After school, Lakshmi was ecstatic. I found her in the gym, which was less of a gym and more of a large, empty room with terrible acoustics and poor lighting.
“You shoulda gone Wonder Woman on his ass. He’s like, ‘This is a safe space’ and you’re like, ‘Not anymore, motherfucker! Pow!”
She dropped her basketball and demonstrated a few punches.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be punching anyone.”
Violence had never really been my problem. My mouth, as always, was my problem. Despite Lakshmi’s enthusiasm for my outburst, I felt sick. I had come to Eaganville to get a new start, and three days in I was already failing.
“All right, try and guard me.” Lakshmi dribbled between her legs, collided into me, then burst past me for a layup on a net that hadn’t been replaced in years.
“That was a foul,” she said. “You fouled me.”
She drained a free throw, then tossed me the ball.
“I really suck at basketball,” I protested.
“Don’t get down on yourself; let’s see what you got.”
“I epically suck. I am the worst person ever at basketball.”
“You haven’t seen our team. Come on. I’m sure we can use you.”
I dribbled robotically with my right hand, then threw up a shot that missed the hoop and landed two rows into the wooden stands.
“Yeah, you suck,” she said, retrieving it. “So, you got one day of ISS, that’s it?”
“Yup.”
“That’s not so bad.”
Lakshmi took the ball, shimmied to the side, and launched a three-pointer that swished through the net. “That was terrible defense, by the way. You gotta get up on me.”
“If I get up on you, you just dribble past me.”
“Yeah, ’cause I’m so much better than you. You’re basically fucked. But that’s cool. No judgments. I still think you could start for our team. Let me see your vertical.”
“I have a negative vertical.”
“That’s literally impossible.”
I hopped and Lakshmi nodded, puffing out her cheeks.
“I can work with that.”
“Can you?”
“It’s not about physical skills. It’s about aggression and belief.”
“I think my physical skills are more suited to standing and talking. Maybe I should try out for Speech and Debate,” I joked.
Lakshmi recoiled. “Don’t even say that. They’re evil. They’re seriously like a cult.”
“I thought they were like a gang.”
“They’re a gang cult. You don’t want to go anywhere near them.”
“All right,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I’m just good at talking. I think it’s my main skill.”
“Are you good at being an asshole? ’Cause that’s why they win.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Kinda, yeah.”
At my previous school, in-school suspension was basically an exercise in staring at a wall for an entire day. I had actually perfected the art of falling asleep with my eyes open, which was a necessary survival skill in an atmosphere designed to bore you into submission. At Eaganville, we had peer counseling, which was worse.
After lunch I was marched to a room adjacent to the vice principal’s office. It wasn’t the standard punishment zone I was anticipating; it was aboveground, and instead of traditional desks there were two comfy armchairs. There was an ancient, unused fireplace on one side of the room, and it seemed like the kind of place where we could wear smoking jackets with elbow patches and drink snifters of brandy. The carpet was from the Cretaceous Period and there were several wooden bookshelves that held books no one had ever read. I was sitting cross-legged on one of the plushy armchairs when Logan entered.
He was about five-five, and even though I was told he was a senior, he had managed to completely avoid puberty up till this point. He was wearing a button-down and khaki pants and had more hair than was reasonable. Not that it was long, it was just thick, like an inky forest of curly blackness. I was pretty sure he had lost a comb or two in there at some point. He walked in like he had just downed three cups of coffee and was still trying to burn off the excess energy. He even sat quickly.
“All right,” he said, settling into the comfy chair opposite me. He put one ankle on his knee, then thought better of it, switched knees, then decided to put both feet on the ground. One of them tapped spastically, like there was some current of electricity running through him that couldn’t be turned off.
“My name’s Logan. I’m going to be your peer counselor today.” He squinted impressively.
“Sweet,” I said.
“How does that make you feel?”
I eyed him. “Have you ever done this before, Logan?”
He scratched his nose. “I have, actually. One of my great loves is analyzing people’s problems. I’m really looking forward to diving into yours.”
“That must be really fun for you.”
“Oh, sure. It’s fascinating. Before we start,” he continued, ankle still twitching, “I want you to think of me as essentially the same as a priest or a lawyer or a therapist.” He looked me in the eyes. Logan had greenish eyes the color of fuzzy mold on cheddar cheese. “Anything you say here I will keep in utmost confidence. I am awesome at keeping things secret.” He nodded and wiggled his eyebrows just a little bit.
I looked at the clock. Logan had been talking at me for four minutes. Fifty-six more minutes left to go. I hoped that an orbiting satellite would crash through the roof and obliterate both of us. Him first. Maybe I’d survive. Then I thought it would be better if a laser from space incinerated him. I could probably leap clear of the blast radius.
“So, let’s get started, shall we? So… English class…” He opened a folder on his lap and put both his thumbs under his chin. “Words can hurt, Sydney. Just as much as fists.”
“Can they?” I said.
“Yes, they can.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause I’ve never been punched with a word before.”
His mouth crinkled up. “If you’re not going to cooperate with this process, I can always recommend that you get more peer counseling. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”
I swallowed my next quip.
“I find that sometimes people use humor to shield themselves from pain. Ergo, your essay about centaurs.” He said ergo. He literally said ergo.
“Can I tell you something, Logan?”
“Please.”
“The centaur thing was completely true. I’m a child of two worlds: horse and human.” He blinked. “I can translate between English and horse language, which is basically just a series of whinnies.” I neighed softly.
“Why would centaurs speak horse language? They have horse backsides and human faces. That makes no sense.”
“You don’t know us; don’t make judgments.”
He snorted. “More humor. I see. Why do you have these walls up, Sydney? Let’s break them down together.”
“My walls are fine, thanks.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.”
