This school… it would make me into something I wasn’t. It would crush the gutter whore out of me.
“Sorry, honey.” Greg glanced across at the monarchs, who watched me with hungry expressions. “Even if I did have something, I don’t think it would do much good. They’d only steal it, too.”
Across the room, Courtney smirked at me. With a sinking feeling, I realized this was only phase one of their attack. The warning shots. They were gearing up for the big push.
After homeroom, I dug through my whole locker, but I couldn’t find anything to cover my hair that wouldn’t get me in more trouble. My first class was history. I raced in early and sat right at the back. Dr. Morgan didn’t seem to notice. But the physics teacher, Professor Atwood, frowned at me as soon as I entered the classroom.
“Ms. Waite, that hairstyle is against school rules.”
“Please, Mr. Atwood, I have dispensation from Headmistress West until I can get it cut—”
“Rules are rules.” He cut me off, as he clicked away on his ancient-looking laptop. I squeezed my eyes shut so I wouldn’t have to watch my points total drop on the screen behind his desk.
I worked so fucking hard to crawl my way up the rankings, and the monarchs were determined to ruin what little progress I’d made. Even though they started life with every advantage, they weren’t going to let me have an inch. Not even fucking 200 points. Everything felt like too much today – I longed to throw my bookbag at Professor Atwood, storm out of Derleth Academy, and never come back. At least working in a diner was honest. At least I knew where I stood. At least I earned every fucking cent I made.
“By the end of the day, I’m going to lose all my points.” I slumped down next to Greg, balling my hands into fists and resting them against my eye sockets, trying to stop the tears itching behind my eyes from flowing down my cheeks and ruining my tough girl reputation. “I don’t even get what the big deal is with my hair. Why do they care what my hair looks like? It doesn’t affect my grades in any way.”
“Here they want everyone to look like perfect little minions,” Greg said. “I’m not allowed to wear makeup. Haven’t you noticed how everyone conforms to a certain stereotype – rich, pretty, white. There’s a reason they chose us for the scholarships. They can at least claim to be diverse and get kudos for their ‘charitable deeds’ while making sure people like us are stomped back down where we belong.”
I studied Greg and the other scholarship students as if seeing them for the first time. Apart from Ayaz, Loretta and Andre were the only non-caucasian students in an ocean of white faces. As a mute, Andre was the only person with an obvious outward disability. The only other black people at this school were the staff. Add Greg’s open homosexuality and my poor upbringing and you had the token diversity panel. How gross.
I flashed back to the scholarship advisor, looking over my shabby clothes and poor neighborhood with barely-concealed glee. “You’ll find the school at the forefront of cultural politics,” she’d said. “We believe in lifting up those who haven’t had a privileged start in life.”
Sure you do. As long as we remember our place.
At lunchtime, I went back to my room to hunt out something else to cover my head. At the bottom of my suitcase I found another bandana – a blue one this time, an old one of Dante’s that he must’ve left at my place one day. It was so threadbare it was practically see-through, but it was better than nothing. I tied it on and rushed to the dining hall in time to hit the tail end of the buffet line.
“I can’t believe they let her in the dining hall like that. It can’t be hygienic.” Courtney strode past me in the buffet line and pretended to peer into my hair. “Yuck. I can see nits! Nits and beetles!”
“Nits and beetles!” Other students took up the chant. I focused on shoveling piles of quiche and salad onto my plate, not acknowledging her. If you ignore her, she’ll just go away.
But that wasn’t Courtney. Ignoring her made her angrier. She grabbed a handful of my hair, wrenching my head backward. I dropped the plate in my hands as I lost my balance and listed over. Ceramic shards flew everywhere and bits of egg and bacon stuck to my stockings.
“Nits and beetles! Nits and beetles!” The chant rang in my ears. My scalp burned as I clawed at Courtney’s hands, trying to free myself. Instead, she twisted her grip, tearing at my hair, and I howled with agony.
