by Lex Thomas
“No one said that.”
“Oh, why?” Gates said, torturing Will. “Are you interested in hanging out with new girls?”
Will took a deep breath, and when he let it out he smiled. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“That’s the dude I’ve been looking for!” Gates said, and threw his fists in the air.
“You have one set up for tonight?”
“Yeah, with a Nerd chick. I heard her friend has a third nipple.”
“Really? Full size?”
“You can only hope.”
“Cool,” Will said.
“This is gonna cheer you up. I’m going to make sure of it. We are going to party so hard for so long that you won’t even be able to remember this Judy girl’s name.”
“All right, all right. You’ve convinced me.”
“Perfecto.”
“I gotta piss,” Will said, and he got up.
“Great, thanks for letting me know.”
Will chuckled as he headed off for one of the bathrooms in the mess hall. Gates put his chair right side up and sat in it. Its curved plastic frame let him rock back and forth. He picked up the controller off the floor and unpaused Will’s racing game. He crashed the car almost immediately.
Gates heard the crunch of someone stepping on a plastic bottle behind him. He turned back.
Colton stood in the middle of the floor.
His skin was gray. He wore his black shades, and full St. Patrick’s attire, a blazer, tie and sweater, slacks, and penny loafers. His brown hair was combed neatly to the side. Black blood dripped from the hole in his forehead.
Colton walked toward him. Gates scrambled out of his chair and into the corner. How was this happening? His dead brother made fists of his hands as he strode toward him.
“Get back!” Gates said.
“Gates?”
Will was standing at the entrance to the mess hall, staring at him, perplexed. Colton was gone. One second he was there and the next he wasn’t. Gates didn’t know if he’d just seen a ghost, or he was losing his shit, but just like earlier when he had seen Will in the gaming chair, just Will’s presence calmed him. He needed to stick with Will. He’d be safe with Will. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he could feel that it was true in his bones.
“Hey, man,” Gates said.
“Are you… messing around? You look all scared.”
“Yeah. You know me. Can’t keep it serious,” Gates said, assuming a relaxed pose. He hoped he wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.
Will stretched and yawned. “So when does the partying start?”
“Right. Fucking. Now,” Gates said.
27
LUCY WATCHED A NAKED GIRL DO PUSH-UPS over broken glass. Her name was Frida. She’d been a Freak since the gangs formed, but now she was fed up. She’d hooked up with Bobby last year, but it wasn’t that great and she’d tried to move past it. Bobby wouldn’t let her. He hounded her with requests for dates, gave her creepy gifts, and got more mad each time she turned him down. Finally he told her she couldn’t be in the gang anymore if she wouldn’t date him. Frida decided enough was enough and she came knocking on the cafeteria door.
Now that she was staring at a pile of broken glass, with Lips yelling at her in her ear, Lucy wondered if Frida regretted her choice. The girl was on her sixth day of Naked Week.
“Thirty…,” Frida grunted out, as she pushed up and locked her arms in place.
“What are you stopping for, bitch?” Lips shouted. “I wanna see forty! I’ve been listening to this thirty crap for days.”
Sophia walked away from the group of Sluts next to Lips to join Lucy, Raunch, and some others that were watching from a distance.
“God, part of me just wants to tell her how to make it stop,” Sophia said, shaking her head.
“I’m so glad you said that,” Lucy said. “Me too.”
“She’ll pull through,” Raunch said. “She’ll figure it out soon, I can see it in her.”
Sophia nodded. “I know. It’s just so hard to watch.”
“That’s what we have Lips for,” Lucy said, and the others laughed.
The girls settled back into watching Frida struggle through more push-ups as Lips jabbed at her ribs with her foot. Frida began to lower herself toward the glass again. Lucy could remember that moment vividly, making the decision to push beyond her limits when she didn’t know how it was humanly possible.
“Come on,” Sophia whispered to herself, but it was meant for Frida.
“Fight back,” another girl muttered.
