by Nancy N. Rue
I said, “My point exactly.”
Obviously nobody got it. I sat down in the back and waited. It should take about fifteen seconds for the petition to go around the room — since nobody was even going to look at it, much less sign it — and then I could get out of here.
“Can we please talk about the prom now?” Alyssa said.
Patrick’s brown eyes danced. “Are you going to keep bugging me until we do?”
“Yes,” she said — apparently unimpressed with the dancing eyes.
“Okay. Knock yourself out.”
Patrick leaned against the podium, and Alyssa stood up. I guess. She was one of those miniature girls who could barely see over the steering wheel of her Audi and yet ran her posse of friends like a mafioso. She tossed back her mane of every-shade-of-blonde hair and leveled green eyes at her audience, who had obviously been saving their stash of attention for her. And then she nodded at Egan and said, “Okay. Go for it.”
Egan stood up next to her, every spike of his bleached-out hair in place. “First of all, I just want to say that as chairman of the prom committee, I have tried to get the prom moved to someplace cool, but Mr. Baumgarten is still being a — still says no, and now it’s too late to reserve a hotel or something anyway.”
The juniors and seniors gave a unanimous moan. The sophomores and freshmen went back to sleep, since this had nothing to do with them. It had nothing to do with anybody, as far as I was concerned.
“May I remind you again,” Mr. Linkhart said, breathlessly, “that you are lucky to even have a prom after what happened two years ago.”
“True,” Patrick said. “We didn’t have one last year.”
“What happened two years ago?” I said.
They all looked at me as if they’d forgotten who I was already. I hadn’t actually meant to speak, but I hated to see an obvious question go unasked.
“It was stupid,” Alyssa said, flicking her hand at me.
“They had the prom at Birch Hill,” Patrick said, “and some parents hired a bus for a bunch of kids to get out there.”
“A nice bus,” Egan put in. “Not a school bus. I actually went with a junior — she’s graduated now —”
“Whatever,” Alyssa said. “Everybody knows the story —”
“Some kids sneaked alcohol onto the bus,” Patrick said to me, “and they got to the prom totally plastered.”
“And nearly destroyed two restrooms,” Mr. Linkhart said. “Which is why we are no longer welcome at Birch Hill.”
“It was kind of cool how they snuck the booze on, though.” Egan focused on his hands, held in front of him. “They got these, like, special flip-flops that you can pour liquid into. I mean, I wasn’t in on it, but, dude, nobody knew.”
“Until Doug Letterman fell off the bus,” Alyssa said. “What a moron.”
“So where do you get something like that?” a wide-awake freshman said. They were, in fact, all wide awake at that point. “Moving on,” Patrick said to Egan.
“Okay, the deal is we have to have the prom here at the school. Sorry.”
“Which will mean a lower ticket price,” Mr. Linkhart said.
Alyssa rolled her eyes at the entire council.
“Okay, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, Mr. Linkhart,” Hayley Barr said. She glanced at me like I was the poster child for disrespect to teachers. “But people expect to spend a lot of money on prom. I mean, right?”
She swiveled in her seat for the reaction, ponytail swinging. Everybody nodded — everybody, including the underclassmen. What, had they already set up prom accounts for their junior year?
“Oh, yeah,” Egan said. “The tickets are, like, nothin’. You’ve got the limo, corsage for your date, the tux rental, dinner, stuff for the after-party —”
“The girls spend more, I bet,” Alyssa said. She enumerated on her manicured fingers. “The dress — which, if you’re going to get anything decent, is going to run you at least five hundred —”
“Are you serious?” I said. “Five hundred dollars for a dress you’re going to wear once? That’s like a hundred dollars an hour!”
As soon as I said it, I wanted to rip my vocal cords out. Alyssa, Egan, Hayley, Joanna — all of them and more honed in like cats when you bring in the Meow Mix. Every eye glittered.
