by Lex Thomas
“Wanna see something cool?” Bart said after a while.
Lucy nodded, and he led her to a quiet study room. He closed the door behind them, and locked it. There was a sheet pinned up over the window so they could have total privacy. Bart opened a laptop. He showed her bunches of videos that the Nerds had stolen off of people’s phones when they’d brought them to be serviced or loaded up with music at the Nerds’s trading post. Bart told her that most of the time they left people’s content alone, but every once and a while they’d come across something too good to pass up. And they’d have to save a copy.
He showed her a video compilation of people falling, tripping, and injuring themselves. It was pretty funny. He showed her a private video diary entry made by Bobby where he cried the whole time and talked about being misunderstood. He showed her a camera phone picture of P-Nut and a Skater girl in bed, P-Nut was smiling big with his arm around the girl. Then, Bart showed Lucy another photo of P-Nut in the same bed with a different girl. Then, about thirty more, all in the same bed, with a different girl each time and P-Nut always smiling the exact same way.
It was all funny stuff, but the whole time Lucy felt like she was working to get back to the energy she’d had at the Geek show. She didn’t feel as wild as that night or the night of the bonfire. Thankfully, she didn’t have to grapple with that too long before they finally started making out. That got her out of her head.
Bart took off Lucy’s shirt. He cupped her breast and held it like it was a rare and delicate artifact. He started to kiss her neck passionately. His warm lips and wet tongue were all over her now. She groaned. It felt so good, and it turned her on to feel how much he wanted her now. He craved her. He was heating up. This was a moment she’d been fantasizing about. It was about to happen.
Bart unbuttoned her jeans. He reached inside and slid his hand down between her legs. She clamped her thighs together; no one had ever touched her that close.
“It’s okay,” he said.
But it suddenly wasn’t. She felt queasy. She couldn’t relax. Something was off, and she didn’t know what.
She pulled away to look him in the eyes.
“Does this mean anything to you?” she said.
“Yeah, it feels so good,” he said in a low, smooth voice. His hand was still.
“No, I’m saying… do I mean anything to you?”
He blinked and furrowed his brow, like she had just asked him a riddle.
“I think you’re cool, and… I’ve been having fun hanging out.”
“But, do you have feelings for me?”
“Um…”
Lucy pulled his hand out of her pants.
“Bart, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause… I don’t love you.”
“Well, I don’t love you either; what’s the problem?”
“I think… I would need to love someone to sleep with them.”
Bart looked confused. “I think you’re in the wrong gang,” he said.
“I’m gonna go.”
Lucy stood and pulled her shirt back on.
“No, stay. We can get back on track. This was just a speed bump.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s not going to work out with us.”
She walked to the door, opened it, and stepped into the main room library. Lucy headed for the exit.
“Wait, Lucy,” Bart said from behind her.
She paused and looked back at him. He was standing in the doorway of the study room, his belt undone.
“Do you think Sophia would be into me?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to see Bart ever again.
Lucy hurried across the library floor. The whole place was quiet. When she got to the exit, she had to shake the shoulder of the Nerd girl who was supposed to be keeping watch over the fire door. The girl had dumpy black hair and snot trails encrusted above her upper lip, and a T-shirt that was too small for her thick body. She’d been sound asleep. It was a miracle she hadn’t fallen off her stool yet. The girl’s eyes barely opened.
“I want out,” Lucy said.
The girl unlocked the door and pulled it open like a zombie. She may not have ever really woken up as she let Lucy walk through and shut the door behind her. Things never went well for her in the library.
Lucy headed down the stairs. With every step down, she felt more confused. What the hell had happened up there? She felt oddly proud of herself for not going through with it, but she was still kind of turned on. Lucy thought back to that couple she and Will had seen the day of Kemper’s graduation. The scene played so passionately in her mind. She’d imagined that the couple’s connection was so deep, but maybe all they’d been were desperate strangers just trying to cope with life in McKinley. By the time she reached the second floor, Lucy felt naive, like her innocence was nothing she could shake, no matter how long she hung out with the Sluts. Violent had told her to be smart about her choices, but Violent had said it full of regret about her own past, almost as if she and the Sluts were a different breed and Lucy was someone they were simply corrupting.
