Reject High (Reject High: A Young Adult Science Fiction Series Book 1) (13 page)

Her face screwed with displeasure. “Again. . .I’m lost.”

I sat down next to her. “Out of all the guys at North, South – even Reject High, why me? You’re popular. Your ex was a football player. A bad one, but a football player.” 

“He’s also untrustworthy. Popular people have problems, too, Jason.” She grew a sudden interest in her bare feet. “Not everyone sees you the way that you see yourself.”

She was deeper than I thought.

Sasha looked up at me and blushed. “You really think I’m
hot?”

“Well, yeah.” Honestly, I
had
to know. “Then, how do
you
see me?”

“You were not like other guys, even before you could. . .do what you can do. Look, Selby’s got problems of his own. His dad locks him in their basement and practically abuses him, and his mom doesn’t protect him.”

“So, he’s got issues. Doesn’t mean he should go around stabbing people,” I said, with more anger than I had intended. “And what’s
your
story?”

I hoped what I’d heard about her didn’t match the truth. She shifted her legs and stood up. “That’s all you get out of me, tonight. I think your aunt wants me to go.”

“She’s overprotective,” I said, standing up next to her. “My mom’s dead. They were sisters.”

She looked down again. I wasn’t used to this side of her. “Sorry, about. . .”

My psychologist Susan thinks my mom’s death was the start of my ADHD and rage blackouts. But I still don’t buy that. “It’s okay.”

She stroked my cheeks and gave me a kiss that continued until I heard footsteps. Aunt Dee appeared in the doorway with a wooden spoon and an oven mitt in her hand. “Will you be staying for dinner, Ms. Sasha?”

“No, ma’am.” Sasha backed away from me. “My mom won’t be home for another hour, and I live about ten minutes away.” She glanced down. “I hate to be a bother, but could you or Jason’s stepmom drop me off, please?”

Aunt Dee gave me a look, leaving nothing open for interpretation. “Alright. I’ll meet the two of you downstairs.”

Once Aunt Dee disappeared, Sasha stepped in front of me. “How?”

I pulled the necklace from beneath my shirt and showed it to her. I could tell from the sparkle in her eyes that she knew it was from Reject High’s basement.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I’ve created a monster

Forget about earrings, she wanted a necklace now, like mine.
The shard from Selby’s crystal still jangled against my cell phone in my pocket. If she didn’t get superpowers tonight, she’d watch me sleep from outside of my window until I gave it to her.

As Aunt Dee drove us in her minivan and followed the GPS, I leaned over and whispered to Sasha. “Can’t you wait?”

She smiled and paused. “Oh, I’m sorry, you were
serious?
Just let me try on yours for a second.”

I wasn’t giving up mine, no matter what. “Uhh. . .it’s sweaty,” I said. The one in my pocket was bigger than mine. What if the size of the crystal has something to do with the level of power? Like, would she be able to blow up buildings or something crazy like that?

Sasha reached for my hand. “You’re sweet.”

She knows my secret. Is she my girlfriend now?
God, this is strange!
Would we be dating other people? Would she go out with half of Reject High and I wouldn’t be able to buy a date? Yeah, Sasha had a reputation, but I had my own. Except for the fight that got me kicked out of North, most of mine was undeserved
.
It wasn’t fair for me to judge her, or Selby, I guess.   

I wanted to text Rhapsody, even Selby, to get some advice, but I’d gotten myself into this. I’d dig myself out. Sasha was a pretty girl, not a threat to national security or the state of mankind. Rhapsody’s power wasn’t all that harmful – maybe Sasha’s would be harmless, too. Convincing myself of that kept me calm. Being calm prevented me from ripping the armrest off of the seat and beating myself in the head with it.

“Are you okay?” Sasha brushed the hair dangling on the side of her face behind her ear. She looked like a teen model without even trying.

“Yeah.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. “There’s something I need to tell you.” Her eyes studied my face, which made this even harder. “You can’t say
anything
about what you saw. Someone is after us.”

“Us? You and me us?” she asked innocently.

“No, me, Selby, and Rhapsody us – and now you.” I snapped the prism in my pocket and handed her a marble-sized fragment. “Wear this and never take it off.”

Careful not to draw attention to us, she leaned over to me and whispered, “Think you can you make it round? I have a platinum ring with a missing center stone at home.”

Hammering them out of the wall was one thing, but changing their shape by hand was another. “Don’t think so.”

“Oh, well, that’s okay. I’ll make it work.” She seemed disappointed.   

“We’re here,” announced Aunt Dee. “Hurry up, boy, and walk her to the door. I’ve got chicken on the stove, and you know Debra can’t fry chicken to save her life.” Her voice didn’t sound as bossy as her words.

“Alright.” After sliding the door open, I helped Sasha down. Her parents’ condominium was impressive from the outside, with white arches and neatly-trimmed shrubs. The empty driveway wound up to the garage, where she entered a code and popped open its door.

“So, are we dating now?” I asked her.

Sasha playfully tilted her head upward at the sky, as if she was thinking about it. “You want to
date me?
After all you’ve heard?”

“Everyone
wants to date you.” It was true. There was a line of boys at Reject High who wanted to go out with her, and it was
long.
I’d checked.

“But everybody doesn’t
get
to,” she said with a smirk. “Goodnight, Boyfriend.”

She kissed me on the cheek and disappeared into the garage. If Aunt Dee hadn’t honked the horn, I would have jumped halfway to Disneyland with happiness.

But a nagging buzzed at the back of my brain. Should I trust her? She hadn’t expressed any interest in me whatsoever, BEFORE I started punching holes in walls and intimidating her ex-boyfriend.