“What do you plan to spend on your dress?” Alyssa said. “You realize you’re going to be standing in front of everybody there when they announce —”
“You have a spreadsheet for your expenses, right, Tyler?” Patrick said. “I’m gonna get with you later and see how that works.” With another flash of the grin, he turned to Egan. “What else you got, dude? We’re burnin’ daylight.”
I started to label Patrick Sykes a jackal in my mind, until it dawned on me that he had just deflected any mention of me and the prom queen thing. And he’d done it on purpose. Maybe I’d thank him later. Or maybe I’d just grab my petition and get out of here whether it was signed or not. Or maybe I’d tear it up and get back to campaigning for my parents to please, please send me to private school. In Siberia.
While Egan went on about whether people were allowed to bring dates from other schools, I stretched my neck to see where the petition was. I expected to find it at the last table, discarded by the sophomore who had been jabbing her thumbs at her phone ever since the meeting started. But it seemed to have gotten hung up at the RC’s table, where a kid they called YouTube was hunkered over, writing, while Joanna whispered in his ear. I just hoped he didn’t drool on the paper.
With that in mind, I skirted the tables and crouched at the back edge of theirs.
“I’ll go ahead and take that,” I whispered.
Joanna jumped and pressed her hand to her lips. She was going to come out of that with a palm full of lip gloss.
Below her at the table, Hayley snatched the petition from YouTube and stuck it under a bunch of other papers.
“I wasn’t done!” YouTube said.
“How long does it take to sign your name?” I said. I swallowed back, Or don’t you know how to spell it yet?
“Shut up!” Joanna hissed at YouTube.
She snatched up the paper and thrust it at me. She couldn’t look at me, but YouTube leered openly.
I gave him a cold look and made it out the door and into the hall before I said, out loud, “All of those people are sharing a brain. All of them.”
The paper was wrinkled and smeared, and I smoothed it against the wall so I could slide it back into its folder. The amount of ink on it surprised me — until I looked closer.
It wasn’t my petition, but a different sheet of paper. And the writing wasn’t signatures. Not unless She’s our token black chick was somebody’s name. We need somebody butt-ugly to make everybody else look good, someone else had written. What on earth?
I searched the sheet. At the top, someone had written WHY TYLER BONNING SHOULD RUN FOR PROM QUEEN.
I had to believe they’d accidentally given me the wrong paper, because somehow everyone had gotten the message that they were supposed to be as hilarious as possible with their entries.
Because she can’t run for king.
She’ll give a long acceptance speech and everybody will be able to sneak out and go party.
About halfway down, funny turned to crude. By the end — I didn’t even get to the end before I crumpled it into a small ball and squeezed it until my fingers hurt. I’d been wrong: they weren’t just sharing a brain; they were sharing a purpose, and that, apparently, was to make me look like a complete idiot.
But why? What had I ever done to any of them?
It was a question I wasn’t sure even I could figure out an answer for. I didn’t even want to. I just wanted to go somewhere and cry. Really cry. And I hadn’t done that since … Since I couldn’t remember.
It had been so long I didn’t know how to stop it. I blinked and swallowed my way back to Ms. Dalloway’s classroom, but I still felt like I was going to lose it any second. I stood in the
doorway until she looked up at me.
“Problem?” she said.
“Restroom?” I said.
She started to say something, but I took off before she could. I barely made it to a sink when the tears erupted. The thing about waiting so long to cry? It hurts a lot more when you finally do. Every sob ripped through my chest and burned up my throat and shook my shoulders until they ached. I probably didn’t notice the warm hand on my back until it had been there awhile.
“You okay?” someone said.
I raised my head and looked in the mirror at Valleri. Her blue eyes were swimming.
“No,” I said. “I’m a mess. I need to blow my nose.” She tore off a paper towel and handed it to me. “I feel like Mr. Linkhart,” I said. “Is he that teacher that’s always sweating?”
