Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (14 page)

The crowd shifted, opening up a slim gap between a couple of kids to my left. I moved to squeeze through it, but only succeeded in pushing myself to the front of what I could now see was a semicircle. A line of boys in football sweats lounged against a row of lockers, cracking up at the one-man dance-off in front of them—one man, but lots of girls. That boy York was moon-walking from one side of the space to the other, pulling girls out of the crowd one at a time to take a spin on his impromptu dance floor.

The confident girls showed off their moves to rounds of applause, while the more timid ones gave a little shake, then ran back to their friends, flushed and giggling.

“Seven!” York called after one dance partner twirled away. A less graceful girl got a “Three!” and her face crumpled in embarrassment while York's friends snickered.

His eyes scanned the edge of the ring as the music shifted to a more modern club beat. I tried to press myself back into the crowd, my eyes on my feet and my brain screaming,
Not me! Not me!
Fumbling around in front of dozens of your classmates is not the way to be noticed.

“Hey, you,” York called over the music.

Not me!

“Hey, Hat Girl.”

Oh shit.

My eyes were still cast downward when York's hand stretched into my field of vision, an invitation to humiliation. But I was spared a second later by a boy pushing in front of me, knocking York's hand out of the way.

“Excuse you,” York snapped.

The boy deliberately crossed through the center of the space. “Some of us have places to be,” he said.

“Yeah, like cheerleading practice,” York called after him. He reached into his pocket, and the music abruptly died. “Nice outfit.”

The shift in tone caused a shift in the crowd, and bodies pressed on me from all sides as kids, more interested in fun than a fight, suddenly realized they had better things to do than linger in the hallway after school.

The boy turned around at York's taunt, and I noticed he was, in fact, wearing the unfortunate spandex tank top and shimmery track pants of Jefferson's male cheerleaders.

“You got a problem with my uniform, Flint?”

The crush of moving students opened up a little, and I took a grateful step forward, hoping to slip around the boys, but they backed away from each other, their standoff stretched across my path, and I hesitated, not wanting to be caught in that line of fire.

York held his hands up in mock conciliation. “No problem at all. I especially like your sparkles. Very pretty.”

His footballer friends roared, save for one who tugged at York's elbow, saying, “Let it go. Don't waste your time.”

I inched toward the wall opposite the footballers, my eyes on a narrow space between the cheerleader and the lockers behind him.

York shook off his friend. “No, seriously, where can I get some threads like that? Do I have to join the squad, or—?”

“At least I'm not cheering for you anymore,” the boy snapped.

A split second later, fancy pants and spandex were smashed up against a locker, so close to me that I got hit with York's spit as he cursed in the kid's face.

This was my moment to move, to step around them before they spread their fight back out across the hall, taking up too much space and making themselves big with as much effort as I put into making myself small. But I couldn't move.

I was transfixed by the heat in York's face. His fists and his words all spelled out rage, but the way his eyes drew down at the corners and the strange quiver in his lower lip that only his victim and I were close enough to see smacked of something worse than anger—something closer to shame.

York was either too focused or too furious to notice me, but the other boy slid his eyes to mine.

“Take a picture,” he grunted.

I ducked my head out of habit, angry at myself for letting my shield of invisibility crack, and scurried the rest of the way down the hall. I didn't care one way or the other what happened to that not-so-cheery cheerleader—and as for York and the other junior-wing vultures, well, I hoped they choked on spandex.

 

18

THE STACK OF drugs on the counter made us all a little jittery, but we couldn't agree on where to stash it. I wanted to bury it in the woods where no one—not even the cops, crooked or otherwise—would ever find it. Heroin came from the ground; why not put it back there? Dust to dust and all that. I got shot down by the others, who agreed we would need it as evidence. Andi said we should just put it back the way we found it, but the boys had torn the zipper on the bag when they'd unloaded the stuff. We ended up shoving it all into three small backpacks York collected from a cabin closet, then we piled the packs in a corner of the kitchen and tried to forget they existed.

