Infinite (Strange and Beautiful, Book 1)

by Brittney Musick

  I couldn’t really blame her. I’d probably have reacted the same if it were Skylar talking about a blowjob. After all, I got grossed out seeing my sister kiss a guy, but I wasn’t as bad as Mom and Dad, who looked uncomfortable when Skylar or Luke would hold hands with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

  But Dad always said, “It always starts with just holding hands.”

  Talk about uptight. But, hey, I was just three weeks away from turning fifteen. I had no boobs. And I couldn’t talk to guys. What did I know anyway?

  That’s right. Absolutely nothing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mark Moses.

  Even before I attended Jefferson High School, his was a name I was already familiar with. Luke, Skylar and Tierney had all retold stories of the legendary resident bully. According to Tierney, all future bullies would most likely take a page from Mark Moses’ book when torturing his or her classmates.

  At first I thought they were all just exaggerating. After all, wouldn’t teachers notice a guy shoving kids into lockers, taking lunch money or shoving someone’s head down a toilet? Surely someone would notice a kid dangling upside down from a restroom stall, right?

  These were just some of the more tame stories of how Mark Moses had managed to bully half of the senior class while he was just a freshman. It was said that Mark Moses would corner anyone he could find and steal his or her money on a daily basis. He’d also humiliate them in any way he could in the process. As if being robbed by a classmate wouldn’t be bad enough.

  Luke told the story of how, after cleaning out Kyle Michaelson’s wallet and taking his clothes, Mark Moses then forced him to walk through the cafeteria stark naked. Kyle, one of the few boys actually comparable to Mark in size, was so scared of Mark Moses that when he was reprimanded by the principal, he cried and stuttered his way through explaining that it was all just a stupid joke. He wound up suspended from school for a week.

  “No doubt best seven days of his life,” Luke proclaimed, “because he was free from Mark Moses.”

  Skylar thought it was hilarious when Mark Moses set his sights on Samantha Bower, who Skylar despised on the grounds that one of Skylar’s previous boyfriends had allegedly cheated on her with Samantha. She was the second in command on the cheerleading squad and, consequently, part of the popular crowd.

  It was claimed that when Mark, for reasons unfathomable to Skylar, asked Samantha out she gave him a flat out “no” and proceeded to laugh in his face. As soon as Skylar had said this, I’d known that the story wouldn’t end well.

  “Big mistake,” Skylar said, rolling her eyes as if to say, “She should have known better.”

  I’d been unable to stop myself from asking, “What happened?”

  “He decided to make her life a living hell, of course,” Skylar explained. “First, he broke into her locker and filled it with dead leftover frogs he stole from the science lab. I swear everyone heard her screaming when they fell out of her locker.”

  After the scream heard ‘round the school, of course the teachers and principal wanted to know what was going on. Samantha accused Mark of being the culprit. He didn’t deny it and was suspended from school for two weeks.

  “Samantha thought that would be the end of it,” Skylar said in the tone that implied Samantha was an idiot, “but on the third day of his suspension, Mark broke into her white car, hotwired it and drove it onto the football field and spray painted the word “slut” all over the car in red.”

  “Couldn’t they get the police involved?” I wondered. That seemed pretty serious in my opinion.

  “Oh, they were called, but they couldn’t prove that Mark had anything to do with it. It’s not like anyone was going to rat him out,” Skylar shrugged. “The best part, though, was Samantha had to drive this slut covered car home, and then later that night after the sun went down, the car lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Mark Moses had used glow in the dark spray paint over the red. Her parents had to cover the thing with a tarp just so people would stop driving by their house to see it.”

  In the end Samantha didn’t return to Jefferson High. Her parents had opted to home school her after that.

  While Luke was amused and Skylar was gleeful, Tierney wasn’t nearly as enthused by Mark Moses’ antics. In fact, she looked downright frightened as she explained what had happened to Parker McGarvey.

