Anathema (6 page)

Ms. Dodd boots me out of her Comp Sci class with incredible speed. I’m transferred to Mr. Dearborn’s fourth period class and paired with a new partner… The other odd one out.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. Nerves jump in my stomach as I join my new lab partner. I’ve never had a class with Alexander Metz before. He is leaning back in his seat before the glowing computer screen, arms folded, legs kicked up. He seems to consume the space around him. Even as he gazes abstractly at the screen, there’s an air about him of calm, expectant waiting like a great lion poised to pounce. He looks dangerously alert. When I tentatively take the seat beside him, he just arches his eyebrows in silent question.

“We’re partners now.”

“Partners,” he repeats. “In the middle of the semester.” His voice startles me. A rich, smooth timbre. I’ve never heard him speak before.

“I was transferred from Ms. Dodd’s class. She, uh, didn’t like me anymore.”

A corner of his mouth twists in a knowing way. Of course he’d know. He’s the other anathema. He must know the teachers who dislike us on principle.

“I guess I have an obligation to tell you,” I admit, “I’m not very good at this whole JavaScript thing. My old partner basically did everything and I leeched off her. So, uh, there’s that.”

“Ah.” He considers that a long moment, looking between me and the screen. Then he scoots his seat back and props his legs up. “Then you can make up for it now. All yours.”

I stare at him. “Wait. What?”

“Best way to learn is to do it yourself.”

I stare at him. “But I don’t know how to do this.”

His gaze focuses squarely on me. There’s a remoteness to it like we’re speaking across a chasm to one another. “You probably care about getting good grades,” he says. “I’m guessing you’re aiming for an Asylum Scholarship.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not. So I suggest you do the work. That or it’s not getting done.” With that, he leaves me at it.

I can’t believe it. He’s sticking me with all the work. “It’s not like I intentionally avoided the work with my old partner—”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Again, you do the work, or it’s not getting done.

Suddenly it hits me: this guy is just a slacker.

With a start, I realize I don’t know him at all, for all the gossip I’d heard, for all I’ve wondered. I even think of him with two names, ‘Alexander Metz’. I don’t know why my mind always attaches the last name. I don’t even know if he has a nickname like Al or Alex or Xander…

Thrown, I twist the computer screen towards me, trying to realign my perception of the boy next to me.

“So,” I stumble awkwardly through conversation, “what do people call you?”

“Alexander.”

“Nickname wise, I mean.”

“Alexander,” he says flatly.

“Okay. Just Alexander then. I’m Kathryn.”

He just stares at me. His hair has fallen over his brows, his beautiful features arranged in a look of calm disinterest.

“Right. You know my name. I guess you would. You’ve been at this school a long time.” Heat flushes my cheeks. With his steady blue gaze on me I feel more idiotic by the moment. “I probably shouldn’t have bothered telling you my name.”

“Are we doing this?” Alexander interrupts me.

“Doing… what?”

“Talking?” He points between us. He leans towards me suddenly, a spark of intensity kindling within the depths of his eyes. “You’re not a citizen anymore. Very sorry to hear it. But don’t assume that creates any sort of camaraderie between us.”

A part of me wants to withdraw, but I swallow my hurt feelings. Instead, I try seeing it from his perspective. “I get it. You’ve been a loner all these years, and here I am, someone who never talked to you before I lost citizenship. Now I’m talking to you. I guess you think I’m being superficial suddenly changing now. But just so you know, you’re not the most approachable person, Alexander. It’s not like I could’ve just walked up to you in the hallway.”

“This isn’t personal, Kathryn,” he says flatly, “You’re new to this, so I will give you one single survival tip as a veteran to a newbie. Here it is: stay away from the rest of us. All of us. We have nothing to lose, there are no consequences if we kill each other, and we tend to carry these.”

I don’t see him reach into his coat. With one single flick of his wrist, the blade flips open, inches from my face. I spring back in my seat.

“You have a knife!”

My dumb and obvious statement is loud enough that a few nearby kids look back—and quickly look away when they see it’s Alexander Metz wielding it. Avoiding eye contact with him.

“Yes. I have a knife,” he agrees, folding it closed again with casual expertise.

“But we’re in school. School is safe! You don’t need a knife here.”

“Sooner or later, I will leave school. Hence, knife.”

“You’re psychotic.”

He leans back, a warm, dancing amusement flickering over his face before receding. “Now you’re catching on. Stay away from other anathemas. That includes me. Space is good. So is learning to write JavaScript for yourself.”

