Sylvie stepped off the school bus. She adjusted her backpack and slid off her Walkman headphones, letting them dangle around her neck. The faint sound of the Beastie Boys, still rapping on the Walkman, filled Sylvie’s personal space. She needed the angry beats for motivation.
Sylvie looked ahead, taking in the scene. The parking lot was jam-packed with kids heading into school. Three news vans were parked out front.
“There is still no information on who killed senior and homecoming queen, June Mitchell, however students and faculty…” one reporter from Channel 4 said as she looked directly into the camera.
Sylvie could see the woman’s thick makeup from where she was standing. Her bright red lipstick stood out among her dark brown skin.
Each van had a reporter of their own doing the same thing. The reporters stood in various spots. One in front of the Lowridge High sign, another by the front doors. The Channel 4 reporter stood in front of the piles of flower bouquets, teddy bears, and posters that lined the sidewalk leading up to the school.
Sylvie put up her hood. I wish I was invisible, she thought as she stared at the scene. She wondered what would happen to the flowers when they dried up and to the teddy bears when they got soaked from the rain. Why do people leave these things, anyway, Sylvie wondered. June’s dead. Teddy bears and flowers aren’t bringing her or her baby back.
Sylvie turned from the reporters, not sure if they knew who she was. She needed to avoid them at all costs. The last thing she wanted was to be on television. Why can’t I just be homeschooled? Her heart thumped as she scanned the school grounds for an escape plan.
She decided to take the side walkway, hoping to enter the school with no one noticing her. I’ll slip in by the auditorium, arrive at homeroom just after the bell to avoid conversation but make attendance. Sylvie felt a little lighter as she convinced herself of this plan. Maybe I can even skip her classes and find a place in the basement to hide until the end of the day. Deep down, Sylvie knew this was all unlikely, but the dream kept her feet moving forward.
“Sorry!” A girl bumped into Sylvie, almost knocking her off her feet. It was Sylvie’s fault; she wasn’t looking where she was going.
The girl apologized anyway.
“Oh. Sylvie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump you, I’m sorry about your…” Jodi Grimes fumbled for the right words.
Sylvie held up her hands. “It’s fine. Really. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Jodi looked at Sylvie. Sylvie wasn’t sure what else to say.
It wasn’t like the two were friends. In fact, if Sylvie felt like a wallflower, she couldn’t imagine how Jodi felt. Even though Sylvie was never invited to the high school parties or hung out with the cool girls like Beverly Fox, she still found friends to sit with at lunch. Jodi always sat alone.
It wasn’t because Jodi wasn’t nice. She seemed nice enough, Sylvie supposed. Sylvie had never really talked to her long enough to know. What Sylvie did know was that Jodi lived in the dirtiest house in town, just down the street from Sylvie. While the rest of the houses on the street were neat, with perfectly trimmed lawns, Jodi’s old, once-white farmhouse was now almost brown because of its chipped paint and naked clapboards. It was set off the road, down a long driveway, but visible to those passing by. Miscellaneous pieces of junk littered the yard: an old, rusty truck, a long-forgotten tractor, a pile of tires by the tree swing. The porch was covered with trash, too. There were no farmhouse rocking chairs, but a dirty mattress, empty flowerpots, and other mix matched collections of junk on the porch instead. Everyone called it the “bug house” and Jodi the “bug girl”, even though Jodi herself was never dirty. Still, her Goodwill clothes and beat-up Kmart sneakers gave the appearance of being dirty. It didn’t help that her father, known as the town drunk, sometimes sleepwalked in his underwear up and down the street.
“Is this yours?” Sylvie bent down and picked up a drawing that had fallen out of Jodi’s notebook. She glanced down at it. It was a beautiful landscape of a tree and lilacs, colored with vivid oil crayons.
Jodi snatched it.
“It’s pretty good. I draw, too,” Sylvie said. She was trying to be nice because Jodi looked lonely. Sylvie understood that feeling now. As much as she’d complained about her sister, she was lonely without her. Jodi’s younger brother had drowned two summers before in the town lake, Jodi’s mother had died trying to save him. Sylvie recognized that pain.
“Mitchell!” A boy’s voice, loud and accusatory, interrupted the conversation. It was Bruce Martin.
Sylvie watched as he headed their way with his sidekick, Joseph Banks, tagging along.
Jodi began to walk away.
“Where you going, Grimes?” Bruce asked. “To wash yourself to get rid of your crabs?”
Jodi turned bright red as she froze still.
