by Anita Oh
“Nothing? You disappoint me, Astor. Anyone else want to have a crack at my original question?”
I hesitated before raising my hand. “They’re all written by men?”
Mr. Porter broke into a grin so big it could swallow the world. “Bingo,” he said, shooting me finger guns. “More specifically, white men. Now, I want you to get those lists up on your overpriced little tablets, and delete them. Or if you have a hard copy, rip them up into little pieces and throw them in the air! We’re going to spend the class discussing books that aren’t on the list and why they should be, until we have a book list we can all agree upon.”
A few people groaned, obviously having read the book list already. And more than a few shot me filthy looks. But I didn’t care. For the first time since I arrived at Amaris, I felt as if I’d done the right thing coming here.
The class passed in a flash and before I knew it, the bell rang. As I stood up to leave, I glanced down to the courtyard. It was empty apart from two boys who sat on one of the seats by the flowerbed. Even from a distance, Tennyson Wilde was distinctive, striking. He watched the other boy intently as the boy said something and bit into an apple. I wasn’t seeing things this time. There was definitely a second boy. A second boy who looked remarkably like Sam Spencer. It was too far away to tell for sure, but the way the boy threw his head back when he laughed was the same. So was the way he held the apple with the very tips of his fingers. And how my heart pounded when the boy turned his head up and looked toward me.
“Lucy, are you coming?”
I forced myself to smile at Hannah and nodded, and when I looked back down to the courtyard, the boy was gone. Tennyson Wilde stood, alone, glaring up at me, his thick black eyebrows furrowed into a scowl.
I’d thought the dirty looks in English were because of the extra reading, but I got more in history class, and a few people muttered behind their hands to their friends while staring at me. Hannah wasn’t in history with me, so I couldn’t ask her, but I was fairly sure I wasn’t just being paranoid. I knew I didn’t have anything stuck on my face, because after history, I ducked into the bathroom to check.
“Think about the free food,” I said to my reflection as I tightened my ponytail and straightened my glasses. “Even if rich people are creepy and weird, it’s worth it for the food.”
I’d been running too late to eat breakfast, so by lunch I was starving. I hardly had to look up where the dining hall was on my map – I just floated toward the smell of food.
The dining hall was as ridiculous as everything else at Amaris. There was no lunch line where a grumpy lady served mediocre food, no cheap long tables with wonky chairs. The hall was a large atrium off the west wing, with glass doors that opened out onto the back terrace. It was filled with sweet-smelling plants and small tables covered with white lace tablecloths. I walked around vaguely, trying to find where to get my food from, and ignored the muttering and snickers that seemed to follow me.
I spotted Hannah sitting in the back corner with a short boy and an Indian girl, and she waved me over to sit with them. The boy furiously whispered something at them as I approached but hushed up once I got within hearing distance.
“You’re being an idiot, Milo,” said the Indian girl, clearly not caring if I could overhear. “Aren’t you the president of the ‘I hate Tennyson Wilde and all he stands for’ club? Have some integrity!”
Milo pouted and looked away as I sat down.
“Ignore him, he’s an idiot,” said the Indian girl. “I’m Fatima, and unlike other people at this table, I don’t throw away my principles at the first sign of trouble.”
The three of them were halfway through bowls of some sort of orange soup, though Fatima didn’t seem to be eating hers so much as using it to prop open her book. I looked around again for somewhere to get food.
“Here,” said Hannah, pressing a small button in front of my place setting. “It’s all automated, but if you don’t like the menu you can change it through your login on the school app.”
She stared at a silver circle in the middle of the table that wasn’t covered by the tablecloth, but nothing happened.
“Weird,” she muttered, pressing the button again.
“It’s not weird,” said Milo. “It’s obvious. What did she think would happen when she made an enemy out of Tennyson Wilde?”
“It’s not because of Tennyson Wilde,” Fatima said, turning a page in her book without looking up.
Hannah pressed the button again. “I mean, how would they even know where she’s sitting to block it?” she said quietly.
