Hunted

by Dean Murray

  The most annoying thing that happened during the game was the way that Tristan looked me up and down every time our defense was on the field. There wasn't anything I could do other than ignore him and hope that Cindi didn't notice, but I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the other girls noticed and said something to her.

  We won the game by two touchdowns, which was quite the feather in Tristan's cap since the first-string quarterback was still out with an injury. I still knew pretty much nothing about football, but I suspected that we were going to have a really good team next year with the way that he was playing. It was a perfect example of the fact that being good at football doesn't mean you're a decent human being.

  This school was big enough to have a locker room for the visiting team, but only one. Miss Winters had told us that the football coach had agreed to let us use it first, so once the game ended I just headed in to change. The rest of the girls pretty much all made an instant beeline towards our football team.

  Predictably Cindi was practically hanging off of Tristan's arm, but I didn't want any part of that. Besides, I figured it would be better to get changed back into street clothes by myself before the rest of them all came into change. The less interaction I had with the other girls the better as far as I was concerned.

  I was most of the way changed before they struck. I was in the middle of pulling my white tank top over my head when I heard giggling and an odd hissing sound. A split second later I felt a trickle of liquid running down my back and I realized that the hissing had come from one of those cheap squirt guns you buy at a dollar store. I pulled my tank top down and turned to see what was going on, but they'd already turned and run out of the locker room. I caught a flash of blue, but didn't see enough to identify them.

  I reflected that it seemed like a pretty lame prank and ran my hand across my back so that my top would soak up the water. It wasn't until I saw the black on my hand that I realized that I hadn't been sprayed with water. A quick trip over to one of the mirrors revealed what looked like black ink staining the bottom of my hair and the back of my shirt.

  I wanted to cry and scream all at the same time, but I just grabbed some paper towels and used them to blot the worst of it off of my top so that it wouldn't run onto my jeans. My tank top had actually protected the top of my head, but the bottom inch and a half of my hair had turned a splotchy, streaky black.

  I used some more paper towels in an effort to try to strip off the worst of the ink, starting at the top with a clean paper towel and working down so that I didn't spread the ink further up. It probably would have been quicker to just strip back down and wash my hair, but I wanted to make sure that I had plenty of evidence to show Miss Winters and I was pretty sure that it was going to take hairspray or some kind of specialized cleaner to get the ink out anyways.

  I cleaned my hands off, grabbed my stuff, and then headed back outside. A mostly-full garbage can had the squirt gun lying on the top of it along with the plastic gloves that they'd used to keep the ink from staining their hands.

  Pretty much the entire squad except for Cindi and Sheree were lined up outside, just kind of standing around inconspicuously, but I knew that they were there just so they could see me come out covered in ink. I was suddenly very glad that I hadn't started crying or yelling. I didn't want to give any of them the satisfaction.

  Miss Winters showed up before anyone said anything and her eyes went super wide.

  "Adri, what happened?"

  "Someone from our squad sprayed me with ink while I was getting changed. I didn't see them well enough to be able to tell who they were, but they were wearing blue uniforms."

  I was pretty sure that the school paid Miss Winters a little bit to coach us, but mostly she paid the bills by working as a cosmetologist during the day. What had been done to me wasn't just wrong, it probably insulted her professional sensibilities. She looked at me for a couple more seconds with her mouth open than then closed it with an audible click.

  "Let's get you taken care of, Adri. The rest of you girls stay right here. I don't want you in there with us, and any girl who leaves to go home with her parents or someone else is off the squad, no questions asked. Once I've helped Adri I'm going to come back out here and we're all going to have a rather pointed discussion."

  I followed her back into the locker room. "I don't think that there's much we can do, Miss Winters. The ink isn't going to come out with just soap and water. It will just have to wait until I make it home."

  She looked positively miserable. "How long has this been in your hair, Adri?"

  "I don't know, maybe ten minutes."

  "Sweetie, it's not ink. It's hair dye, I can tell by the smell."

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I tried to stop myself from completely losing it.

  "It's been too long, hasn't it?"

  "More than likely. If you had darker hair maybe not, but your hair is so light that it will have had some effect by now."

  Apparently my distress was more evident than I meant for it to be because she rushed to reassure me.

  "Don't worry though, I've fixed worse than this. We can bleach it back out so that you're a blonde again, or we can change it to pretty much whatever color you would like."

  I shook my head. A few of the girls at school had used Miss Winters to color their hair and I knew that she did a good job, but I also knew that there wasn't any way that she could recreate the sheer depth of the high and lowlights in my hair. She'd probably get a good match for my base hair color, but even then it wouldn't be quite right.

  I'd never realized just how vain I was. I'd told myself for years that I didn't care what other people thought, that what was on the inside was more important than what was on the outside, but that wasn't quite true. My character was the most important thing, but I did care how I looked and for years my hair had been the one physical attribute that I'd been proud of.