Hot, white pain arced through my scalp as Courtney dragged me backward. Ceiling beams swung above me as my whole world flipped upside down. She flung me around and slammed me hard against the end of the monarch’s table. My head cracked against the wood, and white dots flared across my vision.
“Don’t come near any of us ever again,” she hissed. “You’re diseased.”
More gobs of wet quiche slapped against my body as I dragged myself up. Students hurled food and abuse at me until I managed to stagger down the steps of the great hall. Their taunts followed me into the bathroom, where I scrubbed the food off my uniform as best I could. My temples throbbed from cracking my head on the table, and my whole head flared with fire. Clumps of torn hair came away in my hands.
A lump rose in my throat as I fought the urge to cry. I gulped several times, forcing down the bile that rose in my throat.
I’m not strong enough for this.
I leaned against the wall and stared at my reflection in the mirror. Dreadlocks fell over my face, the ends unraveling now that I hadn’t had them redone. Gobs of quiche clung to the thick locks.
I’d survived seventeen years living in the Philly Badlands – attending school with gang members, hiding alone in our apartment while I waited for my mom to get home from the strip club, being best friends with a black guy in a neighborhood where that could get you killed. I watched the two people I loved most in the world burn in a fire. I’d seen more in my life than Courtney Haynes could ever know.
Now I had the opportunity other kids in my neighborhood could never have dreamed of – a free ride at a prestigious school, a basically guaranteed spot at the college of my choice. Never in a million years did I ever expect to see my reflection staring back at me wearing an expensive private school uniform.
But the girl inside that uniform was still the same.
I didn’t fit here. I didn’t belong. Dressing me up in an ugly tartan skirt didn’t change the girl inside.
No matter how much I fought Courtney and Trey and all the other monarchs, it would never change the fact that they were born for this life and I’d landed here by luck. Outside of these walls, I didn’t have a name that inspired awe or a mansion in the right part of town or a close personal friendship with the president. These kids were going to grow up to run the country, the world, and even if they had to stare at my face on the other end of a boardroom, I would still be the gutter whore who served their fries.
They were never, ever going to stop until I was back where I belonged.
I was my mother’s daughter. I hoped and I hoped and I put on a brave face and I pretended that things were better than they were. And I almost believed my own bullshit, until something like this happened and the cracks showed. Tears welled in my eyes.
“I miss you, Mama,” I whispered to my reflection, to the hazel eyes I inherited from her, the eyes she’d used to tempt a thousand men out of their one-dollar bills, the eyes that had inspired my name. I wished I could see her staring back at me, her lips curled into one of her secret smiles, her eyes crinkling at the edges, her arms wide open, ready to wrap me in a hug that could crush my ribs.
But all that looked out of that mirror was a sad, broken girl with no one and nothing left in the world.
Grief roared up inside me, hot like the fire that took her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they had everything and I had nothing. That they had the whole world and I was completely alone.
I pulled my arm back, and I slammed my fist into the mirror. Pain flared across my knuckles. The sound shattered the grief from my bones, the pain carving out the horror like a k
nife. The girl in the mirror disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces.
Shards of glass littered the floor at my feet. I picked my way around them, heading for the door. Blood dripped down my knuckles as I bent down to examine a perfect triangle of glass, a single hazel eye staring back at me – not kind like my mother’s, but hard as flint.
Carefully, I picked up the piece of glass, folded it in one of the fluffy paper towels, and slid it into my skirt pocket.
Bring it on, Courtney. If you want to break me, then you’d better be prepared for a fight. And us gutter whores fight dirty.
The bell rang. Wiping my face and patting the glass shard in my pocket, I ducked into the hall and made my way to English literature. When I took my seat in the back corner, Courtney and her friends moved their desks away, creating a plague circle around my desk. The teacher didn’t say anything, because this was Derleth Academy and Courtney Haynes was Queen.
