by Mary Strand
Had he not heard a word of this conversation? I’m a reform-school survivor. No college will want me. I have no future. Period.
“I haven’t thought about it.”
Okay, I had. Of course. Even if I hadn’t had a bazillion empty hours in Shangri-La to think about college, I couldn’t possibly miss all the college chatter in my classes this fall. From almost everyone except Cat.
I’d tried to ignore all of it, just like Cat ignored me.
I glanced at Liz, wondering what embarrassing thing she’d say next in front of Zach. She slid another glance at him and didn’t say anything.
I pointedly checked the clock on my phone. I didn’t need to check it to confirm that there were no texts, no emails, no nothing. “Oh, geez. Didn’t Mom tell us to get our butts home in time for dinner?”
Liz looked horrified. “Dinner? Mom?”
I glared at her, daring her to screw up my escape plan. “She said she was making her Charlie Special.”
The Charlie Special, previously known by any number of names of Jane’s boyfriends over the years, was a monstrosity that might’ve originally been a meat-and-noodle goulash that Mom claimed was her grandmother’s old recipe, but it came out gray and vile. It also tended to overwhelm the bathroom capacity in our house and, occasionally, the nearest hospital ER.
“No shit.” Liz flicked a glance at Zach. “Er, so to speak.”
I nodded. “So we should hurry.”
“In the opposite direction.” Liz finally caught the looks I kept shooting her, though, and sprang to her feet. “Hey, great to meet you, Zach. Maybe I’ll catch your band sometime.” She winked at him. “At least, if Kirk doesn’t see me first and slam the door on my face.”
He grinned at her and nodded, then turned to me. “I’d love to hear you play guitar sometime, too. Even your dreaded D chord.”
“Sure.” When hell froze over. “Maybe sometime.”
We all walked out to the parking lot together before Zach headed to his hideous bright-orange VW Beetle and Liz and I went to the Prius. I waved good-bye to him before climbing in.
“Nice guy.” Liz started the engine. “Have you known him long?”
I could tell she meant to ask if I’ve been going out with him long. Or sleeping with him long. Or whatever.
Buckling my seatbelt, I refused to think about what everyone assumed. “I don’t know him at all.”
“Hmm.” Liz shot out of the parking lot with her usual high-speed roar. I had no idea a Prius was capable of it. “My guess? He’d like to change that.”
Ha. Right.
When we got home, Mom was too busy shrieking at Dad to notice my new violet walls or to care that Liz and I had picked up enough Chinese takeout on the way home to feed the entire offensive line of Woodbury High’s football team.
Or Liz, as the case may be.
When I grabbed a small carton of rice and the entire container of seafood delight and headed for the stairs, Liz put a hand on my arm, stopping me.
“Dad could probably use a break from the shrieking. Should we all eat together?”
Mom was still pissed about all the lies Dad fed her when he sent me to Shangri-La. Mom’s lungpower was amazing, but I didn’t feel like rescuing Dad. He deserved it. So I kept going.
Liz’s grip is ridiculously strong, though, and she bought me violet paint and helped paint my room. She also treated me to DQ, so it didn’t seem like the right moment to take her down.
As if I could.
“Fine.” I returned to the kitchen table just as Cat showed up, grabbed the carton of vegetable lo mein, and tried to make a similar move for the stairs.
Liz grabbed her, too. “Since when is everyone around here so antisocial?”
“Since Lydia broke out of reform school?” Cat’s claws were out, reminding me of Amber. “Why? Is this one of those special moments when we’re supposed to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’?”
Liz frowned at her. “Cat, what’s happened to you?”
She flicked a snotty look at me. I think it made at least a thousand of them. “Like I said. Lydia came home.”
Liz glanced toward the stairs. Based on the decibel level, Mom and Dad were battling it out in their bedroom and unlikely to quit anytime soon. “Do you have any idea of the hell Lydia went through in reform school?”
Oh, great. Just what I needed. Cat hearing anything about reform school and telling the whole school.