Lucy never would have thought something so vicious would have warmed her heart. When it had been her in Frida’s place, she’d thought all the girls around her were monsters. She couldn’t understand how someone would treat another person in this way, but now that she was on the other side, Lucy knew how much love there was in this room. Each one of these girls had suffered through similar trials and they were stronger for it. They only wanted the best for Frida, and none of them, including Lucy, had any intention of letting her fail.
This was Lucy’s family now. Her life. She belonged. It was everything she’d hoped for when she’d joined up. So, why had she been thinking about Will every day since the bonfire party?
It still bothered her that their conversation that night hadn’t gone the way she’d expected. Being in the Sluts had felt thrilling before she saw him at the party. And the look on Will’s face when he comprehended completely that Lucy was a badass Slut had been the cherry on top. She’d wanted to see him eat his own words, feel horrible for the things he’d yelled at her in the Stairs. And he did, and he’d apologized, and he’d told her he missed her. That should have made her happy, but instead, it had only upset her.
“Hey, Virgin!” one of the guards at the cafeteria entrance shouted. “Somebody here for you.”
Lucy swallowed hard. She wasn’t expecting anybody. She looked to the other girls, who shrugged. Lucy walked toward the cafeteria entrance. When Lucy laid her hand on the door handle, she took a deep breath and hoped that it wasn’t Will. Lucy pushed open the door.
Bart stood alone under a bright hall light. He had a crooked smile and his pompadour looked a little bigger than she remembered from last time. He gave her a big, friendly wave. Lucy felt her body relax at the sight of him.
“Hi, Bart.”
“Yo.”
So goofy. So cute.
“Wanna go on a date?” he said.
“Yes, she does!” Raunch shouted from somewhere behind Lucy.
Lucy laughed and stepped out into the hall.
When Bart had told Lucy they were going to the Geek show, she didn’t know what to say. The last time she’d been to one was on a date with David. Those few hours she’d had with him, before everything went wrong, were immortalized in her mind. She could only recall the sights and sounds of that night as part of a perfect bliss. And so, Lucy was afraid that tonight Bart could only fail. She wouldn’t be able to help but compare, and everything he did would only pale in comparison to how David did it.
She liked Bart, and she didn’t want that. Thankfully, he was one step ahead of her.
Lucy’s legs dangled over the metal ledge of the lighting catwalk, where Bart sat next to her. It was one of three catwalks that ran the width of the auditorium, each one mounted with powerful lights aimed at the proscenium stage at the far end of the room. A partying crowd, populated with heads of different colors, swirled below. Gangs mixed freely, in a way Lucy had never seen before, at least not from this perspective. Kids mingled. Pairs and threesomes from different gangs drank together, played games together, laughed together. The bonfire party had greased the wheels and started a phenomenon of impromptu parties that were happening nearly every day now. She’d heard about them, but this was the first one she’d been to since the bonfire.
“I can’t believe it,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool up here,” Bart said. “That Geek, Lane, you met, could only hook us up for
a little bit before the show starts, but I figured it’s way better than the same old Geek show stuff.”
That wasn’t what Lucy was talking about, but she was happy to keep it light. “Definitely,” she said.
“I love heights,” he said. “When I was little I was pretty sure I could fly.”
Lucy laughed. “Really?”
“Yeah, one day I flapped my arms so hard I dislocated my shoulder. My mom freaked out when I came back in the house with one arm hanging to, like, my knees.”
Lucy covered her mouth in shock. “No way.”
Bart grinned. “The next week I built a pair of wings out of tree branches and bed sheets. I jumped off the roof and broke my leg.”
“Shut up,” Lucy said, snorting a laugh.
Bart nodded, his grin getting bigger.
“What did your mom do?” Lucy said.
“She just left me in the yard for a week. Said it was the only way I’d learn my lesson.”
“What?” Lucy said.
“Honk. Sucka. Nah, she took me to the ER. Again. The doctor laughed at her. She didn’t talk to me for a month. I was a pretty big spaz when I was little.”
“I would’ve never guessed that. You’re like the most chill person I know.”
