Quarantine: The Saints q-2

by Lex Thomas

  Bart cringed with a laugh. “Oh, boy. We got a live one.”

  Lucy cackled. She knew it might lead to trouble, leading the crowd on this one, but Hilary deserved it. Sam had gotten his comeuppance for what he’d done, but somehow, so far, Hilary had managed to get off, unscathed. A laugh at her expense was the least Lucy could do.

  Hilary stood up in a huff, like Bobby did. She was in the front row with a bunch of Pretty Ones. She was livid.

  “I refuse to sit through this trash!” she shrieked.

  “Then get the hell out!” Lucy shouted at her, and others in the crowd echoed her.

  Hilary glared at Lucy with pure hatred. Lucy was unbothered.

  “What are you looking at?” Lucy said, leaning forward in her seat.

  Hilary sneered at Lucy, then widened her gaze to all the kids shouting at her. She looked uncharictaristically rattled. Lucy wasn’t sure she had seen her blush before. She started pushing through her row in a huff. A string of Pretty Ones trailed her. As they reached the aisle and hurried for the exit, people whistled at them and shouted catcalls. They looked miserable, but Lucy didn’t feel an ounce of compassion for the other girls. This was the life they’d chosen. If they didn’t like what it had amounted to, then too bad.

  “You’re a wild one,” Bart said with a grin.

  Lucy fixed Bart with a charged stare.

  “What?” he said.

  Nobody had ever said that to her before. And she liked it. She planted a heavy kiss on him.

  “Yee-ha!” somebody shouted from a few rows back. She had a pretty good idea who it was. Raunch. “Get it on, girl!”

  Lucy laughed through her tongue dance with Bart. Her whole gang must have been watching her now, maybe others too. It was a rush. She pushed Bart down in his seat, then hopped over the armrest into his lap, facing him. She straddled him like he was a horse and looked over to her gang. She threw up a fist.

  “WHOO!” Lucy shouted back. They threw up fists and cheered for her while the play continued on stage.

  Lucy leaned down and kissed Bart more. He couldn’t have been happier. They made out for the rest of the play. It felt crazy just putting on a show for everybody around, but she was tired of being the prude all the time. Besides, Will seemed to be having a PDA marathon all over the school, so why should she hold herself back?

  When the play ended and the lights came on, people got up from their seats and started to mill about the auditorium. Lucy and Bart didn’t move. They were in their own little world. She wanted to stay close to him. There, on his lap. He couldn’t look away from her. The stage lights sparkled in his eyes. He smiled his perfect smile. She wanted him. It was decided in a moment. Naturally. Just like Violent had said it would be. Bart was the one. He’d be her first.

  Someone whispered in her ear.

  “Make him wait.”

  Lucy turned and looked over to see Violent. Already moving on. She couldn’t see Violent’s face. It made her anxious. She didn’t understand.

  “What do you want to do now?” Bart said.

  Lucy looked back at Bart. He had a mellow grin.

  “Uh…”

  28

  WILL WOKE UP WITH ANOTHER CRUEL HEADACHE. He felt like someone had spent the night standing over him and beating his face with a rake. It probably wasn’t the best idea to mix booze with his medication, but he wasn’t dead yet. It had been three weeks of this, something like that, partying day in and day out. In the mornings, it felt like it had been three years. Each night, once the alcohol hit his system, he felt ready to do it all over again. By then, the morning misery was long forgotten. Being bros with Gates was a full-time job.