Lucy stepped out of the stairwell into a first floor hall. She walked close to the lockers, moving at a good clip, until she turned a corner and saw a girl rummaging through an open locker. Lucy slowed. The girl pulled her head out of the locker. It was Hilary.
Lucy froze in place, still in shadow. Hilary went back in for more. Lucy had never seen her like this, down on her knees, clawing through a locker like a Dumpster diver. Rumors about what had gone down in Hilary’s private meeting with P-Nut had been getting wilder and wilder since the Geek show, but it looked like the gossip must have finally taken its toll. When Lucy had been a Pretty One, Hilary would make her and the other girls walk as a group to different lockers throughout the school. It was usually after Hilary and Sam had a big blowout, and Sam wanted her to be nice to him again. He’d give Hilary a locker number and a combination, and inside he would leave her presents. They all had to ooh and ahh to make Hilary feel good about what Sam had given her.
Lucy stared at Hilary, and the fog of doubt from her walk down the stairs burned away. Mocking her at the Geek show wasn’t enough. Hilary had tried to starve Lucy out, she’d made the other Pretty Ones shun her, she’d kicked her out of the gang for disobeying and had encouraged Varsity guys like Brad to go after her, and he would have raped her if David hadn’t done what he did. And even after Hilary had done all that, she’d stabbed out her boyfriend’s eye. But, now things were different. Hilary didn’t have Sam anymore to protect her, and she didn’t have any Pretty Ones with her either. She was all skinny and alone, scavenging one of Sam’s old stashes. For anybody else, that wasn’t so bad. For Hilary, this was rock bottom.
Maybe this date was going to have a happy ending after all.
“Wow. This is just sad,” Lucy said.
Hilary looked up and saw Lucy. She looked surprised at first, but not scared like Lucy had hoped for. In fact, she didn’t look scared at all.
“I’m gonna enjoy this,” Lucy said, cracking her knuckles.
Fifteen Pretty Ones ran into the hall from a classroom.
“Are you?” Hilary said.
Lucy realized too late that she’d made a horrible mistake. She tried to run, but they tackled Lucy to the ground. They sat on her chest and they slapped her face. They dug their nails into her skin, they slashed her with them, they drew red lines all over her body with their sharp claws, and they kicked her ribs and stomach. Lucy was bruised, bleeding from countless little cuts by the time they finished. Hilary stood over Lucy, keeping her distance as if she was disgusted by Lucy’s existence.
“She’s so ugly now,” Hilary said. “Remember when she used to be pretty?”
The Pretty Ones laughed.
“I like her hair though,” another Pretty One said.
“Ooh, that is a nice shade of red,” Hilary said. “I want it.”
They grabbed her head. One of them p
ulled out a knife. She tried to stop them, but there were too many. They yanked at her hair, and gathered it into a ponytail at the back of her head. With a sawing motion, the one with the knife cut Lucy’s ponytail off. They shoved Lucy’s head down and the back of her skull cracked into the floor. She could feel the ends of her new, shorter hair tickling the backside of her jaw.
Hilary took the ten-inch long clump of Lucy’s red hair from the other Pretty One. She pulled a pink hair band off her wrist and looped it around the base of the ponytail, then dangled it over Lucy’s face.
“Thanks, Slut. I think I’ll turn it into a toilet brush,” Hilary said. “Let’s go, girls.”
Hilary and her crew walked off down the hall. They left Lucy squirming on the floor. Just when she’d thought she couldn’t get any lower, she realized that she was going to have to go back to the cafeteria, face her gang, and admit that she hadn’t been attacked by burnouts or Freaks… she’d had her ass handed to her by a bunch of Pretty Ones.
