The S-Word (7 page)

Face it, Angie. You abandoned her.

I’ve started having the most terrifying dream. I’m standing at the edge of my yard, and in the distance, I see a tangled forest. I feel I would do anything to keep from going into that wooded darkness. Inside that forest lies the root of all evil.

Then the creature comes up behind me.

I can never make out his face. His claws are sharp, curling and curling like a dead person’s nails. Eyes red. Gaping maw.

And he likes the taste of humans.

I start running. Into that forest I go, leaping over fallen logs, pushing my way through brambles. My skin is cut and bleeding. There’s so much blood I can’t see my hands. I look up and he’s above me, falling as if from the sky. Come to swallow me whole.

Come to crush me.

I understand, in that moment, that I deserve to be caught. I understand that entering the forest invited the evil into me.

Just as his claws sink into my skin, I look up at
the sky and ask forgiveness. But it’s too late. The evil swallows me.

It eats me alive.

Tonight, I awake covered in sweat. My blankets are soaked through. My nightgown is plastered to me like I’ve crawled out of a swamp and my lips bleed from where I bit them.

I kick the covers away, tearing off the nightgown like a skin. I know that I’m awake now, that I’m safe, alive, but I still feel his eyes on me. I still feel his claws sinking in. I stand up in the dimness and walk to the window. The blinds are open, to keep my room illuminated. There’s a movement in the house next door as I approach. A sudden closing of blinds.

I know that I’m awake. But this time, the eyes I felt on me were real.

I
MEET MARVIN AT
the cafeteria door but grab his arm before he walks through it. “Not so fast,” I whisper in his ear, unleashing hot breath. “I’m taking you somewhere a little less crowded.”

His eyes pop like I’ve said the magic words. (Here’s where I play him like a fiddle.)

“What makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?” he asks. He’s wearing this shirt and vest combo you generally see in retirement homes. Plaid pants, like he’s planning to golf.

Wish I could say he’s dressing ironically.

“Oh, come on, Marvin. I know you.” I set a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t want to choke down mystery meat beside your lowliest contemporaries. You want to be inducted into the crooked world of Verity’s elite.”

Maybe . . . wet your whistle where Kennedy McLaughlin leaves lipstick stains on rum-spiked coffee mugs?

After all, everyone knows he’s into blondes. And Kennedy’s
Queen of the Summer Court as far as this school is concerned. My guess is he planned to practice his moves on Lizzie before pitching for the big leagues.

Classy.

“Am I right?”

Marvin just bobs his head.

Game. Set. Match.

So that’s how we end up at the Cheer Queen’s café hideaway. Marvin stops at the doorway and peers inside the building that’s too cool to be named. No doubt he’s hoping there’s a whorehouse hidden within. Maybe I’m even one of the working girls.

Sure, Marvin. It’s your lucky day.

We sit at a corner table, draped in shadows. The occasional cobweb waves from above. The place is eternally decorated for Halloween, just not on purpose. Marvin orders coffee, black. He probably saw someone order it in a movie that way. This boy is much more electric-green soda than black coffee.

Is everyone at Verity playing pretend?

“Kennedy and I found this place sophomore year,” I say, sipping my latte in a way that leaves foam on my lip. I let it sit for a second before licking it off. It’s so over-the-top I almost lose it. “It’s kind of been our little secret.”

“Why me, then?” he asks, his coffee already forgotten.

“I wanted a quiet place to talk. When I thought of us sitting in some cheesy cafeteria, well . . . I just couldn’t picture it.”

Marvin raises his eyebrows. “What a surprise. A cheerleader with a mind.”

I almost gouge out his eyes right then. Patience gets me through it. Recently acquired patience.

“No offense,” he adds.

“Of course not,” I reply.

“I just always thought Lizzie was the smart one, and you were her . . .” He struggles to find the words.

“Popular—”

“Traditionally attractive friend.”

If I take this as a compliment, he’ll go back to assuming I’m the dumb bimbo. If I take offense, I’m the oversensitive chick. “If Lizzie was smart,” I say, “she must’ve liked me for a reason.”

“That’s true,” he agrees, as if it honestly never occurred to him. He leans back, eyeing me coolly. “What can I do for you, Angie?”

