Limos, Lattes and My Life on the Fringe

by Nancy N. Rue

  “Well, Miss Bonning,” he said as he stood up and looked down at me. “I’m sure you’ll change the world someday, but I don’t think the junior-senior prom is necessarily the place to start.”

  “I do, sir,” I said, “because this is the world I’m stuck in right now.”

  His eyes flinched as he watched me stand up. “Like I said, Miss Bonning, you might want to watch that tone.”

  I was still trying to figure out what “tone” he was talking about when I walked out of his inner sanctum and into the main office. I didn’t have time to give it too much thought, though, because Egan Owens popped up from a chair and got right into my space.

  “They told me you were in here,” he said. His eyes darted around like he was watching confetti fall.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I said.

  “Whoever. Here.” He stuck a piece of paper at me. “It’s about the photo shoot and the interview. It’s tomorrow.”

  “For …”

  “For the prom queen nominees.”

  His mouth twitched into a smile and back out of it again. He still didn’t seem to be able to look straight at me. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was nervous.

  “Is this part of the joke?” I said.

  He licked his lips. By then his face was even redder than Mr. Baumgarten’s scalp. “I heard what happened with your petition thing at the council meeting. They were just messing around and ended up giving you the wrong paper.”

  “There’s that ‘they’ again. Have we figured out who ‘they’ are?”

  “Just — some people.” He put up his hands, and I saw that his palms were sparkly. He was nervous. That made me squint in suspicion, which I was doing a lot lately.

  “This is for real,” he said, nodding at the paper I was now holding. “Ms. Dalloway will be there. Seriously, it’s legit.”

  “Why is she going to be there?”

  “Because it’s for the school paper,” he said. “She’s the advisor.”

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  “Great,” he said, already backing away. “It’s all on there.” He took another step back and sent a wastebasket spinning across the floor. I left so he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  When I got to Chemistry, Mr. Zabaski had already started the class on a heat transfer calorimetry experiment. Normally Yuri was my lab partner, but since I was late, he was already playing mad scientist with Matthew, a pairing Mr. Zabaski had outlawed after they heated a hexane on the Bunsen burner during a lab back in November and caused a minor fire. Zabaski never said they did it on purpose, but they were way too smart for it to have been an accident. Which was probably why he was hovering over them when I walked in and didn’t see me standing there for a good fifteen seconds.

  “Bonning,” he said, his eyes still on the dangerous duo.

  Mr. Zabaski was a retired army officer, so he called us all by our last names and said things like “fall in” when he sent us to the lab side of the classroom. Guys like YouTube couldn’t resist going straight to the floor every single time. Hilarious.

  “Can you work with the new girl?” He nodded toward the end of the line of lab stations, where Valleri was staring blankly at a test tube. It occurred to me that they must not mess around much with chemicals in home school.

  “Sure,” I said, although I wasn’t sure Valleri was all that interested in working with me. She’d basically ditched me at lunch. I shrugged and made my way through the pairs of people looking cluelessly at their lab workbooks until I got to her.

  “I guess you’re stuck with me,” I said.

  She glanced up from the test tube she was still gazing at. “I think it’s the other way around. I don’t even know where to start with this stuff. That’s why I asked for you.”

  “Seriously? I got the impression you were over me.”

  “No. I’m over your friends.” She put her hand on my arm. I didn’t know anybody as touchy-feely as she was. “No offense,” she said. “I know you guys always eat together and everything, but — “ She shifted her eyes down the row and let her voice drop. “They’re kind of rude to you.”

  “Really,” I said. I, too, glanced down the line of stations at Yuri and Matthew, who weren’t looking at the lab workbook at all. “They don’t get what I’m trying to do with the prom thing, but —”

  “They’re rude,” she said. “Or maybe it’s just me.”

  I wasn’t sure. They definitely weren’t as warm-fuzzy as she was. I’d have to think about that.

  “Okay,” I said, “so, if you’ll just read the steps to me, I’ll do it and you can watch and see how it’s done.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “I don’t want to blow something up my first day in here.”

  I picked up the aluminum and glanced behind me to make sure Mr. Zabaski was out of hearing range.

  “I don’t think you actually can blow anything up,” I said. “He makes it sound like we could if we don’t follow directions, but, seriously, I can’t see him giving us anything we could potentially create an explosion with.”

  “Ohmygosh, do you hear her?” someone whispered on the other side of the half wall from us. It was one of those whispers they use on stage — the kind that could be heard in the back row or, in this case, at my lab station. One thing about those whispers; they’re always used on purpose.

  “She talks like a brain surgeon.”

  “No, she talks like she’s better than everybody else.” That was followed by a swear word, but the speaker might as well just have said my name. As for who was talking — it could have been Hayley or Joanna or any other female junior in the Ruling Class. They all sounded the same to me.

  “Next step,” I said to Valleri.

  She looked from me to the half wall. I nodded at the workbook.

  “Um — we’re supposed to put the aluminum in the water.” “So — a little Al in the H2O.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows, and just as expected, the RC whispered, “What is she even talking about?”

