Heartless Few Box Set

by MV Ellis

  As I walked down the hall, a strange feeling came over me and settled in the pit of my stomach. It felt kind of like when I’d eaten a bowl of the gross ambrosia that my grandma Mia had insisted on forcing on me, despite my protests, when I’d stayed with her in New York one summer when I was little. The thick, gloopy mess had sat congealed in my gut like a lumpy stone, threatening to come back up if I didn’t sit still and concentrate on keeping it down.

  The thing was, apart from the unmentionable, I had no reason to be called to Principal Moreton’s office. I shuffled through my mental index cards again just to be certain, but there really was nothing. Sure, I had made out with Dean Jacobs behind the cafeteria after lunch yesterday, but that was hardly a punishable offense in the grand scheme of things. I had also skipped gym last week, feigning stomach cramps, and instead taken myself to the mall for window-shopping and a soda, but if I was going to get in trouble for that, it would have happened already.

  Plus, I had seen the expression on my history teacher, Mrs. Anderson’s, face when she saw the note that was handed to her, summoning me to the office. She had recovered quickly, but not fast enough to avoid putting the fear of God into me. She had spoken kindly when she’d told me to pack up my things and leave. Normally taking our books would signify a suspension or expulsion, but I was super sure that wasn’t the case with me. I had done nothing. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she’d had tears in her eyes as she spoke, but that couldn’t be. Teachers didn’t cry, did they? Even if they did, they didn’t do it in class.

  I walked slowly, knowing that I was only delaying the inevitable, and that doing so wouldn’t make the outcome any less painful. Still, I wanted to take a moment. With hindsight, I would be glad I had. As I pushed open the heavy, ugly brown door of the Principal’s office, I could tell by the look in her secretary Marie’s eyes as she greeted me that there was something wrong. Very wrong. It was that same look of sympathy I had seen on Mrs. Anderson’s face. Marie motioned with her head, indicating toward the second drab door.

  When opened it, my life changed forever. Along with the principal, there sat Ms. Arnott, the school guidance counselor, and a woman I didn’t know. I would later find out she was from Children’s Protective Services.

  Oh shit. I hesitated in the doorway, not wanting to enter, as though holding back would somehow undo whatever drama was about to unfold. Of course I knew that was impossible, but in that moment, however illogically, the thought gave me comfort and hope.

  Principal Morton looked up when she heard the swish of the door across the fugly carpet of her office. The fear and dread built in me even further. You didn’t get called to the principal’s office for her to smile at you, or be nice in any way. You were summoned there because you had fucked up—you’d been caught smoking, or fighting, or your grades were slipping and you were flunking out. All sorts of bad shit. You didn’t expect sympathy, unless something really awful had happened—like the time when James Gravlinski’s sister had been hit by a police cruiser and killed. He had gotten sympathy. Fuck.

  “Come in please, Marnie, and take a seat.” She motioned to the one empty chair in the room. I sat.

  One look at her face, and I knew. I just fucking knew.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  All day I’d been hoping it would magically go away, but it hadn’t. Deep down, I’d known it wouldn’t. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  At least that’s what I wanted to say. In reality, what came out was a string of garbled words, each one tripping over the last and completely unintelligible to anyone else in the room. Through my tears, I saw that Principal Morton looked like she would rather be anywhere else on Earth but there. She wasn’t alone in that. We were all in the same boat.

  “I’m so very sorry, Marnie. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m going to have to come right out with it. There has been an… ummm… incident at your house. Unfortunately, both your parents have died.”

  I felt my features literally crumble and turn on themselves, as though my skull had caved in, leaving not enough bone structure to carry my skin, sinew, and cartilage. Big, heavy tears spilled spontaneously from my eyes, and my whole body started to shake.

  She went on to explain. “Ahhh… we don’t know the full story yet, but the police who attended the scene have confirmed that your parents suffered apparent drug overdoses.”

