League of Strays (12 page)

I don’t know why, but all along, I’d pictured Mark hiding behind the building, waiting to see if Dave would show up. Then he’d sneak off and tell the entire school. But this was heading in a different direction. I dried my sweaty palms on my scarf.

“What are you talking about?” Dave asked. “Mikey who?”

Mark emerged from the shadows. His buffoons surrounded Dave in seconds.

“Why are you here, Mark?” Dave asked.

“Did Mikey-baby stand you up?”

Dave delivered the classic smile that seemed to dissolve most of Kennedy’s female population. “Look, guys, I have no clue what’s going on here. This is some kind of joke, right?”

“Ha, ha, ha.” Mark tossed Nora’s balled-up note in Dave’s face. “Your little fairy friend put this in the wrong locker.”

I winced at the derogatory term and glanced at Richie. He was enjoying the show, the smallest of smiles tugging at his mouth.

Dave smoothed out the note, and holding it under a ray of light, read it. He let it slip through his fingers. It fell into a puddle where it floated on the surface like a paper boat. “Come on, man. You’ve known me for three years. I’ve slept with every girl at Kennedy High.”

“Talk about an inflated sense of self-worth,” Nora whispered.

Mark’s fist shot out, connecting with Dave’s jaw. Dave fell to the ground, his baseball hat skidding across the blacktop.

“Jesus, Lawrence, what the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t like pansies, that’s what’s the matter!” Mark yelled.

Dave scrambled backward like a crab, carried by his hands and feet. “I told you, I’m no—”

The pack descended, pounding at Dave’s legs. One of the guys delivered a kick to his stomach. Dave contracted into a ball, groaning. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to walk away humiliated, not pummeled. Weren’t jocks supposed to have a team-for-life mentality?

I covered my eyes, but I couldn’t block out Dave’s grunts and moans as the others took turns punching and kicking the exposed parts of his body.

I peeked at Kade though my fingers. Shadows from a nearby tree cut his face in half.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whispered to him. “We have to do something.”

My eyes pulled back to Dave. He wiped his nose, leaving a bloody trail along his shirtsleeve. “Is this about football?” he cried, rolling onto his knees. “‘Cause it’s just a game, Lawrence, a damn game.”

Lawrence lunged forward, shoving Dave down again. I heard the sickening crack of bone as Dave’s arm collapsed under his weight. He howled and drew it to his chest.

I grabbed Kade’s shirt. “We have to stop this,” I pleaded. “It’s getting out of control.”

“No, it’s just getting good,” he whispered. He put a finger to his lips while keeping his eyes on the horrible scene before us. “Quiet, Charlie.”

“You broke it!” Dave cried, stumbling to his feet. “Jesus Christ, you broke my goddamned arm!”

Lawrence actually looked shocked, his eyes widening as he took a step closer to check it out. That’s when Dave made his move, driving the elbow of his good arm into Lawrence’s gut. His teammate doubled over, and Dave took off. Just like in football, no matter how injured these guys were, they could still gain yardage. Fistfuls of rocks flew over Dave’s head as he vanished down an alley.

“Oh my God,” I said, watching Mark and his friends slap each other’s hands as they crossed the parking lot. “Do you think he’ll be OK?”

Kade grabbed my arm. “It’s time to get out of here.”

“Too bad he got away,” Nora said. “He deserved it.”

I stared at her. Was this the same girl who saw a B as failure, who’d spent her whole life trying to please others?

Kade’s viselike grip hurt my arm. “Relax, Charlie. Nora’s right.”

Once the guys had left, Kade jogged over to the blacktop, scooped something up, and stuffed it into his pocket. Then
he turned around, both thumbs raised. Nora, Richie, and Zoe returned the gesture.

I stared beyond Nora’s head, watching Dave in my memory, curled up to protect himself against the attack.

“Think of what he did to Richie,” Nora said. “Now he knows what it feels like.”

I could see what she was saying: Dave had experienced for himself what it felt like to be harassed. But the irony didn’t slip by me. Now I knew what it felt like to be a bully, too.

They all turned to me, waiting. Kade wrinkled his nose as if he could sniff my hesitation. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts, which were as sticky and thick as tar. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him from that distance. All I could focus on was his mouth, slightly open, and his eyebrows, arched with an unspoken question.

I hesitated, then lifted my thumb.

SINCE ZOE LIVED TWO BLOCKS FROM THE POST OFFICE
, and her mom worked Monday nights, Kade picked her house to celebrate what Nora was calling “Harper’s Ass-Kicking Party.”

The stench of trash wafted through the door before it was opened. A pair of flies buzzed over something left in a bowl on the arm of a recliner.

Kade couldn’t deal with the mess. He sunk to the sofa and started channel surfing while Richie and Nora picked through a bag of stale corn chips.

“You don’t think Mr. Reid will connect the gym office with Dave Harper getting beat up, do you?” I asked.

“How?” Kade said. “Who’s going to tell him?”

“If Mark or Dave talk, he might figure out that someone planted the letter.”

“They won’t,” Kade said, as if he’d received the answer from
his personal crystal ball. “Teammates support each other. Jock superglue. Dave won’t rat on his defensive lineman, and Mark won’t admit that he beat up the star quarterback.”

It sounded reasonable. Nora, Richie, and Zoe nodded.

In her mom’s bedroom, Zoe flattened down onto her stomach and shimmied under the bed, exiting out the other side with a Costco box full of liquor bottles.

