Quarantine: The Saints q-2

by Lex Thomas

Will mounted the bike, and Gates hoisted himself onto the handlebars.

  “I can’t see,” Will shouted.

  “I’ll be your eyes,” Gates said, glancing back at Will with a mischievous arch of his red-eyed eyebrow.

  Will grinned. He eased into the acceleration. They cruised back down the hall. Gates held onto the steering bar and planted his feet on the front tire guard to keep his balance. The people they rode past in the hall were awestruck.

  “FASTER!” Gates yelled.

  Will cranked his wrist forward and poured on the throttle. Gates barely stayed on the bike as Will sped into the quad. When the crowd saw them, they lost their minds.

  Will slowed the bike to a parade pace, he was going to milk every second of it. Gates was on front shaking his fists high for everyone. They cheered. Will revved the engine and they screamed louder.

  Will’s smile dropped when he saw Lucy.

  She was at the front of the crowd. She wore heavy eyeliner that swooped up in the corners of her eyes like a cat. Her hair was flame red. Her old blue dress was now black and cut to ribbons like she was in a swimsuit calendar. It was full of holes. More holes than dress. The neckline was a plunging V that nearly reached her belly button. The two sides were held together by paper clip chains. Will stared at her dress in disbelief. The word SLUT was hand embroidered on the dress’s bust, in haphazard, sloppily stitched red thread.

  He brought the bike to a short stop right in front of Lucy and put his feet on the ground.

  “Aw, come on, lets keep going,” Gates said.

  Will ignored Gates. The sight of Lucy in her new threads had rocked his world. He had to play it cool.

  “You, uh… I… What the fuck? You’re a Slut,” he said.

  “Yup,” she said. Her eyes were cool and calm.

  Gates whipped his head around to look at Lucy. His face cramped with irritation and his bad eye flickered.

  “Who’s this?” Gates said.

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  She stayed cool. “Didn’t really see how it was any of your business considering the last thing you said to me. It was so… nice. It was such a really ‘good friend’ thing to say. What was it again?”

  Will braced himself.

  “Oh, yeah!” Lucy said, then she leveled her eyes at Will. “Fuck off.”

  Will leaned the bike on its kickstand and stepped off it, causing Gates to have to jump off the handlebars. Gates dug his finger into his eye with a fierce rub. Perturbed, he looked around at the crowd that had quieted and was watching intently.

  Will stepped to Lucy. She didn’t look happy with him, but even unhappy, she looked fantastic. He hadn’t seen her since the Stairs. Somehow, he had forgotten how perfectly her face fit together. He’d also forgotten the inescapable pull he felt toward her, the ache in his chest that used to oppress him when he was this close to her. All the duct tape and popularity in the school couldn’t protect him from that feeling.

  “Look, about that night,” Will said, keeping his voice quiet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “Funny, that doesn’t make it feel any less shitty.”

  “I was just trying to do the right thing for both of us—”

  “Are you guys done?” Gates said. “Come on, Will, let’s go. Don’t let this chick ruin our party.”

  The Harley engine grumbled behind him.

  “You go ahead without me. I’ll catch up, man,” Will said.

  “What, just me?” Gates said.

  “You can’t party without your boyfriend?” Lucy said.

  Ooohs erupted all around. Gates took a step toward her, and the Sluts broke through the crowd to flank Lucy. Knives out. Will kept his eyes locked on Lucy. It was clear that this wasn’t what she wanted either.

  “Whoa, easy,” Will said. “No need for trouble, now. Let’s chill out, put the weapons away.”

  Will gave Gates a stern look to make sure he was on board with this plan. It was the first time he’d ever stood up to Gates so directly. The anger in Gates’s face scared Will more than the fifteen-odd blades pointed at him. But in a blink, it vanished. Gates went full smile. He stepped back. He threw his arms up in the air dramatically.

  “Anybody looking for fun, follow me!” Gates shouted.

  Gates mounted the bike and gunned it, roaring away. The crowd closed the gap behind him with cheers, and partying resumed again.