“Leave her alone, Martin,” Sylvie said, purposely not calling him Bruce. If he couldn’t call her by her first name, she wasn’t going to call him by his.
“Look at you, all tough and mighty. Why, you don’t seem upset about your sister at all to me. You’re fired up and ready to fight.” He eyed Sylvie up and down as if he was undressing her with his eyes.
“Leave my sister out of it. Don’t you have some band geek to feel up? I mean, you’ve run out of cheerleaders by now, I’m sure,” Sylvie said.
Joseph laughed.
Bruce elbowed him in the arm to shut him up.
Sylvie wondered why Joseph put up with him. He was a trust-fund baby who lived at the top of the hill that overlooked Lowridge. He had enough money to buy friends if he needed to.
“Your sister was right,” Bruce said. “You are a loser.”
Sylvie glared at him.
Bruce laughed. “What are you going to do, hit me?” He walked closer to her, grabbed her by the neckline and said, “Who do you think you are, sending the cops to my house?”
Sylvie put her hand on his, trying to pry it off. “What are you talking about? Get your hands off me.”
Bruce let go and stepped back as Dr. Peterson, the school counselor, walked by. Bruce flashed Dr. Peterson his best innocent smile.
“Everything okay over here?” Dr. Peterson asked.
Sylvie looked over at Dr. Peterson. He was new to the school and wasn’t really a school employee, not exactly. He was a clinical psychologist who came to the school two to three times a week to meet with various students. It was part of the school board’s initiative to “combat teen depression.” Sylvie had read all about it in the newspaper article Dad had shown her. Some study at the state capitol found that students in Lowridge were more susceptible to depression and teen pregnancy than any other town in the state. So, they sent in grant-funded dollars and Dr. Peterson to help the students. Sylvie thought it was ridiculous to think that this defunct counselor was going to help the students “rise up” from their lower class, depressed existence. She couldn’t take anyone with greasy, slicked back hair and a crooked clip-on tie seriously.
“It’s fine, Dr. Peterson,” Sylvie said. “Bruce, here, was just giving me his condolences on my sister’s murder. He and June were very close. He’s devastated.”
Dr. Peterson looked at them both, then at Jodi and Joseph. He turned back to Sylvie. “I’m very sorry about your sister, Sylvie. If you need anything, I’m just a phone call away.” He reached into his pocket, then handed her his business card. “I’m here at the school extra days this week, given the tragedy. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You, too, Bruce. And the rest of you,” he said, nodding to Joseph and Jodi.
Sylvie took the card, knowing full well the last thing she would ever do is sit on some psychologist’s leather fainting couch to discuss her feelings. Or, in this case, his creaky twenty-year-old school desk chair. Still, she smiled and said, “Thank you, Dr. Peterson.”
Dr. Peterson nodded and walked away.
“Listen,” Sylvie said to Bruce when Dr. Peterson was gone. “Just leave me alone.”
“You sent the cops to my house.” Bruce spit on the ground.
“I didn’t send the cops to your house.”
“Then how else did they know about the message I left June?”
“Well, you left it. I told them, yes. They asked what I knew. I heard the message, so I told them. If you didn’t want anyone to know about it, you shouldn’t have left it,” Sylvie said. “Besides,” she added, “Where were you, Bruce?”
“What are you talking about? Where was I when?”
“When they called your name for the crown?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I think it is, considering someone murdered my sister while you were missing.”
Bruce’s cheeks flushed as his neck lit up with blotches of red.
“Come on, let’s go.” Jodi pulled on Sylvie’s arm as the bell rang.
Sylvie didn’t budge.
“You know what, Mitchell?” Bruce said. “Your in denial of the one true fact here.”
“Yeah, and what’s that? That you’re insecure?”
Joseph laughed.
Bruce shot him a look. “That your sister had a bad reputation and faced the consequences.” Bruce said.
Sylvie looked at him, shocked. How could anyone be so vile? Wasn’t this the same boy who’d held June’s hand for three years? Who’d folded up football-shaped love letters and had given her his varsity jacket? If her sister had a poor reputation, he’d contributed to it.
Sylvie felt her skin boil.
As Bruce turned to slap Joseph a high five to celebrate his comment, Sylvie lunged forward and pushed him. Bruce fumbled backwards as Sylvie surged forward again, scratching his face with her nails.
“You psycho!” he screamed.
Everyone turned to watch, including Dr. Peterson, who rushed back to pull Sylvie off Bruce as she kicked and screamed, “Murderer!” loud enough for everyone to hear.