Poison Ink (13 page)

“Hold up, Letty. Something you oughta say to me.”

With a condescending smile, Letty rolled her eyes and kept walking, a bounce in her step as if she’d just gotten a compliment. She carried her books against her chest like some wholesome 1950s schoolgirl.

Rafe grabbed her arm.

Letty froze and turned to look at him, fire in her eyes.
“Canto de cabrón. No me jodas más.”

“
¡Marimacha!
What is your problem?” Rafe snarled. Sammi could tell he was furious, but he was looking around, uncomfortable with so many people watching them.

Letty tried to pull her arm away but he held on tighter. She went to slap him and he grabbed her wrist, trapping her free hand.

She laughed then, mischief glittering in her eyes.
“Careculo,”
she said.

Rafe’s anger turned to confusion. “Are you on crack? The hell’s wrong with—”

He didn’t get to finish.

Caryn went by so fast, Sammi almost didn’t realize who it was. Rafe looked up, blinking in surprise at the black girl in the stylish skirt rushing at him. He didn’t even have time to defend himself.

“Let her go!” Caryn shouted, her hands balled into fists.

She hit Rafe so hard that the sound echoed down the corridor. He staggered two steps backward. As he reached a hand back toward the lockers to steady himself, Caryn shot a kick at his balls.

Rafe went down on the floor, curled into fetal position, sucking and wheezing air into his lungs as if he were having an asthma attack.

Letty stood over him, looking down with open amusement. She shook her head.
“Careculo,”
she said.

Then she giggled and started away, with Caryn falling in beside her. They laughed together, linking arms. Peering down the corridor beyond them, Sammi could see T.Q. coming toward them.

She looked at Rafe. For a moment she considered trying to help him, but then she remembered the way he had snickered at whatever nasty crap Letty had said about her when she’d walked into history class and figured he could deal on his own.

“What’s going on here?”

At the voice, she turned and saw Mr. Geary staring at Rafe. In a kind of wonder and bafflement, the teacher looked around for an answer, but the students in the hall started scurrying away.

“Samantha?” Mr. Geary said, turning those sad eyes upon her. “What’s going on?”

She clutched her books against her.

“I wish I knew,” Sammi said.

Then she turned and headed for homeroom, the strangest day of her life finally come to an end.

8

O
n Wednesday, they didn’t come to school at all.

The day seemed oddly still. Not a trace of cloud appeared in the sky, yet its blue was a pale, pitiful color, without any vividness. No wind blew. When Sammi walked the corridors of Covington High, the voices of the other students and the other sounds of the school seemed strangely muted. She moved through the halls as though in a dream. On Tuesday, she had been comforted by the friends who’d been cool to her, talked to her at her locker, invited her to sit with them at lunch.

Today she just felt alone.

The night before, Sammi had not slept well. Falling asleep had been easy enough, but she’d tossed and turned and woken at five, unable to drift off again. While she’d been getting dressed and eating breakfast, her parents had been like ghosts passing each other in the halls and in the kitchen. They seemed locked in a kind of détente, a tenuous peace that existed mainly because they had stopped talking. Sammi had walked past their room on the way to the shower and caught a glimpse through the door of an old bedspread and a pillow made up on the carpet. Her father had spent the night on the floor.

The way the girls had blown her off had hurt her badly, but somehow knowing they weren’t even there felt worse. When she thought about their behavior the day before—cutting class and smoking, Letty going psycho bitch on Andrea Cooper, and Caryn beating on Rafe—it made her shiver. Plenty of kids cut class or smoked, but not these girls, not her friends. At first Sammi had wondered if she had just never seen the real them. They had all had their faults, and she knew she had her own. But had this kind of nastiness been there in them all along, and she’d just never realized it?

No. Impossible. She had rolled it over and over in her mind, and she knew that wasn’t the case. They were different. They’d changed, and she knew exactly when it had happened.

It’s me,
she thought as she hurried to her locker after fourth period.

It’s my fault. I spoiled it all. I’m the trigger.

Sammi knew it made no sense, but couldn’t deny the timing. She had ruined the friendship they had all shared, and as a result, all four of them had undergone major attitude adjustments. And not for the better. Hell, they weren’t even in school today, and no way did they all have legitimate excuses. They must have left their houses this morning so their parents would think they were going to school and met up somewhere later. Sammi didn’t even want to think about what kind of trouble they might be getting into at the moment.

Yet, at the same time, she couldn’t help wishing she could be with them. Letty, T.Q., Caryn, and Katsuko might be able to just throw a switch and suddenly hate her, but Sammi didn’t have that cold a heart. As much as it hurt her the way they’d defriended her, she missed them.

The flow of hallway traffic carried her toward her locker. She moved toward the wall on the left side of the corridor, slipping past a couple of basketball boys who nodded to her as she passed. Her locker was just ahead, right after the entrance to the girls’ bathroom.

Hands grabbed her arms and pressed against her back, driving her to the left. Before Sammi could say a word, they crashed her into the bathroom door. It banged open, and they pushed her inside. She staggered, barely able to keep herself from tripping over her own feet, and then they shoved her and she couldn’t stop herself. Arms pinwheeling, she went down hard on the tile, her books flying from her hands and sliding across the floor.

“What the hell is wrong with—?” she began.

Her words cut off when she looked up to see the three girls standing beyond the sinks and stalls, silhouetted by the light coming through the windows. The tall girl in the middle had long, curly brown hair with red highlights. Sammi knew her, but not well. Her name was Marisol, and when Teri Gomes had graduated the year before, she’d become leader of Las Reinas. They all listened to her.

The other two were faces she knew, but Sammi couldn’t remember their names.