Angelina,
I want to correct, but that would be counterproductive. So instead, I tell him, “I’m getting a C in Mrs. Linn’s.” In addition to Math, Marvin and I share an English class.

He dips a finger into his coffee. “I’m sorry—did you ask me here to tutor you?”

I ignore him. “I had a really stupid thing happen with my term paper last semester. Remember that week we got to spend in the library? To do research on our topics?”

“Vaguely.” He sounds bored, oh so bored.

Hey, I bet he wants me to entertain him!

“I remember it very clearly,” I say, leaning in. My arms are crossed, but he doesn’t know I’m doing it protectively.

“Oh yeah?” He peers down my shirt like the crease between my breasts belongs to him. It’s all I can do not to kick him under the table.

“Yeah,” I say. “So I’ve hit my stride. I’ve written seven pages in the span of an hour, and I’m, like, five hundred words from finishing my paper when something really weird happens. I hear this heavy breathing coming from the other end of that long computer desk.”

Marvin sits up straight in an instant. “Was there a dog in the library?”

“You’d have known if there was. You were there too, remember? You were writing that paper on sex in Shakespearean lit?”

“Love,” he corrects.

“Totally.” I nod like I believe him. “So I get up to look, but I can’t see anything. That shelf of reference books is sitting in the middle of the desk. And I’m like, when did that get there?”

Of course, I know when the shelf was moved. Right about the time Marvin volunteered to be the librarian’s aide.

His blush confirms my theory. “Miss Marilyn thought it would remind us that you can look things up in books too,” he explains.

“I bet someone suggested it to her.”

“Maybe I did.” He wrinkles his brow. He’s got this zit trapped between two wrinkles that looks like it’s going to burst. “That proves nothing.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.” I lean away, readjusting my top. “Anyway, I hear this panting, and it’s totally breaking my concentration, so I creep down the row of computers, all stealthy like.” I wink. “Even dumb cheerleaders know how to spy. And I peer through the reference books and out the other side.”

“Oh God.” He’s shrinking in on himself.

But my story’s just getting interesting. “And what to my wandering eyes should appear but a little scum bucket perving on the
nastiest
websites I could ever imagine.”

“Please stop.”

“I mean, this was not normal stuff. This wasn’t even normal hard-core. This was, like . . .” I open my hands, as if searching for the words. “I don’t even want to say. It was definitely the worst—”

“
Okay.
I get it. Just—”

“I’m not finished yet,” I say in singsong. “So after a minute this perv-master realizes the typing on the other end of the desk has
stopped. And he starts to figure out what the typist is doing, and he totally freaks. He starts closing web windows like you wouldn’t believe but they just keep popping up. And he’s sweating and wheezing and I honestly think he’s going to cry so I start to slink away, figuring I don’t want to be the cause of an eighteen-year-old’s heart attack. And just as I disappear into a row of autobiographies, I hear the sound. That zap.”

“Crap.”

“Exactly,” I agree, nodding vigorously. “In his panic, this cretin drops to the ground and turns off the power strip that’s connected to all the computers. I lose seven pages of my fifteen-page paper. I miss the deadline. I get an F on the assignment.”

“Why didn’t you just work at home like a normal person?” He narrows his eyes, but the movement looks forced, like he’s trying to appear disdainful. Really he’s scared, anyone can see it. His fingers tap out rapid rhythms on the table, and he can’t stop watching them. “Well?”

Because my dad pawned his computer, like, months ago . . . because Mom protects her laptop more than she ever protected me
—but I don’t say those things, because Marvin wouldn’t understand. He probably has separate laptops for homework, porn, and video games.

“My computer crashed,” I lie. “And I had to take it in.”

His smirk says that would never happen to him. It makes me so mad. He has all this high-tech equipment, but still he chooses to look up dirty things at school. What would compel him to do something like that?

“Wait—why didn’t
you
work at home?” I demand.

He shrugs like it’s the stupidest question in the world. Like I’m the stupidest girl, and he’s so goddamn smart it pains him to be in my presence. But his answer is less than satisfying. “I wasn’t working.”

“Oh, you were working, all right. Working out a problem.
Rubbing one—well, never mind. The point is, I told Mrs. Linn someone turned off the computers.”