Cat smirked at me. “Did you? Excellent.”
Wow.
Liz wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I nearly brushed her off—I can handle my own battles with Cat, thank you very much—but my legs actually felt a little wobbly. I told myself it was a delayed reaction to the paint fumes.
Cat rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me. Lydia even has you under her spell. Did she tell you her so-called charms aren’t working for her at school anymore? Except maybe with guys who are just looking for an easy lay?”
I sucked in a breath.
I also pictured Zach in his silly pseudo swordfight with Liz this afternoon. Was he like Drew and every other guy? Just wanting to hook up with me?
No, he had zero interest. He also had Lauren.
I glanced at the rice and seafood delight I’d set back down on the table. It wasn’t too late to grab them and go as far away from here as fast as humanly possible.
But not to Montana. Or Milwaukee.
As I reached for the containers, a chair slammed down on the floor. I whirled to find Liz in Cat’s face, which had gone pale, maybe because Liz had her in a headlock.
“I can’t breathe.”
“Like you say, excellent.” Liz loosened her hold, but not much. “Maybe you’ll stop talking about your twin sister like that.”
Shrugging, I grabbed my rice and seafood delight. I was tempted to dump Cat’s vegetable lo mein on the floor, but Liz would probably put me in a headlock. It wasn’t worth it.
None of this was worth it.
“Let her go, Liz.”
Liz, being Liz, didn’t.
“Seriously. Please.”
The impromptu wrestling match brought back vivid nightmares of bench-clearing brawls at Shangri-La, which were always stopped, but the same way the refs at a pro hockey game stop them: after letting the slugs fly for a few minutes. I felt like heaving. I’d also lost my appetite for seafood delight, which was almost unheard of.
Losing every shred of self-respect I’d ever had, I also started to cry.
Damn it.
Just like that, Liz released Cat, picked the overturned chair up from the floor, and proceeded to sit down on it. She dug into the sweet-and-sour chicken as if nothing had happened. Turning away from them both, I wiped my eye with the back of my hand, then turned back and grabbed the chair next to Liz.
Cat sat down, too. I think it had more to do with Liz’s barked command—“SIT!”—than a desire to hang with her sisters.
I knew the feeling.
“So let’s talk.”
Liz, of course.
I raised my hand. “Don’t I have a right to the assistance of counsel or at least a phone call?”
Grinning, Liz waved a rice-coated fork in the air. “There’s no point in calling out for pizza, since we already have Chinese, so you don’t need a phone call. But if you’d like a lawyer present, I can ask Mom to join us.”
I laughed. Before Shangri-La, I don’t remember anything Liz ever said being funny. After a day spent sniffing paint with her, she was growing on me.
“You really are falling for her crap.” Cat, whose vegetable lo mein sat untouched, stuck out her lower lip. It reminded me of our seventh birthday, when Mom gave her a Barbie doll but gave me a G.I. Joe. “You drank the Kool-Aid.”
“No, but I would if we had any. Especially cherry. Hey, let me check.” Frowning, Liz pushed back from the table and went to the fridge. She returned with two cans of Diet Coke and one Coke. She handed me the Coke, kept one Diet Coke, and gave the other to Cat. “No Kool-Aid, sorry. Maybe Lydia’s been
force-feeding it to everyone she knows.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” Cat’s lower lip was still front and center. For someone who didn’t hang with Amber and Tess anymore, she sure acted like them. “Lydia waltzes back into town, acting like she still rules the world, and the whole family falls for it.”
Liz pointed at the ceiling, in the general direction of Mom and Dad’s bedroom, where World War III continued to rage. “The whole family, huh?”
Cat sat back, crossing her arms. The temptation to shove her vegetable lo mein in her face until she choked on it was almost overwhelming.
She must not have noticed my fingers twitching. “Fine. Dad didn’t fall for it, but Mom did. So there’s one rational person in this house besides me.”
