by Meg Cabot
And I, who had my head with horror bound,
Said: “Master, what is this which now I hear?
What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto III
The girl sitting next to me in the IHHS auditorium was checking the comments on her Facebook page. I saw her flinch, then finally switch off her phone and lean back, muttering something in Spanish. My written Spanish is officially below average, but I know all the swearwords.
“At my old school,” I volunteered, even though I knew she hadn’t been talking to me, “they wrote that I have a big stick up my butt.”
The girl looked at me sharply, as if finally seeing me for the first time. She’d rimmed her expressive dark eyes very expertly with black liner and mascara, and stuck a small silver star at the corner of each lid. I remembered that IHHS had cosmetology classes. Maybe she was enrolled in them.
“What?” she said, looking confused.
“Online.” I pointed at her phone. “At my old school. They also called me a skank.” I didn’t mention the other, worse things they’d called me, after what happened with Mr. Mueller.
She frowned. I couldn’t tell if this was a bad or good sign.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Well, they call me a skank, too. Because of these.” She pointed to her breasts. It was hard to deny they were pretty enormous. The black cotton shirt she wore had ruffles all down the front. This might not have been helping the situation.
“Some people are just stupid,” I said, my gaze going involuntarily to the two girls with the straight-ironed hair, who were still standing over by the steps to the stage. They were staring in my direction…only now they didn’t look contemptuous. They looked stunned.
One, noticing that I’d glanced her way, lifted a white-nail-tipped hand, smiled, and waved. At me.
For a second I couldn’t figure out why. Then I saw the guy in the white polo shirt walking away from them, and all became clear.
“There’s no shortage in stupid around here,” the girl next to me was saying sarcastically. “Hey, aren’t you in my econ class?”
“Yes. I’m Pierce.” I carefully avoided saying my last name. I had a feeling that’s what the two girls over by the stage had just found out. That’s probably what accounted for their sudden attitude adjustment where I was concerned.
It’s a small island, Mom had warned me. And not everyone is going to be as sophisticated as they were back in Westport. People in Isla Huesos might decide they like you for who Dad is. Or not, considering. It all depends. Just be careful.
“Kayla Rivera,” the girl next to me said, indicating herself. “You’re Alex Cabrero’s cousin.”
It was a statement of fact. So either Alex had been talking about me, or Kayla remembered my name from somewhere else. Had Tim or Jade been urging all the other New Pathways kids to be nice to me? That was the most charitable spin I could put on it. How pathetic, if it were true.
Well, at least she didn’t seem to know who my father was. I really hoped when I got my phone back, I wouldn’t find all sorts of stuff about me online. I didn’t have a Facebook or Twitter page or blog or anything like that. I had enough people following me in real life. Although I guess not anymore.
“Yeah,” I said. “Listen. Can I ask you something?”
“Oh, they’re real,” Kayla said, indicating her breasts. “My mom’s insurance covers breast reduction surgery, and I’m getting it, as soon as I turn eighteen. Not for cosmetic reasons, either. I don’t care what kind of names they call me. It’s just that I’m sick of my knees hitting my nipples whenever I try to pedal a bike. Plus, my back hurts. I’d get it done now, but the doctor says I could still be growing. Can you believe that? These things could still be growing.“
“Wow,” I said. And I thought I had problems. “But not about that, actually. What does it mean when people call you D-Wing?”
Before she could reply, there was a thump on the back of our seats, like someone was kicking them. I spun around fast, sure it was him.
But of course it wasn’t. It was only my cousin Alex, clambering into the row behind ours.
“Hey,” he said to me. “There you are. I was looking all over for you at lunch. Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Tim took it,” I said. “He said I would engage better without it.”
Kayla laughed. “Oh, man,” she said. “You really are new. I can’t believe you fell for that one. You never surrender the phone, chickie, no matter what Tim says. Never.”
I shrugged. “No one ever calls me, anyway.”
This was sad but true. Did John even have a cell phone? Doubtful. How would he pay his bill? In gray diamonds? That would probably go over well with the phone company.
Alex climbed into the seat beside me, then sank into it.
“Thanks,” he said. “I guess I don’t count as anyone.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
He shoved me companionably in the shoulder in response.
“Simmer down, people.”
That’s what the man — the school principal — said in a tired voice when he climbed up onto the stage and stood there behind the podium, waiting for everyone to take their seats. As he flipped through a bunch of note cards he’d brought with him, checking to make sure they were in order, I heard Alex heave a sigh. I didn’t blame him. I looked around, already bored. I needed another soda. I’d only had six since breakfast. This guy had better make his speech snappy.
“So,” Alex said to me, “how’s your first day been so far?”
“So far?” I shrugged. The girls who’d sneered “D-Wing” to me, I saw, had found seats…on either side of the guy in the white polo shirt, who’d held the door open for me. Interesting. “Fine.”
“Wow,” Alex said. “You lie almost as convincingly as my dad. Really. I’m inspired.”
“This place sucks,” Kayla said, squirming. “I know the Florida State Department of Education is, like, out of money. But I think there are bedbugs in my seat.”