  Will turned to face Lucy. Neither of them spoke as the party swirled around them. Will felt at peace standing next to her.

  “Should we talk?” Will said.

  The tension eased from Lucy’s face. She seemed like she was about to nod, but some Nerd with a pompadour stepped up beside her.

  “We’re gonna hit the slip ’n’ slide,” the Nerd said to Lucy.

  Will looked him up and down. “That sounds good. Why don’t you get lost?”

  “What’d you say?” the Nerd said.

  “Bartholomew,” Lucy said quick, stepping between them. “Give me a minute, okay?”

  The Nerd glared at Will, then walked away, shaking his head.

  “Bartholemew, huh? Your friend has a stupid name.”

  She didn’t react.

  “Is this part of your new Slut personality? No laughing?”

  Lucy twisted her face into a sneer. “No. We were all laughing our asses off a few minutes ago. When you showed up on a motorcycle.”

  “Oof,” Will said with a nod.

  “Pretty respectable party though,” Lucy said.

  Will shrugged. “I had to come up with some way to get you to show up and talk to me again.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said and rolled her eyes.

  “I knew the best Lucy bait was pizza.”

  Lucy laughed. Finally a sign that things between them weren’t actually as bad as they looked, and that they didn’t have to keep acting like they were enemies.

  “So, really,” Will said. “Why did you go Slut?”

  “Are you really asking, or is this a set up for a joke?”

  “I’ll get back to you on the joke, but I gotta be honest, I’m still getting used to the red. I did not see that coming. Like ever.”

  “You got a problem with it?”

  “I guess not. So, what do you do, just sit around all day cutting the crotch out of your jeans?” Will said, cracking up.

  “Oh, I see,” Lucy said. “You still think you’re funny!” She pointed at his duct-taped torso. “Good thing you’ve never grown any body hair or it might hurt to take that tape off.”

  “Damn! Slut Lucy doesn’t mess around.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  Lucy held his stare. This was new. She didn’t look away, or do something cute to break the awkward moment. This new Slut Lucy was right at home with the tension.

  “I miss you,” Will said.

  Lucy faltered. Will’s emotion seemed to make her nervous. Bart walked over from the spot where he’d been standing, ten feet away.

  “Lucy, we should get going if you’re done talking to… this dude,” Bart said.

  “Beat it, Jebediah,” Will said.

  “It’s Bart,” Bart said.

  “Bartholomew,” Lucy said.

  “Right, whatever. Don’t you have a barn to raise or something?”

  “Will, stop,” Lucy said.

  “Why? It’s my party, and this big lump is messing up our vibe.”

  “Yeah, well we’re on a date,” Lucy said. “I’ll see you later, Will.”

  She walked off with Bart. Bart put his arm around her, and she looked happy to let him. Will watched her red hair disappear in the crowd. It made no sense. The whole school loved him. Why couldn’t she?

  Will kicked the dirt. He’d started the night feeling invincible, but a few minutes with Lucy, and it was like she had taken a giant ice cream scoop to his middle, and left a gaping hole behind.

  25

  HILARY HAD COME TO SEE P-NUT.

  They’d been secretly flirting for al
most a year. Anytime he was near, and Sam wasn’t around, P-Nut would wink at her, and blow her kisses, or steal a few moments with her at the market to tell her exactly how he would make love to her. At first, she was offended that he thought he was worthy of her. But he never gave up. And eventually, the fact that he was the only boy to ever approach her like that, when he knew full well Sam would wage war on the Skaters for it, started to turn her on.

  Now that she was looking for a new boy, P-Nut was first on her list. She stood in the Skater’s headquarters, the old administrative offices, with a crew of Pretty Ones. P-Nut balanced on the top rung of an aluminum folding ladder above her.

  “Hand me that hammer, will ya, perfect?” P-Nut said.