“You really don’t get it.” Liz took a long swig of her Diet Coke. “You think Jane and I fall for crap? Was it crap last spring when all those losers you used to hang out with went after you, and we helped you out? Even Mary?”
Cat shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong about Mary. At least somewhat.”
“At least somewhat?”
Based on Liz’s glare, I had a feeling the vegetable lo mein was going to end up in Cat’s face without any help from me.
Cat bit her lip. “Fine. I didn’t know Mary. But you didn’t, either.”
“So maybe you don’t know Lydia.” Liz glanced at me, offering a half-apologetic smile. “Maybe none of us do.”
“Lydia is Lydia. Was, is, always will be.”
“Right.” Liz sighed. “So that’s why you’re treating her as badly as your so-called friends treated you last spring.”
I watched the two of them argue, curiously detached. Actually, no, there was nothing curious about it. Detachment was the first and most useful skill I learned in reform school. It was how I survived.
After a few more volleys back and forth, Cat leaped to her feet. “That was different. I’m different from Lydia. I didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”
Liz’s eyebrows went up. “But Lydia does?”
I’d had enough. Way more than enough. Leaving the seafood delight for another day, when I might again have some semblance of an appetite, I stood up. “Thanks, Liz. For the paint and the help and, well, for today. You can’t fix everything, but I appreciate the fact that you tried.”
I turned my back on both of them before another tear fell. Because Shangri-La taught me more than detachment; it taught me never to let the bastards dance on your grave.
Chapter 15
Lydia—the humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all soon swallowed up every private care.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume III, Chapter Four
I walked outside after ignoring the keys to the Jeep in the chipped bowl on the front-hall chest. I needed to walk.
No, I needed to run.
Slipping back inside a house that was strangely quiet, I headed upstairs, changed into gym shorts and an old Green Day T-shirt I’d swiped from Liz a million years ago, and grabbed my one pair of running shoes from the back of my closet.
Before reform school, in the absence of a gun to my head wielded by a Gym teacher, I’d never run. Okay, it was pretty much the same scenario at Shangri-La, but the gun to my head was wielded on a daily basis, even in the worst of winter, so I’d gotten in the habit. Even so, I swore I’d never run again if I didn’t have to.
Until this moment.
Outside again, I started walking down the street before speeding up to a slow jog, then eventually to a run.
I soon remembered exactly why I’d always hated it, but I kept running. It chewed into my anger and disappointment.
My disappointment in Cat.
My disappointment in myself.
But I’d rather focus on Cat.
A laugh spurted out of me, exacerbating the sting of the hitch in my side. Ouch. Running was for total morons. I’d have to mention that to Liz the first chance I got.
Laughing again, I had to stop, bend over, and wheeze a little. Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have sprinted so fast after a month and a half spent not running.
But like everyone said, Lydia Bennet took chances.
They had no idea.
A horn honked, making me jump. Jerking my head toward the street, I saw a bright-orange VW Beetle I’d last seen a little over an hour ago at DQ. It pulled over to the curb.
Zach rolled down the passenger window. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I didn’t move an inch in his direction. For one thing, I was sweating like a pig.
For another thing, I was sweating like a pig.
“You’re okay, right? Like, not dying?”
I rolled my eyes. “Not dying. Just out for a run.”
So, as they say, only mostly dead.
“You like Green Day? It’s my favorite band.” Zach leaned toward me, almost falling into the passenger seat of his VW. “You know any of their songs on guitar?”
He seriously thought I could play guitar. I couldn’t even nail a solo on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
I just shook my head.
“We should play together sometime. I love ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams,’ but some people think it’s depressing.”
I stared at him. It used to be my fave Green Day song, but he wouldn’t know that. Had Liz told him? No way. It was something Cat would do.
“You hate it.” He nodded but shifted back into the driver’s seat a little, which was the only reason I took a few steps closer to the curb.
I shrugged. “It’s complicated, but I used to love it.”
Before Shangri-La. Before “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” sounded too much like my life.