“My dad helped me focus after that. He was an engineer. I mean, is,” Bart corrected himself. It was something a lot of people did when they talked about their families. “He taught me about drafting, and we started making designs for real planes. It’s what I’m going to do.”
“Build planes?”
“I’m gonna build one faster than the X-43,” he said. Like he meant it. Like it was a fact.
Lucy didn’t know what the X-43 was, but just the fact that Bart was so sure of what he would do in life, or that he would even have a life outside, was impressive.
“Maybe you’ll take me up in it?” Lucy said, leaning over and bumping him playfully.
He shook his head. “You’d die.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, it’ll be too fast. It’ll have to be unmanned.”
“Oh,” Lucy said. “Now I know why you went Nerd.”
Bart laughed. That laugh she loved. He touched her knee. The glow of a blue stage light clamped to the catwalk railing above them made his perfect teeth gleam.
“Want to make out?” he said.
“Uh…,” Lucy said, a little surprised. It made her wonder if all of this, the catwalk, his plan to build jets, was all an equation in Bart’s head that equaled “make out.” It probably was. What boy didn’t have a plan when it came to that?
“Yeah, okay,” she said.
They leaned toward each other at the same time and kissed. He was pretty good at it. They scooted closer to each other, and he put one warm hand on her thigh and one on the back of her neck. Every move he made was steady, the rumble of the crowd below pleasantly filled her ears while she gave in to the pleasure of their kiss. It had been too long since she’d felt the rush of lips on lips. Long enough for it to feel brand-new and exciting. It was what she’d wanted the other night at the bonfire, but he’d never made a move. Maybe that was part of his plan too.
“Time’s up,” someone said from the adjacent catwalk. It was the Geek that had shown them up there. “Sorry, but Zachary’s starting his show now, and if anything goes wrong up here with the lights, he’ll kill me. Can’t risk it.”
Bart pulled back from Lucy and shrugged. “Bummer,” he said.
He was so cool about it, it made Lucy smile, even though part of her wanted to smash Zachary’s spotlight while she had the chance.
“Should we grab a seat?” Bart said.
“Sure.”
Lucy had to hand it to Zachary. If he was good for anything, it was putting on a show. Just the set alone, in front of her, was impressive. Thanks to a delivery of new lumber and paint, courtesy of Gates, the Geeks had constructed a stylized version of McKinley High on stage. A looming row of gigantic lockers, nearly three times the size of real lockers, dominated the stage. Actual, piled-up salvage from the basement, clumps of tangled chairs and desks, gave the rest of the stage depth and dimension. In combination with the nightmarish lighting, the McKinley world onstage looked like some surreal wasteland.
“Way to go on the seats,” Bart said when he walked up, holding two bags of microwave popcorn.
“Ooo, popcorn,” Lucy said. “I can’t remember the last time I had that.”
“Well, keep dreaming, because they’re both for me.”
“Ha-ha,” she said as Bart handed her a bag. He sat down next to her, reached across, and held her hand.
As the houselights went down, she smiled.
A spotlight cut across the dark and settled on a locker onstage in the center of the row. The locker door flew open and Zachary stumbled out, wearing massively exaggerated shoulder pads underneath a football jersey. He wore a cartoonish coif of blond hair that immediately drew boos from the Varsity guys in the crowd, but peals of laughter from everyone else. Sexed-up moans and groans echoed out from the open locker, and anonymous girls’ hands clawed at Zachary’s jersey.
“Back, Pretty Things! Back!” he shouted in a faux-meathead voice, and he kicked the locker door shut. Zachary turned to the crowd and tugged at his collar with wide eyes. “Yeesh, sex slaves… can’t live with ’em. Can’t live without ’em.”
Lucy snorted a big laugh. She couldn’t believe what Zachary had just said.
“Oh, sorry,” Zachary said. “Lemme introduce myself. My name’s Dork Baloney. I know you all think every Varsity guy is just some total, complete, roided-out asshole that is looking for somebody’s head to crush and—”
Zachary stopped suddenly and pointed at Bart in the crowd.
“What are you looking at, Nerd?! Do you want me to rip your head off?!”
