“Ibet Zach’s with Flynn again,” Lucy had raised her voice to compete with the bus engine as it sputtered and slowed. She fussed with her pixie cut as she looked out the window, frowning at her reflection in the glass.
“Which one is Flynn?” Elena pulled a lollipop from her lips and crouched down to look outside. She had to crouch because she was nearly six feet tall.
“Ironic Mullet.”
“Which one is Ironic Mullet?”
“The one with the ironic mullet,” Lucy explained.
“Oh.” Elena giggled, apparently amused by her stupidity. Meg wanted to roll her eyes but managed to keep her face impassive as she pretended to read her History textbook. She didn’t want Lucy to realize she was eavesdropping on their conversation. And she could not, under any circumstances, let her dislike for Elena Carvalho become public knowledge.
Elena was Lucy’s best friend. If Lucy was the smartest girl at Rose, then Elena was by far the most beautiful, with long legs, wide eyes, and flawless olive skin. Meg had assumed Lucy was a loner, and anti-social to the core. She deflated a little bit, realizing she was going to have to compete for Lucy’s friendship, and that said competition was freakishly tall and sickeningly sweet.
It made things much more difficult. Not impossible, but prickly.
“How do you know the mullet is ironic?” Elena’s hair had come loose from her messy ponytail. It was a color somewhere between copper and cinnamon and seemed to sparkle. “Maybe he’s clueless, the poor thing.”
“Flynn told me it was ironic,” Lucy said. “I think he was trying to impress me with his nonconformity.”
Meg sat across from them, heavy with envy. The two girls didn’t pay much attention to her, but they didn’t demand she move either. Still, her stomach churned. What if that friendly conversation in detention had been a fluke? Perhaps Lucy had been nice to her only out of boredom.
Once the idea of having a friend again had taken seed, it had sprouted, and no amount of second-guessing or nervousness could stop it from spreading through her, like a persistent tangle of ivy, creeping up to overtake everything in its path.
Lucy whispered something, and Elena giggled again. She turned her head and caught Meg’s eye. Her smile was friendly, sincere, and blindingly bright. She must bleach her teeth, Meg thought. Or maybe they’re caps. The thought of Elena hiding crooked, yellow bicuspids behind porcelain veneers enabled Meg to return the smile.
“Hey, you sit next to me in homeroom! You lent me a pencil.”
Meg nodded, staring at that perfect heart-shaped face. No amount of makeup contouring could create those cheekbones.
“Oh my god, I think I lost it!” Elena’s hand shot up to cover her mouth. “You don’t need it, do you?” she asked, her voice muffled.
Lucy was watching.
Entertain me, her face said.
“I do,” Meg said after a moment. “I stole it from Katrina’s desk. It’s got her teeth marks on it. I’m going to have them analyzed so I can prove that she’s secretly a hairless bigfoot.”
Elena looked confused, but Lucy guffawed loudly.
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of tweezing,” she said.
“Duh, she waxes.” Meg’s voice was a perfect imitation of a snotty Deb. “Except for the mustache.”
“Of course,” Lucy agreed. The two of them were so in sync! “She wants to keep some small tie to her furry brethren.” Lucy leaned over and flashed Meg a mischievous grin. “You’re wicked, Ford. You know that?”
“Yes,” Meg answered, as the bus lurched to a stop.
She turned to Lucy, about to make a crack about Katrina “keeping it real” when a little hurricane rammed into her shoulder. Her coat and her bag dropped from her arms, and her books and gym clothes spilled across the bus aisle.
“I’m so sorry,” the little freshman mumbled through her giggles, and, with her friends in tow, she rushed off, leaving the aisle covered with Meg’s debris.
“Great.” Meg knelt down to collect her things.
“You’re lucky that didn’t fall on your foot.” The girl who had been sitting next to her crouched down and retrieved Meg’s history book. “That would have been a broken toe for sure.”
“I could have sued her then,” Meg said and smiled. “Her dad’s a congressman.”
The girl smiled back. It was Johanne DeHaviland, Rose School’s token person of color. It was her smiling face on the Rose School website, part of a trio of girls, in their neat plaid skirts, straddling the earth. Meg had yet to see the smiling Asian or the saucy, dark-skinned brunette, the two other girls featured in all the school’s advertising efforts. She suspected they had been hired models. Rose’s student body was as white as freshly fallen snow.