Some Slut she was.
32
THE BLOWING WIND WAS COOL AGAINST THE spit that ran down Sam’s arms. The people who used to quake before him, they spat on him now. They cheered when Gates threw him around like a bag of books. They blamed him. They thought everything that had happened after the quarantine was his fault. Idiots. For the past few food drops, Gates had brought Sam to the quad for show, but this was the first time Gates hadn’t bothered to blindfold him. This time, he got to see all the faces of the people who hated him, he got to see their glee at seeing him demoralized. He was a punching bag, a prop, a trophy.
Saints held his arms, which were bound behind him with duct tape. His mouth was gagged. Sam stared at the ground. He didn’t want to look up, he couldn’t bear it. His father was up there, witnessing every second of Sam’s failure.
TOTAL DOMINATION.
That was his father’s favorite phrase. He’d shout it at Sam during their father-son training sessions at five a.m. They’d start with an hour of strength and conditioning in the basement. Then it was immediately on to a liquid breakfast, his father’s creation: veggies, protein powder, a mix of seven carefully chosen powdered sports supplements, water, a cup of Pedialyte, and a teaspoon of vinegar. Sam had never touched fast food until he’d started dating Hilary. He was his father’s science project. His perfect athlete.
Dominate! Dominate! his dad would yell from the bleachers on game day. Sam could remember seeing how uncomfortable it made the other parents around his father. He could remember how it made him feel, hearing it when he was on the field, in the huddle, his father screaming when no one else was making any noise. Nobody else could understand his father’s disgust with imperfection. But Sam had been raised under it. His dad didn’t just need Sam to win, he needed him to do something new that no one had ever seen, every game. And almost every game, Sam couldn’t do it.
When he would return home, there would be no love. His father would shun him after a loss. It was guaranteed he wouldn’t acknowledge Sam’s existence for at least a day. And every flaw spotted brought a punishment with it. He might take away Sam’s bed for a week and make him sleep on the floor. He’d take away his computer, or put all the TVs in the house in storage until Sam got another win. He lived by his dad’s rules, down to the detail, to get an occasional nod from his father, or a rare smile. The guy didn’t love him, not as far as Sam could tell. He loved the win, and he loved when Sam didn’t get in the way of that happening.
Sam could only imagine what his father thought when he looked down at the quad. It killed him that his father had never had the chance to see what he’d built with Varsity. Instead, all he got to see was his son as a hopeless victim.
Gates was in the center of the quad, stalking around the pile of food and supplies. The pile was about a third of the size as usual, and it was mostly comprised of something Sam hadn’t seen in almost two years. Fresh vegetables. Squash, spinach, green beans, and lettuce.
“What the hell is this?” Gates shouted up to the sky.
Gates walked over to the pile and kicked over a crate. Deep green cucumbers spilled into the dirt.
“This isn’t what we asked for!” Gates shouted up at Sam’s father in the motorcycle helmet. “Where’s the Tempur-Pedic mattresses I asked for? Huh? Where’s the above-ground pool? I asked for two matching chain saws, where are they?!”
“We can’t do this anymore,” Sam’s father’s voice blared down from above. Sam knew that tone. His father was fed up, officially disgusted with Sam. He wasn’t going to play along anymore. He’d decided Sam wasn’t worth it.
Gates pointed at Sam. “Do I have to remind you what the score is again?”
Sam dared to look up. Other masked parents had appeared on the roofline. They moved toward Sam’s father.
“Goddamnit, we’ve given you everything you wanted,” Sam’s father said. “This stops now. One of our men, a good man, died yesterday in Colorado Springs trying to get your precious above-ground pool. Killed by a pack of teens.”
“Waaaah,” Gates said, imitating a baby’s cry.
