Lovely Vicious (20 page)

Kayla’s taken over Avery’s position as temporary queen bee. I watch her mope through the lunch line, the girls around her cooing sympathetically and insisting she’ll find someone better even as they shoot sultry glances at Jack from across the cafeteria. Jack eats alone, reading a book as he munches a sandwich. I wonder what the girls would do if they knew I’d worn his shirt? Probably put an apple in my mouth and roast me to suckling browned goodness. I’m ready to die, but I’m not ready to die with a fruit in my mouth. That’s a whole other ballgame.

“What’s a whole other ballgame?” Wren asks, sliding his stray across from me and sitting.

“Ah, nothing.” I wave him off. “So what’s up with you, my majestic prez? Busy making peace treaties with Iran? Scouring the globe for alternative energy sources?”

“Making sure Avery comes back to slightly less power around the school. You’d be surprised how many teachers she has under her sway.”

“No surprise at all. I’ve seen how she works.”

“Hopefully she’ll have the sense not to work for a while,” he sighs. “I really don’t want to go to Evans about the GHB.”

“Or what happened that night in middle school.”

Wren’s eyes flash behind his glasses. “That was a bluff.”

“And you huffed and you puffed, and you bluffed the house down.”

Wren watches me for a moment before lowering his voice to a bare murmur.

“She was our friend.”

I look up from my hot dog. “Who?”

“Sophia,” Wren continues. “Jack, Sophia, and I. We were best friends in elementary school. We lived next to each other. We played on the same street, in each other’s yards. Every summer and winter break we were together, for days on end. It was the happiest time of my life.”

He inhales, and pushes his tray away.

“Avery was on the outskirts. She’d come over sometimes, since she was Sophia’s best friend. She wasn’t anything like who she is now.
 
The old Avery was loud, and bossy, but kind. She’d do anything to make Sophia laugh. She hated Jack – but I always knew that was because she liked him and also didn’t like the way Sophia liked him. She was jealous of him getting Sophia’s attention, and jealous of Sophia getting his. She was caught in the middle and it ate away at her as we got older, I think.”

I try not to move, or breathe too noisily. The last thing I want to do is jolt him out of the story. Wren looks up.

“There’s something I want to show you. After school. Can you drive us there?”

I nod, and he smiles.

“Good. I’ll see you then. I’ve got a Run for Charity to organize, so, I better go.”

“Later,” I try to sound casual. I watch him leave the cafeteria, the curiosity eating me alive.

***

After school, Wren instructs me on where to go. He leads me to the airport, almost all the way in Columbus. After a few more turns, we’re in an airport-adjacent suburb, complete with cracked road, constant overhead noise from the planes as they go rumbling by, and faded yellow grass yard. Chipped paint houses and trash line the streets. A pair of tennis shoes hangs mournfully from a power line above. I park, and follow Wren. He leads me up the stairs of a tiny, two-story house with clean, yet old-looking windows. The porch is weather-beaten and strewn with plastic kid’s toys. A woman answers the door, peering through the screen.

“Wren!” Her face lights up. “Come in, come in!”

“Thanks, Mrs. Hernandez.”

“Is this a friend?”

“Yeah, she’s helping me at the food bank.”

“Oh, how nice.” Mrs. Hernandez wipes her hands on her apron and holds one out to me. “I’m Belina. It’s good to meet you.”

“Isis. Nice to meet you too.”

“Well, come in! Don’t just stand there in the cold!”

She ushers us into the tiny house. It smells like spicy meat and fresh laundry. A porcelain image of Mary hangs from almost every wall, and the couches and chairs and tables are shabby, but clean. Two kids race by, screaming and chasing each other with toilet brushes, using them like swords. Mrs. Hernandez snaps something in Spanish at them and they cower and immediately run into the bathroom.

“Sorry about that.” Mrs. Hernandez smiles. “I’ve been baking tostadas all day and letting them play with whatever.”

“As long as they don’t wave those swords around the food,” Wren jokes. She laughs, and motions for us to come into the kitchen.

“Would you like some juice? I have milk, too.”

“No, it’s alright. We’re just here for a moment. I wanted to know if you could get me your WIC paperwork. I need the pin on it and I was in the neighborhood, so I figured I’d drop by.”

“Of course! One second.”

She shuffles upstairs. Wren turns to me and sweeps his arm around.

“It’s cozy, isn’t it? Four bedrooms. Three baths. Not bad for a single mom with two mouths to feed.”

“It’s nice, but I don’t understand –”

“She works as a maid. Almost minimum wage.”

“So how does she get the mon –”

“Jack.”

I immediately start choking on nothing. “
What
?”

“He sends the money. Through me. To Belina, I’m a student who works with the food bank’s outreach program to supply funds to single mothers. But in truth it’s only her who gets the money.”

“But why –”

“I don’t know what Jack does exactly to get this money,” Wren interrupts coolly. “But I have an idea. If only someone could confirm it for me, I’d be very grateful.”

I bite my lip. “I can’t. He made me promise, Wren. He has my voice on tape –”

“I understand. That’s more than enough. Thank you for confirming my suspicions.”

“You can’t tell him you know.”

Wren chuckles. “Do I look like I have a death wish?”

“So –” I lower my incredulous voice. “So why Belina? What did she do?”

“It’s not what she did. It’s what Jack did.”

It dawns on me, a slow crawl of illuminating light-thought.

“Whatever he did that time in middle school. That’s linked to Belina?”

Wren nods. I’m about to ask another question when Belina trundles down the stairs. Wren makes a show of checking her papers and making small talk. So the money’s not just for Sophia. He lied. But why? Because he didn’t want me to know? Why the hell would Jack feel he owes Belina money? It’s a nice thing to do, but it has to have a reason. I feel like I’m missing some huge part, the one clockwork gear in the middle that’ll connect all the others and make them move in tandem.