“People.” Principal Alvarez’s voice boomed into the microphone. “As long as this juvenile behavior continues —”
Someone yelled something unflattering about Principal Alvarez’s parentage and then suggested he go do something incestuous with his mother.
That’s when the doors to the auditorium were thrown open, and police officers in short-sleeve uniforms — out of deference to the heat — appeared at every exit. They walked into the auditorium and leaned against the walls.
I eyed them nervously. I’d been hoping for something a little more interesting than your typical run-of-the-mill keep-off-drugs convocation.
But having spent a considerable amount of time in the company of the police only a few short months ago — even though I hadn’t been the one who’d actually done anything, just the one who’d taken all the blame for it — this was a little much.
The cops seemed to make everyone, not just me, nervous. The auditorium suddenly got very quiet.
“Mr. Flores,” the principal said into the microphone, “you may be surprised to know that I can see you perfectly clearly from up here. And you just earned yourself an OSS for the remark about my mother. That’s an Out-of-School Suspension, for those of you unfamiliar with the term. Please remove yourself from the school grounds, Mr. Flores, and don’t bother returning until Monday.”
Everyone in the audience hooted appreciatively at this as a young man in a black head scarf rose and sauntered — not appearing too concerned about his suspension — from the back row of the auditorium. The police officers observed his exit casually from where they stood.
This was a far cry from the Westport Academy for Girls, where the first assembly was always devoted to a loving tribute in song to the school’s founder, Miss Emily Gordon Portsmith.
“Hey.”
To my surprise, the guy in the white polo shirt had gotten up from his seat. Now he turned to face the entire auditorium. With
out so much as wiping the nervous sweat off his hands onto his khaki shorts (probably because he had no nervous sweat), he said in his easygoing voice, “Welcome back, Wreckers.”
To my astonishment, everyone shut up to listen to him. I suppose this might have been because of the cops.
But there was something more going on than that. There was an ease, a confidence with which this guy spoke — and I suppose the boy-band good looks didn’t hurt, either — that made people seem to just want to shut up and listen.
“I know it’s been a long summer,” he said, looking serious and yet friendly and approachable. “And I’m stoked to be back and to see all of you, too. Well, some of you. Right, Andre?” His gaze fell on a guy in the crowd, whom he gave a mock frown. Andre pretended to cower in his seat. Everyone laughed.
“But Mr. Alvarez’s got the floor right now,” the guy in the white shirt went on. “So let’s hear what the man has to say. All right? Peace.”
He turned and sat back down to thunderous applause. I clapped, too, not even sure why. Except that everyone else was…except, I noticed, my cousin Alex.
“Why aren’t you clapping?” I leaned over to whisper.
He shrugged. Like his father, Alex wasn’t always super communicative.
“Thank you,” Principal Alvarez said as the clapping died down. He clearly wanted to seize control of the situation before anyone else could begin yelling about his mother. “Thank you, Mr. Rector, for that. And for all of you freshmen or transfer students who might be new to IHHS and don’t know, that was senior class president Seth Rector, who also happens to be this year’s varsity quarterback and treasurer of the Isla Huesos High School Spanish Club —”
Rector? I had definitely heard — or at least seen — that name around the island. Only where?
Oh, right. Since the local economy wasn’t doing so well — thanks, in no small part, to Dad’s company — every other business in Isla Huesos seemed to have a FOR SALE sign in the window. Rector Realty seemed to be everywhere. Could that be any relation to Seth Rector?
“I just wanted to say welcome to all of you, new and returning students, before I hand the microphone over to someone I think you know well. But first, I’d like to discuss an important safety issue with all of you. And that issue is…bonfires.”
Principal Alvarez looked down at his note cards. Note cards? Really? Snore.
“Why don’t we allow bonfires during IHHS football games anymore? Well, let me tell you. Here on Isla Huesos, the average temperature in September is eighty-seven degrees. At temperatures like that, a bonfire can quickly escalate out of control.…”
But it wasn’t just on realty signs I’d seen the word Rector. It had been written somewhere else.…
Now I remembered. It had been carved into the high-gloss marble of one of the mausoleums Mom and I had gone past in the cemetery during the bike tour of the island she’d given me.
Unlike all the rest of the crypts in the vicinity, the Rector mausoleum was on its own plot, cordoned off by a little chain fence, and was two stories, with shiny brass nameplates. This family had really gone all out for their dearly departed.
“Someone’s got money to burn,” I’d remarked, idly wondering why my necklace, tucked inside the front of the V-neck tee I was wearing at the time, had turned such a deep, stormy gray.
“Yes,” Mom had replied in a funny voice. “They do.”
“What’s the matter, Mom?” When I’d looked up from my necklace and over at her, I saw she’d gone as white as the sundress she was wearing. “Do you know these people or something?”
“I used to,” she’d said in a distant voice. “A long time ago.”
Then she’d seemed to shake herself, put her foot back on the pedal, and smiled at me. “Look at us, spending all this time in a cemetery on such a beautiful day. Let’s go get some lemonade.”