“This has gone far enough, you little—”
His mom approached his father on the roof, sunlight glaring off her lilac helmet. She touched his arm, talking him down the way she always did when he got like this. Seeing her gentle way here, in McKinley, was too much for Sam to handle. Sam felt his eyes get hot, grow wet, and overflow. He was crying. Sam didn’t cry, he hadn’t cried since grade school. An easy breeze made the tear streams go icy on his cheeks.
“If you’d just give us another chance, we could all work together, and figure this out,” Sam’s mother said without amplification. Her voice was small and sounded far away.
“Oh, you want us to work now?” Gates said.
Gates pulled a yellow metal box cutter out of his pocket and held it up for Sam’s mother to see. He extended the triangle of razor blade out of the box cutter’s handle with a push of his thumb. Then he began to cross back toward Sam, box cutter in hand. Sam let out a fearful grunt that was muffled by the tape over his mouth. His legs shook uncontrollably. Sam knew Gates was out of options, a message had to be sent, the only thing that would make an impression was to go to town on Sam like he’d never done before. Mutilation beyond recognition. It’s what Sam would have done.
“No, Jason, don’t!” Sam’s mother shouted.
His father pushed his mother away, and she fell back. He flipped his motorcycle helmet visor up. He pulled a rifle up from the ground, and laid the long black barrel over the razor wire.
Instant screams erupted from the crowd, and people scattered. They ran for the exits.
The rifle cracked. Sam jumped. Dirt kicked up beside Gates’s feet. Sam’s father lifted the rifle for a reload. An empty casing ejected from the gun and spun down three floors to land in the quad.
“You stay away from my boy, you bastard!”
Never in his life had Sam heard his father express that sort of emotion about him. He stared up in shock as the Saints ran for cover, leaving Sam alone, unguarded. His father pulled the rifle butt up to his shoulder and leveled the sights at Gates.
“Run, boy!”
Sam didn’t hesitate. He obeyed his father’s command at once. It felt like old times. He took off, running as fast as he could with his hands bound behind him. Sam dodged. He weaved. His father kept firing. Nobody was trying to grab him, they were running for their lives. Sam worked his way through the chaotic crowd, and escaped into the hall. Every gunshot he heard told him how wrong he’d been.
His father loved him after all.
33
“CHECK THE CLOSET!” GATES SAID.
Will pulled open the closet door. Empty. They were in the middle of a mad search for Sam, in a first-floor classroom that smelled like rotten milk.
Pruitt ran into the room, clutching a rifle that he’d fashioned into a club. The barrel was wrapped in athletic tape for grip.
“No sign of him in this hall,” Pruitt said. “I checke
d all the lockers.”
Gates punched the blackboard nearby, and Will was surprised to see it crack.
“HE SHOT AT ME!”
“Gates, calm down,” Will said, keeping his voice as measured as he could. “We’ll find Sam, and everything’ll be fine. There’s only so many places he can hide.”
Gates started pacing and muttering to himself.
“You know what Sam would do if he was in our place? He’d get on the PA,” Will said. “He’d have P-Nut giving news updates until there was nowhere left to hide. Let’s get every gang organized. I mean, we’re all in this together, right?”
“Nobody else gets him,” Gates said. “Sam belongs to me.”
Pruitt crossed the room. “Listen to Will, he’s making sense…”
Will felt huge relief that he and Pruitt were on the same side of this.
Pruitt continued. “It doesn’t matter who captures Sam—”
“I want him!” Gates said, squaring off to Pruitt. “I want that motorcycle helmet fuck up there to see exactly what happens when he crosses me!”
“What are you gonna do?” Will said.
Will looked to Pruitt whose forehead was crinkling with concern.
“You can’t kill him,” Pruitt said.
“I can,” Gates said. “Right in front of their eyes. They’ve had it coming for too long.”
“Get a grip, Gates,” Pruitt said, walking toward him, using his size to get his point across. “Those adults up there are not the same adults that made our life miserable before. It’s only gotten this bad because you took it too far!”