  Up until that point, even though deep down I’d known it wasn’t going to be the case, for some stupid reason, I’d still held out a glimmer of hope that she had some other bad news to deliver. Like the house had burned to the ground and all my worldly possessions had gone up in flames with it. Like my parents had taken off for Vegas, never to return, finally admitting to the world what I already knew—that they didn’t want me. Like I was being expelled from school for missing gym, or kissing Dean. Like my whole life had been part of some Truman Show-style movie, and now was the time for the grand reveal. Although in truth, if my life was to be any movie, it would probably be The Hunger Games.

  “Sadly, it would appear that they took their own lives.”

  Now it was real. I don’t remember much of what happened next. Just that it was chaos. I was crying, screaming, and convulsing with the emotions I’d been suppressing all day, in the hope that it would somehow make the situation less real. I remember Ms. Arnott offering me a Kleenex and trying to slip a comforting arm around my shoulder. I’d shrugged her off—I may have even cursed her out. I couldn’t remember the last time either of my parents had hugged me. I didn’t need to be shown that kind of affection from a complete stranger.

  Amid the unfolding drama, I was overtaken by a strong feeling of nausea, and I knew I was going to hurl. I grabbed my dirty old backpack and ran out of the principal’s office at high speed and into the girl’s bathroom. I stumbled toward the first stall, flinging my backpack behind me at breakneck speed and banging the door shut.

  As I heard my bag slap against the wall and thud to the floor, I lurched jerkily to the bowl, just making it in time to watch my lunch spewing out of me and into it. The door swung and hit me on the ass. I shifted my weight onto one leg, using the other to prop it closed. I stood like a deranged flamingo heaving until I was empty of every last trace of food and a whole lot of bile. Though my throat burned and my eyes watered, I felt almost numb as I slid down the heavily graffitied stall wall. Numb was good. Not thinking or feeling was… perfect.

  Two

  Luke

  Of all the life-changing events I’d experienced, one stood out. The day had started off unremarkably, apart from the fact that Arlo had woken up covered in spots and would clearly not be joining the rest of us at school. It was weird; I could have sworn that we had all had the chickenpox already but apparently not Arlo. He got the shitty end of the stick, catching it as a teenager. Watching him suffer with it—he had spots in his ears, and even in his mouth—made me feel lucky to have had it when I was a preschooler.

  I’d left the house with a feeling of dread about navigating school life without Arlo running interference. It wasn’t that I couldn’t make it through the day without him. It was more that I wasn’t comfortable doing so, due to a combination of crippling shyness and total laziness. Plus, it was the way things had always been. Even when we couldn’t stand the sight of each other at home or anywhere else, at school Arlo was the voice for both of us, whenever possible. A person didn’t need to be an expert in twin psychology to know that we were a weird bunch—identical twins even more so.

  I’d trudged into school, made it through homeroom on autopilot, and was heading out of the class on my way to chemistry when Mr. Kostopoulos called my name and beckoned me to his desk. I’d quickly run through the list of possible misdemeanors he could be pulling me up on but had drawn a blank. There had been nothing I was aware of—not that there ever really was. Arlo was a completely different story, but even he, as far as I was aware, had kept his nose clean for at least the few weeks prior. I had no idea
why he would want to speak with me.

  I split from the throng of kids shuffling out of the room like sheep and stood by his desk, staring at my feet, shoulders hunched against the worst.

  “It’s okay. Don’t look so worried. You haven’t done anything wrong. We have a new student starting today in ninth grade, and Dr. Campbell has requested you as their student buddy.” Oh. Hell. No. The last thing I needed was to be stuck with some kid as he found his feet around the school. What the fuck was I supposed to say to him?

  I shook my head, still staring at the floor. Mr. K seemed prepared for my refusal. He chuckled.

  “See, here’s the thing. Just because I ask kind of nicely, let’s be clear, this isn’t a request, it’s a mandate. We all know it’s Dr. Campbell’s way or the highway. And by highway, I mean a month of after-school detentions on your record.”