“Anyway.” Zach drummed the fingertips of one hand on the steering wheel, looking antsy, especially for a chill guy like him. “Sorry I interrupted your run.”
I’d already stopped to suck wind, which he totally knew, but whatever. Had I gotten too close to him in this sweaty T-shirt? Resisting the urge to sniff it, I offered him a wave. “No prob. See you.”
He glanced out his windshield before turning back to me. “We should play sometime. It doesn’t have to be Green Day.”
Right. Knowing what he played on the radio in his car, it might be Tchaikovsky.
But anything he suggested would be impossible for me, at least in front of a human being other than Jazz, who didn’t count. She got paid to listen to me play.
I nodded, even though he was just being polite and we’d never play anything together. Including, unlike Zach and Lauren, in a wading pool.
He pulled away from the curb.
And slowly, very slowly, I walked back home.
Monday morning, someone must’ve cranked up the air conditioning in school, because the chill in my Speech Communications classroom was subarctic from the moment Chelsea walked in and saw me sitting in the back row next to Drew.
Oh, wait. Our school has no air conditioning.
Without a word, Chelsea launched herself into a desk in the front row, middle. Even though the desk on the other side of Drew was free. And even though a speechless Chelsea had probably never happened in this lifetime.
Drew didn’t say a word, either, but he stared at Chelsea. Kept staring. Stopping just short of drooling.
I can’t believe Cat wasted so much time on him. I can’t believe I wasted even two minutes considering him.
Ms. Ciccarelli walked in just as the final bell rang, a stack of index cards in her hand.
“Good morning.” As the class settled down, she handed several index cards to the kids in the front of the room and told them to take one and pass the rest back. “We’re going to do a little impromptu speaking on topics I thought would be relevant to teenagers today. Thirty seconds, a minute at the most. Whatever is on your card.”
As the cards made their way to the back of the room, some kids rolled their eyes, several laughed, and a few groaned. To me, it meant a class free of actual work. Perfect.
Until I got my card.
Slut-shaming.
Jesus H. Christ.
My gaze whipped to Drew, who was grinning, and then to his card. Legalization of marijuana. The girl on the other side of me: LGBTQ bullying.
I nearly crumpled up my card, shoved it down my throat, and swallowed it. Instead, I straightened my spine and faced forward, grimly awaiting my doom.
That was the one benefit—the only benefit—of Shangri-La: by definition, nothing else in life would ever be harder.
Not even speaking about slut-shaming to a room full of kids who thought I put the “slut” in slut-shaming.
Lost in thought, I finally realized that Chelsea was waving her arm so wildly that if someone harnessed it, the wind power she was generating could power a small village.
“Ms. Ciccarelli? We can trade cards, can’t we? Or ask for a new one?”
Grinning, I slouched back in my chair. Her card must be even worse than mine. Excellent.
“No trading, and no new cards.” Ms. Ciccarelli looked like she was trying not to smirk. And failing. “Sorry, Chelsea. Every topic is relevant in today’s world. I’m sure you can find something to say for thirty seconds.”
“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean—”
Ms. Ciccarelli shook her head. “Would you like to go first so you can be done?”
“Um, no, but could I get a hall pass? I just realized I have to go to the nurse. I’m, like, sick.”
“You and half of the class, from what I can see.” Ms. Ciccarelli smiled. Kindly, even. “No hall passes today except in the event of dire necessity.”
On the far side of the room, Travis clutched his chest, moaned, and dropped to the floor.
Ms. Ciccarelli actually laughed. “Nice try, Travis, but unless you want to miss football practice tonight, I suspect you’re not requesting a trip to the nurse’s office.”
Grinning, Travis leaped to his feet. Bowing as half of the class applauded, he took his seat again.
Then the girl behind him, LaShonda, slumped against her chair while pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. All she needed was a fainting couch.
Ms. Ciccarelli rolled her eyes. “Seriously, class. It may be too late to audition for the fall musical, but it looks like we have several budding actors. I believe the drama club meets on Mondays after school.”