Meg usually sat behind Johanne in morning chapel. Meg liked those quiet few minutes before the real school day began. It was an excellent time to sit (and stand, and kneel) and think. She could have roamed around the hallways during this free period, but she had no friends to gossip with, no snacks to share, no homework to copy.
The Holy Scolders took up the first three rows, all of them kneeling and fervently praying. Meg supposed she should pray herself, but she figured the Scolders probably demanded most of God’s attention.
If, of course, he existed at all.
Johanne sat kept a reasonable distance from everyone else. The Scolders took no notice of her, and she ignored them as well. With all that religious devotion, Johanne should have been a card-carrying member of the Holy Scolders, but that group seemed to want nothing to do with her. Perhaps it was because she was a Haitian girl from Roxbury.
Even those religious nutcases were racist white girls from suburbia.
“Hope you’re not telling Johanne anything important.” Lucy slid up next to Meg. Her face was hard, and her full upper lip curled into a snarl. “She’ll sell you out.”
“Lucy…” Elena hissed.
“What?” Lucy’s hand fluttered to her chest. “Meg’s new. She doesn’t know that she’s talking to the fakest bitch in school. I’m only looking out for her best interests.” The strange emphasis Lucy had put on those words, along with the evil glare she gave Johanne, made Meg’s smile wither.
Johanne was silent as she lifted her backpack off the floor. Unlike the distracted Debs and the Scolders, who had no time for such earthly pursuits, Johanne’s skirt was freshly ironed. Each pleat was perfectly creased. When the back door opened, she walked over to it. Her back was straight, and she held her head high. The insults Lucy mumbled, just loud enough to be heard over the bus engine, didn’t seem to faze her. She stepped onto the platform and disappeared from view.
The color had gone from Elena’s cheeks, but Lucy was calm as she gathered her things. Meg wasn’t about to speak up for a girl she hardly knew, but those bitter, ugly worlds that Lucy had so casually tossed around? They made her uneasy. A few months ago, similar things had been shouted at her, in between all the punching and the kicking.
She followed Lucy and Elena off the bus, but paused at the curb and watched as they went to mingle with a group of boys.
The same crowd of boys gathered there every day after getting off of their school buses. They were students at different schools throughout the city, distinguished only by the color of their neckties and their oversized duffel bags. Each boy had the rumpled, disheveled look of a caged animal, newly freed. They buzzed with energy, having spent all day in a classroom trapped under a desk. Desperate to move, to bounce, to run, they pushed each other, laughed too loudly, and clawed at their stiff shirt collars, eager to let the cold air hit their bare skin. After six weeks spent in the company of just girls, Meg found even the gawkiest of them fascinating and exotic.
Also terrifying.
Lucy and Elena melted into the group, laughing, flirting, and telling stories. Meg was too afraid to join them, but she didn’t want to leave and go home to an empty apartment and an empty refrigerator.
The Rose School bus stop was a lucite bus shelter, entirely covered with graffiti, on the curb in front of an old, darkened movie theatre. Having nothing better to do, Meg shuffled closer to the theatre and peered in. Posters covered the windows, big-budget classics from the past and campy sci-fi features. In between, the glass was bare. It was too dark to see very much, but Meg thought she saw a concession stand and aged velvet ropes. Abandoned buildings were nothing new, especially in that depressed area of the city, but it was sad to see a movie theatre in such a state. Meg loved movies. She had spent most of her freshman year sneaking into matinees when she should have been in conjugating verbs in Spanish class.
A dark, crowded movie theatre was a perfect place to hide.
“I know you.”
Meg yelped and spun around. One of the boys had broken from the group and was standing a few feet behind her. His crooked tie was red, and his hands were stuffed in the pockets of his baggy uniform pants. He lifted them out and held them up as he backed away.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He did look perfectly ordinary. Harmless. Brown hair, brown eyes, a snub nose. And a god-awful haircut.
“You didn’t scare me,” Meg scoffed, before noticing her raised hands. Her fingers had curled into her palms, making clumsy fists. She lowered them and fumbled with the frayed edge of her backpack. “I wasn’t scared.”
“I know you,” he said again. “From Boston Jefferson.”
“I didn’t go to Jefferson,” she snapped. Who was this boy, and what did he know?
