The Wrong Side of Kai

by Estelle Maskame

  My cheeks burn with rage, a hot fire that starts in the tip of my toes and spreads throughout my body. I turn to the screen at the front of the room again and try to tune it all out, but I’m so tensed up, my jaw so tightly clenched that I fear I might explode any second. With what emotion, I don’t know. If I open my mouth, I’m not sure if I’ll burst into tears or if I’ll pummel someone. I think of all the nasty remarks I could throw back at Noah, but I clamp my mouth shut.

  Kai is looking at me now. Our eyes lock and I realize he’s watching me with concern, chewing his lower lip as he contemplates whether or not to comfort me. And then he does the most bizarre thing – he doesn’t comfort me at all, he defends me instead. He twists in his chair and looks back at Noah, coolly telling him, “I don’t think she wants to catch your crabs.”

  Noah’s laughter falters and the room falls silent with him. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk, nostrils flaring as he sets his sharp glare on Kai. “And who the fuck are you?”

  “The line runner on the team that beat your ass last weekend,” Kai says with a challenging smile, and I can see the realization dawning on our classmates that Kai is from Westerville Central. They’re most likely wondering the same as I am – what’s a Central kid doing here in a Westerville North classroom?

  “You don’t need to act tough to impress her, you know,” Noah says gruffly, slumping into his chair. He looks at me with hatred in his eyes. “Just ask her. She’ll ride anything with a pulse.”

  “Silence, please!” Miss Anderson says, clapping her hands together as she whirls into the room. We all do as we’re told, everyone going quiet as she jumps straight into where we left off on Friday.

  Everything was different on Friday. I was back at my desk, musing to Noah about Maddie Romy’s upcoming party, daydreaming of the drinks I would enjoy and the music I would sing along to and the kisses I would share with Harrison Boyd. If only I had known how that party would mark the beginning of the end of Vanessa Murphy.

  I try to catch Kai’s eye throughout the class, but he pretends to be engrossed in Miss Anderson’s teachings, chewing on his pen the same way he did last night at the library. Unlike him, I can’t focus, too paralyzed in fear that Noah will find an opportunity to crack more jokes to the room. But he doesn’t, thankfully, and when class ends, I remain rooted in my chair while everyone makes a beeline for the door. Kai is deliberately slow to pack up his books, both of us waiting for the room to empty before we engage in conversation.

  Noah makes his presence known again by walking through the middle of mine and Kai’s desks. He bumps his shoulder into Kai’s, stares him down, then smiles at me. “You did this to yourself,” he says with a sneer, then walks out.

  I stare after Noah. My late-night thoughts from yesterday set in again. The guilt, the blame. If I hadn’t gone to that party . . . If I hadn’t been with Harrison . . . If I hadn’t been too buzzed and carefree to tell him to put his phone away . . . If I hadn’t lived my life, then none of this would have happened. But I was doing exactly that. I was living my life the way I wanted to. Do I deserve to be shamed for all of eternity because I had fun with a guy I was attracted to? Everyone seems to think I do.

  Once everyone has left the room, including Miss Anderson, I turn to Kai, both of us standing up from our desks. My expression is blank. “Why did you do that?”

  “Well, you weren’t gonna say anything,” he says. He takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair, then sets the snapback back on. Still backward. “And I couldn’t resist making a dig at a North player.”

  “In case you forgot, you’re a North guy yourself now.”

  “Central blood, Nessie. Central blood,” he says with great passion, holding up a clenched fist, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he smiles and lowers his voice as he says, “I hope you’re free after school, because we’re staying back. We have locker rooms to sneak into, and a phone to steal. Bring your A-game. None of this apologetic crap. You’re really gonna let that team of douchebags do this to you? Fight back, Vanessa.”

  I stare at him, my real name sounding foreign on his tongue. “Vanessa?”

  “I’m not talking to you as a partner anymore,” Kai says. He leans forward and delicately places his thumb under my chin, tilting my head up. The movement is so careful, and my breath catches in my throat as I look up at him. “I’m talking to you as a friend now. And I’m telling you to keep your head up and keep moving forward.” He gives me a nod of reassurance, like he really believes I have the strength to ignore all of the torment being thrown my way, and then he tucks his books under his arm and walks away.

  I swallow hard, then run my fingers over my skin where traces of his touch remain.

  8

  I lock myself inside a bathroom stall at the end of the day until everyone has left the building. It takes twenty minutes after the final bell has rung, constant commotion in the hallways as everyone dumps books in their lockers and catches up with friends. When I haven’t heard any noise from outside the bathroom for a while, I kick open the stall door and stick my head out into the hallway. My head swivels back and forth, like a cartoon secret agent, checking that the coast is clear before continuing with my mission.

  There’s a janitor mopping the floor at the end of the hall, so I stroll out of the bathroom and head for my locker. When I reach it, Kai is already there. A Sharpie in hand, adding to the words scrawled all over my vandalized locker door.

  “Is this your attempt to convince everyone we’re not friends even though you admitted earlier that we are? By writing abuse on my locker?” I ask as I approach, folding my arms across my chest. I don’t really care what anyone writes, so my expression is neutral, more curious than anything else.