“You did?” His hands are curling and curling, but there’s nothing to hold on to.

“I did. But she wouldn’t change the grade on my paper unless I told her who did it.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Why?” He catches my gaze.

Because Lizzie begged me not to. Because she was such a good person, it made me want to be a better person too.

“Because it would have ruined you,” I say, and that’s true as well. I do have compassion, or at least I used to. “The stuff you were looking at was bad, Marvin. Like, lock-you-up-and-study-you bad. I felt sorry for you.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Trust me, the feeling is passing.” I hold up my hands. “But as far as I can tell, I did you a big, fat favor, so you owe me one.”

He takes a moment to answer. His shoulders are sagging, like his body’s too heavy to hold up. “What do you want?” he asks finally.

“Just the name of the person who’s writing on the lockers. And bringing Lizzie’s diary to school. It has to be the same person, don’t you think?”

“It seems likely,” Marvin agrees. “But I don’t know who’s doing those things.” He clears his throat when I go to speak. “I only know who was doing it before.”

“Before? Before, when she . . . Oh my God. Tell me.” I touch his clenched hands, like we’re famed superheroes coming together to save the planet. Like we’re actually friends. “Please?”

And then, just as Marvin opens his mouth, Kennedy McLaughlin slides into the seat next to mine. She’s got on these dark, low-rise
jeans and a man’s white collared shirt. The loose fit of the shirt only enhances the possibility of what hides beneath. I expect Marvin to be drooling.

But the look he gives Kennedy is pure hatred. “Speak of the devil,” he says.

W
ERE YOU TWO
talking about me?” Kennedy slides a roll of papers over to me. I hardly have time to catch my breath. Marvin
saw
Kennedy doing something to Lizzie. He witnessed it.

He reaches for the pages.

I slap his hand. “I don’t think so, computer boy.”

He scowls as I put them in my bag. Yes, I glance at them. Yes, it’s Lizzie’s handwriting.

“I found them in a locker,” Kennedy explains, just glancing at Marvin. “I figured you’d want them.”

I don’t thank her. I can barely stop myself from glaring. Why did she lie to me?

Why did I believe her?

All I want, in that moment, is for her to disappear so that Marvin can explain, but I know that’s not going to happen. Kennedy sticks like glue when she wants to.

“What was said?” She turns her golden gaze on Marvin. Already she’s picked up on his feelings about her. Smart lady.

Smarter than me, apparently.

“Huh?” I come back to the world slowly. Sitting here with the two of them, it’s like two universes are colliding. I don’t like it.

“What were you saying about me?” she asks, batting dark lashes. Those lashes betray the fakeness of her hair color, but some things about her are real. Her wicked mind. Her razor-sharp wit. The ability to destroy a reputation in ten seconds flat.

“Oh that.” I smile easily. At least, it looks easy. “We were arguing about who the hottest girl in school is.”

Marvin jumps in. “Angie here said it was you, but I said—”

“You were far too beautiful to be grouped in with the rest of us,” I finish for him.

Kennedy gives me a grin. She knows better than to show her claws in mixed company. “Well, I think you’re both wrong. Jesse Martinez is the fairest in the land.”

It takes me a minute to realize she’s not kidding. “He’s nice looking,” I say. “Kind of stuck-up, though. Or something.”

Marvin takes a sip just so he can sputter at me. I think that’s why, at least. “Are you two joking? He’s a
freak.
”

“Oh, right,” I reply. “Says the boy who’s into all sorts of things.”

“What’s that, now?” Kennedy perks up.

“Nothing,” Marvin says with me.

Smooth. We should go on stakeouts together.

He looks at his watch pointedly. “Well, I got to get to class. Ladies.” He tips his head at me. “Kennedy,” he snarls.

“Wait.” I reach for his hand.

But he’s too fast for me. “So nice chatting with you,” he says, rising from his seat. He’s gone before I can think of a way to keep him. I feel Kennedy’s gaze locked on me. “What?”

“Are you two dating?” she asks.

I don’t give her the satisfaction of a disgusted reply. “We’re
talking,” I say, which could mean a lot of things. “Why’d you follow me?”