Текст книги "Bad Girls Don't Die"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

3

Once upon a time , I had a best friend. Her name was Beth Goldberg. Beth and I got in lots of trouble together, but back then, people called it “mischief” and went a little easy on us. Apparently, when it’s two people, it’s quirky and funny, but when it’s a person doing the same stuff on her own, it’s rebellious and antisocial.

I’d always assumed that Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in the middle of eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World’s Nastiest Divorce.

Beth went a little nuts.

I don’t blame her. When her dad got involved with his twenty-one-year-old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk-food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes around the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. I figured she’d get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only person who noticed.

May 14 was “Fun and Fit Day” at Surrey Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us not to end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn’t fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders’ program on physical fitness.

They had a PowerPoint presentation, and it started out okay, if a little stupid….Finding their misspelled words made it kind of fun, actually: “veggetables” and “carbhohydrytes,” and don’t forget to eat plenty of “protene.” Beth and I sat there and laughed. Good times.

Then came the next segment. You know those DO and DON’T pages in fashion magazines? Like, “DO try belting your hideous $900 fuchsia sweater with a ridiculous $400 belt” and “DON’T leave the house with your underwear on the outside of your pants.”

The cheerleaders did that—only they used pictures of kids from our school.

“DO exercise regularly”–insert photo of several cheerleaders looking really pretty as they pretend to lift weights.

“DON’T sit on the sidelines in gym class.” The picture that went with this one had a black bar over the kid’s eyes, just like in a magazine, but

everyone could tell it was Javier Delgado, who’d been overweight since kindergarten.

That’s when most people started laughing nervously.

And that’s when Beth and I stopped laughing.

“DO eat lots of fresh produce.” A shot of Kira Conroy and Megan Wiley daintily eating a salad outside the lunchroom.

“DON’T go back for seconds in the lunch line.”

And there it was.

A picture of Beth.

Yeah, there was a black bar over her face, but it was obviously her. She had her favorite rainbow-striped sweater on—the really expensive one from Nordstrom, the one she loved to wear even if it was tight and sometimes rode up a little to show off her new Twinkie stomach.

Beth didn’t want to come back to school after that. She got out of her mom’s car a minute before first bell, ate lunch in the main office, and got special permission to leave five minutes before final bell. Probably because Mrs. Goldberg and Javier Delgado’s mom threatened to sue the pants off the school board.

The cheerleaders got a slap on the wrist. A bunch of us started a petition to keep the high school from letting them on the junior varsity squad. We had hundreds of signatures, including a lot from teachers and parents. The

JV coach at Surrey High agreed and barred the whole team from tryouts.

But then the varsity cheerleaders decided to stand up for their sisters. And they invited just about the whole troupe to skip JV and join their team.

That was right around when Beth and her mom put their house on the market and started packing up to move to Florida.

So now, not only did my best friend leave, but the cheerleaders and their mindless followers assumed I was personally responsible for the petition (which, yeah, I was) and started being openly rude to me—shutting doors in my face, leaving nasty notes on my desk and in my locker, making fun of me when I could obviously hear them.

That’s when I began keeping really quiet in class, and finding ways to show the other kids I wasn’t afraid of them—like staring them straight in the eye when they looked at me, taking a step toward them when they talked to me, or walking right up to them and getting in their personal space if I heard them say my name. Saying the meanest things I could think of whenever I had the chance—repeating rumors, embellishing them. I found out that Kira Conroy had been arrested for shoplifting at the mall, and made sure everybody knew about it. The girl who’d had five beers on New Year’s Eve and peed her

pants, the girl who tripped and fell off the stage at the Miss Teen California pageant—I shared those stories the moment I heard them.

All’s fair in war, right?

So suddenly I wasn’t a nobody anymore.

I was a somebody.

Somebody everyone was afraid of.

Since Megan Wiley was the captain of the cheerleaders, the school withheld her Student of the Year award. Seeing how she’s always been star of the student body and undisputed queen of the cheerleaders, I can only imagine the whole Fun-and-Fit presentation was her idea in the first place. And it’s not like she’d break formation and say otherwise, even if it wasn’t.

Beth and her mom moved the Saturday after the last week of school. We tried to stay in touch—we really did. But I guess going to a ritzy private school changes your priorities. All I know is that we swore we’d talk once a week, and it took about three months for that plan to dissolve into nothing. When Beth started talking about going on the Zone diet and wanting a Prada purse (pardon me, bag), I knew that was the beginning of the end. And when I dyed my hair pink last year, it was the end of the end. So.

Since Beth left, I haven’t really had a best friend. I guess I don’t have any real friends at all.

I mean, there’s Kasey. She’s thirteen—two years younger—so if you believe the greeting card commercials, we should have this special bond or something. We get along all right, but once she hit middle school, I started to feel less like her friend and more like her security blanket.