Now, she had a crystal, too. Everybody I’ve trusted to this point, Rhapsody included, had betrayed me in some way or used me as a lab rat. Peters, Spivey, Welker – people who were supposed to be trustworthy.  

I held up a finger and mouthed “one minute” to Aunt Dee, who honked the horn to acknowledge my request. I rang Sasha’s doorbell a few times. When she didn’t answer, I rounded the side of the condo to figure out which bedroom window was hers. Turned out, it was on the second floor, and she didn’t have anything for me to land on but the roof, and that would be too obvious.

I backed up far enough to see into the window, which was well lit with the curtains drawn. Had anyone else spied on her like this before? She bopped around her room with earphones in her ears, which was probably why she hadn’t heard the doorbell ringing. Perfectly acceptable excuse, until a green glint of light flashed from inside her room.
That didn’t take long
. I crossed my arms, as a warm breeze whisked past.

“Nice job.” Selby stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me and slow-clapped.

I turned to punch him into the atmosphere, but Rhapsody materialized out of thin air. “You gave her one?” I’d never seen her that frantic and talking with her hands. “Why
her?”

“Why
him?”
I pointed my thumb at Selby.

“What’s that supposed to mean,
Freak?”

I grabbed Selby’s shoulders and flung him through the field of open grass behind us. “Told you not to call me Freak again,” I said in his direction.

Rhapsody cupped her mouth in shock. “We discussed giving him one! You agreed. . .”

“No!” By now, we were yelling at each other. “I didn’t agree to anything. He saw too much. She did, too. She had dungeon duty and found the source by herself. If I hadn’t given it to her, she would have taken it anyway.”

Selby zoomed back to the two of us, turned me around, and pushed me backwards with such force that my sliding created a shallow ditch half a football field long. After brushing myself off, I rose to my feet and leaped back to where I started.

Rhapsody positioned herself between us. If she hadn’t, Selby might have gotten punched through my new girlfriend’s house. “Stop it,
both of you.
Go home, Jason.”

Listening was the best thing, at this point. I was lucky, since Aunt Dee hadn’t tried to find me. I’d make a story about falling to explain the mud caked on the back of my shirt. “She doesn’t know how to use it.”

“Then teach her, before she finds out by accident.” She stared at me, then Selby. “Nobody gives out any more crystals, or uses them to look at naked girls,
right?”

“Yeah,” Selby and I agreed. From there, we parted company.

Sasha and I text messaged back and forth until about 10 p.m., when jumping across the county and being pushed fifty yards in the dirt finally caught up with me.

The next morning I awakened to see Debra with her arm hovering over my body, ready to throw a cup of ice water onto my face.

“Don’t throw that,” I spat out, waving my hands. “I’m awake.”

“It’s about time – get in the shower. You only have twenty minutes before the bus comes.”

Excitement rushed through me –
I’ve got a girlfriend.
I smiled so hard that my teeth hurt. My first three girlfriends had been long-distance relationships, and
everybody knows those never work out.

I’d met one girl outside Aunt Dee’s house and another when Debra dragged me to some postal worker weekend carnival. The most recent one went to a Catholic school near North High and rode my bus. But Sasha – we’d talk every night and I’d see her each day. It was a chance at a real high school relationship, whatever those were.

After a quick shower, I got dressed, brushed my hair a couple of times, and grabbed a cinnamon raisin bagel before leaving for the bus stop. Nothing could put me in a bad mood, or so I thought.

Rhapsody didn’t sit with me when she got on the bus, but instead, sat by herself on the outside part of the seat. We never made eye contact, and she didn’t turn around, wave, or anything. Rather than be ignored, I waited until the bus neared a stop sign to move a few rows up. She didn’t move. So, I hijacked the seat of a fellow freshman next to her.

“You don’t take hints well, do you?” Rhapsody asked with the heavy metal from her MP4 blaring.

“You’d think you’d know that about me by now.”

She forced out a smile. “What do you know about this Anderson chick?”

I blanked for a minute. Anderson was her last name?
I tried to mask my embarrassment at not knowing that fact. We’d never discussed last names or our dating pasts, which was a relief for me. But I did question hers. Girls at North High with a reputation for sleeping with a lot of boys either did it, or were flirts that never did anything. This, however, was Reject High and
everybody
here was guilty of something bad.
What was hers?

“Enough,” I said, forcing a laugh.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said. I assumed she meant the crystal, and not my relationship.

Since Rhapsody and I hadn’t talked about what happened yesterday, I told her about my effort to remove the source and my findings. It was at least two feet deep, it stretched across the wall, and I got knocked unconscious trying to destroy it. With both Selby’s perspective and mine, she could see why I did what I did.

“She still shouldn’t be one of us, but whatever,” she said. I wondered whether it was because of the crystal, or due to the fact the prettiest girl in school liked me.

She hurried off the bus and away from me when I said, “If it’s cool with you, I’m waiting for Sasha.”

Five minutes before the warning bell for first period, Sasha arrived in a yellow convertible Mustang with the top down. By the time she said something to its driver – a guy too old to be transporting a high school freshman. I was steamed up enough to throw both them and the car onto the roof of the school.

Sasha strolled up to me, her plaid skirt swishing as she walked. She’d pulled her hair into a loose ponytail. I started to say something about the scene, but decided not to do it.

Immediately she went into explanation mode. “He’s just a friend.”

“What kind of ‘friend’?” She’d better not say he was a relative, because there was no way I’d believe that.