Prickling all over with anger and hurt, I turn back to the computer and set about teaching myself everything Chelsea used to do for me. It’s the first, and I suspect,
last
conversation Alexander Metz and I will ever have.

My mood does not improve when I walk into the cafeteria. A hush drops over the room. It’s fleeting, but I notice. I always notice it now. The very sight of lunch makes my stomach churn unpleasantly

I settle with a yogurt and head over to join my friends. That’s when I see Amanda arguing with Siobhan.

“… who did it, then?”

“I don’t know. I just got the link,” Siobhan says.

“You’re obviously a member!”

“Just to see who else is a member, I swear.”

They’re both staring at a laptop. Conrad, Russell, and Derek are across the table, arms folded, looking ready to disappear.

“Someone created it. Someone must have,” Amanda declares. “It’s someone in the group.” She’s getting worked up. “I am going to kill them. It’s hard enough… Oh, hey, Kat!” She flips down the cover of the laptop with incredible haste.

I look from face to face. Siobhan with flushed cheeks. Nancy Chang at the end of the table with Lilah Levin, their dark heads dipped towards each other in confidence. They’re both peering up at me. The boys are avoiding my eyes. All but Russell, who is staring at me intently.

This is definitely about me.

“What is it?” An edge creeps into my voice. “What’s on the laptop?”

“Nothing,” Amanda says.

“Someone at school started a deathwatch group,” answers Siobhan.

My heart wrenches. Amanda hisses at her and kicks her under the table.

“Forget it. Sit down,” Conrad urges me, clearing a seat next to him.

But I need to see it, so Siobhan peels up the cover of her laptop and shows me the new Facebook group. There are already sixty-one members. My face is in the corner of the screen, and otherwise it’s a mirror of Alexander Metz’s page. People I barely know are gambling on the odds of my survival. A sick feeling roils me. My eyes drop over the comments.

“I give her a month. At most.”
That remark is from a David Maio. I have no idea who he even is.

“She and her friends have always thought they’re better than everyone else. At least the rest of us aren’t anathemas,”
writes Lisa Aasabo, another person I have never talked to in my entire life. I don’t even know who she is, either.

Not everyone’s malicious. Heidi from the newspaper joined to write,
“This page is sick! Kathryn Grant is so sweet once you get to know her. I’ll cry when she dies.”

“Don’t know her,”
writes a tenth grader named Ian White,
“but I’d hit that.”

Enough. I flip the cover shut.

Every eye at the table rests on me. I am sure I don’t imagine the slightly malicious flush on Siobhan’s face. I suddenly wonder if she has any fake names online. But I don’t give her the satisfaction of reacting.

Instead, I swallow my anxiety, and remark, “Guess it was inevitable.” Then I dig into the yogurt, even though I have no appetite.

Conrad runs his hand along my back, and resumes dissecting the plays of the most recent football game with Russell. Amanda finally joins in the discussion, moving on. Only I can’t tear my thoughts from the Facebook group.

The image of Alexander Metz and his knife keeps playing behind my eyes. Maybe there
is
something to what Alexander told me. I just saw the threat, the blade at school. I didn’t think of the tactic behind carrying it.

He comes across as dangerous, fearless. No one messes with him, really.

I could never convincingly pose as dangerous.

But fearless?

I can do that right now, today, even with my own deathwatch group online waiting for my last breath.

No one is more shocked than Conrad when I show up at his house the night of his party. Getting here was not easy.

My parents think I’m asleep in my room. Amanda was snorting with laughter when she and Nancy Chang balanced a stepladder under my window. I climbed down with my heels in my hand. Then we stumbled across the lawn, giggling.

One thing about becoming an anathema: it adds an edge of danger to something so routine as sneaking out to a party.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” I tell Amanda.

“No worries.” As we saunter in the door, her gaze focuses like a laser on a brunette across the room. “Oh, and just FYI? I got a text from Lilah. She said Siobhan’s been all over Conrad tonight.”

I roll my eyes. “Wonderful. Has Conrad been all over
her
?”

That’s really what matters. Siobhan and I aren’t friends. I expect nothing else from her. Conrad, on the other hand, is my boyfriend. I definitely expect better of him.

“You know Conrad. He’s stupidly oblivious to everything.”

“If it’s one-way, I don’t care. I trust Conrad,” I say uneasily. “Hey, can you tell him his surprise is in the hallway?”

Amanda grins wickedly. “Be right back.”

I may not have an actual wig or fake moustache the way Amanda jokingly suggested, but I’ve got a hat pulled low over my head and a coat that’s entirely weather-inappropriate, long enough to hide my short skirt. I’m even wearing a tie.