  Other girls bleached their hair in an effort to make it look like mine did naturally, but no matter how hard they tried it was never as rich as mine. If I bleached it then I'd be making myself look just like all of them. I'd look like just another artificial blonde cheerleader who wasn't happy with the color that nature had given her. They would be winning.

  "Can you just cut off the ends instead? Turn it into a bob, or if there isn't enough unstained hair, maybe you can do a pixie cut."

  She was backing away from me now with her hands raised. "Let's not do anything hasty, Adri. Cutting your hair isn't something you should do on the spur of the moment like this. Let's just get the dye rinsed out enough that you won't get it all over your other clothes and the bus. We can figure out where to go from there tomorrow or Sunday after you've had a chance to think things over."

  She was right and I knew it. It was stupid to just hack my hair off like this, but a wave of stubbornness washed through me. I didn't dig my heels in very often, but when I did nobody had ever managed to budge me.

  "I'm not going back out there like the ugly stepsister because that will mean that whoever did this to me has won. I want to go out there like they didn't manage to get to me. If you won't do it then I'll cut the ends off myself. I think I've got some nail clippers in my bag."

  I set my bag down and started rummaging through it. Miss Winters took a deep breath and then put her hand on my arm.

  "If you're that determined then I'll cut it for you, just please, please, please make sure you're positive that this is what you want to do."

  "I'm sure."

  "Okay, I came directly from work and I was bringing my scissors home so I could cut my niece's hair. I'll go send someone for them."

  She left the locker room and I thought I could hear snatches of conversation as she ordered one of the girls to go get her bag.

  Whoever she sent must have run because she was back in less than five minutes. Miss Winters sat me down on one of the hard wooden benches and pulled out her scissors.

  "This is your last chance to change
your mind, Adri."

  "It's okay, just go ahead, please."

  I'd heard that she was good, but I was surprised at how quickly she worked. The black ends fell to the floor in rapid succession despite the obvious care she was taking to make sure she didn't let any of it fall on my jeans.

  She then wiped her scissors clean on a paper towel, and started in on the undamaged hair. The whole process took less than twenty minutes after which she let out a deep breath.

  "Okay, it's done. If you come by my house tomorrow I'll finish cleaning it up for you and I'll show you how to style it, but that's as much as I want to do tonight and the guys are no doubt starting to get antsy."

  I nodded. I'd actually forgotten that the football team still needed to change. I just wanted to sit there, but I forced myself to go stand in front of the mirror. My hair had been just barely past my shoulders and almost completely straight. I'd been trying to grow it out for almost a year now. Before then I'd kept it a little shorter so that Cindi and I had almost the same hairstyle.

  It was short now, shorter somehow than I'd expected it to be even though Miss Winters had done exactly what I'd asked her to do. I looked at the golden strands that now framed my face and told myself once again that I wasn't going to cry. It was short, but it was still my color.

  "Thank you, Miss Winters. It's perfect."

  I was sure that she heard at least a little bit of the lie in my voice, but she'd probably heard the same tremor in the voice of hundreds of girls over the years who'd gone in and asked for an extreme change and then second-guessed the decision after it was too late to do anything about it.

  "I'll give you a few minutes to change into something that isn't ruined."

  I couldn't get my voice to work so I just nodded and then watched as she walked out of the room. There wasn't a good way to get my tank top off without getting more dye on my hair or other clothes, so I just stripped back down and slid it down far enough that I could step out of it.

  Five minutes later I was dressed again. Jeans still, but I was back into my shell and my sports bra as everything else was ruined. I looked at my tank top and bra for a couple of seconds and then just threw them into the garbage on my way out.

  The football team and the guys from the cheer squad were all lined up waiting to use the locker room. I mustered what I hoped was a genuine-looking smile.

  "It's all yours, gentlemen."

  Tristan looked me up and down again as he walked past, and Jackson gave me an indecipherable look, but nobody else seemed to really even notice that I'd just lost half of my hair. Miss Winters was standing with the rest of the girls just around the corner of the school.

  "Adri, why don't you go for a walk? You don't need to hear what I'm about to say to the rest of the team. Sheree, you can go with her if you'd like."

  I shook my head. "I'm fine. Someone can just call my cell when you're ready to go."

  I turned around and went back the other direction. The team was between me and the football field, so just going to the bleachers was out. I didn't particularly feel like going back to the bus either, so I just kept walking along the edge of the school until I found a bench.

  I felt like I was in shock, which was stupid, but I hadn't realized that the other girls hated me this much. If things kept escalating then eventually I'd have to just quit the team and hope that doing so didn't make me stand out too much when the Native American, the wax lady or the old man came calling.

  I kind of lost track of time, but I felt something changing in me as I sat there. I wasn't just in shock now. I was starting to get mad. The other girls on the team had no right to be so mean to me. They were trying to get me to quit the team, but I didn't want to quit.

  I didn't love cheering, not really, but I loved spending time with Jackson and I still had some hope that being on the team would help me patch things up with Cindi. Besides, I really wanted to see how good I could get at stunting.