“Yeah.” I honked.
“There’s something wrong with that poor man.” “There’s something wrong with me too,” I said. “It’s called idiocy.”
“What happened?”
I honked into the paper towel again. “I let those jackals get to me.”
“What’s a jackal?”
“It’s a wild dog that runs in packs and devours what’s left over after the lions eat.”
“Oh. Then I know exactly who you mean.”
She waited while I splashed my face with cold water, and then handed me another paper towel.
“I bet you never had to put up with people like that when you were homeschooled,” I said. “Matter of fact, I think I’m going to opt for that myself.”
Valleri shook the curls. “There are jackals everywhere, trust me. We have a lot more in common than you think.”
“You and me?” I pulled in my chin. “It isn’t the niceness factor, that’s for sure.”
“You’re the only person who’s been nice to me since I got here.”
“Then this place is worse than I thought,” I said, “because that is not an adjective most people would apply to me.”
My mouth dropped open as she hiked herself up onto the next sink and swung her legs.
“That’s because most people think of ‘nice’ as, like, sickening sweet,” she said. “That kind of ‘nice’ turns around and cuts you down behind your back.”
“You can definitely count on me to cut you down to your face if I think you need cutting, only — “ My eyes filled up again. “I don’t really do that, either. I’ve hardly even talked to any of these people in the last year and a half. I don’t even know them.”
“Me neither,” she said. “So, see, we have that in common too.”
“You’ve only been here three days.”
“That’s long enough to know I don’t have anything in common with them.”
I had to nod. “Yeah, I figured that out pretty early on too. Which is why I don’t see why they can’t just leave me alone.” I gazed miserably into the mirror at my swollen eyes. “I just figured it out: I haven’t cried since September 11, 2001. That’s why I can’t believe I let this get to me — I mean, this is not like an attack on the World Trade Center.”
“It’s an attack on you, though.”
“I haven’t even told you what they did.”
She shook her head. The curls, I was discovering, had a language of their own. “You don’t have to,” she said. “But maybe we can figure out —”
“Okay — what is going on?”
We both turned to the doorway, where Deidre was storming through. She tossed her vintage bag into the third sink and put her hands on her hips. Her wrists jangled with noisy bracelets.
“Yuri texted me that you came back from the council meeting upset and I’m like, ‘Tyler doesn’t get upset.’ So I texted him back and he texted me and said ‘girls’ bathroom.’ Like I’m supposed to know what that means.” She glanced at Valleri. “Hi, by the way.”
“Hi.”
“So what went down?”
“Just — more harassment,” I said.
“About the stupid prom queen thing?”
“Yeah.”
I choked back more tears. Valleri put her hand on my arm. “And you’re crying about it?” Deidre said. “This is not the Tyler Bonning I know.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t the Tyler Bonning I knew, either. The bell rang, and Valleri squeezed my arm. “I’m going to go back to class and get my stuff,” she said. “You okay?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said.
She hung on for a second longer. “I’m going to pray for you,” she said.
When she was gone, Deidre stared at me. “Did she just say she was going to pray for you?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Who says that? They are going to eat her alive here — which is so not my problem. You are my problem.” “I’m not your —”
“When I come in here and find you crying in the sink because a bunch of brain-free posers played some game with you, that’s a problem.” She hoisted the bag onto her shoulder like we were about to storm the castle. “All right, I’m sorry I even brought up the Facebook thing last night. You’re right — we have to just pretend this whole thing isn’t happening. So — tomorrow, half day, we’re going to lunch. Far away from here, where we can get your mind off all this — garbage. My treat, so don’t eat breakfast. Are we clear?”
“Sure,” I said.
But nothing was clear to me right now. Nothing at all.
Chapter Four
Usually on the half days we had so that teachers could do whatever it was they did when we weren’t there, I hung out in the chemistry room and helped Mr. Zabaski. But the next day I was happy about the prospect of getting far, far away from Castle Heights High when the bell rang at eleven thirty. The Fringe was waiting for me out in the student parking lot, and Matthew was tossing his car keys from one hand to the other.