“Really? In your heart, is that what you want?”
The point of peer counseling was dawning on me: torture. Inflict as much psychological pain as possible. I would never yell at a teacher again, not if this was what was waiting for me on the other side.
“Yes, Logan,” I repeated. “In my heart I do not want you breaking down my walls. Or scaling them. Or tunneling under them. I want you the fuck away from my walls because my walls are equipped with machine guns. And they will blow your ass away if you try to knock them down.”
His smile cracked a bit. An evil silence settled between us.
“Okay,” he said, recovering. “Let’s talk about what you want to talk about. Why did you feel the need to use expletives with Mr. Papadakis?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Is everything all right at home?” He looked over his notes.
“What does it say in your little notebook?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about my notebook.”
“I mean it probably says why, doesn’t it? That’s what was going on in class.”
“I see.” He nodded, jotting something down. “You want to tell me about your father?”
“Nope.”
“I touched a nerve, I guess.”
“Not really. I just have no interest in discussing my father with you.”
He reached out, and
HIS HAND TOUCHED MY KNEE.
I focused on him. On his pasty face, the black hair that spiked up in a thicket—the mold-green eyes. A tiny bead of sweat on his forehead. The air in the room was suffocating—how many countless children had been peer-counseled to death in this very room?
I looked down at the offending hand.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“It is not going to be okay if you don’t remove your damn hand,” I said.
He twitched a bit, and the hand moved away from my knee.
“Okay, um… just remember that this is a safe space.”
“That’s my trigger word,” I said. “When I hear that, I explode.”
He shifted in his armchair. “Maybe let’s take a different tactic. Studies have shown that an increase in engagement might help you assimilate. Have you thought about joining a club or team?”
“Sure.”
“Excellent—”
“I was thinking about Speech and Debate.”
He coughed and looked away.
“What?” I said.
He turned back to look at me. “I’m actually varsity on the debate team, so I found your comment amusing.”
“Amusing? How so?”
“I was just tickled by it.”
“You were tickled by it? My comment tickled you?”
Logan vibrated ever so slightly, as if he was about to crack into a million pieces and shatter in front of me. “I’m sorry.” He smiled, trying to hold it together. “Well… um… you should know that Speech and Debate is a lot of work. You can’t just pick it up in the middle of your junior year. It requires discipline.”
I raised an eyebrow. You could almost feel the waves of testosterone-laden arrogance wafting off of him. “The centaurs taught me a lot of discipline,” I said.
“Can I be honest with you?” he said. “I don’t really think you would do well in forensics.”
“What’s forensics?”
He sputtered. “Speech and Debate. Sometimes it’s called forensics. They’re interchangeable terms.”
“Forensics, like crime scene investigation?”
“If you don’t even know what the term is, how do you expect to join the team? I mean you can’t—you obviously can’t join the team, so I don’t even know why I’m entertaining this thought experiment right now.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a seriousness to it—”
“I’m totally serious.”
“Are you? Are you, really? I know that you’re simply trying to provoke me right now, that’s what this is. You’re erratic and violent, not exactly the qualities we’re looking for.”
“I think that will probably help me.”
He laughed. “Perhaps you’re not aware of the level of quality of our team. We’re the number-one-ranked team in the country. Number. One. You don’t just walk onto a team like that.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you need some new blood.”
“Maybe we don’t.”
“That was hostile,” I said.
“It wasn’t hostile, it was a statement of fact.”
“Stated in a hostile way. See, I’m debating you right now and I’m winning.”
He kicked at the legs of his chair. “You’re not even close to winning.”
“I’m kicking your ass at this, actually. Are you sure you’re a debater, ’cause I’m not all that impressed with you right now.”
“I went to Nationals last year; perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
I shrugged again. “If you got to Nationals, the competition must not have been that tough,” I said, switching to full troll mode to see if I could make Logan spontaneously combust.
“It’s Nationals,” he sputtered. “It’s the National Championship! How do you think you can join a speech team if you’re not even clear on basic concepts?!”
“Listen,” I said, deciding to go all in. “You don’t need to mansplain debate to me, all right? I was on the Speech and Debate team at my last school,” I lied. “I was basically the LeBron James of Speech and Debate at my last school. That was my nickname: LeBron Speech.”
“Bullshit. How do you not even know it’s called forensics, then?”
“’Cause I’m messing with you. I wanted to see if you would condescend to me, which you did, thank you very much.”
He squinted his eyes, trying to see through my obvious lies. He was turning a healthy red color now. Little beads of sweat were forming under his hairline. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’ve been debating you for like five minutes and I’ve already flattened you, so—”
“You haven’t flattened me!”
“You’re totally flustered, you’re reevaluating your life choices, you don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“Well, you can’t join our team!”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll be there Monday. Maybe I’ll take over your spot.”
Let me add here that I had zero intention of joining his awful team—I just wanted to see if I could force him into an aneurysm.
He gritted his teeth. “You won’t win. You aren’t good enough. Besides,” he added, “attractive girls tend to do better.”
That comment sat there for a second. I looked at him, and the words slipped out of my head. The way he said it was as a statement of fact, a cruel fact, like it was complete in its own truth and couldn’t be challenged. The barest glint of a smile crept across his face—you could tell that he felt he won—he just out-assholed me.
“I’m not attractive enough for Speech and Debate?” I said, trying to regain my footing.
“You might have been hot shit on your last team; you just wouldn’t do well on ours.” He shrugged. “We have standards, and the hot girls do better. It’s been proven. There have been studies. I can send you links if you want.”
My face tingled. I could tell that red blotches were forming on my cheeks, making me even less pretty, but I held myself still.
But when I look back on it, that was the beginning of The Plan. It started with this thought:
I’m going to wreck you.