Broken (The Outsiders Series) (5 page)

I start by bringing up Lane. He listens while I
tell him what happened. Then, he stops on the sidewalk and shoves his hands in his pockets. “What did you do?” I ask knowingly.

He shrugs. “I kind of told Brooke that you and I would double date them for a party at Colton’s. I just can’t go alone, you know. Katie will think it’s pathetic. And I’ve been wanting to ask Brooke out for a while and stuff. Come on, Carter.”

“If she’s going to help you get over that ho, I’ll do it. But let me warn you, that I’m not into her. I was just trying to get Anne Marie off my back, Ryan. Okay?”

Ryan smiles a little. “Is it Candy?” he asks.

I roll my eyes. “No, it’s not Candy. I’m not into girls like that. Not seriously.”

“Then who?” He pulls his hands out of his pockets and shakes my shoulders when I don’t answer right away.

“I don’t know her name,” I admit.

Ryan sighs. “Point her out to me tomorrow. I’ll help you out with her. But you’ve got to hold off until after the party.”

“Deal, man. I’ll keep it up for you.” We shake on it and begin walking again.

“I guess I won’t see you after school tomorrow. You’ll be busy with Vandelya and junk,” Ryan says a second later. Then, he stops and humps the air in front of him. People from across the street point and laugh at him.

“Come on, man. You know I’m not into her. I don’t even know what she looks like yet. All I know is that you tell me that I won’t like her. Why?”

Ryan sighs, but then
he tells me about this Vandelya girl. He tells me that Vandelya and Anne Marie don’t get along, and that no one likes Vandelya at all. No one really talks to her anymore. When I ask him why, he tells me that Vandelya and Anne Marie used to be friends in elementary school. Then, when middle school happened, Vandelya refused to be Anne Marie’s friend and all. She was too busy wanting to be popular, so she abandoned her so-called friend. Anne Marie tried not to take it too badly. So, she went off in search of her own friends. When she befriended the popular eighth graders, Vandelya got angry and spiteful. She began to bully Anne Marie, and it lasted until the day Anne Marie confronted Vandelya in front of the whole school.

I
lean forward on the couch. “So when did that happen?” I ask Ryan. This story is pretty interesting, and I’m almost beginning to like Anne Marie a little bit more.

“Well, no one really knows, because Anne Marie said it happened in the lock
er room. She said that her shoe laces were tied together and she had to stay late. Vandelya went up to her and started bullying her. Apparently, Anne Marie just told her off. She said she wouldn’t deal with her crap anymore.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “And now, because of all the crap that went down, no one talks to Vandelya. Serves her right, too. Bullying is not cool.”

“What about Anne Marie, though?” I ask Ryan. “She seems a little stuck up and stuff. She doesn’t sound like that same girl in the story.”

Ryan shrugs. “People change, man. Wouldn’t you change after standing up to someone that had been bullying you your whole life, Carter?”

I lean back and bite my lower lip. I guess I would feel different if I had punched Jack before leaving. I’d feel stronger and more in control. “Yeah, man. I guess you’re right about her,” I say.

5

The next day, I walk into the lunch room. Candy’s walking next to me. She stopped me in the hall after Chemistry and now she won’t shut up about something that happened in her class. Apparently, they did a cool experiment or something. Something about fire and gummy bears.

“And then, it blew up!” she says excitedly.

I mumble something and continue to look around the lunchroom. Ryan told me he’d help me with my mystery girl. Now I just have to find her.

“Uh, Carter, if you’re looking for your friends, they’re in their same spot. Carter,” Candy says in an attempt to get my attention. But I’m too busy scanning the tables. She grabs my arm, and I look down at her. “Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just looking for someone that I saw yesterday.” I shrug, trying to play it off, but she’s not stupid.

“Who is she?” she whispers. “I can help you find her.”

“I don’t know her name,” I say again.

“Oh. Well that doesn’t help me at all, Carter. When you find out her name,” she says as she starts walking away, “let me know. I’ll help you out.” She waves and moves to talk with her friends.

I laugh to myself and turn toward my table. I guess it’s time to hang out with Lane today. And I get her all to myself. Perfect stuff.

Ryan catches me before I sit down. He pulls me a little bit away. “Did you find her?” he asks.

I shake my head and shrug again. “Maybe she’s absent,” I say as I scan the room one more time. I know I won’t find her, but I pretend I will.

“Sorry, man. Now,” Ryan says seriously, “I have to remind you to play nice. For me, man. For the bond. K?”