“Got the bubonic plague?” Trey smirked at me, drumming his fingers on my desk as he strode past on the way to the back row. I stared at my hands. I didn’t have an answer. The shard weighed heavy in my pocket.
The shunning continued through the rest of the day. As I wrote a quote on the board in class, Amber muttered the ring-around-the-rosie nursery rhyme under her breath. Students crossed themselves in the hallway as I went past, as though I was a vampire. When I arrived at my locker, a symbol had been drawn on it in red paint.
What was weird was that the symbol looked almost exactly like the rune I’d seen tattooed on Quinn and Trey’s wrists.
“It’s to ward off evil,” Courtney hissed as she sauntered past, her arm looped in Quinn’s. She dragged him away before he could say anything, but his eyes met mine over his shoulder. He looked almost… sheepish. But I was probably imagining that.
Why is Quinn’s tattoo on my locker door?
When my last class was finished I went straight to my room, slipping a note in Greg’s locker asking him to cover for me at rehearsal. I collapsed on my bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rats scrabbling through the walls. For once, I found them a comfort. The rats knew their place.
I must have drifted off to sleep. I didn’t even hear Loretta come in. The next thing I knew, I found myself standing somewhere cold and damp, a slippery darkness wrapping around me. A rancid smell that was too much like the rotting meat in my locker invaded my nostrils until I choked for air.
I thrust my hands out in front of me, stumbling forward until I touched a wall. My fingers scraped cold stone. Where am I? Am I in the corridor? Where’s the door to our room? My eyes strained to see the gloom. Something flickered in the distance. A flame? Was something on fire?
My chest tightened. The hairs on my arms stood on end. If there’s a fire, then why am I so cold?
And where am I that the very air seems drenched with death?
A sound penetrated the gloom. Scritching, like the sound that came from the walls in my bedroom, only louder and brighter and more terrifying as it echoed through vast chambers and deep crevices, through all the dark places where nightmares dwelled.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
Hundreds of tiny feet descended upon me. The incessant scratch and scrape of claws on stone crawled on my consciousness. My head swam with dizzying fear, a fear all the greater because I could not confirm it. I could not see what descended upon me.
Was it death, visiting me at last to take me to my mother, to place me into Dante’s arms? Then why, instead of opening myself up to it, did my mind rebel from it? Why did my skin itch and my throat close as if it wasn’t death that came scritching for me along the walls, but some nameless, unheard-of thing even more abhorrent?
They’re coming for me… The rats in the walls…
I woke with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. A thin shaft of golden light had started its journey across our bedroom wall, indicating the path of the rising sun. The ancient alarm clock read 4:45. Rats scritch-scritched across the ceiling. Everything perfectly normal, perfectly as it should be.
It was just a nightmare. It wasn’t real…
The cold, clamminess of my dream still clung to my skin. I struggled to suck in a breath, my throat still closed from the foul smell my imagination had conjured up. I tried to sit up. Something like a rubber band grabbed the back of my head and snapped it back against the pillow. There was a squelching sound and a warm wetness around my ears, like my head was resting on Jell-O.
I raised a hand to my face, swiping it through something wet and sticky under my head, and sniffed. My head swam from the fumes. It smelled like a road.
Tar. It’s tar.
But why is there tar on my pillow…
I swung myself out of bed and grabbed the door handle. Locked tight. But I knew that didn’t mean anything. Courtney and Trey had someone sneak in here and take my journal. I thought they had bribed the woman who took my suitcase, but I realized that they could easily have made a copy of my key.
They broke in here in the night and put tar on my pillow. But why—
My eyes struggled to make out the shapes of furniture. The fumes closed my nose, choking me. White lights danced in front of my eyes. My steps felt slow, sluggish, as though I was moving through molasses.
I staggered into the corner of Loretta’s bed. She sat up, her arm sloooooowly reaching out, grabbing my wrist. The movement nearly sent me sprawling.
