The Wrong Side of Kai

by Estelle Maskame

  “Hi, hooligans,” Maddie says with an air of superiority as she approaches.

  “Aren’t you technically a hooligan yourself now?” Kai challenges.

  She sets her eyes on Kai, glowering at him. “Shut it, new kid.”

  God, this is an odd trio. I never thought I’d be spending my Wednesday staying late after classes to riffle through the school’s filing system with Kai Washington, the new kid, and Madison Romy, the teacher’s pet. I stand up from my chair and join the two of them as Maddie breezes straight into the main office. Honestly, it doesn’t even surprise me that she helps out the office staff. She’s a total brown-noser.

  “Hi, Miss Hillman,” Maddie says, greeting the woman behind the main desk. Miss Hillman has worked at this school for decades and is sweet, but sweet can also mean naive. “These two have lost their class schedules, so I’ll print them some new ones.”

  Miss Hillman nods and gives us all a smile. I hope she doesn’t end up in trouble for this.

  Maddie guides the way across the main office, past Principal Stone’s office and toward the counselor offices at the back. There’s not much staff still here, most of them gone for the day.

  “Our files are kept back here,” Maddie explains, placing her hand on the door handle of Mrs. Delaney’s office. “And aren’t we lucky none of the counselors ever work late? God forbid you ever have a mental breakdown after school.” She double checks around us for any other administration staff that may be lurking, but the coast is clear. The three of us slip into Mrs. Delaney’s office unnoticed.

  Kai immediately throws himself down into the huge, plush chair. He swivels back and forth, touching all the items on Mrs. Delaney’s desk. I eye him in disapproval – I’m pretty sure leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime is a no-no in undercover missions.

  “What can we expect to find in these files?” he questions Maddie. He sits back and stares her down, drumming his fingertips together like some fancy CEO of a billion-dollar company.

  “For starters, we can find out why you’re even at this school,” she says, taking up position by the row of metal filing cabinets that line the wall. She bends to the floor and opens a drawer at the bottom, silently searching through the stack of files for a moment before she stands, a paper-thin file in her hands. She smiles at Kai and flicks the file open. “Ah,” she says. “Expelled from Westerville Central for fighting. Doesn’t surprise me, given that you were involved in a brawl at my house at the weekend. And Mrs. Delaney herself has noted that you’re overly confident and charming.” She looks up from the page. “The overly confident part is true. Charming? I disagree.”

  Kai stands from the chair and grabs the file from her, reading it for himself. “I’m an acquired taste,” he defends, skimming over the biography the school has put together about him.

  While I stand by the door to keep watch, I realize I’m focused more on Kai again than I am on any possible witnesses. His dark eyebrows pull together as he reads, his lower lip caught between his teeth. He may be an acquired taste for some, but of all the different personalities in the world, his is my favorite right now.

  “Vanessa, Mrs. Delaney thinks you might go off the rails,” Maddie says, stealing my attention away from Kai. My gaze flickers over to her, and she tosses a file across the room to me. I barely catch it. “And given that you’ve partnered up with Mr. Charming over here to ruin someone’s life, I think she’s right.”

  I look down at my own file. It’s thicker than Kai’s, but he’s only been at this school for three days, whereas I’ve been here for four years. I open it and skim over the first page. General details about me, like my date of birth and my address. Copies of all my report cards. A record of all my grades in each of my classes. A list of the colleges I’ve applied to. And then personal notes from each of my counselors over the years.

  Mr. Williams, the freshmen year counselor, wrote that I was excelling in all of my classes. That I was a well-mannered, polite, hard-working student who had transitioned seamlessly into high school.

  Mrs. Sinclair, the sophomore year counselor, wrote that my mom passed away during first semester. She notes that I missed an entire month of classes, and that I was now falling behind. That I needed extra support during this time, which, to Westerville North’s credit, I did receive. By the end of the notes on my sophomore year, Mrs. Sinclair talks about how much happier I seemed to be.