The stack of drugs was soon replaced by a potpourri of food scavenged from the cabinets and the fridge. Bags of pretzels, jars of salsa, and about a dozen pudding cups were now spread over the kitchen island. It wasn't exactly dinner, but we were all too hungry to complain.

Boston picked at a pile of M&M'S until all the red ones were gone, while York single-handedly finished off a box of stale crackers and some suspicious-looking cheese-in-a-jar, then started pawing the rest of the snacks.

“I want something sweet,” he said.

I held up the yellow pudding cup in my hand and offered him a spoonful. “These are sweet.”

He sneered at the blob on the spoon.

“What?” I said. “It's tapioca.”

“I don't eat foods that jiggle.”

I shook the spoon back and forth under his nose to make the tapioca wobble. “Beggars can't be choosers.”

He closed his hand over mine on the spoon to keep it from reaching his mouth and winked. “I never have to beg.”

I felt a flush of something warm and tingly zip from our hands all the way up my arm and into my face.

He's a jerk
, I reminded myself.
And this is no slumber party.

But his eyes were locked on mine, and there was something almost kind there—something meant for me. I couldn't help it. I smiled.

“Ugh,” Andi mumbled through a mouthful of pretzels. “Stop flirting.”

York and I both dropped our hands so fast the spoon clattered to the counter, spraying little blobs of pudding on the granite. Tapioca shrapnel.

Boston rescued us from any awkward silence by announcing that he was going to start writing up our statement. He shoved the remains of our late-night binge aside and settled in with a
notepad and pen at the counter. No one really responded when he asked for input. It was as if time had slowed down inside the cabin, and we were all dragging our feet, putting off the inevitable. Something about this place felt very far away, and for the first time tonight, very safe. I, for one, was no longer in any hurry to turn myself in.

York must have had the same thought, because he escaped with an excuse about finding us some blankets and pillows so we could all sleep in the cabin's great room.

Maybe it's a slumber party after all
.

“What are you saying about the drugs?” I asked Boston.

He shook his head without looking up from what he was scribbling. “I don't know, the truth? We found them?”

“Don't say it's heroin,” I blurted. “It might seem suspicious that we know that.”

Andi raised an eyebrow. “That
you
know that.”

“Whatever. Just keep it short and sweet,” I said. “But, y'know, don't leave anything out, either—”

“I think I got this,” Boston interrupted, waving me away.

“Come on.” Andi motioned for me to follow her out of the kitchen. “We'll check his spelling later.”

As we retreated, I heard Boston mutter something about being the River City Regional Spelling Bee champ for three straight years.

We found the great room in the center of the cabin, bookended by the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. The back wall opened up to a view of the lake. The water was as still and slick as ice, belying the heat outside, and a long dock stretched quiet and
steady over the water. The serenity was almost unsettling after the turbulent night we'd had.

“It's beautiful,” I breathed, touching a hand to the glass wall as if I could reach right out into the moonlight.

“Yeah, it's a regular Bob Ross painting,” Andi grumbled.

I turned away from the window in time to see her flop down on a giant leather couch. “Who's Bob Ross?” I asked.

“Some painter my dad watches on TV.”

“Bob Ross and infomercials,” I said. “Exciting television over at your place.”

Andi pursed her lips.

“That's where that stuff came from, right?” I said. “The flashlight and the binoculars. From infomercials.”

Andi sat up to make room for me on the couch. “You mean the Sun Shot and the Super Zooms?”

We both let out a laugh, but hers sounded bitter.

“You guys buy a lot of stuff off TV?” I asked.

“Yeah. If it's ‘As Seen on TV,' it can probably be seen lying around our house somewhere.”

“Or in your bag.”

Andi narrowed her eyes at me. “It's not stealing if you take it from home.”