  Motherfucker.

  I’d briefly considered just taking the detention, but I knew the boys wouldn’t forgive me for missing that many band rehearsals, and Mom wouldn’t forgive me for giving her more school shit to worry about than she already had to deal with because of Arlo. I didn’t want to do that to her.

  Damn. Our principal was a smiling assassin. At first glance, she looked like a sweet, kindly mom, but in reality, Dr. Lorna Campbell was a tiger, and she quietly ruled the school with an iron claw. I couldn’t say we all enjoyed her methods, but her take-no-prisoners approach was firm but fair and had elevated Ambrose Hill High from one of the poorest performing schools in the district to a shining example of inner-city excellence. At that moment, however, I could happily have strangled her with my bare hands.

  I shrugged, still resolutely refusing to make eye contact. “Good man. I knew you’d make the right decision.” Mr. K slapped my shoulder and sent me on my way. “Hurry now. Dr. Campbell is expecting you, and you know she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” I knew. We all knew.

  As I walked into the reception area outside Principal Campbell’s office, she appeared in the doorway, clearly waiting for me.

  “Nice of you to finally join us, Mr. Jones. Now hurry up. I’m not getting any younger over here.”

  She wasn’t getting any older either, at least not if her looks were anything to go by. I wasn’t sure how old she was exactly, but she held a doctorate, and I knew she had three sons around my age, so she must have been older than she looked.

  I shuffled over to the doorway, and she stepped aside to let me pass. I took a few steps into the room and stopped in my tracks.

  Could this day get any worse?

  Standing near one of the easy chairs in the principal’s office was a girl. My mind flicked quickly back to Mr. K’s words. “We have a new student starting today in ninth grade, and Dr. Campbell has requested you as their student buddy.” He hadn’t actually said the person was a dude; I had just assumed. I had thought it was a pretty safe assumption, though, as who in their right mind would assign me of all people to show a girl around the school? I couldn’t even talk to other guys, never mind a motherfucking girl.

  When I got past the general shock of my buddy being female, my jaw slackened, possibly to floor level, when I properly took in the appearance of the girl in question. To say she was cute was an understatement. She was out of this world. Of course, I instantly developed a blush so deep it felt like the entire top half of my body had been doused in kerosene and set alight.

  The girl looked at me wide-eyed, perhaps equally surprised to find that her buddy was a guy. Speaking of her eyes, they were wide set and beautifully angled, almost like a cat’s, and black as coals. But the thing I noticed most overwhelmingly about them was a deep sadness. She looked as though her heart was broken and seeing it in her made me feel the same way. My heart ached on her behalf, and I didn’t even know who she was, or why she was suffering.

  Her face was framed by bangs cut with precision into her long, thick, ultra-straight, jet-black hair. Little had I known at that point, but I was destined to spend years walking a few paces behind her, sporting an agonizing hard-on, watching that shiny mane swishing seductively just above her perfectly pert butt as she sashayed from A to B. It was to be my personal form of delicious torture.

  She was literally breathtaking. I opened and closed my mouth, trying to get air into my oxygen-starved lungs. My attempt was futile. The girl stared back at me with what appeared to be a mix of mild curiosity and definite irritation. You and me both, chica. She blinked rapidly, turning her lips up at the corners into something that hovered between a smile and a grimace. I wasn’t quite sure which. Her. Lips.

  I had been so busy staring into her eyes like a deer in the headlights—officially making our exchange the longest time I’d maintained eye contact with anyone other than family and close friends for as long as I could remember—that I had completely missed her lips. Now that I had seen them, I couldn’t take my eyes off them, or see anything else. They were full, red, and pouty—so much so that they almost appeared swollen, but I knew they weren’t. They were the shape of tightly rolled rose petals, and I wanted to kiss them more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

  I swallowed. Hard. Dr. Campbell cleared her throat.

