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FRIDAY, MARCH 22
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BLAKE, BRUCE AND I settled into a tenuous routine by the end of March. We gathered around the breakfast table in the house three times a week for a two-hour tutoring lesson on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They listened to me about 45 percent of the time. Most of the sessions consisted of them rolling their eyes, and making the usual snide comments. I found out a few things about them, though.
Blake liked English, but he didn’t want his brother to know. In fact, I suspected he got bad grades on tests just to please his twin, who had a hard time reading above the fifth grade level. Bruce did better in Science and Math.
They didn’t like each other all the time, either. In fact, they hated the endless comparisons to each other almost as much as they hated the fact that my mother had married their father, and ended any hope of reconciliation for their parents.
The best part of all, though, was how much my intelligence threatened them. They hated that. Once I found that out, I used it to my advantage in any way I could.
Like today.
“So,” I said, as the two of them struggled to write down a readable synopsis of The Great Gatsby. They had a test coming up on the material the following Monday. “Tell me one of the most famous quotes from that book.”
Bruce looked up from his notebook, and blinked at me. “Quote?”
“Sure.” I leaned back against my chair and calmly took a sip of the Diet Coke in front of me. “That book is full of them.”
“I don’t remember any quotes,” Bruce said after a few seconds, and this comment didn’t surprise me.
“Here’s one,” I said, after another swallow of Diet Coke. “Her voice was full of money.”
Blank stares answered my words.
“And another. Rich girls don’t marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby.” I tapped my fingers on the table. I liked F.Scott more than most kids in my class, and it annoyed me that my stepbrothers couldn’t see anything about the deeper meaning of his words. “Think that one is true? F. Scott Fitzgerald sure did.”
Blake snickered. “It’s true in Robert Hill.” He paused. “Well, at least at Heritage. Not that anyone’s getting married. But when it comes to dating, yeah.”
“You guys date whoever you want.”
“But that’s just it.” Blake cleared his throat. “There are certain girls I can’t get, even if I want them.”
“Come on. Really?” I cocked my head and raised my eyebrow at him. I’d never heard him speak candidly about any of the social shit at Heritage. So why was he doing it now?
“He’s right,” Bruce said. “That’s just how it is right now. How it has always been at school.”
“What do you mean?” I asked Bruce. I’d always lumped them together as two tumors in my life that I couldn’t cut out. I hadn’t stopped to think that they might have their own perspectives on life.
Bruce tapped his pen on the edge of the table. “One thing about school is how people just assume you’re one way. Like us. They think we’re just rich meatheads. And there’s nothing to change that.”
“But why would you want to change it?”
“Because it sucks, sometimes,” Bruce said after a moment. “And like, with girls, that just means the only girls who want anything to do with either of us,” he pointed to himself, and then his brother, “are the airheads.”
I grinned. “Like Monica.”
“She’s a bitch, but she gives it up,” Blake said. “Of course, she’s nothing like Laine. Laine would never look twice at guys like us. Just Evan.”
“I wish it wasn’t like that,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
“Oooh,” Blake said, closing his notebook. “I knew it. You totally thought you had a chance with her.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Somebody really should put Laine in her place,” Blake muttered. I didn’t try to hide the glare I shot him.
“It’ll be better for you once you realize she wants nothing to do with someone like you,” Bruce added. “She’s a Disney Princess. And you’re a frog.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Look, there’s just no other way to really say it.” Bruce replied. “We’ve all been in school together, ever since we were in kindergarten. Twelve years in the Robert Hill Independent School system. You should know this right now.”
Blake nodded, and pushed his chair back from the table with a loud scrape.
I motioned to the textbook. “You’re not done, Blake. You’ve still got all those worksheets to fill out.”
He sighed. “Can’t we just pay you to do it?”
“Like the chores?”
“Sure. Like the chores, you asshole.”
“Nope. Only your father pays me.” I grinned from the satisfaction of saying that. I might not have had much hold over them, but when it came to being smarter, I always won.
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MONDAY, APRIL 15TH
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IT RAINED FOR the first two weeks in April; a cold, continuous, dull system wrapped itself around Greater Cincinnati and hung on to everything. No designer rain boots or all-weather jackets could shut out the spring dreariness, and the lack of sunlight added to what, by then, had become a decent depression. Getting out of bed took more effort than brain surgery. Studying for classes and keeping up with assignments required more focus than I wanted to expend, and at dinner a few times my mother accused me of having a bad case of senioritis.
“You’re not yourself,” she said in early April, over a plate of burned roast chicken and limp green beans.
“Sure I am,” I dismissed her. “It’s just that high school is too easy.”
Better to lie than tell her the truth. And the truth was, I’d given up any pretense of trying to be happy in this hellhole. I started wearing all black. The fake smile I often wore as a shield against the teasing and taunts of my peers had disappeared from my face. And, as I walked the halls, I glared at all the underclassmen. By the middle of the month, it was working pretty well.
Geoff Megadeth had finally appeared.
“Dude, you’re a fucking nightmare to those freshmen.” Josh poked me with his shoulder after my latest glare scared away a fat girl with a lacrosse hoodie. She had given me one of those looks that said she’d never glance my way again. Just what I wanted.
I looked at him sideways as I turned and shut my locker. “That’s the idea.”