I shrugged and got out my tablet. “I’ll try changing the menu and doing it again.” I loaded the app, went to the lunch menu, and selected the table and seat where I was sitting. It flashed up an error message saying the seat didn’t exist.
“Let’s swap seats,” said Hannah.
That didn’t work either.
“It’s him,” said Milo. “They’re not going to let you eat. You won’t be able to access the facilities. The teachers will stop teaching you. They’ll treat you like you’re invisible until it becomes true. You know what happened to the last person who was number one in the Tennyson Wilde ‘worst things’ rankings? Eaten by sharks. Sharks just jumped right out of the sea and ate them up because Tennyson Wilde wanted it that way. Your life is basically over.”
Fatima rolled her eyes and turned another page. “Tennyson Wilde can’t control sharks, Milo.”
From the look on Milo’s face, he definitely did not agree.
“It’s not that bad,” said Hannah, though she did look worried as she pressed the buttons in front of the other seats as well, and still nothing happened.
“What do you mean, they won’t let me eat?” I said. My stomach gurgled in protest. I hadn’t even done anything that bad to Tennyson Wilde, had I? Surely it was just some sort of technical glitch.
Hannah smiled kindly and pushed her bowl of soup toward me. “You can finish my lobster bisque if you like. I’m sure it will all blow over soon.”
I grinned at her and started digging in. I was so intent on eating that I didn’t notice when a hush fell over the dining hall, not until Milo kicked me in the ankle as he tried to duck under the table.
The doors to the terrace had been thrown open and the Golden appeared in a stream of sunlight. The entire student body flooded toward them as if controlled by the Golden’s gravitational pull. Althea said something to the other two and gestured with an elegant wave toward a mezzanine level that overlooked the dining hall and gardens. Nikolai nodded at her, and they crossed the hall to the mezzanine stairs, paying no attention to the crowd as it parted to let them through.
Tennyson Wilde didn’t follow them. He stood in the entranceway, glaring fiercely at me. A few people turned to see what he was staring at, then nodded in understanding and whispered to each other when they saw me. I didn’t care. I had lobster bisque and I was going to eat the whole bowl. And if Fatima didn’t want hers, I would eat that too, and Tennyson Wilde could glare at me all he liked. It didn’t bother me one bit.
Creepy jerk.
Chapter 5
Although I didn’t care about Tennyson Wilde’s opinion, I was in an incredibly small minority.
Lunch had been bad enough, with him scowling at me over his soup, and everyone muttering, and Milo trying to hide behind some sort of exotic plant. But that was nothing. When I got up to go to class, so did everyone else. They converged and by the time I got out of the dining hall, I was completely separated from Hannah and the others. It was as if I was being swept away by a tsunami. There was no way I could fight against it; the force of the crowd was too strong. I tried to push through them but they formed a solid barrier, so I gave up and just went with it.
As far as bullying went, I thought it was kind of weak. It was inconvenient and a bit creepy how they didn’t even look at me as they herded me along but it was no worse than closing time at the Farmers’ Market, when everything was discounted and yo
u had to battle the old ladies for $1 boxes of fruit and veg. And honestly, none of these rich kids were half as scary as Mrs. Gionopoulos if you got between her and a cheap eggplant. Plus, as soon as the bell rang, they started drifting off. No way would Mrs. Gionopoulos quit so easy.
By the time the crowd dispersed enough for me to make my own way, I was in some dusty, forgotten part of the school.
“Jerks,” I muttered to the last few stragglers as I got my class schedule up on my tablet to figure out where I needed to go. Of course, my biology class was at the opposite end of the school.
“You’re late,” said the biology teacher as I slipped into the seat Hannah had saved for me. “Lates are marked as absences in this class,” he said, narrowing his beady little eyes at me. “Three absences are a fail. Organize your time better in future.”
