Envy (Fury) (4 page)

“Hi! I’m Gabby Dove.” The name fit her perfectly.

“I’m Skylar. Skylar McVoy. I’m new,” she answered, and then mentally kicked herself. Obviously she was new. She might as well have it tattooed on her forehead.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” Gabby said, as though Skylar had done her a favor on purpose. “I cannot stand math. Which is so stupid because I’m, like, actually okay at it. Not great, but I get it. I just wish it wasn’t so painfully boring. Anyway, can I see your schedule?”

Skylar handed it to her mutely.

“Ah, you have bio now. Bummer. I do
not
get science. So, we’re going to want to head back toward the cafeteria—you know where that is, right?—and then turn toward the back of the building.” Gabby was walking now, tossing words over her shoulder, and Skylar scurried along to keep up. She checked out what Gabby was wearing—a deep-red tunic, black jeans, and black wedge boots that gave her at least three inches. Skylar could see that without them, Gabby would be short, like her. She tugged on her cardigan, which suddenly felt too small.

“So, how long have you been in town?” Gabby slowed down to let Skylar catch up.

“Just since Saturday,” Skylar said.

“Where are you from?”

“I came from Alabama.” She was about to offer a bit more information, but they passed a group of students standing by a row of lockers, and she clamped her mouth shut, suddenly shy.

“Hey, Gabs,” several of them called out.

“Hi, guys,” Gabby said, waving over her shoulder as she kept walking. Then she stopped, turned around, and kept talking to them as she walked backward down the hallway. “Can’t wait to hear about the hot tub incident.” They all cracked up as Gabby turned a corner. “It’s right down here,” she said to Skylar.

Skylar smiled too, as though she had any idea what the hot tub incident was and why it was funny. Maybe someday she’d make people laugh like that. Maybe someday she’d be in on the joke.

“Okay, here we go. Room 209.
That
was room 209 too,” Gabby said, moving her head in the direction they’d just come from. “But it’s 209A. Totally dumb system. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you so much,” Skylar said, trying not to sound gushy. She’d already come off as enough of an idiot. It was important to try, but not seem like you were trying. That was the rule of the pageant circuit too.
Make it look easy.

“No problem, happy to help. See you around, Skylar,” Gabby
said as she turned back toward her math class. Skylar watched her go, then looked down to smooth her shirt before heading into bio. Ugh. All of a sudden she couldn’t help but see herself as Gabby must have seen her—plain, lost, pathetic. With a knot in her throat, she opened the door to face the next humiliation.

•  •  •

Flat. Flat and stringy. Skylar hated hair spray, mousse, any type of hair product at all. The sticky-sweet smell made her think of being backstage at the pageants. But her hair, which she was currently fluffing in the bathroom mirror between third and fourth periods, fell limp against her head—nothing like Gabby’s bouncy curls.

As she stared at herself she felt the slightest shimmer of a presence behind her. She whirled around, even though she knew that she was alone in the bathroom. She turned back to the mirror. And then, as though steam was clearing after a shower, the space behind her opened up and she could practically see Lucy smiling at her pityingly.

Oh, it looks fine, Dumpling
.

Dumpling. The “affectionate” nickname Lucy and their mom had bestowed upon her in third grade. Skylar leaned against the sink and turned on the water, cupping some in her hand and gulping it down thirstily. She willed herself not to cry, ordering the Lucy in her mind to go away.
This is your chance to start over
, she told herself. She straightened up, rooted in her purse for a tube of
lip gloss, and slammed out the bathroom door. She wouldn’t be late for her last class before lunch.

•  •  •

When she finally made it to the cafeteria later, it was clear where she should try to sit—at the tables below the skylights, each bathed in white winter light, where students were gossiping, sharing plates of fries, and finishing last-minute homework. Everyone sitting at those sun-bathed seats seemed touched by a confident glow.

This was the popular crowd.

Clutching her brown bag—which held some carrots, a small container of hummus, and a yogurt, all packed this morning by Aunt Nora—Skylar headed in that direction. Was she being too bold, parading over to sit in the cool section? It wasn’t like she was going to plop down in the middle of the action. She’d stay on the outskirts, try to smile at people, listen to the kinds of things people talked about here. Although, it might be difficult to hear anything, with that group of whooping boys wrestling and jostling each other just next to the cash registers. . . .