Conrad rounds the corner and sees me, then breaks into a dazzling grin. “Hey, you!” He plucks the hat off my head, freeing my blonde hair to stream about my shoulders. He twirls me around to peel off my coat, and then tugs me closer using the tie. “Keep this on. You look sexy.”

“I wasn’t going to miss your birthday.” I use the hottest whisper I can, and am rewarded by his lips snaring mine, his large hands splaying against my back. It doesn’t even matter that people are bubbling in and out the living room next to us, seeing us here in the hallway—seeing the anathema out in public like a walking target.

We slip into the main body of the party. Surprise washes over everyone’s faces, and there’s the usual dimming of conversation. I’m almost getting used to it by now. Tonight it can’t phase me. I almost enjoy the way everyone is astonished to see me.

Especially Siobhan.

Her wide-necked top has slipped down over one shoulder. Her drink sloshes over the rim of her glass as she whirls around, her cheeks flushed. “Conrad, did you bring me a— Oh, Kat!”

I stop beside her, not missing the look that races between them. Conrad mumbles something about a drink and heads right past her towards the alcohol.

It’s not a huge shocker to me, realizing she’s been hanging off him the whole party so far. Siobhan has always wanted my best friend and my position on the dance squad, so it’s really no surprise she might want my boyfriend. I wouldn’t even put it past her to have created that Facebook group.

“I’m so surprised you’re here,” Siobhan burbles. Could her smile look anymore fake?

“I can tell,” I say.

“Can’t you, like, die just being here?” Siobhan says with a giggle, sipping her drink.

“No, honey.” Amanda suddenly appears at my side, wearing a malevolent smile. “No, she won’t. Because anyone who goes after her here is going to be very sorry. Aren’t they?”

“I’m just concerned. Ex-cuse me.” Siobhan’s gaze flickers over Amanda uncertainly. She clearly senses that Amanda is pissed about something but doesn’t know what.

“So, so concerned, aren’t you?” Amanda bares her teeth in a smile. “I have to admit, Siobhan, I didn’t think you’d want Kat’s sloppy seconds. Then I remembered: it’s
you
we’re talking about. The girl who only got a spot on the pyramid after you broke Kat’s leg. I think you’re getting way too comfortable scavenging after things that don’t belong to you.”

“I didn’t do that on purpose!” Siobhan protested. “Kat knows I didn’t drop her on purpose.”

“By the way,” Amanda says, poison dripping from her words, “I’m going to have Colin look at that Facebook page. He’s so good with computers. He’ll find out who started the death watch for Kat.”

“It was
not
me. I swear!”

I grab my best friend’s arm and steer her away. A little wrath from Amanda goes a long way with any student at Cordoba Bay.

“Did you see her face?” Amanda whispers. “She totally did it!”

“If she did, it’ll get deleted.”

Amanda’s eyes gleam. “Then we’ll know for sure.”

“Either way, she’s going to fall over herself sucking up to you on Monday.”

“She better, or I’m losing my touch.” She kisses my cheek. “Love ya, hon.”

Then Amanda rushes off. She flings herself into Russell’s arms by the keg. He grumbles something, holding his drink out so he doesn’t spill it while she kisses him.

I weave through the crowd, searching out Conrad.

He’s pouring me a rum and coke. I watch his back ripple, thinking of how it used to worry me to drink at parties. Underage drinking falls in that vast realm of formerly criminal offenses so minor, they won’t get you loss of citizenship in themselves. If you can’t become an anathema doing it, people do it. Especially teenagers. We drink. A lot.

Of course, if someone drives drunk afterwards and hits someone, or has sex with someone unable to give consent, or gets in a fight—well, they’re done for. They lose citizenship. Alcohol doesn’t directly lead to loss of citizenship, but it’s a prerequisite for offenses that do. In those parental advisory flyers Mom used to bring home, one of the warning signs that indicate your kid is at high risk of future anathema status is use of alcohol. That made her nervous and caused her to lecture me frequently. That made
me
nervous and caused me to worry every time I went out with friends to a party with drinking. Now that I’ve lost citizenship, though, there are no more consequences. The worst has already happened.

Or so I hope.

I perch on Conrad’s lap as we all sing him happy birthday. When I stumble to my feet and head into the bathroom, I behold a blonde girl in the bathroom mirror. She’s still wearing Amanda’s older brother’s collared white shirt and tie, her glaze of gold-highlighted hair slipping down over her shoulders. I haven’t been to a salon to touch up my roots, so there’s a solid inch of ash brown hair growing in.