Before I could say anything in my defense – the late bell hadn’t even chimed yet – he put up a slide on the overhead projector about biochemical molecules. The information all seemed far more advanced than what I’d been learning in middle school, and I hurried to start taking notes. A few people laughed at me getting reprimanded, then glanced back at Tennyson Wilde to see if he noticed their reactions. He didn’t. He was too busy scowling.
“Are you okay?” Hannah whispered.
I shrugged and smiled at her, not sure how to answer.
“Don’t mind Mr. Corbett. He’s really horrible to everyone, unless he’s looking down your shirt. Sometimes even then.”
Try as I might to concentrate on molecules, I kept thinking about Tennyson Wilde. He really had no reason to be setting his minions on me. I mean, I’d glared him into submission, but that was only because I was awesome and he was not. And surely that didn’t warrant this kind of treatment. Maybe I’d inadvertently interrupted something in the forest. He’d been committing some sort of nefarious act and Althea had been his lookout. That made sense. Though it didn’t explain why he’d been cutting class to hang out with some Sam lookalike earlier. I was sure I hadn’t imagined that. He’d been weird when I asked about Sam as well. No matter how I looked at it, how I slid the pieces of the puzzle around in my brain, none of it clicked into place. I needed more information.
I screwed up my nose at Tennyson Wilde from across the room, even though he wasn’t looking.
“Something on your mind, Miss O’Connor?” asked Mr. Corbett. “Something more interesting than my class?”
Everyone turned in their seats to stare at me. Well, everyone except Tennyson Wilde. Nikolai Volkov gave me a cheeky salute from his seat next to Althea.
My cheeks burned red and I stared down at my notes. “No, sir.”
“Then, with your permission, we’ll continue.”
It was the worst class ever. I wondered if I could switch out of biology and into something else. Like stabbing myself in the face with a spoon class, that would be way more fun.
“He’s basically Professor Snape,” said Hannah, later on when we were gathered in the common room. “Without the sex appeal and flimsy excuse for being mean.”
We’d skipped dinner at the dining hall, and had taken the prime spot on the sofas while the place was relatively empty. It was safer that way, with the whole school against me. I stretched out on the soft cushions, scrolling through the lists of school activities that I was supposed to pick from. I wasn’t really an activity person, but it was required, so I was looking for the thing that would take the least amount of time and effort, so I could keep up with my computer repair work. I couldn’t really see myself playing croquet or learning the flute.
“Polo, that’s the one with horses, right?”
Hannah nodded. “Can you ride? No? There’s water polo too, that’s horse-free.”
“Where is the club for eating free food and taking naps? That’s the club I want to join.” Actually, there was another club I’d heard about that sounded like a good fit for me, and I kept it in the back of my mind as Hannah and I discussed the possibilities, until Milo and Fatima came in from dinner.
“No way,” said Milo, edging toward the door.
“But you’re the president, aren’t you?” I asked. “You have control over admitting new members.”
“It’s not even an official club. You can’t put ‘hating Tennyson Wilde’ down on your school transcript.” He spoke in a hushed whisper, even though the only other people in the room were some seniors studying at the big table.
“So I’ll do it just for funsies,” I said.
“You want me to die? You want me to end up at the bottom of the ocean, sleeping with the fishes? Because that’s what will happen if word gets out about this club.”
I rolled my eyes. Milo clearly had a thing about the ocean. A totally different type of thing to his thing about Tennyson Wilde. “You’re not going to sleep with the fishes, Milo.”
“Fish don’t sleep,” said Fatima, scrolling through her tablet as she sat down at the end of the sofa. “They just rest.”
“See,” I told him. “You should let me join the club and tell me everything you know about Tennyson Wilde, and then together we can destroy him.”
Hannah gave me a long look, tilting her head to one side as she studied me, but didn’t say anything.
“Tennyson Wilde is indestructible. He’s the destroyer, not the destroyee. He makes people disappear. And not in a fun ‘where did the lighter fluid come from’ kind of way – in a very real and very dead kind of way.” He turned toward Hannah. “You remember Ivy Fairchild from fourth grade?”