Just as she spotted the perfect chair, right at the edge of the light-drenched area, it hit her. Or rather,
he
hit her—a guy (one of the wrestling boys) came flying out of nowhere, slamming her shoulder and knocking his tray of spaghetti and marinara sauce all over her white top and pink sweater.

“You assholes! Now I have to get a new lunch!” The guy
who’d collided with Skylar was wearing an Ascension High football jacket and still hadn’t noticed that his lost lunch was now covering the front of Skylar’s shirt. She could feel its warmth on her stomach. A hundred eyes stared at her.

“Oh, jeez.” The boy had just turned to look at Skylar. He had short brown hair, a square jawline, and broad shoulders. The name Travers was printed above his right pec on his football jacket. “Look at you.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out other than a squeaked “You—you ran into me.” Great. Her second obvious comment of the day.

“Sorry about these idiots,” he said just a little too loudly so his friends would hear him. “They don’t know how to behave in public.” He grinned at her. “Especially not around new girls. You are new here, right?”

Skylar actually had to concentrate to make sure her jaw didn’t drop. This guy, this cute guy, had noticed her? “You—um—I—how did you know?”

“Hard to miss a pretty girl. I think you’re in my geometry class, first period? I’m Pierce.”

“I’m, uh, Skylar,” she responded. She couldn’t believe she was having a conversation—
with a boy
—in the middle of the cafeteria, while covered in spaghetti sauce. “Yeah—geometry. I’m the one who asked that dumb question about the sine and cosine stuff . . . .”

“Wanna know my secret?” Pierce asked, leaning in conspiratorially. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a graphing calculator. “Dorky, I know, but I carry it around with me just in case.” He winked. “I also carry this around, for marinara emergencies.” He took off his jacket and then pulled his sweatshirt over his head. It, too, was emblazoned with Ascension’s football logo.

He put his jacket back on but held out the sweatshirt to her. She looked at it, and looked at him, not understanding.

“Take it for the afternoon—no one wants to smell like oregano through their last few periods.”

“Are you sure?” Skylar took the sweatshirt tentatively.

“Yup. You can bring it to me tomorrow. See you in math, Skylar.” And with that, he turned away and headed back to his table. As he approached his friends she saw him push one of them good-naturedly, and peg another one with a french fry. The guys started laughing and high-fiving.

Skylar felt a warm glow in the pit of her stomach. Pierce Travers. It was a perfect name, and immediately she coupled it with her own. Pierce Travers and Skylar McVoy. A football player who was also nice? She almost brought the sweatshirt to her nose to smell him, but remembered at the last second that she was still in the middle of the cafeteria.

In the bathroom she gingerly removed her stained top and replaced it with the sweatshirt. It was huge and hardly matched
her boots, but who cared? She was wearing a boy’s football sweatshirt. If not for her nervous expression of a newbie, she might even be taken for the girlfriend of an Ascension High player—maybe even
Pierce’s
girlfriend. With an unfamiliar confidence in her step, she emerged back into the hallway, ready to face the last few classes of the day.

The sweatshirt was a sign, she was sure of it—a sign that in Ascension, she would get the life she deserved.

“It’s bad enough that I have to wait until practically dinnertime to eat lunch this semester,” Gabby said, gesticulating with a fork held high above the Greek salad she’d brought from home. “But now I’m not even guaranteed the pleasure of my best friend’s company? What is this?
Prison?
”

Em sighed. It was fifth-period lunch, and she and Gabby, along with Fiona and Lauren and the rest of the girls, were sitting at their typical table in the junior section of the cafeteria. Or rather, Gabby, Fiona, and Lauren were sitting, and Em was hovering next to the table, having just told the girls that she kind of had plans to meet Drea at the deli for lunch. Big mistake.

“I didn’t know my presence provided such a ray of sunshine,” Em said dryly, trying to smile. Her skin was still crawling
from last night, and she couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that the Furies were nearby. She’d agreed to lunch after all—she was going to meet Drea off campus (at the deli, so Drea could get her Reuben) in order to discuss the run-in at the park and the tattered flag; Em had been dying to share the details all day.