  Mr. Rogers, the junior year counselor, wrote that I was still falling behind in my classes, but that I was making no effort to catch up. I’d ended up in detention for the first time of many that year. Based on his notes, I was no longer a star student, but also not the worst either. I was somewhere in between, and not bad enough to be a cause for concern yet.

  And as if Mrs. Delaney, my current counselor, has a note that I focus more on the social aspect of school rather than the academic aspect. Like, how the hell would she know? Do the counselors hang out in the hallways and stalk our every move? Mrs. Delaney is apparently worried that I’m losing it like some wild child who doesn’t care anymore.

  I grind my teeth and look at Maddie. “Are they seriously allowed to keep all this information?”

  Maddie shrugs as she rummages through different drawers of the filing cabinet, presumably searching for Harrison’s folder. “A school’s got to know who its students are,” she says. “That’s how they keep tabs on who the potential psychos are. My bet is on Ryan Malone.”

  Kai and I exchange a look. He throws his file down on Mrs. Delaney’s desk and sits up, demanding, “Just give us Harrison’s file.”

  “Fine,” Maddie huffs. She slams the drawer shut and hands Kai the folder. “Here.”

  The three of us huddle around the desk, Maddie and I leaning over Kai’s shoulder, silently reading over the first page in unison. The entire office block feels eerily silent, as schools so often do after hours without the buzz of noise from its students, and it puts me on high alert. My body is tensed up and I’m trying not to breathe too heavily against Kai.

  Harrison has good grades in all his classes, just like I thought he did, and there’s lots of notes about his lifetime football stats, too. Kai flicks through the boring pages, desperate to get to the juicy stuff – and the juicy stuff is the personal stuff, the things only our counselors know about. Kai stops at a page of notes written by Mr. Rogers last semester.

  Harrison cheated on his SATs back in the spring.

  And the only reason Harrison wasn’t kicked off the football team was because Mr. Rogers decided, for Harrison’s sake, to keep things quiet because being caught cheating and being kicked off the football team would instantly ruin his chance at a scholarship – though it’s not like his parents can’t afford to send him to college. If it had been anyone else who was caught cheating, I bet Mr. Rogers wouldn’t have hesitated to take the appropriate disciplinary actions, but it seems he didn’t want Harrison’s parents kicking up a fuss. So, all Harrison got was a month of detention.

  Kai glances sideways at me, our mouths inches apart. He smiles. “Bingo.”

  Maddie gathers up the files from the table, both Harrison’s and Kai’s, then also grabs mine out of my hands too. She walks back to the filing cabinet and begins returning the folders to where they belong. I’d wondered why she was so willing to help us, but I think I know why. She has her own grudge against Harrison Boyd.

  “Maddie,” I say gently, but she doesn’t turn around, only shoves Harrison’s folder back into the “B” drawer. “Are you helping us because you hooked up with Harrison once?”

  She stiffens at the filing cabinet. “What?”

  “What?” Kai says, spinning around in Mrs. Delaney’s chair to stare bewildered at me.

  I continue to focus on Maddie. She’s frozen in place, rigid and unmoving. Slowly, I move across the office toward her. “What happened?”

  “He’s a jerk,” she mumbles, her voice cracking out of its usual high pitch. She speaks in a low murmur, blinking fast as though she’s fi
ghting back sudden tears. “I thought he really liked me. At least he told me he did, but that he didn’t want anyone to know about us until we were official. And he said we weren’t official until we slept together. He totally manipulated me. I was stupid, okay?” Her head snaps up to look at me, the sharp movement causing a tear to break free and roll down her cheek. “I wasn’t even ready for that in the first place, and then he never spoke to me again after it. I tried to pretend it didn’t happen, and I don’t think he told anyone, because I know that news would have spread through this school like wildfire if he had.” Her eyes narrow. “So how do you know?”

  “I had a hunch,” I say, only because I think it’ll upset her even more if she finds out he has a record of their encounter in his phone. And that she’s rated. I shake my head in disbelief. Harrison is worse than I thought. I feel stupid myself for actually believing he was a nice guy, but at least these new discoveries mean I can carry out my mission to ruin his life with zero guilt or remorse. “I’m sorry, Maddie. You’re right, he is a jerk. That’s why we’re doing this.”