  Kai starts at the sound of my voice echoing down the empty hallway. He looks over, pen hovering in the air. “Actually, I was fixing it.”

  I stop next to him and look at my locker. The hashtag from before – #SmileForTheCamera – has been totally scribbled over by Kai’s permanent marker to look like an ocean, and peering out of the ocean is . . .

  “The Loch Ness Monster?”

  Kai grins, proud of his crappy art skills. “Nessie. Clever, isn’t it? Hiding your secret code name in plain sight.”

  “Not really,” I say, squinting closer at my locker. Kai’s interpretation of the Loch Ness Monster is pretty terrible – an awful-looking reptile with one huge, googly eye. “Everyone is going to assume someone is calling me a snake.”

  Kai looks at his drawing again. “Shit,” he says, and scribbles over Nessie too, leaving my locker door a total inky mess as though a three-year-old was given free rein with a black pen. It’s not as bad as that hashtag, though. And I guess it’s kind of cute that he was trying to make my locker look a little better. “Okay, let’s focus on the mission at hand. The locker rooms. How do we get to them?”

  I lead Kai down the hallway and out the main entrance, passing the school offices where we met for the second time yesterday morning. It feels like days ago now. Would Kai have gone out of his way to find me after that party if I hadn’t conveniently been placed in front of him again? Or was I simply an opportunity that presented itself to him? I don’t know, but I’m glad I’m not doing this alone.

  We step outside into the student parking lot where only a few cars remain, most likely owned by students who are stuck in detention or staying late to cram in some extra study. Chyna’s car is gone. I told her not to wait around for me, that I had some extracurricular activities that needed to be done, and she didn’t bother to ask anything more. I’m not sure if she agrees with what Kai and I are doing, so I don’t think she wants to know what we’re up to.

  “Where’s the Hulk?” Kai teases as he follows me around the building.

  “I told you. My vehicle’s name is the Green McRusty,” I say defensively, furrowing my brow at him. “And I rode your bike here.”

  Kai abruptly comes to a halt. “Excuse me,” he says, aghast, “you did wh
at?”

  “Rode your bike here,” I repeat, but I keep on walking until he jogs after me. There’s another low sun today, the air crisp. My favorite weather. Cold, sunny days where you can wear sunglasses while still hugging a jacket around you.

  “And what gave you the right to ride my bike to school?” Kai asks, indignant. As we move across campus in fast strides, he walks close by my side, his elbow brushing against mine. I try not to focus on it too much, because I doubt he is doing it intentionally.

  “You did,” I remind him.

  “I gave you my bike to use on secret missions only.”

  “And aren’t we on a mission right now?” I look sideways at him. “A mission that you still haven’t told me about.”

  Kai sighs, defeated. “The Warriors – who suck, for the record – have practice right now. I overheard some guys from the team talking about it in the Chemistry lab this morning. So, we know exactly where Harrison is right now, and we know that his stuff will hopefully be in an unattended locker room,” he explains.

  “So, we’re going to steal his phone, and . . .?”

  “Hack it,” he finishes. “Somehow.”

  I like the idea of having access to Harrison’s phone, even if it only means deleting that wretched video from its source. It won’t stop the video spreading – I know everyone has the video already – but it might make me feel that slight bit better. Maybe I could read all of Harrison’s messages and pray to find some incredibly embarrassing information about him, something I could use to humiliate him as much as he’s humiliated me. His entire life will be on that phone, every detail, from the good to the bad – and there’s so much I could do with access to it.

  I take Kai around the back of the school toward the football field. I can hear the grunting and the yelling before we even see the field, and as we round the corner, I reach for Kai’s arm and gently pull him behind a car. We peer over the hood, analyzing our surroundings and our options. The Westerville North High varsity football team is out on the field, running drills and hurling footballs around. The players are distant figures, tiny from this far away.

  “Sorry, I don’t know which locker rooms they use,” I say, my shrug apologetic. I’ve only ever gone to a couple of games, and only because I was begged to by the guy I was hooking up with at the time. Like Noah last fall, and Harrison this year.

  “I do,” Kai says, and he points out across the field to a small building by the bleachers. “Those are the visiting team lockers. I’ve used them before. So—” he points to another building a few hundred feet directly in front of us “—that’s where we need to be heading.”

  “Easy,” I say, and just like last night, I scour the area to check for any witnesses before I dash out from behind the car and sprint across the asphalt toward the locker room. Kai is close on my heels, both of us running while slightly hunched over as though it’ll make us look smaller, and therefore, less noticeable. If anyone saw us now, they’d seriously laugh.

  “I think you’re starting to enjoy this,” Kai says as we slam ourselves against the wall of the locker house building, shielding ourselves behind it.

  “I’m enjoying the thought of putting Harrison through hell,” I correct, but Kai is right: this is kind of exciting. We’re in a game – us versus Harrison Boyd. The prize? The last laugh. “Please, please don’t be locked . . .” I mumble under my breath as I reach for the door, and I exhale a breath of relief when it swings open.