“I didn't—I wasn't saying—”

“My dad doesn't even use those things. He just buys them, okay?”

“Okay.”

I hadn't meant to imply that she'd stolen anything, but since she brought it up . . . I glanced over at Mama's violin, resting
where I'd dropped it in an armchair. “Why did you take it?” I asked.

Andi followed my line of sight. “Because I could tell you wouldn't.”

“So?”

“So it seemed like you really wanted it. And I got it for you. You're welcome.”

She wasn't getting off the hook that easily.

“If you got it for me, why did you run away from me?”

Andi smirked and propped her feet on a wide wooden coffee table. “Because you seemed like you needed a little something else, too.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Fun?”

“This night is the opposite of fun,” I said.

“Is it?” She caught my eye and let the question hang in the air for a second. Then she shrugged and looked away. “Anyway, I didn't know all of this would happen. I was just messing with you. I would have given it back.”

“And my money?” I pressed.

“That's payment for the violin.”

“How did you do that, anyway?”

Andi laughed, and this time it sounded genuine. “It's just a little trick I picked up.”

I know a trick, too. It's called wait until you're asleep, and then take my cash back.

Andi yawned and stretched her arms to the sides, her tree tattoos stark against the moonlight. I scooted down the couch and
caught one arm in the air. I did it without thinking. The second my hand closed around her wrist I expected her to yank it away, but she only leaned forward to give me a better look.

“Did they hurt?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not as much as I wanted them to.”

My fingers strayed to the scars half-hidden under my hat. I couldn't imagine
wanting
to feel pain. I was pretty sure I had blocked out memories of my own. It had to hurt when my hair burned away and my flesh literally bubbled and split open, but all I could remember was how itchy my scalp had been as the hair grew back, prickling against tender, pink new skin. That itch was the worst of it. The rest was a black hole in my brain. One second, heat and flame and a straight blond ponytail; the next, scratchy scalp and funny new orange-colored curls. Grandma used to say I carried the fire in my hair as a constant reminder, but who the hell wanted to be reminded of that?

“This is all I could find.” York stomped into the room with one arm full of pillows and the other wrapped around two small rolled-up sleeping bags. “Our mom strips the beds at the end of the summer to do laundry.”

“Speaking of tattoos,” Andi drawled, rolling her head back to peer at York over the couch, “Sam says you've got some chick's name on your chest. How much is that gonna cost to laser off  ?”

York dumped the pillows in a pile at our feet and switched on a lamp, shifting the room from moonlit silver to warm amber.

“It's never coming off.”

I felt an unexpected twinge of disappointment.

“Who's the unlucky girl?” Andi quipped.

“Your mom.”

I started to laugh, but choked on it when I remembered Andi's mom was dead.

A shadow crossed her face, but she didn't play the pity card with York.

“Dibs on the softest pillow,” she said, kicking the pile.

Who could sleep? My body was exhausted, but my brain was buzzing. It felt like we'd lived five years in the last five hours. I probably wouldn't rest until the police had our statement, bought it, and started hunting down those crooked cops instead of hunting us. Then I would sleep for a year.

But a little part of me—a part I'd just been introduced to that night—hoped to delay that moment. Yes, this was an awful nightmare. Yes, I was scared, and Mama was alone, and we were all in deep shit, but there was something else in the air, too—something that felt more real than the intangible fear and the invisible police chasing us. Something almost . . . exciting?

Ridiculous
 
. . .
 
and yet true.

I watched York unroll the sleeping bags on the floor and Andi push the coffee table back to make room. I wasn't even sure I liked them, but in this moment, inside this cabin's strong, safe walls, with the drugs and the SUV out of sight, I felt like I knew them. And it was nice to know someone other than Mama.

“Hey, Worms,” York called, tilting his head at me. “Help me lift the couch.”

Or maybe I don't want to know them after all.

“Hey, Douche Bag,” I replied, my voice ice. “Lift your own damn couch.”