There was a time when we used to hang out—Kasey, me, Beth, even Mimi—goofing off and watching movies. But gradually, my formerly funny and cool sister morphed into a neurotic, oversensitive, doll-obsessed mess. Now our vibe is pretty much “big bad sister protecting timid little sister.” So until the greeting card companies start making cards that say ” you’ve always been there when i was either scared or bored ,” our relationship doesn’t measure up to Hallmark’s standards.

There’s one group I hang out with at school, but their attitude is getting tiresome. My secret name for them is the Doom Squad. Everyone assumes they’re morbid and strange, so they do their best to live up to the hype. Some of them are really nice, and I think they could be okay…if they would just stop trying so hard.

I mean, just because you don’t want to be a cookie-cutter clone doesn’t mean you have to wear a spiky collar and dress like a vampire wannabe. In the first place, I’m too lazy to put that much effort into my appearance, and in the second place, I’m really paranoid about wearing

nonmatching blacks, so I usually end up in jeans and a T-shirt.

After history, I stopped by my locker. Lydia Small, who might as well be the Doom Squad poster child, wandered up and rested her forehead on the locker next to mine. She spends a lot of time and energy trying to give people the impression that she’s too emo and gothic to be interested in anything. Still, I did notice she was wearing a wedding veil that she’d shredded and glued a bunch of plastic spiders on to.

Lydia is rude and overbearing and pretentious, and to be honest, there are actually several people I’d rather hang out with than her. But she’s the one who always seems to appear out of thin air. And because of her big old attitude, people tend to do what she says. So when she walks over at lunch and says, “Move, worm,” to whoever’s sitting next to me, they move.

In spite of my misgivings, Lydia and I had been hanging out a little lately, going to see movies, people-watching at the mall, ending up next to each other at lunch. She was drawn to me, like a moth to a porch light. In fact, sometimes I suspected it was my ambivalence about her that made her so eager to hang out.

She wasn’t best friend material, but I was getting used to having her around.

“You won’t believe what Pepper Laird just said to me,” I said. Lydia was quiet for a second. I waited for her to say something sympathetic.

“Ugh,” she said. A fair start. As I drew in a breath to elaborate, Lydia widened her eyes. “Sabrina Woodburn dyed her hair black. Who does she think she is, Morticia Addams? She’s in marching band… What a wannabe.”

“Weren’t you in Glee Club until the middle of last year?” I asked.

Lydia sputtered. “That’s totally different.”

“Sure,” I said. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Now, see, if somebody talked to me that way, I would tell them exactly where they could put their opinion, and then I would assume the friendship was over. But Lydia just pouted and looped her arm through mine.

We started walking toward homeroom together. As we passed a group of cheerleaders, Lydia stuck her tongue out at them and clicked her tongue piercing against her teeth.

They drew back in a scandalized herd. “Oh, that is so mature,” one girl said.

As we kept walking, the crowd seemed to thin a little. I spotted Megan Wiley leaning up against a locker, talking seriously to a girl in a pink cowboy hat who was crying so hard her mascara ran down her cheeks. The girl was Emily Rosen. I had Spanish with her. She was nice.

I planned to drag Lydia right past without stopping, but she saw the tears and came to a screeching halt. “Heeey, Em!” she called.

“What are you doing?” I asked under my breath, as both Megan and Emily looked at us.

“I hear you had a big night with Rory Henderson,” Lydia said sweetly. “Gonna have to give that promise ring back to your daddy, huh?”

Emily’s face froze for a moment, and then she was bawling again. I clamped a hand on Lydia’s arm as Megan shot a dirty look in our direction.

The only thing that saved us was the swaggering arrival of Rory Henderson himself. Rory’s only popular because his dad is a rich lawyer and his mom used to be the weather girl on channel twelve. He’s not really good-looking, and his entourage is made up of goons who laugh at everything he says, even though none of it is funny.

“Hi, Rory, you big stud!” Lydia cooed, and he gave her a half-second of a smile. She dissolved into giggles. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Megan glaring.

“God, Lydia, you’re so obnoxious!” I hissed.

Lydia laughed her I-don’t-care-about-anything laugh. “I know, right?”

“You didn’t have to say that to Emily.” Emily was genuinely sweet, the kind of girl who would offer you her notes if you were absent.

“She deserves it,” Lydia said, all la-di-da. “Look, she’s buddy-buddy with Wiley.”

I turned to look back at Emily and Megan, but the first thing I saw was Rory.

He stood motionless, staring across the hall at something; a second later, I realized it was Megan he was staring at, only it was really the other way around. She was staring at him, and from the look of things, he wasn’t all that wild about it. His ruddy cheeks paled, and he cast a nervous look at the kids around him.