  With bleary eyes, Will lifted his head and charted his surroundings. He was on his back, on the floor in front of Gates’s school bus. All around him was a terrible mess. It wasn’t just the wrecked bus stuck in the wall, or the rubble around it, it was the week’s worth of party waste that littered the floor. Food was spilled everywhere. Twinkies with footprints in them. Cold cuts that had been thrown on the wall and had stuck there. A huge puddle of milk that someone had poured over a pile of cigarette butts. Dirty dishes covered in a brown crust of microwaved burrito filling. A soda-soaked pair of boxer shorts. Crushed beer cans and plastic party cups were everywhere. A knocked-over television played a porno, and there were two gaming chairs in front of it, but no one there watching. A series of croquet wickets were duct-taped to the floor, with mallets and balls strewn around. Gates had designated one corner of the room the “smashing corner,” and it was where they threw glass bottles when they were done with them. Breaking bottles had bored Gates pretty quickly and he’d encouraged the gang to start destroying other things. In addition to the piled-up broken glass, the smashing corner had an eviscerated beanbag chair, bent lacrosse sticks, a bashed-up bicycle with slashed tires, and a pinball machine that had been set on fire.

  Will didn’t know how he’d ended up on the floor. The last thing he could remember was blending up mudslides with Gates and some Freak girls. He had a vague flash of hooking up with one of the girls in the supply closet across the room, but then things got fuzzy. That was pretty standard these days.

  “There you are.”

  Will sat up and saw Lark walking toward him from the hall of containment cells.

  “I have to talk to you,” she said. She looked too serious for Will to handle right now. His head was murdering him.

  Poor Lark. She was cute and clever and she liked Will. A lot. It wasn’t hard to tell.

  “What’s up?” Will said to her.

  Lark sat down in front of him and took his hands.

  “I’m here for you,” she said.

  “Okay…”

  “And it’s not even that bad. Really, it’s for the best. It’s high time you moved on.”

  Will felt a twinge of panic. “What are you trying to tell me?

  Lark sighed, “I know how hung up on you are on that girl, Lucy. And I saw her last night at the Geek show. And I don’t know, I just feel like you can do better. ’Cause, you know, sometimes it’s easy to make too much, like way too much, about the past, when the future is literally wide open. Right in front of you—”

  “Lark. What are you talking about? You said you saw Lucy.”

  “Yeah. At the Geek show. I think she’s got a new boyfriend.”

  What was it with Lucy and making out with guys at Geek shows? Unbelievable. Even though it wasn’t David this time, it still hurt. Last time this happened, Will ran away crying. He wasn’t about to do that again. He had to go talk to her.

  Will pulled on clean clothes in his room, and headed out into the hall of containment cells. He passed Sam’s cell. Sam paced in his locked cell like a tiger at a zoo. He froze when he saw Will and charged the clear door. He spat on the thick plastic between them.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” Sam shouted. Will could only read his lips; no sound passed through the door.

  Will ignored him and continued on toward the closed metal door to the white room. Sam continued to beat on his cell door. The air in this hall had never lost a pungent chemical smell, and it made Will feel more ill than he already did. Will hit the red door button on the wall, and the door to the white room slid open, disappearing into the wall.

  The white room was a pool of two-foot-deep water. A folding table had been laid on its side and duct-taped against the other side of the doorway, and towels had been stuffed under it to keep the water from flowing out. Another table sealed up the doorway to McKinley on the other side of the white room. The water’s surface reflected the bright ceiling and the white tiled walls. Water poured down in continuous streams from the eight hoses of the sprayer contraption on the ceiling. Saint boys and girls in their underwear cavorted in the water. Some floated around on inflatable mattresses. Gates and Pruitt stood in the middle of the room. Gates wore mirrored aviator sunglasses that shined with the same bright white of the rest of the room. He was shirtless and he’d cut his pinstripe suit slacks into b
oard shorts. A tie was wrapped around his head like a headband, with the knot off to the side. Pruitt was the only person who was fully clothed, with his trousers rolled up above his knees. He had his giant hands on his hips, and loomed over Gates.

  “Why do we have to talk about this now, Pru?” Gates said. “Can’t it wait till, like, a group powwow or something?”

  “Dude, we haven’t had a powwow in I don’t know how long. When’s the last time we even all ate together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Months. Since before we got Sam. No matter what was going on, we used to all at least gather around the campfire and say what’s on our mind.”

  “What do we need a campfire for? The lights are on.”

  “You know what I mean,” Pruitt said.