She climbed slowly to her feet, turning to see the two girls standing by the bathroom door—the two who had shoved her into the bathroom from the hall. Jesenia and Cori. A twinge of sadness touched her. She knew these two well; they had always been friendly to her.

“Cori—”

“Don’t talk to her. Talk to me,” Marisol said.

The words, and the hard edge of her voice, made the fog of surprise clear from Sammi’s mind. She understood, now. Trouble had found her. She turned to face Marisol.

“Okay, then you tell me. What’s your problem?”

Marisol blinked, and her eyes grew stormy. “You might wanna rethink your tone with me, girl.”

Sammi held up both hands. “Look, you guys know me. Or some of you, anyway. Cori and Jesenia, they know me. Some of your other friends, too. All I’m saying is, if you wanted to talk to me, you didn’t have to drag me in here.”

Marisol smiled, eyes twinkling with malice. “Who says we wanted to
talk
to you?”

Sammi’s breath caught in her throat as she felt fear blossom in her chest. She glanced back at Jesenia and Cori, who both looked away. All Sammi could do was shake her head and stare at Marisol.

“What the hell’s this about?”

Marisol leaned back against the windowsill. The sunlight washed through the opaque glass and blurred around her, so she seemed like some kind of ghost or angel.

“Your friends didn’t show up for school today. You could take a lesson from them, Sammi. None of ’em are here. Really, we wanted Caryn Adams in here with us today, and Letty, too. But since they’re not here, we might as well start with you.”

Sammi shook her head. “Caryn? Why do you…”

Her words trailed off. She squeezed her eyes shut, one hand coming up to touch her forehead as she realized what had brought this trouble down on her today.

“This is about Rafe, isn’t it?”

One of the girls with Marisol swore under her breath. The words were a harsh whisper, and Sammi couldn’t make them out, but their intent was clear.

“There you go,” Marisol said. “Now at least you’ll know why this happened to you.”

She nodded, and the two girls on either side of her moved away from the window. At the bathroom door, Jesenia took a couple of steps toward Sammi as well. Desperate, Sammi glanced at the stalls, hoping someone might be in there, but then it struck her that they would not be that stupid. They’d have cleared the room first. This would not be the first time Las Reinas had given a little payback in this bathroom.

Cori braced herself against the door to prevent any intrusion.

Sammi focused on Marisol. Again she shook her head.

“You’ve got it all wrong. I saw what happened, but I wasn’t involved. Rafe grabbed Letty and then Caryn hit him. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

Marisol almost looked sympathetic, but she didn’t say a word.

Sammi put her hands up to protect herself, and one of the girls slapped her. The other grabbed her hair, then her throat, and slammed her against the frame between two toilet stalls.

Sammi got pissed. She shoved out one hand, grabbed the girl by the face, and pushed her away. The girl stumbled, but still had a fistful of her hair, and Sammi cried out in pain as she was dragged forward. By instinct she grabbed the girl’s wrist and shoved her thumb into the pressure point there, forcing her to let go.

Jesenia grabbed her arm. Sammi tried to hit her, but Jesenia grabbed the other arm as well, and they faced off.

“What are you doing?” she said, staring into Jesenia’s eyes. “We were friends?”

Jesenia shook her head. “I like you, Sam. Doesn’t make us friends.”

Sammi’s nostrils flared as she fought a terrible nausea that churned in her belly. It would have been easy to think of this as just the latest in a series of betrayals, but that wasn’t true. This wasn’t about Jesenia or Marisol, and it wasn’t about Sammi Holland.

“Just listen to me for a second!” she snapped, and she shook Jesenia off and backed up, nearly against the stalls again. Sammi looked desperately around at Las Reinas, her breath coming hard, her whole body coiled and ready to fight or run, knowing how it would end if she had to do either.

“They’re not my friends anymore,” Sammi said, and she winced at the pain of speaking the words aloud. She bit her lower lip and felt tears welling in her eyes, and that only made her angrier. “They blew me off, okay? You got a problem with them, take it to them. They don’t want anything to do with me anymore, and the feeling’s totally mutual.”

Marisol blinked, and for the first time Sammi saw hesitation in her eyes.

This time, when Sammi looked at Cori, standing by the door, the girl did not look away.

“Cori, maybe we’re not friends, but you know me. Ask around today. Anyone who was at lunch with us on Monday saw them get up and leave me sitting there. They’re treating me like something nasty they stepped in. Caryn and Letty embarrassed the hell out of Rafe. I don’t know why you’re looking for payback instead of him, but I don’t care. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

Sammi felt a chill spider-walk up her spine as she put down her hands and locked eyes with Marisol. “If you’re gonna do something to me, I can’t stop you. But if you’re doing it to get at Letty and Caryn, they’re just gonna laugh. They won’t lose any sleep over it.”

Her cheek stung where she’d been slapped and her scalp burned from having her hair yanked, but telling these girls the truth about the way her friends had humiliated and abandoned her was much worse.

Marisol glanced over at Cori.

“It’d be easy to check. But for what it’s worth, I believe her,” Cori said. “Sammi’s not stupid. She knows there isn’t anywhere to run.”

With Cori distracted, the door swung open six inches before she tried to stop it. The girl coming into the bathroom looked annoyed and shoved it open.

“Do you mind?” she said, pushing past Cori.

Then she saw the other Reinas and her gaze darted to Sammi, the one person in the room who didn’t belong, and she paused.

“Sorry,” she said, unsure now. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Marisol shook her head. “Nah. You’re not interrupting anything. We all got classes to go to, right, Sammi?”

Sammi stared at her without answering.

“Better pick up your books,” Jesenia said. “That was a bad spill you took.”

Cori helped her pick up the books even as the other Reinas departed. Sammi kept silent until the newcomer—a sophomore girl she vaguely recognized—went into a toilet stall. Then she looked at Cori.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice low.