by Joni Bing
Two periods later, the upperclassmen were let out for lunch and for the first time ever, Josh gave me a hug in front of everybody in the downstairs hallway where we spoke that morning. Right in front of the Mass admins, too. I hoped he realized what he had done and wondered if people would compare us to Myles and Kenzie...well, before the whole wild card disaster at Mass. The only talk I heard in the hallway were people asking whether Kenzie showed up to a class yet. So far, no one had seen her.
I met up with Blythe, Marty, and their friends at our usual lunch table and they seemed happier than I normally found them after class. The girls greeted me as I sat down and I couldn't help but smile as what transpired in the hall continued to replay in my mind.
“Wow, today is just-”
“Nice, right?” Blythe smiled. She flipped her straight brunette hair and it fell effortlessly behind her back. I wondered, for a moment, if that was why Josh called Dibs on her that night at Mass a month ago.
“Bleu!” one of the girls exclaimed, jerking me from my thoughts with a snap of her fingers in front of my face.
“Yeah, what?”
“You okay, girl? You, like, spaced out.”
“Oh, yeah yeah, I'm fine-”
“So, how about last night, huh, girls?” Blythe smiled as her eyes moved to me. “You and Joshy left a little early there. What was that all about?”
I started to ignore her but the opportunity at hand was too great for me to let pass. “Oh, well, Josh and I decided to have our own little party.”
Her face paled and she immediately lowered her blue eyes to her even paler lunch. Marty lowered her eyes too. She hated our petty fights.
“Did something happen between Myles and Kenzie? I heard their names on my way to lunch,” one of the girls whose name I believe was Serena asked.
No one answered her and the wind wrapping around us felt brisker all of a sudden. Serena didn't speak another word after that.
“Ladies.”
I heard familiar steps nearing the table and turned to find Josh dropping down beside me. He threw an arm around my shoulders and smiled at everyone at the table before his eyes hit mine for a long moment. I forced my cheeks to flush when I felt them heating up.
“Hi, Josh,” the girls exclaimed in unison yet again.
Girls could not have always been this annoying, I thought.
“Hey, Josh,” Blythe smiled widely.
“Um, hey, Bly,” Josh replied half-heartedly.
This was awk. I could almost feel awkness oozing from the cracks of everyone's falling smiles and sudden speechlessness. That's when it hit me. I liked Josh. It wasn't until that second when I felt a burn of jealousy rip through my heart that I really knew. I suddenly wished the other girls-and the other forty-five and subtracting kids that showed up to school that day-weren't there so that I could grab Josh by the face and kiss him until Blythe caught on that he wasn't interested in her anymore, if he ever was interested in the first place. Of course, after what happened in the hallway, our display of affection for each other was already overdone for the day. Going any further would've raised a lot of questions that I would kill someone for answering falsely. I was a Purist, after all.
As I watched Josh swoon the other girls at the table and my lunch deafened my hearing, I started to wonder a few things in thought.
One: Blythe “loved” Josh, but did he “love” her back? I mean, he called Dibs on her at Mass bash that night. Dibs was serious. It was real. It was how Myles and Kenzie found out how much they “loved” each other.
Two: Did Josh love me? If so, why did he call Dibs on Blythe?
Three: Did Josh realize how one move at me with Blythe around would affect our friendship now? I mean, Blythe knew now. With his arm around me and constant staring into my eyes, she had to know that it wasn't just friendship between two childhood neighbors like it had been way back when. It was real. Hopelessly, unofficially real, just like Myles and Kenzie.
“BLEU!”
I rubbed my forehead and the friction soothed the throbbing caused by Blythe flicking me right in between the eyes.
“Girl, you been spacing all day!” she giggled as the others joined her.
“What happened?” I asked as I gritted my teeth, and tried to fight the urge to punt her in between in eyes for the tree camera above us to capture.
“He left.”
“What?”
I looked around and the news was true. He was gone. Gone without a kiss or a hug or a goodbye, but what was I expecting, really? We lived in The Nation, specifically Central Union where it all started, and he was of the Mass now.
“He stayed for a good minute though. Told a funny story and everything, but you just sat there all spaced out like your usual for today. Is everything alright?” Blythe smiled. I didn't buy it. I saw the sneer in her grin like she won. We'd see.
“Yeah, I'm fine. I just have a lot of weird wonderings mixing around in my head.”
The girls leaned their heads in confusion and I sighed. I was sure moments like this was why our ancestors used messaging as their mainstream communication for almost a century. “I just-”
“Bleu Dalton!”