I smile even though I don’t want to. “I can do this,” I say. And I know I can. I’ve been lying this much so far. I’m sure I can lie to Lane the whole time. Plus, she already knows what Ryan’s told everyone. Maybe I won’t have to do much lying…or talking.

---

As the bell rings for fourth, I walk to the library. I have to admit, I’m a little bit nervous about meeting Vandelya. I don’t really want to have to pretend to like this girl. I don’t want to have to work with someone that thought she could bully someone else to make herself feel stronger. It’s bull, and I don’t want to deal with someone like that right now. I’ve tried to get away from Jack. And now I have to deal with some self-righteous ho.

The thought pulls me back to lunch. I learned that Lane hates Vandelya too. She heard from Anne Marie that I’m working with her. She spent the entire lunch talking about her. She told me how ugly she was. She told me how she once had to do a Math project with her last year. She said that she had to do the whole thing because Vandelya wouldn’t speak to her – like Vandelya was too good for her or something. Lane just kept repeating how sorry she was, and that she hoped I didn’t get caught in the middle of her lies. Apparently, Vandelya lies a lot. I guess that makes two of us now. And I don’t want to be like her.
But I can’t let them find out about my past. I have no choice.

“Just go get it over with,” I tell myself. I push forward and change my thoughts to focus on where I am, not who I’m with. It makes me feel better instantly, and I calm down enough to go
in. There is no reason for me to skip class like Lane suggested. Besides, if I do, I’ll just have to do this all over again tomorrow. I’d rather just get it over with.

I take a deep breath and look at the large wooden doors in front of me.
The library is on the bottom floor, near the classrooms better known as the dungeon. These classrooms aren’t used anymore because both faculty and students claimed it was haunted. The library has to be down here, though. The school hasn’t had enough money to move it somewhere else. And no one complains about the library. Probably because no one ever uses it.

When I step into the
large room, the first thing I see is a large desk. Behind it, sits a small woman with grey hair. And behind her hangs the largest deer head that I’ve ever seen. I must say, I’m pretty impressed with it, especially because it’s a twelve-pointer. And I don’t think the school bought it. It must be from her home.

“Hello, young man,” she says when I reach her desk. I’m still staring at her buck when I get there, so she waves her hand in my face.

“Sorry,” I say as I run my hand through my hair nervously. I point at the buck and she turns around to look at it proudly. “I was just admiring it.” I laugh and bite my lower lip. Wow, this future meeting is wacking me out. And I don’t even know how to handle it right now. Girls.

“Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves? My name is M
rs. Marshall, and my husband was the one that shot the buck up there. We brought it down here to see how long it would take for Principal Wiggins to notice it.” She laughs quietly. Her eyes squint behind her small glasses when she does, and it makes me laugh too.

“I’m Carter,” I say when I stop laughing. “And I’m down here
so that I can meet someone. We’re working on a project for English class.”

M
rs. Marshall nods once and leans over the counter to point toward her left. “A girl went down that way a few minutes before you got here. She’s probably sitting at the group tables in the back corner. Have fun back there,” she adds with a small wave. I wave back as I walk toward the group tables, where my unfortunate partner sits waiting.

It
doesn’t take me long to get back to where Mrs. Marshall pointed out. When I do, I come face to face with a girl’s back. She has long brown hair, and she’s wearing a black, cotton shirt. She’s got on some jeans and a pair of black Converse sneakers. They’re laced about halfway up and they’re tied there in a loose bow.

I
clear my throat to tell her that I’m here. I watch as she moves to turn around. When she does, I’m in for the biggest shock of my life. Because I’m staring into the green eyes of the girl from the pond, the girl from the hall.

She swallows and stands up quickly. She pushes her long hair behind her ear and looks down at her shoes. “What do you want?” she asks me a second later. Her voice is small and afraid. Why would she be afraid of me? Unless she knows that I know about Ann
e Marie and the bullying. Then she should be nervous.

I decide that I won’t start off too strongly. “I’m Carter, your partner.”

She looks up into my eyes again. This time, she looks confused. But she nods a second later and turns to sit back down in her seat. I walk around the table and sit across from her. She’s playing with her pen. As I watch, I notice that her hands are shaking slightly, and I wonder if it’s because she’s scared or if she always does that. But it doesn’t really matter. She’s a bullying backstabber. And there’s no way I’m telling Ryan that she was the one I was interested in. No way in hell will he find out about it.

“I’m Vandelya,” she finally says. “I think we should just write down the answers and give it to each other. We don’t have to talk.”