  "Adri, are you okay?"

  I looked up to find that Tristan of all people was approaching me.

  "I'm fine, and I haven't changed my mind about dating you. Please go away."

  He shook his head at me. "You don't have to be so hardcore about everything. Look, I heard what happened and wanted to say that I'm sorry. If you want I can find out who did this. Plenty of guys on the team are dating girls on your squad. If I ask around one of them will find out who did it. Girls talk."

  I was surprised. I hadn't thought that Tristan was that insightful, or that he'd even care. Of course he was probably just trying to get in my pants, but even so I hadn't been expecting it.

  "I don't know. I guess go ahead and find out, but don't tell me who did it unless I ask. I'm not sure it would be good for me to know."

  "Okay, it's your call."

  I heard footsteps and turned to find Jackson approaching. He gave me a slow smile. "You look gorgeous."

  My cheeks tried to heat up, but I clung to my anger.

  "Thank you, but right now I want to be mad and you reassuring me doesn't help with that."

  Tristan stood a bit closer to me as though staking out his territory. "Why don't you get lost, Jackson?"

  "Because she'd rather be with me than with you."

  Any points that Tristan might have earned by offering to find out who had sprayed dye on me disappeared as he stepped away from me and into Jackson's space. It was obvious that he was gearing up for a fight, but it wasn't something he was doing for me, it was one hundred percent for his own ego.

  "If you seriously start a fight with Jackson then I'll never talk to you again, Tristan."

  "You've already said that you won't date me, so that's not exactly the most effective threat anyone has ever come up with. Besides, I've wanted to beat the tar out of Jackson for months."

  "You can try. It's actually better this way because it means I've got a witness who can make sure everyone understands that you started this."

  Jackson's words came out strangely unconcerned. I'd seen a couple of fights start over the years, and usually the two guys involved had to work themselves up to fighting. Jackson wasn't getting worked up, but I was positive that he was ready to fight.

  "You really think you can narc me out after I beat you down and there won't be any consequences?"

  Jackson shook his head. "No, it's more like I hate dealing with the authorities after I hospitalize someone. It's always better when I can point out that it was self-defense."

  It was like he'd poured gas on a forest fire. Even I knew that Tristan couldn't back down after a statement like that. I did the only thing I could think of to stop the fight. I stood up and walked away.

  "This isn't about the two of you, this is supposed to be about me right now. If you want to fight then fight, but I'm not going to sit here and watch. You're not going to impress me or have a witness to tell the cops who started what."

  I didn't look back, but a second later two sets of footsteps started following me. They caught up to me all too quickly, Jackson walking on my right side, Tristan walking on my left.

  Out of the corner of my eyes I saw Tristan open his mouth, but I already knew it was going to be some lame attempt to justify what he'd been doing.

  "Don't even start with me, Tristan. You screwed up, deal with it like a man and accept it. Maybe then you'll start to grow on me a little."

  Whatever he might have said in response was preempted by a muffled scream. I took off at a run without even thinking about the fact that it might be dangerous to get involved in whatever was going on. There were a couple of outbuildings a short distance away from the main school building and I was currently running around the side of what looked like a metalworking shop.

  I'd expected to find one or more guys assaulting some poor girl. I didn't expect to find one girl, a slender Hispanic, being punched and kicked by four other girls. Normally I would have just grabbed my phone and called 911, but the anger that I'd been nursing over what had been done to me flared into an incandescent point o
f brilliance. The parallels to this girl's situation and my situation were too close for me to just watch and wait for the police to get there.

  The building was nearly twenty yards long, but I covered the distance in a couple of seconds before they'd even realized they weren't alone any more. I grabbed the arm of one of the girls and shoved her into the side of the building to stop her from landing another kick.

  "Get off of her!"

  All four girls turned on me with a speed that took my breath away.

  "Get lost, wolf girl. If you leave now and keep what you saw to yourself we won't track you down and beat your head in."

  It took me a second to realize that she was talking about our mascot. I was still wearing my cheerleading shell, so it didn't take a genius to know which team I belonged to. I was slowly backing away, trying not to do anything to cause them to actually attack me, but they were following me, keeping the distance between us from growing.

  With a start I realized that all four girls were in red and white cheerleading uniforms. It took me a minute to remember that we'd played against the Waterford Red Devils.

  "Sorry, devil girl, but I can't just stand here and watch you kill her. If you have a problem with her, then come at her one by one after she's healed back up instead of just ganging up on her."

  The girl they'd been beating on had pulled herself up to a sitting position, but she still didn't seem very with it. I wanted to yell at her to make a run for it, but I knew that would just focus the attention of the cheerleaders back on her.

  I was starting to think of the girl who was doing all of the talking as the head cheerleader. She was so furious she was practically spitting.

  "You don't know anything about what's going on here. She looks like a normal girl, but she isn't. She's some kind of supernatural freak. Two of the football players we knew turned up dead after a party last week. She was the one they were last seen talking to. She ripped their throats out."