I turned my head then looked back at the girls who rolled their eyes as Tenter Uriah rushed for our table. He was pretty much Ms. Muller's pet, a.k.a. the boy who cried discipline.
“Ms. Muller needs to see you in discipline. Again,” he rolled his eyes as he scratched at his short sandy yellow hair.
I flipped my hair back then rose when I noticed another empty seat at the table. “Guys, where's Marty?”
“The same place you're going,” Tenter replied sharply. I peered at him from the corner of my eyes and shook my head. “Come with me, please.”
I walked away with Tenter and looked back at the girls who went right back to their conversation without faces of sympathy in my direction to make me feel like I would be missed. Then, I realized how crazy I was acting. There was no point in missing me when I would be back in twenty minutes, the usual time it took me to escape discipline after Ms. Muller went on and on about student performance and grades and how they both were sinking like the Titanic—which, I heard she almost got fired for saying. Then, she would stamp yet another Discipline Visitation on my virtual record. Two more DVs and I would have to ride an hour from my province by speed shuttle to another YA school just to get my Advanced Education Certificate. If Josh got one more, he could kiss his AEC goodbye with no chance at ever receiving it.
On my way to discipline, my fingernails shrunk two inches from my rapid biting at them and my stomach kept churning. This wasn't good. Why would discipline want Josh, me, and Marty. Marty? Sweet-innocent Marty of all people? I mean, for crying out loud, she made brownies for people's birthdays and not even the special kind. I wondered if maybe the cameras had caught Josh and I in his car before school, but what would that have to do with Marty? Then, I figured maybe they were just calling us in for a check-up. Maybe they wanted to make sure that they didn't miss anything we had done wrong and wanted to spill it out of us, but again Marty had nothing to do with that.
The main office was shaped like a marble dome from the outside, but inside the walls were long and square. It held more rooms than my flat five times over and the floor was covered in salmon pink tiles.
“You have any idea what this is about?” I asked Tenter like always.
“If I did, I still wouldn't tell you. Though it's probably the usual,” he replied like always.
I looked down at the rows of blurry pink tiles and pouted. I hated walking, especially in that cold forsaken place.
“Bleu.” I looked up at Tenter as we turned the corner and finally reached the waiting space before the gray hallway of rooms. He looked weary like for once snitching was no longer how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. “You'll live.”
“What? What are-”
He looked away and I shrugged. Tenter was such a freak. The fact that for a moment a spark of curiosity about his feelings ran thro
ugh my mind almost infuriated me.
Josh strutted out of Muller's office without a care in the world and he winked my way when we met eyes. I winked back with a relieved smile. It was nothing serious, as usual. Nothing to freak about.
“How'd it go?” I asked as I walked up to him just to reassure myself.
“How does it always go?”
“What's it about?”
He kissed my forehead. “You're not gonna believe it. I don't want to spoil it for you.”
“They didn't see us in your car this morning, did they?”
I looked over at Tenter still standing beside me and he fixed his face like he was disgusted. I couldn't help but laugh. The kid was like a target-easy to take a shot at.
“Oh, you mean this?”
Josh took my face in his hands and Tenter grabbed my wrist.
“You need to leave, Dalton. Now!”
“Fine, fine!” I exclaimed in a laugh.
Josh kissed me just before Tenter pulled me away and I rolled my eyes. That kid needed a night out at Mass and I swore one day I'd be the one to take him. He shoved me inside the cold dark room and sat me down in an even colder seat. Yep, this was Muller's office.
“Bleu?”
I looked behind me and Marty walked out of Muller's office closet.
“Marty! What's this about? Why were you just in Muller's closet?”
She looked around with a smirk. “I was...bored.”
The room grew silent and then we laughed out loud. It was moments like those that reminded me why Marty was my best friend. I wasn't sure about Bly lately.
“I think she wanted-”
The door opened and Marty sat down fast beside me in the other black seat.
“Glad to see you made it, Ms. Dalton.”
“What's this about?” I asked as I leaned back in my seat.
Ms. Muller crossed the room and sat in her chair. Suddenly, my vision turned black and I felt like I was suffocating.
“What's going on? Stop!” I screamed.
That's when I realized what was happening. Someone had come with Ms. Muller to her office. Someone with a black pillow case or sheet or something who was trying to kill me. I tried to fight the person behind me while my ears deafened Marty's screams but they restrained me the moment I almost broke free with something rough that felt like hard plastic. My head started pounding faster than my usual heartbeat, and I felt myself falling asleep. Then, I realized this wasn't meant to make me sleep; it was meant to kill me, and of all sights to die seeing last, my worst nightmare: Muller's cold gray eyes.
FIVE