  As I look at her, I see something in Madison Romy that I’ve never seen before. I see . . . myself. I see a girl who’s insecure and acts out to gain positive attention so that her peers like her, accept her, the same way I act out to gain any attention because I lack it from my dad. We aren’t different at all – we are totally the same. We both just want someone to pay us attention. And, I realize, maybe that’s why I’ve never particularly liked Maddie. Maybe all this time I’ve been projecting my thoughts about my own behavior onto her.

  Maddie wipes the tears from her cheeks and looks away again, storing my own file back into the unit. “Just make sure he doesn’t know I’ve helped, okay?” she sniffs, trying to get back some control. “I still like to be friends with him.”

  “You don’t need to be friends with everyone,” I tell her softly. God, I feel like a damn counselor myself. How did I go from feeling so hostile toward Madison Romy’s needy personality to feeling sorry for a girl who’s clearly vulnerable? It’s almost like realizing I feel sorry for myself, because it’s such a shame we’re resorting to such desperate measures rather than just allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open. “It’s better to be loved by a few than liked by many.”

  “Wow, that was kind of deep, Nessie. Did you read that on Facebook?” Kai pipes up from the desk. I fire him a glare. Way to ruin the moment.

  Maddie slots Kai’s folder back into the bottom drawer and then straightens up, her gaze meeting mine. Her smile is fragile, her eyes wet with tears. “You know, I never really liked you all that much. I’m sorry.”

  “The feeling’s mutual,” I say, and we both crack into quiet laughter, finally taking notice of one another for the first time. At the end of the day, we’re just two girls who have been screwed over by Harrison Boyd. We should be friends.

  Kai gets up from Mrs. Delaney’s chair and walks over, his stride as smooth as ever, eyes on Maddie. “It seems Harrison messes with everyone, so don’t take it personally. Think of it as a lesson learned. You’ll meet someone who does actually like you for yourself,” he tells her, offering his own reassurance to cheer her up. “Perhaps someone who’s overly confident and charming, like me. But I doubt you’d be that lucky.” He winks at her and slings an arm around her shoulders.

  Maddie laughs and rests her head on his chest for a moment. “Thanks, new kid.”

  How does he do that? How does he just do everything right, even when he’s doing the wrong thing? He’s so effortlessly charming, his sarcasm and wit so easily delivered, but he’s also genuinely nice when he needs to be.

  As the three of us leave the office block, the dynamic has changed, and I trail behind, struggling not to daydream of Kai’s lips against my own.

  13

  “Oh, yeah, for sure the criminal justice system is corrupt. How do those cops sleep at night knowing they’ve tampered with evidence and thrown two innocent people in jail? It’s so messed up,” Kai says, staring thoughtfully out my windshield. He’s become deeply invested in telling me all about his thoughts on the conspiracy theories involved in some crime documentary on Netflix. Also, he believes that Avril Lavigne died and was replaced by a lookalike. Riiiiight.

  “Any theories on aliens?”

  Kai looks over at me. “They exist. There’s definitely a UFO at Area 51.”

  I roll my eyes and toss a chip into my mouth, scouring the parking lot. We’re in the Green McRusty, parked beneath a row of trees outside Bob Evans. Harrison and his dad are already inside. We can see them from here, sitting in a booth by the window, eating burgers. Meanwhile, Kai and I are outside in the SUV with the heating up full, milkshakes in the cup holders, and a selection of snacks spread out between us. It’s like live entertainment, lying in wait for these “casual encounters” to turn up at eight. Still ten minutes to go.

  It’s fun just listening to Kai talk. The minutes are ticking by too fast. He’s so enthusiastic, his hands moving as he talks, and although I’m not completely sold on his conspiracy theories, hearing him talk about different subjects has made it the most interesting conversation I’ve had in forever. It’s so refreshing, for once, to actually be talking about something other than who hooked up with who, and did you see what so-and-so wore to school?

  I pull my legs up onto my seat and cross them, bumping my knees against my steering wheel. “Okay, new conspiracy: Harrison Boyd is actually the devil in disguise, and he acts like your typical sweet, popular kid with good grades in order to screw with girls.”