“You’re driving?” I said. “Why can’t we take Deidre’s car?”
“Because it’s in the shop,” Deidre said. “The brakes are shot.”
“I still think that’s safer than riding with Matthew.”
“Man, that’s harsh,” Matthew said.
“No,” I said, “that’s the truth. How many tickets have you had?”
“Technically, none. On my record, anyway.”
“You got stopped twice first semester alone. What happened to those?”
“My mom was dating a cop then. He made them go away.” Matthew shrugged his hulking shoulders. “Then he went away, so now I have to be a law-abiding citizen.”
“That bites,” Yuri said.
“Tell me about it.”
Deidre folded her arms. “Are we actually going to get in the vehicle, or are we just going to stand here and review your rap sheet?”
Matthew creaked the back door of his ancient Mercedes open and disappeared inside from the waist up. Various articles of clothing, a handful of CDs, and a liter bottle of Mountain Dew were tossed onto the shelf under the back window.
“So it’s true,” Deidre said. “You do live in your car.”
“How are you going to see behind you with all that stuff in the window?” I said.
Matthew emerged from the backseat. “Am I supposed to see behind me?”
“Are you serious?”
“No.” He jerked his shaggy head and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” I said to Deidre as I joined her in the back.
“Culinary therapy,” she said.
“Where are we eating?”
“Five Guys. I love their Fat Burgers.”
“I don’t think that qualifies as culinary.”
“Define culinary,” Yuri said from the front seat.
“Food that only contains ingredients I can pronounce,” I said.
Yuri said something — at least his mouth was moving — but I couldn’t hear him over the scream of the car’s engine as Matthew revved it into the red zone on the tachometer, with the car, fortunately, still in park.
“Do you have to do that?” Deidre sh
outed to him.
“Gotta blow the carbon out. It’s old.”
“What, the carbon or the car?”
“You. You sound like my grandmother back there.”
“You’re going to blow more than carbon —”
I didn’t hear the rest of what Deidre said, because Matthew lurched the Mercedes into gear and peeled out of the parking space. I could actually smell rubber burning.
“This is a bad idea,” I said. “Let me out.”
He may have ignored me, or he actually may not have heard me over the squeal of brakes as, in a horrible slo-mo moment, a red Jeep turned into the oncoming lane, which Matthew was taking up half of at warp speed. I hadn’t even had a chance to buckle my seat belt yet, and I stuck my arms out to keep from colliding with the back of Matthew’s seat. As the Mercedes rocked to a violent stop, I was flung backward into my own seat so hard my teeth clacked together. The bottle of Mountain Dew flew between Deidre and me and landed on the console.
The Jeep was now almost sideways, its driver’s side fender about a half inch from the Mercedes’ left headlight. If the driver hadn’t been paying attention, we’d probably have been picking glass shards out of Matthew’s face just about then.
“That’s it,” I said. I fumbled with the handle and got the door open.
“What are you doing?” Matthew said.
“Making sure I live to see graduation,” I said.
I got out and tried to pull my bag with me, but it caught on the same handle I’d just wrestled with. Gritting my teeth, I yanked it loose, and both bag and I fell sideways, right into somebody’s arms.
“You okay?” the person said.
I looked up and groaned. It was Patrick Sykes.
“Seriously — are you hurt?”
“No,” I said, and to prove it I wrenched myself away from him and dumped my bag onto the parking lot. Facedown, of course.
I didn’t crouch down to retrieve it when he did. I’d seen enough cheesy movies where two people who couldn’t stand each other went for the same dropped book, handbag, contact lens, you name it, and came up miraculously in love. That definitely wasn’t happening here.
While Patrick was sticking all my stuff back into my bag, Matthew poked his head out the car window.