“I don’t know, Rory,” Megan said. Her voice was low, but it carried perfectly. Everyone within twenty feet was watching and listening. “It seems really unlikely that any of what you said is true. I mean, considering what Jessica told us after prom last year…? About things going…downhill?”

Jessica Xiong, an eleventh grader on the varsity squad, smiled brightly and waved.

Then, in unison, the cheerleaders laughed their tinkly little laughs, which made everyone else laugh too.

Huge rosy patches flooded Rory’s face. He ducked his head and practically ran off down the hall, his crew following in disgrace.

Lydia dragged me away. “Oh my God, you should hear what he’s telling everyone she did last night. It’s nasty….I’m sick of cheerleaders. They’re so shrill!”

If there were a shrill contest, the Doom Squad would probably take the gold medal. At least silver. But I didn’t say so to Lydia. She’d just take it as a compliment.

I happen to know that Lydia was not only in Glee Club last year, but she played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in eighth grade, and she used to blog under the alias BRDWYDIVA about all the Broadway shows she wanted to see and all the actors she wanted to meet. Then whoosh, she changed pretty much overnight into the spider-veiled Princess of Doom.

That’s the pathetic thing about high school. Everyone tries so hard to be something they aren’t. It’s gotten so I don’t know who I am, so how can I even try to be who I am, much less someone I’m not?

My problem is that I don’t even fit in with the misfits.

I don’t fit in anywhere.

So there I was, walking next to Lydia, who was waving her arms around and telling a story way more dramatically than she needed to, when a door opened right into my forehead and knocked me down.

Just like that. And when I say down, I mean, like, down for the count. I landed on my butt, which I suppose is better than landing on the back of one’s skull, if one has to choose—but it still sucked.

I sat there for a second, thinking I was all alone in a very dark room that smelled like pennies, and then I started to hear voices all around me, and my vision came back.

Lydia crouched to my left, staring at me, and on the right a teacher was trying his best to take charge of the situation, and in front of me was a guy with blond hair and glasses.

My first thought was: he’s really cute. His curly blond hair, his big, worried, blue eyes.

My second thought was: wait, I know that curly hair and those big blue eyes.

I closed my eyes again, and my head started to hurt.

The teacher, a tweed-clad staple of the history department, took hold of my hand and patted it a few times. “Try to stay awake…you could have a concussion.”

Not like closing your eyes helps the pain anyway. I opened them without complaint.

He was still there, looking at me. I don’t mean the history teacher. I mean him.

Carter Blume.

“Do you know your name?” the teacher asked.

Okay, I understand that it’s standard first-aid procedure to ask this question, but if you do happen to know your name, it’s really annoying to be asked. I nodded and started to answer.

“Her name is Alexis!” Lydia shrieked helpfully. “Oh my God, Alexis, are you okay?”

I squinted. “I’m fine.” Her shouting was making my headache worse.

“Alexis Warren,” Carter said.

I stared at him, and after a second he smiled.

“I’m the guilty door-opener,” he said. “Very sorry.” He stuck his hand out, and it didn’t occur to me right away that he actually wanted me to shake it, like we were a pair of old men or something. I just looked blankly at his hand until he laughed and pulled it back.

Lydia tried to haul me to my feet. The teacher helped her, and Carter hovered behind them.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Lydia spat at him. “Why don’t you go back to the Young Republicans?”

He ignored her.

“I am so sorry,” he said, looking into my eyes.

Careful, Alexis. I looked away. Not that there was any danger of me actually liking someone like Carter. I mean, so what if his eyes were really sparkly? And who cared if his blond curls looked as soft as a baby’s hair?

He was not my type. In fact, I didn’t have a type. Not that I was looking to date college guys, but I’d always operated under the assumption that my Prince Charming wasn’t among the available choices at Surrey High.

I realized I’d been kind of staring at him, but thankfully the late bell rang, interrupting the moment.

“You should go to the clinic,” the teacher said. “Check in with the nurse.”

“Can I come too?” Lydia asked frantically. “I’m her best friend.”

No you’re not, I thought.

“I think she’ll be fine on her own,” he said.

“I should go with her, Mr. Daley,” Carter said. “It’s my fault….I won’t be gone long.”

The teacher shot him a suspicious look, but nodded. “Five minutes.”

Lydia breathed out through her nose and looked at her watch. “I guess I have to go to class, Alexis….” It was a clear prompt for me to invite her along.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “See you later.”

The teacher ducked into his classroom and Lydia trudged away. I was alone with my assailant.

“This really isn’t necessary,” I said. “I can get there without help.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

4

It all started in September of last year.

There used to be this show, Surrey Survey, that was broadcast once a week during homeroom, run by a couple of A/V nerds.

I was on the last episode ever to air.