Boston Jefferson was one of the biggest schools in the city, and Meg had been just another nameless student there, up until the day she told the lie.
“Your hair color is different, but I remember you,” he insisted.
Lucy walked up then, with Elena and another boy right behind her. “Hey Mullet. Showing Meg how to rage against the man?”
“My name is Flynn,” the boy said, turning to glare at her.
“Alas Mullet, when I look at you, all I see is…well…the mullet.”
“It’s ironic.”
“It’s moronic.”
Elena stopped giggling and grabbed the other boy’s hand.A white bandage was wrapped around his thumb.
“Zachie! What happened to your hand?”
“Accident in shop,” he said, grimacing as he looked down at the bandage.
Meg thought he looked a bit like a cartoon horse, tall and gangly with bowed legs that looked like they were about to collapse underneath him. And his teeth were unfortunately large.
“They really shouldn’t let me around screwdrivers,” the boy said, looking over at Lucy.
He flexed his fingers and winced. Lucy stuffed her hands into her pockets and looked off down the street.
Flynn was standing off to the side, and he was looking over at Meg again. Annoyed and feeling strangely brazen, she met his gaze. Surprised, he started, his eyes darting around until finally focusing on a crack in the pavement. He nudged it with the shiny toe of his school shoe.
She wished he’d take out a few fingers.
“What about you, tech schoolboy?” Lucy said to him as if she was reading Meg’s mind. “Any accidents today?”
“I’m in media arts,” Flynn said, brushing back a strand of his ironic mullet. “They don’t let us near tools, thankfully.”
“Mmm,” Lucy said, her eyes narrowed. When Flynn looked away, she looked at Meg and mouthed “tool.” Meg fought a snicker. She didn’t know who Flynn was, but she was worried about what he might know. It was good that Lucy didn’t like him.
A few minutes later, Elena’s older sister pulled up to the curb in a battered old sedan. Elena released Zach’s hand, but not before planting tiny kisses on the bandage. Both boys watched her walk away and seemed to deflate a little when the car drove out of sight.
Lucy poked Flynn in the shoulder, forcing him to turn his eyes back to her. “Now what’s this I hear about Zach heading to your house?” Her lower lip seemed to triple as she pouted. “He promised to spend time with me.”
“Aw Luc,” Zach rubbed the back of his neck with his enormous hand. “We’re just hanging out.”
“Right. Hanging out.” She looked at Flynn, and if looks could kill, the Ironic Mullet would have been nothing but a blackened singe mark on the pavement. “Sounds amazing. Whatever. So, have fun hanging out and comparing cock size, or whatever boys do when they’re alone together.”
She looked at Flynn as she started to walk away. “Shouldn’t take you very long.”
Before either boy could answer, she stomped off down the street. The boys laughed off her insults as they too headed for home, but both looked decidedly less cheerful than they’d been before she insulted them.
Meg was still marveling at Lucy’s power to destroy as she began the second leg of her journey home. She usually walked the rest of the way, but she felt overly tired. She decided to hop on a bus instead. She fought her way to the back of a crowded city bus, settling down in a cracked plastic seat next to a shirtless, overweight man who was licking an ice cream cone. The man was a bit underdressed for a chilly October afternoon, but Meg had seen worse things on public transportation. Rats the size of Pygmy Horses. Sallow-skinned fraternity pledges, struggling to keep down the Jello shots and Jägermeister. Bad buskers playing accordions, backed up by a troupe of interpretive dancers in full clown makeup.
At least the man was wearing pants.
The smell of the ice cream made her empty stomach gurgle, but once she caught a whiff of the man’s body odor, mixed with the bus exhaust, her stomach churned in another, more unpleasant, direction. The young couple sitting opposite from her was kissing. Their lips were smacking loudly, and their legs were draped across one another. Meg didn’t want to stare at them, or at the river of strawberry ice cream pooling on the floor. Her only option was to look up.
The boy standing in front of her was tall, so tall he could grasp the long handlebar at the top of the bus, the one Meg could never reach, even when on her tiptoes. He was wearing worn jeans and a t-shirt under an open black trench coat that looked like it came right out of a 40’s era detective movie. He looked down when she looked up, and the corner of his mouth turned up.
It wasn’t a smile, but it was close.