  It was weird seeing Pruitt upset. He never talked this much. But it was a big enough event to keep Gates occupied, and that was what Will needed. He’d never get to the cafeteria if he got sucked into Gates’s orbit. Will pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled up his jeans to his knees.

  “Party pooper,” Gates said to Pruitt.

  Pruitt poked Gates with a fat finger. “I don’t have a problem with having fun, I got a problem when there’s no time for anything else.”

  Will stepped over the table dam and into the pool, hoping to walk out unnoticed, but Gates saw him right away.

  “There’s the guy! Get over here, Will! Isn’t the water great?”

  The water was freezing cold against Will’s skin.

  “Pretty great,” Will said.

  Gates walked toward Will.

  Pruitt threw up his hands. “So, is that it? I’m just supposed to walk away now?”

  Gates ignored Pruitt, keeping his eyes on Will. Will sloshed toward the school. He couldn’t get cornered.

  “I’m heading out,” Will said. “Be back in a bit.”

  Will sped up a little, the drag of the knee-high water was slowing his stride.

  “Where you going?” Gates said, sloshing through the water to meet Will in the middle of the room.

  “I… just need some air.”

  Gates got in Will’s way, and Will had to stop. Meanwhile, Pruitt tromped back into the processing facility.

  “Hold up. I forgot to tell you. There’s these three Pretty Ones I met. They want to party with us tonight.” Gates slapped Will’s chest. “They’re jonesing for a little more Gates and Will.”

  Will laughed. “I’m gonna pass.”

  “You hear what I’m saying, right? They want to party. They’re sure things. And they’re hot.”

  “I’m not really in the mood tonight.”

  Gates looked annoyed for a moment, but he shook it off with a smile.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Girls can wait. Some other night. What should we do instead? Want to go break some windows?”

  “Uh… not really.”

  “Yeah, that sucks,” Gates said, then gasped. His eyes lit up. “Forget it—I got it! There’s still a little gas left in the motorcycle, let’s take it on one final joyride through the halls, let every gang hear it fuckin’ rumble. Whattaya say?”

  “I just—”

  “Then, we torch it. You’d love that.”

  Will snapped. “I don’t want to right now! All right? Will you let me go?”

  Gates said nothing. Will thought Gates was staring at him, but all Will could see was the dual reflections of his own frustrated face in the lenses of Gates’s shades. The pause went from awkwardly long, to crawl out of your skin long, but then Gates raised his hands in the air and stepped out of Will’s way.

  “Do whatever you want, I don’t care,” Gates said.

  The room had gone quiet again. Will couldn’t get a read on whether it was okay with Gates that he was leaving or not.

  “All right. Later,” Will said.

  He kept his eyes forward, and walked the last few feet to the steel doors to McKinley, then stepped over the table dam. Will continued on, into McKinley’s front foyer. The leakage from the white room had spread into a giant puddle that covered most of the foyer’s burned and warped floor. He heard the party ramp back up behind him.

  “Oh shit!” he heard Gates say from the white room. “We should ask for a shark!”

  29

  “I’M HERE TO SEE LUCY.”

  A Slut with long, red feather earrings sneered back at Will through the cracked-open door to the cafeteria. She looked at him like he was a homeless man trying to wander into her art gallery.

  “She’s not here.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Will said.

  “Go away,” the Slut said, and started to close the door. Will stopped the door with his foot and leaned against it. The Slut grimaced as she pushed harder.

  “What do you want?” Will said to the Slut.

  “What?”

  “From the parents. What do you want me to get for you?” Will said.

  The Slut didn’t hesitate. “A teepee. Twelve footer,” she said.

  Will wrinkled his brow, “All right… weirdo. I’ll make it happen.”

  “You better not be lying.”

  “I’m sure you’ll kill me if I am. Just let me in.”

  The Slut stepped back from the door and opened it for him. Will walked into the cafeteria. He didn’t get more than three steps before a bunch of Sluts had him pressed against the wall and were going through his pockets.

  Out came his weapons. A Swiss Army Knife, with five blades, that Gates had gotten him. His new Maglite. The chain he kept wrapped around his forearm to make his punches heavier. The brand-new hatchet he kept stuffed in the back of his pants. They even found the razor blade he kept taped under his belt.