  “It was last year, and Mark set his sights on Parker,” she explained. “He was a quiet kid. He wasn’t really part of the in crowd, but he wasn’t unpopular either. He was a pretty smart guy, and his intelligence is what set him in Mark’s path of destruction.”

  “Why? What happened?” Tegan questioned.

  “I guess one of the teachers called on Mark to answer a question, but he had no idea what the answer was, which isn’t surprising since he’s a complete imbecile anyway. When he said he didn’t know, the teacher called on the rest of the class. Naturally, Parker raised his hand. I’d swear he had all of the books memorized by heart.”

  “He’s got a little Hermione Granger and Klaus Baudelaire in him, does he?” I smirked.

  Tierney smiled slightly and nodded. “I guess you could say that.” Then her smile fell and she sighed heavily. “Apparently, after Parker answered the question correctly, the teacher told Mark that it wouldn’t hurt him to take a few pointers from Parker.”

  “So that’s what set him off on Parker?” Tegan asked.

  Tierney nodded. “Mark crashed this party he’d overheard Parker talking to friends about. He showed up completely wasted and started hassling Parker. He was shoving him around and calling him names. A few of the other people at the party tried to get Mark to lay off, but it wasn’t much use. The guy is huge, ya know? So he’s shoving Parker around, and finally Parker shoves back. This completely pisses Mark off, and he pushes Parker so hard he practically flies across the room. And he landed on a glass table that shattered from the impact. He cut his arms and back, and he was bleeding really badly. They had to call an ambulance and the police, but Mark was long gone by then.”

  “Was Parker okay?” I felt stricken. Even though the other stuff wasn’t nice, it hadn’t seemed particularly dangerous. This, though, had ended in physical injury.

  “He lost a lot of blood and was in the hospital for a while, but he’s okay now,” Tierney replied.

  “What happened with Mark?” Tegan asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Tegan and I exclaimed in disbelief.

  “The police went and talked to him, but Parker begged his parents not to press charges,” Tierney replied. “He knew he’d be dead if he did.”

  That was some very unsettling news. It just didn’t make sense to me that he was able to get away with all of these things. I got that he was clearly intimidating, but someone had to be able to put a stop to his bullying, right?

  At least that was what I thought until the day I had my first encounter with Mark Moses.

  We’d just finished a test in Spanish that I had spent hours studying for with Tegan the night before. We were on our way to the cafeteria, and I was feeling pretty good. I thought I’d done pretty well on the test, and it was also a Friday, which was never a bad thing.

  On the way out the door that morning, I grabbed the first book I spotted. I hadn’t made any visits to the library since school started. I knew I was in dire need of a visit to the library soon. I was sure Rose, the head librarian, was wondering what happened to me. I usually visited the library every other week to find new reading material. I was sure Rose would have plenty of recommendations she’d sat aside for me.

  That morning I didn’t have time to be choosy about my books because Skylar had threatened to leave me if I didn’t hurry. It wasn’t until I got in the car that I realized I was holding my copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling. To someone else this might have been a horrible thing since I’d just read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and reading Order of the Phoenix would require reading the seri
es in reverse, but I wasn’t too upset. At least I could say I knew Harry Potter backward and forward.

  After I had finished my Spanish test, I pulled out my book and started rereading it. Sometimes when I was alone, I liked to read the books aloud in a British accent that I was certain was horrible. Sometimes, even when I wasn’t reading, I’d talk to myself in the British accent for fun. I got to say things like “bloody hell,” “blimey,” “wicked,” and “knickers.” Luke usually got called a “git” or “prat” a few times a week. This typically occurred after he’d used all of the hot water. Sometimes I wished that I really had an accent. Everything sounded so much cooler and distinguished with one.

  I was well into chapter two of the book when the bell rang to signal the end of class. There were still a few people huddled over his or her tests. Probably double checking all of their answers, which I never did because I just knew I’d end up second-guessing myself and mess everything up.