“What’s going on? Who’s in here? Oh, Hazel, it’s just you—” Loretta’s words died. She choked. “Hazel, the fumes… your hair—”
My hair?
My hand flew to my head, for the first time taking stock of what they’d done. When I felt my dreadlocks, I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Chapter Thirteen
“Lookin’ good, dyke.” Trey smirked as I entered homeroom.
I stared at my shoes, my hand touching the bare base of my neck and wishing I could just sink into the floor.
Did they have to take everything?
I’d spent two hours in the bathroom, trying to rinse the sticky tar from my hair. It was like someone had dipped my head in a pot of honey. The tar clung to every dreadlock and I tore large clumps of hair out before I realized what I had to do.
My stomach churned from the fumes and my hands trembled as I took Loretta’s scissors and chopped off my hair. Dreads fell to the floor like limp, dead worms. My beautiful hair – a gift from Dante’s sister before she got shuffled to another home – gone, just like every other thing in my life.
I didn’t cry. I had no tears left.
After I was done, I was left with a thin, matted mess. Combing the tar out of the roots had torn out half my hair, and what was left was thin and fine – longer on top where the roots had grown out. But at least I still had some hair. Luckily, I’d been cutting my own hair since I was eight, and Dante’s sister had taught me a trick or two. I evened it out as best I could, keeping it longer on top in a kind of punk-rock mini-hawk, and used some styling product I borrowed from Greg to make it sit on top of my head in spikes. If Dante were here, he’d have said it looked fierce.
But Dante wasn’t here, and fierce was the last thing I felt right now.
Trey’s knowing look punched me in the chest. I wanted to shout something, but I was too raw, too broken. Courtney was right – she was going to win this. I took my seat without answering Trey, staring down at my book and listening to the whispers swirl around me.
“Today, you’ll be starting your main assignment for the year. I’ll assign you to work in pairs. You’ll each research a historical event that caused a paradigm shift in society. Please avoid the world wars, as we’ll be dealing with them in the third quarter.” Dr. Morgan came through the class and paired everyone up. I shuffled my seat closer to Greg, hoping we’d be paired together. But she paired Greg with Amber, and I got… Ayaz Demir.
No, no.
I couldn’t face talking to one of the Kings today, let alone working with one on an important assignment.
But the assignment was twenty percent of our final grade. Dr. Morgan explained that each pair would create a display about their event that would focus on the impact it had on future generations and its impact on the world today. The top displays would be showcased at the end-of-year graduation event for parents and alumni, and the students who submitted that project would each be awarded 200 points.
200 points. My heart hammered. That would jump me ahead. That kind of gain could help me close the gap between the high-achieving students. If I did everything right, it could shoot me past Trey Bloomberg when the time came.
“Join up with your partners and start brainstorming ideas,” Dr. Morgan said. “You have the rest of the hour to decide on a topic and create a plan. Most of the work will need to be done outside class time, so you’ll need to set a schedule and divide tasks evenly—”
I didn’t look up from my desk as Ayaz pulled his desk opposite mine, but I could feel the ambivalence rolling off him. “Trust Morgan to stick me with the circus freak dyke plague victim,” he muttered. His book hit the desk with a metallic clang that rang through my chest.
“Let’s just focus on this assignment,” I said, pulling out my books.
“If you wish,” he said. His words sounded curiously old-fashioned. I wondered about Ayaz. He was a King of the school, and yet his skin color, his foreign-ness, the odd way he spoke sometimes… everything about him should have made him someone who was ridiculed, like me. And yet here he was, a monarch. Even though he sat only a foot away from me, he was on another planet.
I touched my hair, expecting to feel the weight of my fingers in my dreadlocks, but instead, I touched the bare skin on the base of my neck. A few thin strands of hair came away in my fingers, and I shuddered at the violation that’d been done to me. Did you do it? Did you sneak into my room and paint tar all over my hair? Did you take the last piece of my old life away from me?
Shunned: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 1) Page 9