I sway closer to the mirror to check on my makeup. I lift the pale eyebrows I shaded with a dark pencil, studying the skin I bronze diligently with self-tanner. My mascara has smudged beneath my green eyes. With a brush of my fingertip, I wipe away the excess.

“You are scorching hot dressed like that.”

I hadn’t closed the bathroom door, and now Russell fills it. His oily voice floats to me. I rock back from the mirror a step, aware of the distance of the voices bubbling through the air from the party.

“So you actually showed up,” he said, flickering his eyebrows at me. “I’m glad. We haven’t seen enough of you, Kitten.”

“Don’t call me Kitten.” I hate that nickname.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” There’s a smirk sitting on his lips. “You’ve gotta be tired of hiding out with Mommy and Daddy.”

None of your business
. I want to say it, but something restrains me. He’s still Amanda’s guy. My best friend’s boyfriend. Conrad’s friend.

And a member of a hunting guild.

I can’t forget that.

“Would you actually…” I stop.

Russell steps closer to me, his eyes intent. “Actually what?”

“Um.” I feel stupid suddenly. “You know. Hunt.”

“Hunt… you?”

“People,” I say lamely.

“People, meaning
you
?” He draws towards me, and without realizing it, I back into the sink. Suddenly the spinning in my head isn’t pleasant. My stomach hurts. The air is too thick in here. He rests one hand by my hip, then when I try to move the other way, he blocks my path with his other. His palms skim the ceramic just inches from my skirt.

“Couldn’t you see it?” he whispers, breath hot on my ear. “Me coming after you some night when you’re all alone.” His hand reaches up latches onto my tie, tightening it. My hand flies up on top of his, but his grip is unyielding. “I have a dagger. Some rope. Some scotch tape. You’re in one of your little skirts, just like this one…” He tugs mine up, just a bit.

I shove it back down, unable to meet his eyes. “You’re being so creepy right now.”

“But you like it.” He’s breathless, his voice husky.

I can’t get the tie from his grip, so I loosen it, let it twine away in his hand. “No, I don’t.”

“You do.” He presses into me, hot and heavy.

“I
don’t
!” I shove his arm aside with more strength than he obviously expects. I jolt past him towards the door. “I’m just going to hope you’re really drunk right now.” My skin prickles all over. Crawls all over.

His low chuckle oozes on the air. He almost sings the words, “I’m not drunk.”

Then he falls silent when someone’s footsteps creak in the hallway. I burst out into the cool darkness, swaying a bit, and call back to Russell, “And no, I didn’t like it!” One swipe of my foot and I kick it closed, the wood vibrating with the force. I’m relieved to plant a solid barrier between us.

I wheel around, my eyes finding the other person in the dim hallway. My lips are ready to prepare an excuse even though I’m not sure I should need one.

A blue-eyed gaze, cold as shards of ice, slices into me.

Conrad’s mother. Standing there, all prim and put together and proper with her rope of pearls, wine glass in hand. Her auburn hair is in a stylish twist. Her son and his friends are all burbling through her parlor in a mass of hormones and teenaged recklessness, voices bounding down the distant halls. Far from us.

“Ms. Alton.” As much time as I spend at her house, I’ve never called her by her first name, not like the parents of my other friends. Ms. Alton or Mayor Alton. Never ‘Jolene’. “Sorry about the door slam.”

“Kathryn.” She cocks her head. “Let’s talk.”

“Talk?”

She folds her slim arms. Every movement is crisp and precise. “This discussion is long overdue. I want you to end things with my son.”

For a moment, I just stare at her in the dim hallway. She might have seen something with me and Russell and misinterpreted things. “Oh, that thing you saw wasn’t—”

“Conrad is a bright, talented boy with a promising future ahead of him. I will not have you dragging him into the gutter with you,” she tells me.

“Excuse me?” I say, disbelieving.

Mayor Alton has never spoke to me like this before. Now her mouth forms a thin, hard scarlet line. She compresses her lips so tightly all the wrinkles around them stand out. “I want you to end things with Conrad immediately. You are an anathema. He is a citizen.”

“I thought…” I mumble, “I thought you of all people would understand I didn’t do anything that awful.”

“It doesn’t matter what you did, Kathryn. It matters what you are. Either you remove yourself from my son’s life, or I’ll find a way to do it for you.”

Something in me rankles at the threat in her voice. “What does that mean?”

“If you wait, you’ll find out. Believe me, you don’t want that.” She whips around and snaps off down the hallway, heels striking the hardwood floor.