“And that’s why this year,” Principal Alvarez droned on, “we’ll be taking proactive measures to curb such activity. You should be aware that the Isla Huesos police officers, along with members of Isla Huesos High’s nationally recognized, award-winning innovative social services program, New Pathways, will be out in force the coming days — and nights — and they plan to be especially vigilant this year —”
That’s when the booing erupted. I was so startled by it, still thinking back to that day with Mom in the cemetery, I nearly jumped out of my seat. I had no idea what was going on, really. How had we gone from bonfires to the police — and, for some reason, my New Pathways counselors — being out in force to curb such activity?
But I had never seen such hostility from a crowd. Nothing like this had ever happened at my old school…unless you count the scandal that erupted the time I tried to prove my ex–best friend killed herself over an affair with her basketball coach.
“We just don’t want to see people get hurt!” Principal Alvarez was shouting into the microphone. “You should know that all of this is for your protection! Delinquent behavior, vandalism, and arson will not be tolerated this year and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And anyone caught will be held accountable both criminally and by the school system. The charges will range from criminal mischief to battery, not to mention expulsion —”
The boos turned to jeers. People also began to hurl insults, and not just about Principal Alvarez’s mother. Slurs about his wife began to fly — though not all in English, so I couldn’t quite catch the details.
Alex and Kayla, on the other hand, just looked bored. Well, okay: Kayla looked bored. She was checking her Facebook page again.
Alex looked disgusted.
But then, Alex looked disgusted a lot of the time. Who could blame him? Life hadn’t dealt my cousin Alex the fairest of hands. Not only did he have to live with Grandma, but his dad had been in jail for most of his life, and Alex would not even speak about his mom’s occasional visits from the mainland, except to say there’d be no more of them now that his father was home because Uncle Chris would not tolerate her (she worked somewhere you can look up online, but only if you are over eighteen).
Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
“Furthermore,” Principal Alvarez went on, raising his voice as if by increasing the volume, people were going to become more receptive. I could see that his forehead was becoming shiny. It was getting a bit hot in the auditorium. Not just temperature-wise.
“You should know we have contacted all the local hardware stores, asking them not to sell large quantities of wood to juveniles or their parents for the next week.”
Bedlam. I’d never heard such an explosion. People were standing in their seats. You would have thought he’d taken away their off-campus lunch privileges or something.
The cops who’d been leaning against the walls took steps forward, looking alert. The people who’d stood in their seats sat back down. But they still looked upset.
“What,” I turned to ask Alex, uncomprehending, “is going on? What are they so mad about? Just because they can’t make some stupid bonfire?”
“No,” Alex said, shaking his head. His smile was bitter. “It’s not about bonfires at all. That’s not what they’re making out of the wood.”
I shook my head. “What? I don’t get it.”
“Don’t worry. Neither does he,” Alex said, tipping his head in the principal’s direction. “It’s like New Pathways. They’re always doing crap like this. But it never changes anything. Most of the time, it just makes everything worse. Like sticking us all in D-Wing.”
“Wait,” I said, completely confused now. “What does D-Wing have to do with it?”
Alex looked past me. “She wants to know what D-Wing has to do with it,” he said to Kayla with a smirk.
“Ai,” Kayla said. She clucked and shook her head. “Chickie.”
“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused. “What is it? It’s just a building.”
“She’s so cute,” Kayla said to him. “Where did you get her?”
“Main
land,” Alex said, in a “Don’t you feel sorry for her?” voice.
Principal Alvarez held up both his hands. “People! People, listen.…Here…here’s Chief of Police Santos to explain! Chief…they’re all yours.”
And with that, the principal ran off the stage, obviously eager to let someone else take the blame.
The chief of police, however, took his time getting up to the podium. He, unlike the principal, did not have note cards.
He did, however, have his right hand resting on the butt of the pistol he wore at his hip. Whether or not he did this intentionally, I noticed the booing died down immediately.
And no one yelled a word about his wife. In fact, a respectful — or maybe frightened — hush seemed to fall over the auditorium once again.
Chief Santos did look a little scary. A big man, he had a gray mustache, thick gray eyebrows to match, and a very deep, slightly sonorous voice. He took his time not only in getting up to the mike but in choosing his words.
“Thank you, Principal Alvarez,” the police chief said, not even bothering to glance at the smaller man. His hawklike gaze was on all of us instead. In fact, it seemed to be targeted directly on me.
I felt myself sinking a little lower in my seat. I wanted a soda more than ever.
“Let’s not play games,” the police chief said, sucking a little on his teeth. “You’re not children. And you all know why I’m here.” You could have heard a dolphin break the water’s surface outside.
I hadn’t done anything wrong — not at Isla Huesos High School, anyway. But I felt as if I had.
Wait…was that it? Had he read my file? Did he know what I’d done back at my old school?
That had to be it. He knew.
Except that I hadn’t done anything. Sure, I’d planned on doing something.
But I hadn’t. It had all been John. Nothing had been proven — not in a court of law, anyway. Criminal charges had never even been filed against me, for lack of evidence.
Civil charges? Well, that’s another matter.
“We’ve already begun to see vandalism in a certain area of town, and it’s only the first day of school,” Chief Santos went on in his deliberate voice.