  “She probably doesn’t even know. I don’t think she’s really that smart. I think —”

  Whatever she thought was shattered by a blast that shot white smoke into the air. The room erupted in screams and coughing and falling lab stools. I grabbed the fire extinguisher at our station and aimed it at the smoke, but it was already evaporating. Foam spewed out of the hose and drenched the feeble flames — and, it turned out, Hayley and Joanna, who clung to each other in the falling mist, hair plastered to their heads.

  “All right, people, fall out!” Mr. Zabaski barked.

  Even YouTube scrambled with the mob back to the classroom section. I ran around the end of the bank of lab stations, extinguisher in hand. Mr. Zabaski took it from me and held out his arm to keep me from getting any closer. Hayley and Joanna were still entwined and shaking.

  “You all right?” he said.

  Neither of them even moved.

  “What’s the matter, are you paralyzed from the neck up? I said, are you all right?”

  “I don’t know!” Joanna cried, and burst into tears.

  From behind me, Valleri emerged out of the mist and went to her and peeled her off of Hayley. Joanna collapsed in her arms.

  “Barr!” Mr. Zabaski said to Hayley. “Are. You. Hurt?” She looked down at her foam-covered self and shook her head. “It just scared me to death! Ohmygosh — we could’ve been killed!”

  I, meanwhile, was inspecting their station and shook my head. “There wasn’t even a fire.”

  Mr. Zabaski peered at Hayley and nodded. “Yeah, it singed your eyebrows a little, but other than that —”

  “My eyebrows!” she said.

  Joanna drew back from Valleri and frantically rubbed her own.

  “They’re still there,” I said.

  “I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” Valleri said, giving Joanna’s arm the expected massage. “Thanks be to God.”

  I was startled — not just because nobody around there mentioned God wi
th anything close to reverence, but because it actually sounded natural coming out of her mouth.

  “All right, Bonning and — “ Mr. Zabaski looked at Valleri.

  “Clare,” she said. “My last name’s Clare.”

  “Duly noted. You two take these ladies down to the nurse. McKinney — get a janitor.”

  A white-faced YouTube nodded and fled from the room.

  “I’ll take them,” Egan said, inserting himself between Valleri and Joanna. He was shaking worse than the girls were.

  “Did I say it was up for discussion, Owens?” Mr. Zabaski said. “Bonning — you and Saint Clare take care of that detail.” Two vertical lines cut into the skin between his eyebrows. “The rest of you, turn to chapter twenty-eight and start reading. Now.”

  Faces went into books, but I would have bet some serious money nobody was comprehending a word. Valleri put her arm around Joanna and moved her to the door. I looked at Hayley, who said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Never entered my mind,” I said.

  Valleri walked ahead of us with Joanna, murmuring to her all the way. I didn’t plan on saying anything to Hayley. She, on the other hand —

  “Don’t even start in on what we must have done wrong to make that explosion,” she said.

  “I wasn’t going to,” I said.

  “But you were thinking it.”

  “How do you know what I was thinking?”

  “Because you’re always thinking you’re better than the rest of us.”

  The last two words came out in the middle of a hiccup. Hayley was crying. She shook her head and hugged her arms around herself and hurried to catch up with Joanna. That saved me from having to answer her, and I didn’t know what I would have said. I don’t think I’m better than the rest of you would have been a lie.

  That definitely didn’t qualify me as nice, and for the first time, that left me cold.

  Chapter Seven

  Dad started dinner that night with Sunny’s high point. Now there was an oxymoron if I ever heard one. By the time Mom brought out the angel food cake, we still hadn’t discovered what could possibly be “high” in my sister’s day. Or her life, for that matter. It was clear I wasn’t going to get to run the chemistry lab episode or my meeting with Mr. Baumgarten or tomorrow’s interview and photo shoot past them. Not tonight. Maybe not before I finished my junior year.

  I clearly wasn’t the only one who was having a problem with the focus of our entire meal. Mom pretty much dumped the strawberries over the cake, and by the way she stuck a spoon in a tub of Cool Whip and said, “Have at it,” I knew she was as done with Sunny’s angst as I was.

  My father, on the other hand, was so zeroed in on the girl, he never got through his Caesar salad. He didn’t even notice that I’d picked out all his croutons and eaten them. When Sunny started in on the wayward fiancé for the fifth time, I offered to help my mother clear the table. We’re talking desperate to get away from dinner and a therapy session.

  “Is it just me?” I said when Mom and I had escaped to the kitchen, “or is she saying the same thing over and over?”

  “I guess she has to,” Mom said. She let a handful of silverware clatter into the sink.

  “Yeah, but do I have to listen?”

  She gave a soft little grunt — her version of sympathy — and turned on the water and the garbage disposal. I got that cold feeling again. Without stopping to analyze it, I blurted out, “Am I a nice person?”

  Mom shook her head, which left me even colder, until the strawberry tops disappeared down the drain and she turned off the water and said, “I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I said …”

  She put a hand on her almost nonexistent hip and lifted her brows at me. The dishes waited. A fork fell off the pile. My father’s voice soothed on and on beyond the door.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  Mom nodded. “It’s okay. I know you have homework. I’ll have Sunny help me.” “That’s not what I —”

  “She owes me,” Mom said. And with a withering glance at the door, she went back to the sink.