  As Tegan and I left the classroom, I saw Mrs. Willis trying to pry the tests out of a couple people’s hands. It was mostly the brownnosers and goodie two shoes that had their hearts set on making into it colleges like Harvard, Yale, or MIT. I hadn’t even thought about college yet. That seemed too far off to bother worrying now.

  Tegan and I went to our lockers. Then we headed for the cafeteria, and I couldn’t help but talk about the book. I had this horrible tendency to start jabbering about the book I was currently reading, and I’d completely forget about spoilers. Tegan hated it when I started talking about something she hadn’t read yet and ruined the surprise for her. Luckily, she’d read the Harry Potter books; not nearly as many times as I had, but she still knew what I was on about.

  “I can’t believe the movie for Order of the Phoenix won’t be out until next July,” I whined. “I’m so anxious to see how they pull it all together.”

  “I wonder how much they’ll end up leaving out of it,” Tegan replied thoughtfully. “I hated how much they cut out of Goblet of Fire.”

  “Me too,” I agreed. “But I guess I understand why they had to. It would have been so long otherwise. Not that I would have had a problem with that.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Tegan laughed. “You wouldn’t care if it was a twenty hour movie as long as there were bathroom breaks.”

  “Oh, and you’d have a problem with it?” I countered. “I see the way you drool over Rupert Grint.”

  “I prefer to call him Ron,” Tegan said with a laugh. “I just don’t feel right calling him Rupert. That reminds me of an old man.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Anyway, what I’m really anxious to see is the movie for Half-Blood Prince,” I commented. “They just can’t cut out the Ron and Lavender scenes. Especially the Won-Won part,” I grinned. I looked at Tegan, and she laughed and started to reply, but she was quickly cut off when we heard a voice behind us.

  “Won-Won, huh?”

  Tegan and I both turned together. I didn’t recognize the guy, and he was the sort a person would remember if they’d seen him before. He was big and tall. Of course, most people seemed tall compared to me, but this guy looked taller than normal. Even though I usually wasn’t good at guessing these things, I was sure he was well over six foot tall. Aside from height, though, he was also rotund. I knew he wasn’t old enough to drink—he was in high school, after all—but the plumpness of his midsection looked like a beer belly to me. But he wasn’t just fat either. His arms were large, muscular and heavily tattooed. His body seemed so at odds that it took me a minute to finally look at his face.

  It was then, when I looked up and saw the dark, greasy unkempt hair and the multiple piercings in his ears and face, that I realized who had spoken. I’d never actually seen Mark Moses up close before. A few times I’d heard people murmur his name as he walked down the hall, but it was always from a distance, which managed to make him look slighter.

  Up close, not only was he huge, it was easier to see why people found him so menacing. Aside from the metal in his ears and lip, tattoos peaked out from under his dark, worn clothes, and when he smiled—a smile that was anything but friendly, his yellow teeth were somewhat jagged and yellow, making him look more animal than boy.

  Dark eyes glittered as he crossed his thick arms over his chest, above the roundness of his midsection. “Talking about a little Harry Potter, are we, children?”

  I glanced at Tegan, and she looked as confused as I felt. I wondered how long he had been behind us before saying anything. He didn’t strike me as a Harry Potter fan, so he must have been there for a while.

  “Hey, I asked you a question,” Mark snapped, and I jumped and looked back at him. He was staring at me, so I nodded dumbly.

  “Freshmen,” he laughed coldly. “What’s your name, kid?”

  He was looking straight at me, and it was as if Tegan had disappeared into the wall. I opened my mouth to answer, but I realized my mouth had gone dry. That always happened when I was scared or nervous. I swallowed hard before I said, “Silly Granger.”

  “Silly? What kind of name is that?” he laughed.

  “It’s short for Cecilia,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, it’s short for Cecilia, is it?” he said quietly, almost friendly. “Well, Cecilia, why don’t you tell me how much money you have?”

