.

  “Not our parents,” Nora said.

  “Or teachers,” Richie added.

  “They never see what’s happening, even if they’re standing ten feet away,” Zoe said.

  “Unless you hit back,” Nora said. “Then you’re the one who gets caught.”

  “Not if you do it when no one’s looking,” Kade said.

  I turned his words around, looking for a chink in the logic. Revenge was wrong, immature. Everyone knew that. But I also knew that if I said that out loud, Kade would ask me to explain why. And I wasn’t sure how to answer.

  Nora raised a finger. “As the president’s younger brother, whom our illustrious school is named after, once said, ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’”

  “You’re a walking encyclopedia, aren’t you?” Zoe said.

  Nora laughed. “I’m trying to break the habit.”

  “What about karma? Won’t they get their punishment in, like, a spiritual sense?” I reasoned.

  “That’s just something we tell ourselves to make it feel better,” Kade said. “But we can be their bad karma, if that’s how you want to think about it.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “We’re going to have a great time coming up with creative ways to get our point across,” he said, folding his arms on his knees. “I suspect you guys haven’t had a lot of fun lately, but you deserve to. And the people who’ve stepped in your way need to get what they deserve, too.”

  “Um, does that include teachers?” asked Nora.

  I held my breath.

  “Madame Detroit can be first, if that’s OK with everyone. Then Dave Harper. And Wanda. And we won’t forget Tiffany.” He winked at me. I glanced away, but when I looked back, his eyes were still on me. “Subtle and swift, Charlotte. I bet you’d like to knock Tiffany off her pedestal.”

  “I’d like to see that,” Nora said.

  I nodded, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t make decisions quickly, which had always been my problem. I could see all sides to a story, which made it hard for
me to come up with a definite opinion. She lives in a bubble, her every move dictated by Mommy and Daddy. Kade had been right: I had no clue how I felt about a lot of things. Not even Tiffany.

  Kade straightened, hands intertwined. A king on his throne, surveying his subjects. “So, who’s in?”

  His face seemed friendly, serene even, as he waited for our response. Like a row of bobbleheads, Richie, Nora, and I nodded.

  Zoe didn’t move. I half expected one of her protests, but she stared ahead like she was hypnotized. Finally, she said, “What the hell, sign me up. Anything that gets me out of the house is good.” You’d think someone had just asked her to join a softball team.

  Kade slapped a hand on his thigh. “I knew you guys had it in you! You’re awesome. Completely and utterly awesome.”

  I felt a surge of pride, like when I was younger and my parents gave me double stars on my behavior chart for every A I brought home.

  Tiffany was a loser, I thought. Maybe it would be fun to return some of the favors she’d given me over the years. If I could only loosen up.

  “We’re anonymous, but powerful,” Kade said, shaking his fist in the air.

  “So that’s why we can’t be seen together,” Nora said.

  I had a few more questions. “But why—?”

  A grin spread across Kade’s face. “Answers will come in time, Charlotte. It’s my turn now. Ready?”

  No, I thought. I wasn’t ready for anything he said to me.

  “Tell me, do I scare you or thrill you?”

  My face went to five alarms. I couldn’t speak.

  He kept his eyes on me, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. Make that six alarms.

  “Truth, Charlotte,” Nora reminded me.

  I floundered. “You make me nervous. Intrigued, I guess, but nervous.”

  Oh God, had I really just said intrigued?

  “Sounds to me like a love-hate thing,” Zoe said.

  Richie smirked, and Kade smiled.

  “It’s like you have multiple personalities,” I told him.

  The others joined in on his laughter like backup singers. As much as I didn’t want to, I smiled at my own assessment. It did sound a tad melodramatic.