Nora reached for the whiskey, raising it in the air. “I’d like to make a toast. To being wild, crazy, and free.”

Zoe snatched it out of Nora’s hand. “That’s a six-dollar drugstore special. Here, try this.” She handed Nora a skinny, square bottle. “It’s the only one I’ll touch.”

Nora took a hearty swig. She reminded me of a fault line, shifting and straining all the time. “My favorite part was seeing Harper on his knees, begging Lawrence not to beat him to a pulp,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

I sensed Zoe’s eyes on me. I knew I was being too quiet, but images of Harper cowering on the cement kept playing through my head. Zoe leaned across Nora and offered the bottle to me. Was this a test? I raised it to my lips and swallowed. My eyes watered as the liquid burned a trail down my throat.

Zoe slapped me on the back. “Want some water?”

Kade scooped my foot into his lap. All my brainpower sunk into the pinkie toe he was massaging.

“This is where you hold your tension,” he said.

“That tickles!” I giggled, drawing my feet under me.

He moved closer. “Hmm. This could be fun.”

“Get a room,” Nora snapped.

I looked to Kade for my defense, but he was lost in thought, stroking the stubble above his lip.

I’M A PASSENGER IN A HELICOPTER, AND WE’RE FLYING
over the rain forest. Kade, the pilot, throws me an easy smile over his shoulder.

All of a sudden, the craft lurches. Kade adjusts the controls, correcting the trajectory.

“Poor Charlie. You have a problem with trust,” he says as we soar above the treetops.

But then the chopper plunges into a downward spiral. I look at Kade. He doesn’t seem at all concerned that we’re about to crash. His gaze remains fixed on the windshield.

“Do you even know how to fly this thing?” I yell above the dying groans of the engine.

I look out the window and see the earth getting closer. I squeeze my eyes shut, seconds before the helicopter slams into the ground and splinters into hundreds of pieces.

• • •

I woke with a start, terror pulsing through my body. It’s not real, I told myself. Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a dream. I repeated the words until I fell asleep again.

“Do you suffer from blemish overload?” inquired a squeaky-voiced teen. “Do pimples get in the way of your good times? Then zap those zits with—”

I fumbled for the cord to my radio alarm clock, yanking it from the wall.

The next thing I knew, Mom was tapping me on the back. “Charlotte, it’s almost seven!”

The details of last night slammed into me with alarming clarity, officially waking me up. “I’m sick,” I told her. My eyelashes felt stuck together.

She laid her cool hand across my forehead. “Not even warm. Get up.”

“Haven’t you heard of a mental-health day?”

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s when kids need a break from school to gather strength so they can make it through senior year.”

She smiled. “You can’t run from your problems, sweetheart.”

Running? Who was running? I was jogging in place.

My conversation with Mom made me fifteen minutes late for class—my third tardy in two weeks. At least I had a note from home, saving me from detention. The hallways were empty, so I slowed down and took the long way to class.

I tensed when I saw Nora’s PE teacher by the door of the
teachers’ lounge, gripping a thick white mug with permanent coffee stains. Mascara tears rolled down her face and dripped onto the collar of her cream blouse. I froze, paralyzed by the sight. I’d never seen a teacher cry before. It seemed so … out of place.

Mrs. Wilkerson, the art teacher, stood beside Madame Detroit. I ducked into the girls’ bathroom and cupped my ear to the swinging door.

“I was only going to be a substitute until Marsha recovered.” Madame’s accent was faint, hardly noticeable. Unlike Nora’s impersonation.

“I have to admit, Pauline, I’m worried. What message will it send?”

“I tried to deal with it. But I can’t imagine who would hate me enough to do this,” she said. “These are angry kids. I can’t help but wonder what they’ll do next. All I know is I don’t want to be around to find out.”

“The police think it’s a senior prank,” Wilkerson said.

I let out my breath. Finally, someone got it.

“I suppose Tutti’s some kind of joke, too?”

Tutti? What was she talking about? My orchestra teacher, still recovering from her breakdown, hadn’t returned to school yet.

“I know it’s—” Wilkerson’s voice faded.

I nudged the door open and leaned closer. Without warning, it swung inward, smacking me in the face. I stepped back, stunned. Samantha Hawkins glanced at me with mild curiosity and headed for a stall. Over the sound of peeing, she called out, “There are easier ways to get a new nose.”

I pushed the door open and sped past the teachers, holding my sore nose. I could feel their eyes on my back. Lucky for me, I’d shown zero talent in introduction to charcoal drawing last semester. My name wouldn’t survive Wilkerson’s short-term memory.

During the break between third and fourth period, I slipped notes into my fellow League members’ lockers, asking them to meet me in a music practice room after school. With its soundproof walls and thick curtains, it was the perfect place to hold an emergency meeting.

Kade was the last to arrive, Richie in tow. “I hope this is important,” he said, pulling the already-drawn curtain a quarter inch to the left. He shrugged off his backpack. It dropped to the floor like a lead weight.

I looked at him, taken aback by his attitude.

Richie sent me an apologetic glance. “Reid was following us again, but we lost him in the crowd.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I remembered what Richie had said about how Mr. Reid watched them sometimes. But following them around was a lot creepier.

“Does he know something about … ?” Nora glanced at the closed curtain but lowered her voice, anyway. “Well, you know.
Us
.”

“Nah, this is nothing new. He’s been stalking Richie and me for a long time. Before the League,” Kade said.

Richie dropped his chin to his chest. “He hates me. Kade says he won’t let up until I leave the school … or graduate, if I last that long.”