  He had the ball of one foot on the rung, his other leg extended out to the side, keeping his balance. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. P-Nut never wore a shirt. Hilary picked the hammer up from the floor and handed it up to him. He could have grasped it by the head, but he reached further, just to touch her hand.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  In his other hand, he held a noose that was tied around the neck of a full-size, fully dressed, department store male mannequin. P-Nut hammered the end of the noose into the ceiling, defying gravity by staying on the ladder, and giving a Hilary an anatomy lesson of all the muscles of his torso in the process. The mannequin twisted and turned by the neck, his perfect face frozen in a white-toothed smile. Its hands were reaching out, with open palms, as if it meant no harm. P-Nut gave the nail one last solid whack, then hopped down to the floor.

  “What’s that for?” Hilary asked.

  “To practice hitting people while you skate past them. Usually we use a duffel bag full of water bottles as a target, but that Gates dude got this for us.”

  Gates. Everybody loved to talk about him like he was God’s gift to McKinley, but Hilary prided herself on her taste. She knew the difference between a boy that was built to last, and one that was a fad. Gates didn’t smell like a winner to her. He’d burn out, or screw up, or do something wrong, and he’d end up going down hard.

  “A mannequin?” she said up to P-Nut. “That’s all you asked for?”

  “One of the things.” He took Hilary’s hand by the fingertips like she imagined French boys did. “And now I got you here. What more could a boy want?”

  “Are you serious?” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Hilary. I live for you,” he said with a straight face. She giggled. She couldn’t help it. No one really talked like that. “You got no idea how honored I am to have Hilary Bowden in the house.”

  “Stop it,” she said, wanting him to go on.

  “You want the tour?”

  “Dying for it.”

  P-Nut put his hand on her lower back and led her forward. Very low on her lower back actually, closer to upper ass. He did it with complete confidence. She decided to let him. This had to go right, because too much had already gone wrong. She’d gone to George Diaz, a Varsity she thought she could build into something. He had the potential to lead Varsity as long as Hilary was pulling the strings. She told him how easy it would be to overthrow Terry, but he was hearing none of it, and said it would only make them look weaker in front of the whole school if they threw out another leader. George still wanted to fool around with her, of course, but she told him she has a rule against hooking up with bald guys. That shut George up. His hair was already thinning, and he was only seventeen.

  As Hilary walked past a row of administrative offices, P-Nut indicated the last one.

  “Here’s our skate shop,” he said. “If you ever feel the need to ride, I will personally make your deck.”

  “Very generous of you.”

  Inside the room, Skaters were building skateboard decks on tables. The decks of their boards were broken pieces of wood from drop palets, desks, and other furniture. They ground them down to acceptable shapes with an array of customized tools. Others were hacking at the top surface of more finished boards with sharpened cafeteria knives, to give the surfaces more grip. In the corner, a worried Skater with all of his head shaved but a black sideways mohawk that went from ear to ear instead of front to back, stood watch as a Skater girl with a smiley face shaved into her head screwed one of his trucks into his new deck. He clutched his other truck by the wheels and held it to his chest.

  Hilary and P-Nut neared the end of the hallway.

  “Don’t know if you ever got a chance to see the college resource library when it was… normal, but we kinda tricked it out,” P-Nut said.

  He opened the door to a room that was centered around the giant half-pipe. They’d bashed through the ceiling into the room above. Two Skaters dropped in from the room above and crisscrossed across the half-pipe’s smooth linoleum tile surface. Hilary watched one soar into the air, past the old ceiling and the guts of the missing floor, up into the classroom above, where the Skaters had hung a blackboard vertically from the ceiling. When he reached the pinnacle of his jump, the Skater slapped a sticker on the hanging blackboard, not quite as high as the highest sticker, and dropped back down into the pipe. Skaters watching on both floors cheered his effort. The blackboard swung wildly from the brown and white extension cords that tethered it to the ceiling. The second Skater fell near the bottom, hit his head, and lay on his stomach, not moving. Other kids rushed to help.

  Hilary ignored the kid’s emergency and turned to P-Nut with an impressed smile. “Highest sticker is the best?” she said.