  “Man, it would have been more badass if we had to break a window,” Kai says, slapping his thigh in disappointment. “But it’s probably better that we don’t vandalize anything else.”

  The locker house is silent and polluted with so much man-strength deodorant that I nearly choke. There’s bags and clothes scattered all over wooden benches, and shoes kicked carelessly across the floor. There’s also a lot of lockers . . . and a lot of locked combinations. Damn.

  “His phone’s probably in a locker,” I state in dismay, scrutinizing the lockers for some sort of clue as to which locker belongs to who. No names, only numbers, which I assume correspond with each player’s jersey. If only I’d paid attention at the games, maybe I would know what Harrison’s jersey number is. “Well, we tried.”

  “Not so fast,” Kai says. I watch him closely as he slinks around the locker room, rubbing his chin while he thinks. “What was Harrison wearing today? Did you see him?”

  “Yep, he cornered me in the hallway.” I don’t mention that Harrison accused me of slashing his truck tires last night, because it’s no big deal. Harrison will most likely know that I’m behind everything that’s about to go wrong in his life over the next few days, but what can he really do about it? Nothing. That’s why it’s so satisfying. “Black jeans,” I say after a minute of consideration.

  Kai grabs the nearest pair of black jeans and rummages through the pockets, pulling out a wallet. He checks the student ID inside – it’s not Harrison’s. Sighing, he tosses those jeans back onto the bench and moves on to the next pair. I join in the search, grabbing a pair from the floor and sticking my hands into the pockets. I pull out a phone and a wallet, but I don’t need to check any ID to verify that this stuff is Harrison’s – I know it’s his phone by the screensaver. A picture of his fucking truck. Weirdo.

  “I found it!” I tell Kai excitedly, presenting him with the phone. It’s locked with a passcode, duh, but still. We at least have the phone in our possession, which is one step closer to cracking open Harrison Boyd’s life.

  Kai dumps the jeans he’s searching through and rushes over, taking the wallet from my other hand. He pulls out a driver’s license and holds it up, grinning as we confirm that yes, we do have Harrison’s phone now. Kai slips the driving license back inside the wallet, then swipes thirty bucks, to which I raise a questioning eyebrow. “No one would steal his phone without stealing his cash too. Besides, I think we deserve some monetary compensation from him,” Kai says.

  We shove the wallet back into the pocket of Harrison’s jeans and then return them to where I found them. I carry Harrison’s phone like a trophy – he stole my dignity, so I stole his phone. We’re leaving the locker room, amazed by how easy this all is, when I hear footsteps behind us.

  “What are you two doing in here?” a gruff voice questions, and Kai and I freeze on the spot.

  I slip Harrison’s phone into the pocket of my hoodie and turn around along with Kai, and we come face-to-face with Coach Maverick as he approaches us. He stops a few feet away, hands on his hips. He’s old, verging on retirement, but he’s a permanent fixture at Westerville North. Kind of a legend and basically part of the furniture. He furrows his thick, graying eyebrows at us.

  “Hey, Coach Maverick,” I say with a polite smile. “This is my friend, Kai Washington. He just transferred here, and he plays football, so I thought I’d show him around. Sorry.” It’s almost a convincing lie, and I see the creases of suspicion on Coach Maverick’s forehead fading away.

  “You aren’t supposed to be in here,” Coach says, but then turns to Kai with keen interest. “Where did you transfer from?”

  Kai looks down at the floor and blushes a little as he admits, “Central, Sir.”

  “Ouch,” Coach says, placing a hand on his chest as though he’s been wounded. An enemy player standing in his own locker room . . . “You guys beat us good last weekend,” he acknowledges with an appreciative nod. “If you’re interested in playing for us, I’m sure I could find a spot for you. I’m not sure my guys would like it, though.”

  “No thanks, Coach,” Kai says. He glances up and smiles. “I’d much rather get hit by a bus.”

  Coach Maverick’s mouth parts in shock, but then it slowly transforms into a smile. “Alright, you guys really need to get out of here. Don’t snoop around again without my permission first.”

  He doesn’t need to tell us twice. Kai and I set off like rockets, bursting into a sprint the moment we walk out of the locker house. We’re laughing as we run, enjoying the t
hrill of our getaway, and we only slow to a stop when we’re back outside the school entrance. I bend over, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath between giggles.

  “Good work on the quick thinking,” Kai compliments, leaning back against the wall of the school building for support. He’s breathing heavily, his lips parted. “I thought we were totally busted there for a second.”

  I straighten up, finally recovered. “He totally believed me too. I swear, you can get yourself out of any situation just by feigning innocence.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Kai says. “Never admit anything, huh? I think this calls for some food.” He pulls out the swiped thirty bucks from his pocket and passes the notes to me.

  Our hands brush together and we both freeze in the moment, caught out by the feeling of his skin against mine. I stare at our hands together, only the cash between them, and wonder what it would be like to really hold his hand properly. I fight the urge to drop the dollar bills and interlock our fingers.

  We both glance up. Kai gives me that smirk again, the same one he gave me when we met in the office yesterday, though I swear I see him blush as he pushes the cash into the palm of my hand and then steps back.