He sighed when the warning bell rang for first period. From there, we had four minutes to scamper to class before being late. “Let’s go. Can’t wait to hear what school has waiting for us today. The more you know—”
My snicker interrupted him, and I slammed my locker closed. “Whatever. I just like fucking with them.”
I fell into step next to him, and we walked down the long hallway to our first class. Around us the crowd thinned, as students entered classrooms to start another week of learning geometric equations, Spanish verbs and chemistry terms. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, preferring to keep my head down. Less than four weeks to go, and summer would be here. I could make it.
Couldn’t I?
“Oh shit,” Josh said under his breath as we rounded the corner that linked the main hallway with two others. Heritage High was nothing if not a mix of spidery hallways that wrapped through the Gothic architecture. I looked up in time to regret right away that we’d taken this route. About fifteen students remained in what had been a hallway of dozens five minutes ago.
Laine and Evan were two of those fifteen.
He had her up against the locker, one arm pressed against the metal just above her shoulder, body language that told everyone she was his. Her backpack and lightweight tan jacket lay in a large pile by her feet, which she’d encased in a pair of high-heeled tan rubber boots. One of her legs pressed perpendicularly against the locker, too, and that made her black cotton dress ride up her thighs.
The two of them might have been an ad for a designer perfume.
Even worse, we had no other way to get to our first class. We had to walk right by them, even though all I wanted to do was disappear. Christ. Why did I keep on having this kind of horrible luck?
“We’ll just keep walking,” I told Josh when I saw his eyes widen and his mouth drop open. “Like, it’s nothing. No big deal.”
“You sure?”
“Do we have any other choice?”
Evan kissed Laine a few times on the neck, the type of typical public display of affection he always favored when it came to her. I never saw them go so far as to make out in the hall, but as a couple they always did just enough to let everyone know they were together. As he kissed her, her eyes closed, and she rolled her head back against the metal of the locker. I couldn’t read her mind, but something about Laine’s expression told me she enjoyed this. As I realized that, a few pieces of my heart broke off and faded away for good.
She would never do something like that with me.
“Come on.” Josh tugged on my arm, and I noticed that I’d stopped walking in the middle of the hallway. “Class.”
“Right.” I cleared my throat, and pulled my gaze away from Evan and Laine. “Class.”
“Just a few more weeks,” Josh replied as he pulled me into the classroom for first period. “A few more weeks and you can forget about her forever.”
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MONDAY, APRIL 29TH
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BIG EVENTS ON the calendar never passed without some sort of tradition at Heritage, and prom was no exception. Tension and excitement about the biggest dance of the year accelerated the week before it, and it started with the fifteen juniors and seniors on prom committee. They charged around school selling tickets, each of them hoping to win a free limo ride to the dance by selling the most. They also wore something “prom-themed” each day of the week leading up to the dance. On Monday it was custom T-shirts, Tuesday it was tuxedo tees. On Wednesday they donned boutonnieres and corsages, Thursday brought out the faux prom court crowns, and Friday, they donned coordinated blue, green, and black outfits, the colors of this year’s dance.
I had to give them credit for enthusiasm, since most of the outfits looked hideous.
As was also tradition, a voice came over the loudspeaker Monday afternoon during sixth period, about fifteen minutes before the final school bell rang for the day. I couldn’t tell who the voice belonged to because of the muffled sound system, but that didn’t matter because I already knew just what that person wanted to announce. We all did.
“I have here . . . the nominations for . . . Heritage High Prom Court!” the voice said. All around me students tittered, gasped, and rumbled with excitement. “Six names—three boys, and three girls—are on this year’s list.”
I gave Mark a knowing look. These names didn’t even have to be announced, and the voting had no point whatsoever. Everyone knew who would win this competition. They might as well just crown Laine and Evan now.
“Monica Hargrove. Jillian James, and Laine Phillips! Ladies and gentleman, your nominations for Prom Queen.”
Since my classmates broke out into a loud round of applause around me, I joined in, too, with a slow clap. I didn’t want to give too much of my energy to something so ridiculous.
“She’ll win,” Mark said to me, under his breath. “Laine always wins everything.”
I didn’t reply, because I didn’t need to at all. Why argue with the facts?
“Vince Freeman, Neil Harris, Evan Carpenter! I give you the nominations for Prom King.”
I rolled my eyes as I heard the cries of excitement from the rest of my classmates. Didn’t they expect this? Didn’t they know Evan, Laine, Jillian and the rest of them were all going to be named as the Prom Court? Wasn’t this just a script?
“Evan will win,” I told Mark. “He’s already won.”
“You’re probably right,” Mark replied. He hesitated. “Are you upset that she’s taking Evan to prom?”
“Who?”
He gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Come on, man.”
I feigned indifference. “What? You thought I’d be upset about Laine? Why would I be upset?”
“Well, since she got back together with him . . . and you like her so much . . .”
“I don’t care about that anymore,” I lied. “She’s going with Evan. Just like she should.”
He frowned, and started chewing on the end of his pen. “I don’t think they’re that happy.”
“Sure looked happy to me the other day at his locker. And she’s always hanging off him.”
“You know how people are sometimes. They just act okay when they’re really not.” Mark shook his head. “Something about her eyes.” I rolled my own, and he changed his tactic. “Are you going to the prom anyway?”
I shrugged. “Hadn’t really thought about it,” I lied again.