The crowd erupted in laughter. Bart slapped his knee, loving it. Lucy looked behind her to see if Varsity was storming the stage. They weren’t. They were laughing with everybody else. Not so long ago, what Zachary was doing might have started a riot, and Lucy wasn’t sure it still couldn’t. These jokes felt dangerous. Maybe that was what made them so funny.
Onstage, Zachary was shaking his head.
“Sorry, I don’t know what came over me. What I was trying to say is that us Varsity guys are more sensitive than you think we are. And me, in particular, I was thinking about how there’s been new kids in McKinley for months now, and nobody’s given our new friend a proper tour of the school.”
“Oooh,” the crowd said in anticipation. Lucy gave Bart an excited look.
“Is he really gonna go after everybody?” she whispered.
“It’d be pretty pimp if he did,” Bart said with a low-key shrug.
“After all, it’s only the polite thing to do,” Zachary said. “Right?”
“Suck a dick, Baloney!” someone in the crowd heckled.
“Maybe I will!” Zachary said in his most ridiculous meathead voice. “Follow me to the cafeteria!”
The crowd was giddy with anticipation of the Sluts getting roasted. Lucy knew Violent was in the audience somewhere. She’d headed out earlier in the night with a bunch of the others, and Lucy craned her neck to try and find them. She spotted Violent in time to see her watch a Geek boy onstage portray her as a brute who kicked Dork Baloney’s ass when he tried to kiss her. Only three rows back from Lucy, Violent was close enough to see by the glow of the lit-up stage. Slowly, her flatline mouth turned up into a smile. It was all the cue the Sluts needed to laugh and really start enjoying themselves, Lucy included.
Onstage, Dork Baloney traveled to the teachers’ lounge where P-Nut, depicted by a Geek in a harness and wires, was doing bigger and bigger, high-flying tricks on a skateboard. It was such fun to watch. He fake-crashed and fell on the floor, and started yelling that he’d broken his back and was going to die. A nurse girl came running to his side from offstage. The crowd was in hysterics as P-Nut’s character tried to get his Nerd nurse to sleep with him, instead of st
op the bleeding. The actual P-Nut thought it was hilarious and he applauded louder than the rest of the audience.
Sometime during that scene, Bart had let go of Lucy’s hand. He’d put his arm around her instead, and now they were nestled up next to each other. She was crying from laughing so hard. Bart kept whipping his finger at the stage.
“Awww!” he said. “They got you, P-Nut! They got you!”
It was the first time Lucy had seen Bart this animated; he was usually so subdued. But everyone was caught up in it now. The crowd had tipped. There was a fever in the air. Gang lines had kept everyone on guard and frustrated for so long under Sam’s rule that now that there was permission to laugh, it was like a tidal wave.
And that was just in time for Leonard’s big stage debut. Lucy couldn’t have been prouder. Dork Baloney was visiting the Freaks, and Leonard was playing Bobby. Because the Freaks had notoriously dyed their hair with blue toilet cleaner pucks, Leonard wore a giant papier-mâché urinal like a mascot would. His face barely poked out of a face hole. The urinal even had blue liquid by the drain. To Lucy’s surprise, Leonard had a shockingly strong stage voice. He hammed it up as Bobby. He was a natural. Everyone cheered his performance. Everyone, except for the real Bobby.
Bobby stood up in the crowd. “I’ll kill you, Geeks! All of you! You know that!”
The audience booed Bobby. Zachary never broke character, neither did Leonard. They never acknowledged Bobby at all, and it only made the crowd love it more. When Zachary’s character moved on to the gym and Leonard exited the stage, Bobby’s big moment was over. The more he protested, the more the crowd turned against him, until his fellow Freaks had to pull him down into his seat.
A Geek girl walked out onstage swinging her purse in a circle and smacking her jaw open and shut like she was chewing gum. She wore a blonde wig and a white dress and when she started telling boys in the front row that a blow job would cost them a sandwich, Lucy couldn’t control herself. She knew who it was.
“Hooker Hilary!” Lucy said, way too loud.