But just as she’d feared, and as harmless as it seemed, bailing on lunch was obviously going to hurt Gabby’s feelings. It would destroy the daily routine—lunch under the skylights of the Gazebo, rehashing the morning’s dramas—and forgoing it meant something was . . . off.

Of course, something
was
off. Obviously Em and Zach’s hookup had caused a major rift, but over the past month or so, she and Gabby had been working hard to rebuild their friendship. Still, it was crystal clear from Em’s distance and her new friends that things were different. Just as she couldn’t tell JD what had happened that night at the mall, she had sworn to keep the truth from her best friend as well. Gabby had no idea what had happened—she didn’t know about the Furies, and she didn’t even know that Em had feelings for JD.

“The skylights provide the sunshine, sweetie. You can provide the skincare tips. What’s up with your skin recently? It’s, like, flawless.” Gabby shook her head, wide-eyed. “I mean, I can’t even see a pore. Sit down and spill. Do I need to change up my face cream?”

Em looked around at the familiar crowd of girls gathered
at their table. Lauren and Fiona were arguing over whether the new Bachelor was Hot or Not; Mindy and Caroline were sharing a plate of fries; Jenna was frantically penning her history homework last-minute. Em realized she needed this. She needed to sit down and talk about creams from Sephora and homemade avocado masks. She wanted to eat a slice of Ascension’s thick Sicilian pizza and complain about how hard her French quiz had been this morning. To have Fiona lecture her on the dangers of white flour, and for Lauren to laugh so hard she shot Diet Coke out her nose. She wanted those things—normal things—not another hushed, clandestine conversation with Drea about the Furies.

“I’ll stay,” she said, tossing her bag under the table. Then, with a playful smile toward Fiona, she added, “But no lectures about my lunch.”

“Like we could lecture her,” she heard Lauren say as she walked toward the lunch line. “She’s thin as a rail.”

“It’s not about
size
, Laur, it’s about
health
,” Fiona was saying. Em smiled as she walked over to the stack of trays.

As she waited in line for her pizza she pulled out her phone to text Drea:
Can’t make it after all. I’ll call you later.
She hoped Drea wouldn’t be too pissed. As she made her way back to the table, it was like her ears had popped on the way down a mountain—her head suddenly felt lighter. She knew she needed to talk to someone about what had happened last night. But it
could wait. Didn’t she still deserve some semblance of a regular teenage life?

Back at the table, the girls were talking about Josie Swanson, another junior, whose parents were paying for her to have a private SAT tutor
and
a college admissions coach.

“May as well pay for her to have a personal academic assistant at college so she can keep scamming the system,” Fiona said. “Doesn’t she know that good grades and good schools are for, like, smart people?” Everyone knew that Fiona wanted to go to Harvard, and she wanted to get there all on her own. She’d balked even at buying an SAT review book.

“It really is kind of ridiculous,” Gabby chimed in. “Do you know that she has a hot tub? I’m jealous. Apparently there was some impromptu senior party there on Saturday night.”

Em took a bite of her lunch. Everything was the same—the thick dough, the too-sweet red sauce, the salty cheese. But for some reason, her guilty pleasure suddenly tasted gross.

“Speaking of hot tubs, Gabs, can you please ask your mom when it’s going to get warm again?” This from Fiona, whose health craziness did not extend to sun damage—she started laying out in April and was usually brown by mid-June.

“Fee’s dying to go back to that beach where we met those crazy USM boys last summer,” Lauren said. “Gabby, do you
remember
how absurd that one guy was, the one who kept bringing you beach glass?”

“It was embarrassing,” Gabby said with raised eyebrows. “I hope he found himself a nice girl his own age.”

Em’s eyes wandered over to the far left bench, where the junior footballers sat. She tried to look away quickly, before her gaze could linger on the empty spot at the end of the bench—the one where Chase used to sit, the one that had remained empty since his death, as if people feared it was haunted. And even though she wanted to think that was silly, she had to admit she was glad they were sitting several tables away.

“. . . What do you think, Em?” Gabby nudged her.

“About what? Sorry, I was zoning for a second.” Em pulled her hair into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck and tried to focus. All of a sudden sitting there in the cafeteria and gossiping didn’t feel right. In fact, it felt distinctly jarring.