  “That’s not a conspiracy,” Kai says. “That’s a fact.”

  I laugh and reach for my strawberry milkshake, sipping it while I scan the parking lot once more. It’s a cold night outside, but it feels warm and cozy inside the car. Kai leans back in my passenger seat and kicks his feet up onto my dashboard where his phone sits propped up by CD cases. He’s streaming a recap of Monday’s NFL game, though he hasn’t been paying much attention to it.

  The Green McRusty has temporarily turned into our own personal campsite.

  “All this surveillance work is tiring,” Kai says. He reclines the passenger seat all the way back until he’s practically staring at the roof of the car. He grabs the bag of chips from between us and plants them in his lap. “Have you ever done anything like this before? All the sneaking around?”

  “No,” I admit, “but it’s kind of fun.”

  “That’s because you’re with me,” he says, turning his head to face me. He wiggles his eyebrows and shoves a handful of chips into his mouth. All I can hear is the crunching of potato chips and the drone of the football commentary.

  I stare back at him. “Yeah, it is.”

  “OH!” Kai leaps up from the seat, nearly spilling the chips all over the floor, and taps frantically at the window. “I recognize her from the app. That’s Samantha, I think. The ‘attractive older woman’. Ohhhh, man, this should be good.” He gets comfortable with his milkshake, loudly slurping the remnants.

  Talk about another ruined moment. It’s like the universe is conspiring against me.

  I rest my chin on the steering wheel and squint out the windshield at the dark parking lot. There’s a voluptuous figure making for the door of Bob Evans, her walk confident and full of anticipation. Yep, Samantha. No doubt about it. My breath catches in my throat as she walks through the door – it’s like watching an impending train wreck.

  “Maybe Chyna’s right,” I whisper in the silence. “Maybe we shouldn’t have dragged innocent people into this.”

  Kai casts a quick glance over at me. He puts his hand on my knee and leaves it there. “I mean, you’re right. But we can’t do anything about it now.”

  I stare at his hand on my body. My jeans are ripped at the knees, so I can feel his skin against my own. I feel like I’m twelve years old and my crush has just held my hand for the first time. I try to play it cool, try to focus on Samantha inside the restaurant, but all I can’t think about is that I wan
t to grab Kai’s hand and pull him closer.

  “Look!” Kai says, taking his hand back. He presses up so close against the window that his breath steams up the glass.

  Inside the restaurant, Samantha has made a move toward the booth, which Harrison and his father are occupying. Although distant, we can see the scene unfold through the restaurant windows – Samantha stopping at the booth, leaning over it, while Harrison and his father turn their heads up to look at her. It would be sweet if we could hear the words being exchanged, but it’s not hard to guess what’s being said in there. Harrison starts making frantic movements with his hands, his father rising up from the booth. Samantha glances around, confused, reminding me yet again that I’m an awful person. Finally, she storms out of the restaurant and unlocks a car at the other side of the lot, before speeding off. No doubt completely pissed off.

  “Can we, like, pay these dates for their troubles?” I ask Kai.

  Kai relaxes back in the passenger seat and furrows his brows at me. “You wanna pay people off?” I shrug, and the smile he gives me is gentle. “Okay, Nessie. I’ll message them later and apologize, but I don’t think we need to give them a peace offering . . . Hey, look, I think that’s another one!”

  I look outside again and, sure enough, there’s a figure in black skinny jeans and choppy bangs heading for the restaurant door – that must be Raven. It’s like a repeat of the previous few minutes. Emo kid walks over to the booth, Harrison becomes visibly furious, using hand gestures until Raven has no choice but to escape, flicking the Vs back at Harrison as they go.

  The third hook-up turns up immediately after. The same happens again, except Harrison gets up from the booth as if to shove his unwanted “date” away. But they don’t need telling twice. Kai is shoveling chips into his mouth at full speed, engrossed as though he’s watching a live fight on TV.

  “Oh shit, they’re coming out,” he says, slouching down in the seat as though we’ll be spotted.