  “What?” I replied, making a face. I felt Tegan nudge me in the side. No doubt to tell me to do as he said. “I have five dollars.”

  “Is that all?” he questioned as if I were stupid enough to lie to him.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, hand it over,” he said, stretching his big, beefy hands out toward me.

  I recoiled as I dug into my pocket and produced the five-dollar bill Mom gave me before I left for school that morning.

  “Thank you, Cecilia,” he said with a devious grin as a couple of teachers appeared at the end of the hallway. “It was a pleasure doing business with you,” he added. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

  Then he walked away with a spring in his step.

  “Are you okay?” Tegan whispered. I turned to her. Her usually tanned face seemed completely absent of all color, and I was sure mine was quite similar.

  I frowned and looked at my feet. “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you should go to the office and talk to the principal,” she said.

  “What? No way,” I replied. “You’ve heard what he’s done to other people who ratted him out.”

  “So what are you going to do then?” Tegan asked.

  “I’m going to go to lunch, and, hopefully, you’ll let me borrow some money so I can get something to eat.”

  Tegan looked like she wanted to argue, but finally she just nodded.

  Needless to say, I was pretty jumpy for the rest of the day. I made it a point to get lost in the sea of people between classes for fear of seeing Mark Moses again. I didn’t have any more money, and I didn’t want to think of what he might do next. A head down the toilet sounded like getting off easy compared to some of the other stuff he pulled. He was big, ugly and creepy, and I was scared to death of him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Skylar was always threatening to leave me behind. Pretty much every morning after breakfast and once we’d arrived at school, Skylar would say, “If you’re not out in the car by the time I’m ready to leave, I’ll leave without you.”

  On a couple of occasions I’d told her, “You sound just like Mom,” who I knew she got the threat from. Telling Skylar she sounded like Mom was a sure fire way to earn one of her patented glares, but sometimes it was worth it.

  The thing was, though, while I knew Mom would never actually leave me, I wasn’t so sure the same could be said for Skylar until the day she actually left without me.

  In her defense, I was pretty sure she didn’t do it on purpose. Or so I hoped anyway.

  Normally, I was pretty vigilant about making sure I got out to the car as quickly as possible if I was riding home with Skylar, but on that particular day things didn’t go as planned.r />
  It was a week after my run in with Mark Moses, who I’d been sure to avoid like the plague by blending into the crowds at all times. After the last bell of the day, I said my goodbyes to Tegan. She had informed me at lunch that she and Tierney had plans after school, and they wouldn’t be able to give me a ride home. Because she’d been so tightlipped when I asked about her plans, I suspected it had something to do with my upcoming birthday, but I didn’t voice my suspicions and decided to let Tegan think she was being sneaky.

  I was at my locker getting my things together when Annabelle Jansen, the elected editor of the school newspaper, walked up to me. I had only talked to her a few times in class, so I didn’t know her well, but she seemed nice enough. I’d heard Skylar talk about her in the past; she’d called her an overachiever, but I just shrugged it off as sour grapes. Not that Skylar was competitive in the academic department or anything, but she always seemed to have a problem with anyone who was better than her at something.

  Some of the other seniors in our Journalism class could seem a little intimidating at times, but Annabelle had a nice smile that immediately set me at ease. She was also pretty fair about taking things into consideration when someone made a suggestion for the paper.

  “Hey, Silly,” she said, adjusting the bag she had slung over her shoulder. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I nodded, shutting my locker and then following her into the nearest empty classroom. I was extremely curious about why she wanted to talk to me. I could only assume it was to do with the newspaper, but since I really didn’t do anything very important, I couldn’t even begin to guess why.

  Before I could ask what was up, though, she said, “As you know, we only have so much room in the newspaper.” I nodded and she went on. “I know you were very interested in doing a review column.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. It had just been a fleeting idea, but it had been shelved for the time being in favor of the advice column Carley Hendricks was doing.