Meg felt a blush creeping up her cheeks, but, luckily, the boy turned away before her entire face turned red. When he tilted his head to look out the window, Meg studied him. She figured he must be new to public transportation, because he was entirely too cheerful, and his stance was much too open, too trusting. A half-decent thief would have no problem reaching into his unguarded pocket and snatching his wallet or keys.
The folds of his coat brushed against her bare knees.
The bus lurched forward and stopped. The other passengers jumped up to wrestle their way to the exit. The spit-swapping young couple left, leaving two seats unoccupied. Meg thought the boy would hop over and claim one, but when the bus started up again, he was still hovering above her. He looked down, met her eye, and touched two fingers to his brow in a quick salute, but he didn’t budge.
His faint smile was more of a smirk, she thought. But it wasn’t a mean-spirited one. And he had a slight dimple on his left side.
A pack of teenagers crowded around the front of the bus, talking in exaggerated voices that were way too loud for a weekday afternoon. The handsome boy in the front of the group stood with his thumbs in his belt loops, his eyes sweeping over the rest of the passengers on the bus.
Danny Vasquez.
Meg’s stomach churned again, and she swallowed to keep the bile from rising up the back of her throat.
Danny, de facto king of Boston Jefferson High, never traveled without his royal court. Most were more jester than a knight. They were big, cruel brutes, quick to shove or trip, always watchful for behavior that suggested disrespect. Sure enough, they were behind him, cracking their knuckles and sneering at a group of elderly ladies, hoping to scandalize them with foulmouthed jokes and gestures. They were gross and obnoxious, but they didn’t worry Meg. The real threat was the four girls that stood behind them. One of them, a big-boned blonde, had a silver ring on each knuckle.
There were less than a dozen people between Meg and the girls.
Her hair, her diet, even the school uniform-it wouldn’t be enough. She looked different, but she didn’t feel different. She was the same girl that had crouched beneath the bathroom sink, trembling and spitting blood. It was only a matter of time before they recognized her.
She was trapped.
Meg sunk down into her seat, the hard plastic growing slick beneath her sweaty thighs. She brushed her hair over the side of her face and pulled her backpack off the floor and onto her lap. Her textbooks were inside. The backpack was heavy. She could use it as a weapon. It might buy her some time.
She felt a pressure against her legs and saw the boy in the trench coat had moved in closer. When she looked up, she saw he was leaning toward her, looking down at her clenched white knuckles. He met her eyes, and his flicked over to the group at the front before meeting hers again. They were unusual eyes. Meg couldn’t help but notice. Pretty.
“There’s open seats in the back.” Danny's voice, so deep, so swoon-worthy, was unmistakable.
Meg tucked her chin into her chest. She couldn’t stop shaking.
The coat brushed against her knees once more and was gone. Meg looked out from her curtain of hair and saw the boy strolling up the aisle, pushing past the groggy passengers. He paused in front of Danny’s crowd. The afternoon sunlight, spilling into the bus despite a film of grime on the windows, had turned his brown hair golden.
“You,” Danny said, his eyes widening.
The boy replied so softly. Meg couldn’t hear him. It must have been some joke because he smiled. Danny’s face was anything but amused. He looked like he was struggling for a response, but before he couldn’t get the words out, the boy’s fist flew up and knocked Danny straight in the nose. Danny staggered, stunned, before collapsing into the arms of the big, blonde girl behind him. Her eyes were murderous.
The bus, thrown into chaos, skidded to a halt. Horns and brakes screeched. The old women in the front began praying. The back of the bus quickly filled with people scurrying for safety, and Meg couldn’t see a thing through the waving arms and shuffling legs. She glimpsed hairy hands reaching for the black trench coat, grabbing a piece of material. Losing it. Then she saw the boy in front of the bus’s emergency back doors, breathless but in one piece. He was still smiling. He wedged his fingers in between the doors, forcing them open, and then he was gone.
Danny’s gang, led by a wobbly, bleeding Danny, followed. They were so intent on their pursuit they didn’t notice Meg sitting in the middle of all the panicked passengers. The girls were shouting encouragement as they jumped from the bus. The doors slammed shut behind them.
The driver had pulled out his radio. He muttered a few words about the disturbance to the dispatcher before starting the bus up again. The passengers returned to their original seats. The elderly women were still sobbing, but everything else reverted to normal.
The man sitting next to her was greatly entertained.
“Just another day on the T, huh?”