I shrug. That’s fine with me. I’d prefer not to talk to her right now. So I begin writing down the things about myself. My favorite color, my favorite song right now, and my favorite TV show are just a few things that I fill out before opening my mouth to confront her. To be honest, I’m kind of shocked that I waited that long.

“You know, if you had come to class yesterday, we could be on the same part the rest of the kids are on.”

She looks up at me and sighs. “I just couldn’t go,” she says simply. Then, she bends her head down and writes again.

“Why not?” I ask.

She bites her full lower lip before putting down her pencil. “If you want to interrogate me, go ahead. You should know why I didn’t go to class. You saw the whole thing, Carter.” My name on her tongue sounds weird to me, almost attractive. She has this small voice that sounds like a stream. And it vibrates in my ears like a guitar string. What the hell is wrong with me?

So
I get defensive. “You cried. Why? I don’t think I hurt you, did I? There was no reason for you to cry about it.”

“You don’t understand anything,” she starts to say. I watch as she stands up and closes her notebook.

“Maybe I don’t, Vandelya.” Now, I’m speaking loudly. It’s almost like I’m yelling at her a little bit, and when she flinches, I almost feel bad. “You could just tell me, you know. You don’t have to run away like you did yesterday. You could just face it.”

She stops shoving her pencil in the spiral of her notebook. She just stares at me. Her green eyes are wide.

I swallow, unsure of what to do or say. I’ve never gone crazy on someone before. But she’s frustrating me right now. She reminds me of my mother. She’s not dealing with whatever it is she’s running from. And if it’s her lack of friends, she needs to face the fact that she started all of it.

Vandelya’s bottom lip quivers slightly.

“Stop,” I say.

“They’ve told you their side of the story and you believe it. And I know that you have no reason to believe me or like me, Carter. But don’t tell them that I cried.” And just like that, she turns around and rushes out of the library. I stand there for a few minutes, just staring at the direction she took off in, and then I sit down. The questions sit in front of me, and without thinking, I start working on them.

I’m almost finished when footsteps pull me from my work. Mrs. Marshall leans on the table I’m at and smiles.

“She left a while ago,” she says. “What did you say to make her so upset?”

I sigh. “I don’t really know, Mrs. Marshall. I just told her to face her problems. I told her to get over it.” Then, I just start telling Mrs. Marshall about what happened the day before, and how Vandelya skipped Mr. Preston’s class afterwards. “I don’t understand,” I say when I finish with the memories.

“Have you tried to figure it out,
Carter?” she asks.

“She just walked away,” I start with.

Mrs. Marshall lifts a finger to stop me from continuing. “First, change your attitude.”

I mumble an apology and she nods once.

“Second, listen. Look around you, Carter, because things aren’t always as they appear. I may be deep down in the library, but I know more about these students than Principal Wiggins. It’s because I look and listen for the truth, Carter.”

“Are you telling me that my friends lied to me about her?”

“I’m telling you to find out the truth, Carter. I don’t know what they said about her. But I do know that you’re pre-judging that girl.”

I sigh inwardly.

“I would start by telling her the truth,” Mrs. Marshall says before she walks away.

I stare at her until I have to blink. Then I shake my head and pack up my things. It’s Friday and the party is tomorrow. I have to go shopping and find a job.
I’ll figure out what to do about this project on Sunday or Monday or whenever I get around to it. For now, I need to focus on more important things.

When the bell rings, I walk off campus and head to my apartment. I stop in the front
office and get a few phone numbers for people that need to hire someone for manual labor. The guy at the front desk, Dane, lets me use his cell phone. I get a couple interviews and one of the men wants to speak to me right away. I hang up and smile when Dane holds out a collared shirt for me. It’s black and plain but it’s better than the white shirt I’ve been wearing for two days now. I’m just lucky that it’s plain, because the kids at school would have noticed if I had been wearing one of my graphic tees. For now, they probably just think I like white tees under my hoodies.

“Keep it,”
Dane says. “And kid, there’s a cheaper store a few blocks down. The mall is filled with a bunch of overpriced stuff. And you don’t need to waste your time there. The place I’m telling you about is a secondhand store, and you’ll still be wearing the same brands as your friends.” He smiles at me when I thank him and nods before picking up his ringing phone.

I step outside and cross my arms over my chest to keep out the cold. I’ve got just enough time to change before I head over to the job. And hopefully, I’ll have time to go to the store tonight.
I don’t want to risk it being closed on a Saturday or something. Plus, I’ve got to get some food in my fridge. I can’t bank on school food tomorrow.