It was a show about student government elections. The A/V guys were in my Spanish class, and while we were talking one day, they told me their next show was about elections. I said the whole concept of student government was a sham and a farce and a popularity/beauty contest. All the candidates claimed to be committed to change, to making things better, but I suggested that the A/V nerds do a hidden-camera setup and ask the front-runners why they were really running. So they did. When the nonhidden camera was running, the answers were textbook—helping the school, getting involved, taking a stand, blah blah blah.

When that camera was off and just the hidden one was rolling, that’s when the real reasons came out. Motives

as varied as “the faculty sponsor is hot” to “you get to skip class whenever you want” to “Tim MacNamara’s parents always buy beer when he has meetings at his house.”

When the guys asked me (on camera) who I’d be voting for, I told the truth, which was that I didn’t give a flying bleep (that’s how it came out on air, at least) who the candidates were or what they stood for, and neither did anyone else in the school.

I also suggested that, just for fun, everyone who was sick of the pretty people using school elections to perpetuate the social dominance of their tyrannical clique should make a point of voting for a person they’d never heard of.

I wasn’t really serious. I just thought I was being…you know, funny.

But I guess people have different definitions of funny. I hadn’t counted on them using all of that footage of me condemning my fellow students as the basis for the entire segment. I was just a freshman, the girl with the bright pink hair, nobody to get excited about.

That was the day Surrey Survey got the ax.

It was also the day I made my second appearance on the cheerleaders’ Public Enemy #1 list.

Because the front-runner for Student Council VP was Pepper Laird.

And she lost the election to the new kid nobody had ever heard of—Carter Blume. Pepper may have been

knocked off her throne, but Carter’s popularity soared. Soon he was the pack leader of the preps—the buttoned-up speech-and-debate-obsessed clones. Preps are like cheerleaders, only with less jumping.

I had no idea how easy it would be to create a monster—in fact, I had created two monsters. Carter and myself. Suddenly, the freshman anonymity that had softened the public’s image of me was blasted away, and once again, I was That Girl.

So.

I started to walk toward the clinic. He came wandering after me.

“So, okay,” he said at last. “Clearly you have no idea who I am.” “Clearly.”

He wanted me to ask. He was dying for me to ask.

He held open the clinic door for me. The nurse was standing at the counter behind her desk, trying to fish the last cotton ball out of a jar. “Be right there,” she said, without looking at us. Then she disappeared behind the curtain.

I planted myself in one of the guest chairs, and Carter sat next to me.

He leaned over and spoke in a confidential tone. “Are you proficient in the Heimlich maneuver?”

It took me a second to realize he was reading from

one of the posters on the opposite wall. “No,” I said. “Sorry to say.”

I looked at the next poster over, a cartoon about helping your friends fend off depression. A little cartoon girl was looking at her friend and asking, HOW ABOUT YOU, DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE HURTING YOURSELF? “How about you, do you ever feel like hurting yourself?”

He paused and let out a half-laugh. “Well…only on turkey tetrazzini day.”

“I don’t think they serve that here.”

“Right,” he said. “Lucky me.”

He didn’t say anything else. Neither did I.

The nurse came bustling out.

“Carter!” she said. “Are you hurt?”

“No…I’m just here to make sure Miss Warren gets the level of care she needs,” he said.

He was totally flirting with the nurse, and she was lapping it up.

“And I thought chivalry was dead!” she replied.

He stood. “Maybe it is. I opened a door into her head.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure it was probably an accident,” the nurse said absently, sitting down at her computer. “What was the name?”

“Warren,” Carter said, looking right at me.

Forget this. Not about to let him stand around and play hero, I went to the desk, moving closer to the nurse

so that Carter had to edge away. “Alexis Warren.”

She asked a couple more questions, and I kept shifting so that eventually Carter was completely blocked from the desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take a self-conscious step backward and felt a pang of guilt.

“I should get to class,” Carter said. He patted a stack of papers on the desk and leaned down a tiny bit toward the nurse. “I’ve done my civic duty.”

Civic duty? Was he just using me as a cog in the oppressive machinery of the white male hierarchy? A line on his college application? Part three of a Boy Scout badge?

To think I almost felt sorry for him. All so he could enjoy the smug satisfaction of being a good citizen, get into a fancy university, become a lawyer, and help sleazy rich guys dump toxic waste wherever they felt like it.

He looked at me. “If there’s anything I can—”

“There’s not,” I said.

The breezy look on his face faltered.

“Stop.” My head was starting to throb, and my mood was souring by the moment. “I can take care of myself.”

Everyone was quiet. The second hand on the old wall clock was the only sound.

“Just go to class,” I said.

“You’re the boss,” he said, touching his finger to his forehead in a tiny salute. Then he disappeared.