Wren and I take our leave, Belina waving from the porch and my head filled with more questions than ever. Wren won’t answer any more of them, keeping his mouth shut the entire way to his house.
 

I go home and scribble madly on paper like it will help me unravel the threads.

Two men hired by AveryBaseballbatSophiaWren with cameraJackBelina Belina moneyJackAveryWren fear SophiaJack Jack jack Jack Jack???jack

Sophia

Sophiais important

Jackloves her

My stomach twists.

Jack lovesher

***

There’s a sad finality as Thanksgiving approaches. People start freaking about college application deadlines. Teachers nag us to finish them and turn them in. The weather gets bitter-cold, the last of the trees shedding their golden fall leaves. The piles turn to mulch, and mulch turns to dirt the winter-fall rains wash out of the gutters and streets. Nothing is pretty anymore – gray skies and gray earth and gray, naked trees shivering in the breezes.

After two weeks, Kayla’s conquered the act of looking at Jack without bursting into tears. Wren was there with a box of tissue on her way to mastery, though, and for that she smiles at him more and even sits with him and I at lunch. Something’s brewing between them, and it makes me smile knowingly, because even if they are two hopeless nerd idiots, they are my hopeless nerd idiots, and I only want the best for anything of mine.

Avery’s comeback was a lot more anticlimactic then we all thought it’d be. She just showed up one day for school, dressed in her same clothes and with the same savage smile on. The girls flocking around Kayla instantly swarmed back to her, Kayla not included. A surge of pride ran through me when Kayla turned her back on Avery’s motion for her to come over. Kayla laced her arm in mine and we strutted away like the bad bitches we are.

Jack hasn’t looked at me, much. Which isn’t weird, since I know I’m a maggot on his shoe and all, but it’s a little odd he doesn’t like being in the same room as me, either. World History is the worst – he’ll make excuses to go to the nurses, and most days he’ll just straight up play hooky and never show for class. But I see him walking around campus and going to other classes. It’s only the class we share he never shows up for. I’d confront him about it, but I’m still torn about what really happened that night. His explanation made sense, but it didn’t ring true. It didn’t feel right.
 

And I’m bored. God, so bored. Now that we aren’t warring, my days are filled with nothing but homework and staring at teacher foreheads, wondering where they got their worst zits when they were my age.

I sit in Evans’ office, serving the last of my detention. One more day and I’m free of grading his easy-peasy papers and watching his balding head shine in the light of his self-inflicted glory.

“So, Isis.” He clears his throat. “The deadline for Yale’s application is next week.”

“I’m not going to an Ivy, Evans. We’ve discussed this previously. To death.”

“There’s no point to life if you don’t go to a good college,” he insists.

“Have you watched the Food Network recently? Eating is a fantastic reason for living.”

“If I may be completely honest with you, Isis, college is mostly for drinking and crying,” he says. I smother a laugh, and he becomes all business again. “But where you decide to go to drink and cry sometimes gets you far. Like, for instance, Harvard. You can get a mediocre grade in a mediocre-earning field and get a degree but it will be a Harvard degree, you see? It’ll speak volumes more than an Ohio State degree about your level of commitment.”

“And snobbery,” I mutter.

“Regardless,” he talks over me. “It’s too late. I’ve already applied you for Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.”

“What?” I bristle. “How –”

“Your father was very accommodating. He only wants the best for you, and provided all your personal information.”

“But, my required essay –”

“I pulled a few spectacularly funny yet poignant and observant essays from your English and World History classes. They fit nicely.”

“My SAT scores –”

He holds up a paper. “Your father informed me you took the ACT before you left Florida, at his behest. You never got the scores because you moved, but your aunt sent them along. Take a look.”

Four massive, black numbers glare back at me; 32, 35, 33, and 9

“Exemplary scores across the board! Marvelous. You must have been in a much better state of mind for that test.”

“I can’t –” I’m speechless. “Where do you get off deciding where I should go to college?”

“Your father also told me you’re a particularly dutiful daughter, and that your mother is going through a rough patch in life. Trust me when I say I understand –”

“Do you?” I snarl. “I doubt that, baldy.”

He smiles patiently. “I had a father who was ill. Cancer. I stayed behind for three years while my friends went off to college to take care of him. He kept telling me to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to. When he died the guilt that I couldn’t save him crushed me. But the way he told me he was proud of me – me, the boy who worked gas station night shifts – that he was proud of me, that made me feel even guiltier.”

I go quiet, my rage simmering instead of bubbling. I had no idea Evans had a life like that.

“So what, you tell me your whole sobby life story and I feel sorry for you and decide to go Stanford, is that it?” I ask quietly.

“No. I just wanted to tell you that I understand. I know what it’s like, to be kept against your will, even if your heart wants to stay. You’ve written the idea of going out of state completely. You’re willing to settle for a school that wouldn’t challenge you, just to take care of someone you love.”

I clench my fist around the armchair. Evans smiles.

“Sometimes, we can’t do the things we want to do for ourselves. Sometimes we wait for someone else to do them. You can’t always wait like that. You have to seek out change on your own. But in the meantime, I had to step in.”

I snort. He presses on.

“Even if you get accepted, you don’t have to go. Choose whatever path you like. But I can rest easy now, knowing at least you can see the open paths before you.”

The bell rings. I put my pen down and gather my stuff. I can feel Evans staring at me like a massive, balding elephant who smells. Like a poop-covered busybody.

I stop at the door and look over my shoulder.