  The girl smiled a little more, then laughed shyly. I noticed more about her then, like the fact that she was unusually tall for a girl of her age—she looked like she was on the younger end of freshmen, maybe even thirteen years old—and that her legs seemed to go from the floor to just south of her armpits. She was like a tall and supremely beautiful version of Daria.

  “Hi.” She spoke first because I was a social moron.

  Please, voice, don’t fail me now. “Hi.” Yes!

  “Luke Jones, this is Marnie Harloe. She just transferred here from Michigan.”

  Marnie stuck out her small hand.

  “Marnie.” The way she said her name. Oh my God. She had an accent. It was cute as all fuck, and the last piece of the puzzle I needed to give me the boner from hell right there in the principal’s office. I prayed to every god and deity I’d ever heard of that neither she nor Dr. Campbell looked toward my crotch. In reality, it was probably pretty safe to assume that neither would.

  “Luke.” When I shook her outstretched hand, a spark flowed through her to me. My body tensed, and my dick grew even harder. What was that?

  “Okay. So now that we have the introductions out of the way, we can get to the formalities. Please, sit down, both of you.”

  Dr. Campbell had made her way behind her desk and was now sitting in her fancy reclining leather chair. She motioned for us to sit in the two green, fabric-covered, upright chairs on the other side.

  I realized I was still holding Marnie’s hand. It was warm and smooth like the heart-shaped alabaster ornament our dad had once given to our mom as an anniversary present. I released it, embarrassed. More embarrassed. I sat, and so did she.

  The principal handed me a copy of Marnie’s schedule and explained what the buddy arrangement meant for both of us. I was to take her under my wing for the remainder of the semester, which had only begun a few days earlier, helping her find her classes, sitting with her at lunch, walking to the school bus with her. It sounded like a big fat chore. It was basically a glorified babysitting gig. Hell, I didn’t do all that shit for my own kid brother, let alone a total stranger. To say I didn’t want to do it was to put it mildly.

  I stared down at the worn government-issue brown carpet and sighed heavily. I knew there was nothing I could do to get out of this arrangement, so I was going to have to just deal with it. As Mr. K had already rightly emphasized, saying no to Dr. Campbell wasn’t a viable option. Considering that speaking was hardly an option for me most of the time—not without becoming a stuttering mess, at least—the chances of my arguing my way out of a decision with the principal were pretty much nonexistent.

  As we left her office, despite my initial hesitation, I became almost immediately thankful that Dr. Campbell had forced this unwanted interaction on me. So much so that after striding down t
he hall ahead of Marnie in silence, forcing her to almost jog to catch up with me, when we reached her classroom, I took the unprecedented step of making the first move to break the ice between us.

  “S-s-so why have you transferred? Your family move here for work or something?”

  She already had her hand on the doorknob, ready to enter the room, but stopped in her tracks at the sound of my voice. She turned back to me, looking irritated.

  “Nope.” She was clearly not a great conversationalist. That made two of us.

  “Why then?”

  “I don’t have any family, except my grandma, Mia. Both my parents died.”

  “Oh s-s-shit. Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t know. That’s why you asked. Dur.” Shit.

  “Car crash.” She said the words out of the blue.

  “Huh?”

  “Car crash. It’s how my parents died. I knew that was going to be your next question, so I thought I’d save us both the awkwardness. I moved here because it’s where Mia lives, and she’s now my legal guardian.”

  And this was why I hated speaking to people. Only a few moments in, and I’d already wrecked it. Fuck.

  Marnie spoke as though reading my mind. “It’s okay. I know people are going to ask. I’m cool with that. Besides, for every question you ask me, I get to ask you one back.” Oh. Hell. No.

  I felt myself nodding involuntarily. Today seemed to be opposite day. Shit.

  “So, before you got to the principal’s office, she told me you have a twin brother. Are you guys identical?”

  “Yeah.” I saw her bank the information and wondered why she wanted to know.

  “Bonus question. Being as I’m new and an orphan, I get a free pass.” What? No! Before I could raise my objections, she was asking anyway.