  Nettles prickling at the back of my neck, I made a production out of passing through the dining room on my way to the stairs. If either Sunny or Dad noticed me, they did a great job of hiding it.

  I barely hit my room before my phone started ringing. I was surprised to see that it was Deidre, because she usually texted. Besides, I didn’t think she was all that thrilled with me right now.

  I picked it up, prepared to answer the usual, “What are you doing?”

  “Has Yuri called you?” she said instead.

  “Yuri?” I said. “No. Not ever, in fact. Why do you sound like you just ran the four-forty?”

  “Because I’m, like, flabbergasted. Are you sitting down?”

  “Why do people ask that?” I said, although I did plop onto the window seat. “How many people actually fall over when they hear news over the phone?”

  “I have no idea — but I almost did when I found this out.”

  I had to admit I was curious. Deidre didn’t get this excited about much of anything.

  “Did Yuri win the lottery?” I said.

  “What? No. Get this: they actually asked him to take pictures for that prom queen photo shoot tomorrow. Can you believe that?”

  “Well, yeah — he’s a photographer.”

  “He’s not that kind of photographer. He takes pictures of light bulbs with paint dripping over them.”

  “So why did they ask him?” I said. I was losing interest fast. “Who usually takes the pictures for the school paper?”

  “Mr. Linkhart, but he’s evidently sick or something.”

  “Ya think? The man sweats like he’s in a sauna. Even Valleri noticed it —”

  “Who’s Valleri?” “She’s the new —”

  “The thing is — I think, and so does Yuri — that this is another part of their little campaign to make us look stupid for whatever reason. First it’s you with the prom queen thing, now they’re trying to make Yuri think they really want him to take pictures, and you know there’s some kind of prank involved.”

  I could tell from the jangling of bracelets that she was changing her phone to the other ear. I contemplated hanging up; she probably wouldn’t notice for at least five minutes.

  “So what’s next, is my question,” she went on. “I don’t know, and that’s what scares me.”

  “So what did Yuri say?”

  “Huh?”

  “What did Yuri say when they asked him?” “He said no, of course.”

  “So what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that they are out to get us. Not just you — all of us. You have to give up this stupid prom campaign, Tyler, or we’re all going down.”

  I stiffened on the seat. “I’m trying to effect change, Deidre. That always comes with risks.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not interested in being martyrs. You could think about somebody besides yourself in this.”

  “I am! I’m thinking about the Kmart Kids and —”

  “People you don’t even know. People who are going to forget about the prom the next week.”

  “Fine — and Yuri will forget they asked him to take pictures by tomorrow morning.”

  “They’re not going to stop with that. They already tried to mess him over in your chemistry lab today.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “The experiment that literally blew up in those girls’ faces? It’s so obvious what happened.”

  “Yeah. They can’t read lab instructions.”

  “No — one of them set it up so Yuri and Matthew would get blamed.”

  “What?”

  “Those two guys already got in trouble once for knowing more than Zabaski. You didn’t hear that he had them in his office interrogating them the whole rest of the period today? And meanwhile, Egan and YouTube and the rest of them were laughing their butts off.”

  I was about to laugh
mine off. “Are you serious? YouTube wouldn’t know how to set something like that up if his life depended on it. And why would he do that to his own friends?”

  “You know they knew it was going to happen.”

  “No, I don’t. I was there. It totally freaked them out.”

  “That’s what they wanted you to think.”

  “Okay, you’re paranoid, Deidre. Unless there’s some kind of evidence —”

  “The janitor came in and cleaned up everything while Zabaski had Yuri and Matthew under a naked lightbulb.”

  “Did they get busted for it or not?”

  “No. Which is why I know this isn’t the end. You have to call off your campaign — that’s all there is to it.”

  I pulled my knees into my chest and squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips together, but I still couldn’t keep myself from asking it.

  “And what if I don’t?” I said.

  I heard her catch her breath. The fact that she didn’t expect that from me — that made me catch mine.

  “I guess we’ll have to stay away from you,” she said. “And that’s not a threat, just so you know. It’s self-protection.” “Do what you have to do,” I said.

  “Really? Really, Tyler? Is that the way you want to play it?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s the way you want to play it.”

  The bracelets jangled again, and this time her voice jangled with them. “You realize you’re going to be totally alone, right? Not to be mean, but you don’t have a lot of friends.”

  “That’s true,” I said. I didn’t add, “And it looks like maybe I never did.” Instead, I just hung up.

  I didn’t do moods. I’d never even had PMS. But the next day, Tuesday, I put on a black sweatshirt and wore the hood as I walked into English block. If Ms. Dalloway hadn’t outlawed sunglasses in class, I’d have worn them too. I basically didn’t know how to navigate in a bad mood, so all I could think to do was hide.

  That didn’t work on Valleri, who sat down behind me and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “About what?” I said.

  She just looked at me.