Hannah shook her head.
“Exactly,” said Milo.
“Wasn’t that the name of your tamagochi?” asked Fatima.
“It was the name of the tamagochi I inherited from Ivy Fairchild after she disappeared without a trace from fourth grade.”
“You killed her for her tamagochi?” Fatima actually glanced up from her tablet for that.
Milo shook his head. “All Ivy Fairchild did was laugh at Tennyson Wilde’s painting of a dinosaur, and then the next day she vanished. Never to be heard from again.”
“He did suck at art,” said Fatima.
“What about her family?” I asked Milo.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, they were from like Wales or somewhere anyway, and that’s practically the bottom of the ocean. But if you google them, you get zero hits.”
“Is she the only one?”
She wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t.
“I don’t know. I only remember Ivy because of the tamagochi. Maybe he just got better at it after the fourth grade. Maybe nobody made the mistake of laughing at his art after that. The point is, I am not messing with Tennyson Wilde. You’re on your own.”
He wasn’t wrong. The more I looked into Tennyson Wilde, the more it became obvious that people just loved him. And not just people at school, people everywhere. He had fan sites dedicated to his eyelashes, even. But that didn’t help me. I wasn’t interested in rumors about whether he was dating this model or that socialite or whatever. I needed the truth.
Tennyson Wilde’s blog was kind of interesting, though. The whole blog was him ranking things, mostly things he didn’t like. Everything that topped his “worst” rankings seemed to have dropped in popularity shortly after. He seemed to be single-handedly responsible for nobody using Google Plus. Some of it was obviously sponsored – best soft drink, favorite gaming platform, most relaxing holiday destinations but those posts had a markedly different tone to the “worst habits of my family members” and “worst things about the Internet.” The “worst things about freshman year” post was at the very top, with an unflattering photo of me that looked as if it had been taken during morning assembly. I did not read that post, and I definitely didn’t read the 10267 comments on it.
By the end of the week, I still couldn’t get food from the dining hall, people whispered about me, my personal possessions mysteriously vanished, doors wouldn’t open for my student card – it was just like Milo had said, I was becoming invisible. I stuck to my
room when I wasn’t in class, catching up on schoolwork and chatting with my family. I’d always been near the top of my class, but rich kid education was nothing to sneeze at. They were way ahead of me in almost everything. If I wanted to keep my scholarship, I had to get decent grades, and if I wanted to get decent grades, I had to study my butt off.
Hannah studied with me. At first, I thought she was being a super supportive friend, but when I thanked her for it, she just shrugged.
“I mean, of course I wouldn’t abandon you to those jackals but it’s not just that,” she said, highlighting something in her history notes. “My father’s business went broke and we couldn’t afford my tuition this semester. I’d have lost my place only my aunt is on the school board and organized a scholarship. Which means I have to keep up my grades, the same as you.” She looked over at me from her study nook and smiled. “I’m telling you because I know you understand, but please don’t tell anyone else. You’ve seen what they’re like.”
I smiled back at her. “Yeah, we’d be screwed if they cut off both our food access.”
Hannah had been sharing all her meals with me, or I’d have starved. Fatima and Milo had begun to avoid me. I’d hoped we could be friends, but I couldn’t blame them. They’d only just met me and I didn’t expect them to put themselves at risk of the same sort of treatment. If Tennyson Wilde would bring this down on me just for crossing his path, who knew what he’d do to those who associated with me. I’d told Hannah to keep her distance as well, but she refused.
I’d managed to avoid another altercation with Tennyson Wilde or any of the others, and I hadn’t caught them up to any more funny business, but that obviously wasn’t helping the situation. I’d caught glimpses of the Sam lookalike, but nothing definitive. He wasn’t in any of my classes, or any classes at all that I could discover, and he didn’t go to meals with everyone else. He was like a ghost. The few times I did see him, I could never get close enough to question him before he vanished.