  “You got it.”

  “And whose is that?”

  “He’d like to invite you into his office.”

  P-Nut extended his hand. She took it.

  As they walked hand in hand, she could see all the Skater girls in the room smoldering. A swarm of jealous reactions followed her across the whole room. It felt so good. She missed that feeling. She hadn’t really felt it since Sam had been on top. She used to get it from the other girls in the school, just for the fact that she was a Pretty One. She used to get it from the other Pretty Ones, jealous that she had Sam. She felt at home. It did cross her mind that P-Nut might have slept with every girl in his gang, but that’s pretty much what she expected.

  P-Nut led her into a dark room. He closed the door. A lighter sparked. A little flame in the darkness. It was quickly blocked by the vague dark mass of P-Nut’s body. He moved and there was now a second flame. A candle. He was lighting candles. It seemed almost as hokey as his line about how he “lived for her,” but she wasn’t complaining.

  “Well, you get right to the point, don’t you?”

  “Ha, you’re funny,” he said, moving on to another candle. “I’m only trying to show you I care.”

  There were ten short, thin, brown candles lit around the room now and he was still going. It was an office with antique bookshelves, a plush reading chair, and an ornately carved wooden desk. All of it was lit by golden candlelight that revealed the deep red stain of the mahogany furniture. The air smelled calming and familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She could have gotten used to a room like this.

  “I don’t remember any of this stuff coming in the drop,” Hilary said.

  “I guess Principal Warfield was a big antique freak. All this is from his office. I’ve kept them safe.”

  She liked that he had taste. It was the last thing she would have expected.

  “And the candles?” she said.

  The candles were finely made, smooth from trunk to tip. And Hilary would know. They were worthy to be sold at the Pretty Ones’ market table. Well, they would have been, if Gates’s free-for-all hadn’t flooded the school with real beauty and bathing products that put their homemade ones to shame.

  “Nah, I made them,” P-Nut said.

  “You are a fantastic liar.”

  “I did make them,” he said. “You really think I’m just some idiot, don’t you?”

  “Kinda,” she said. “You know how to make candles?”

  “Of course I do. You think this vibe creates itself?”

&n
bsp; “Okay, then what’d you make ’em out of?”

  “Crayons I bought from the Geeks a long time ago. Melted all together.”

  “And the wicks?”

  “Shoelaces,” P-Nut said. “I unwove them and waxed the individual threads.”

  Why did that turn her on so much?

  “I only break them out for special occasions. For special people.”

  “I’m that special?” she said, smiling on the inside only. It had been too long since she’d had even a decent compliment.

  He walked closer to her.

  “I want to talk about our future.”

  “Ew, stalker,” she said and backed up, hoping he didn’t see through her bluff.

  “Don’t talk tough. Be yourself with me. That’s how it’s gotta be if we’re gonna do big things.”

  “What kind of big things?”

  “A Skater-Pretty One partnership.”

  Jackpot. There was really no sweeter pleasure than something falling perfectly in her lap.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. He continued to stalk her around the room. She’d retreat, he’d advance. She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. She forgot how good it felt to flirt with someone she was actually attracted to. She slinked to the other side of the desk. He climbed up over the top of it and hopped down, landing with his face only three hot inches away from hers. This was her ticket. The Skaters had it all. Her girls loved the Skater guys, and P-Nut was hot. The only thing that scared her was she couldn’t see a chink in his armor. She hadn’t found that tender part of him yet, that part that she could twist and gain control. She had to trust that she’d find that part of him eventually. She always did.

  He took hold of her head with both hands and pulled her into his lips. However many hundreds of girls P-Nut had kissed to get this good at it, she forgave him. P-Nut was soft but assertive. They were in sync. He moaned low as his lips told hers where to go. His hands slid all over her body. She could feel the heat of his palms through her dress.

  It took all of her willpower to push him away.

  “Slow down, Cashew. We haven’t talked terms yet.”

  “Let’s have some fun first,” he said, and pulled at her.