  “I’m gonna need all of that back.”

  “Depends if you behave yourself or not,” a big Slut said, and gave him a cheap slap in the crotch. Will winced. He would have fought back but he couldn’t screw up his chance to see Lucy.

  They shoved him forward. He couldn’t believe how clean it was in the cafeteria. They walked him through a door on the other side of the dining room. Will knew the Sluts had claimed a full hallway of classrooms off the cafeteria, including a small student lounge, but he’d never been inside.

  They led him into the triangle-shaped lounge. All of the plastic covers over the fluorescent tube lights in the ceiling were transparent red. The light they gave off was so dim Will had to work to see people’s faces. He felt as if they were all at the bottom of a glass of red wine. Sluts lounged in well-preserved, plushy love seats and cushioned chairs that populated the space. Any of them could have been Lucy in the deep red of the room.

  Seven angry girls, all with pale skin and dark lips and thin eyebrows that slanted down toward the bridges of their noses, followed him as he walked. He passed pretty girls who seemed dead inside. Some of the girls had dates, guys interspersed in the group. Will peered at the dudes. Some ignored him, others casually tried to hide their faces, and then there were the ones that scowled at him until he continued walking past their girl, then they went back to not caring. A skinny girl with a red bob growled at him like she wanted to kill him. A Slut with black lipstick and a train track of gold safety pins pierced through her left eyebrow screwed up her face at Will and flipped him off. He didn’t let any of it shake him. He was a man on a mission.

  “Will?”

  There she was, in the red, lying on her side on a sofa, her body twisted away from Will. He had to squint. She was wearing a shirt that was hardly a shirt. It draped too loosely on her, threatening to show too much. She wore a pair of sweat shorts that stubbornly refused to cover the bottom of her butt.

  That kid, Bart, was lying next to her. He had his stupid arm around her, and she looked cozy as hell all nestled into his side, except for her face, which was stiff with shock. She sat up and straightened her shirt. Bart kept his hold on her.

  “What are you doing here?” Lucy said.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” Will said.

 
Lucy looked to Bart, concerned. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

  Will wanted to explode.

  “Please, I really need to talk to you.”

  Lucy opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Will stayed patient.

  “Will… what else is there to say?”

  “I love you.”

  Lucy stared at Will. Bart started laughing.

  Will ignored Bart and pushed on. “Listen, we had a string of really shitty luck and it ended badly, and that sucks. But I want to take care of you and I’ll do whatever it takes to get you back in my life.”

  Through the heavy red light, he saw a hopeful little smile bloom on her face for just a second. And then she looked at the other Sluts around her and dropped it.

  “Oh god,” Bart said. “That was so lame.”

  “Fuck you, Nerd.”

  Bart laughed again, harder than before. It was the most annoying laugh Will had ever heard.

  “Will, I think you should leave,” Lucy said.

  “Lucy, it’s me,” Will said, and he touched her arm.

  As soon as he touched her, Sluts converged on him. In a few simple, strong moves, they ripped Will’s hand free of Lucy and wrenched his arms behind his back. He strained and twisted against their grip.

  “Get off me,” he said through gritted teeth.

  They pulled Will away from Lucy. She stood, but didn’t stop them. She didn’t care.

  The Sluts lifted him off of his feet and carried him like they were going to use him for a battering ram. He would have screamed if they hadn’t brought their knives to his throat so quickly.

  They carried him out of the lounge, through the cafeteria, and sure enough, opened the door with his head. They threw him out into the hall. His weapons were tossed out after him. He landed on the floor, next to a pile of trash bags that leaked a puddle of red onto the floor.

  30

  “I GOTTA GO TO THE BATHROOM,” GATES SAID to Will, in a hallway near Freak territory.

  That sounded great by Will. Will could use a break from the guy, even a short one. He’d been hanging with Gates nonstop since Lucy shut him down. He was exhausted, and Gates was beginning to grate on his nerves.