by Arden, Alys
I moved quickly to the empty chair next to the boy. He was rubbing his head as if he expected something more to be there. It must have been a new cut.
Three fat files sat on Principal Campbell’s desk, one for each of us. I stared at the manila folder with my name on it. What about my life could possibly fill a two-inch-thick file?
“Dixie Hunter, Tyrelle Johnson, and Adele Le Moyne, you are the three displaced students who were carefully selected to join the junior class of the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Holy Cross, in your case, Tyrelle.” There was something about the tone in her voice that said we were not actually welcome – like someone had forced her to invite us to her party. I think only two of us picked up on it: Dixie smiled cheek-to-cheek as if she had just won the lottery, while Tyrelle adjusted his tie and slouched to one side in his chair, despondent. I was pretty sure I could see a tattoo under the edge of his cuff. This was someone I could get along with.
“I hope you understand what a stupendous opportunity you have been given, as we almostnever accept transfer students.” She slowly took her seat. “Nearly all the student body has received their entire education within these walls, so you have a lot of catching up to do. The Academy of the Sacred Heart holds the utmost standards when it comes to both academic performance and grooming virtuous young adults, and it is imperative that this standard is upheld both on campus and off. You are now a part of this prestigious institution, and that privilege does not go away when you walk out of the door.”
Do not fidget, I repeated in my head as she continued talking up the school. But I was completely uncomfortable, both physically and mentally. I had to concentrate just to sit up straight.
She only glanced my way once (at my messy bun, with total contempt) because she rarely took her eyes off Tyrelle. Her eyes kept dropping to his chest. I couldn’t see him doing anything offensive from my vantage, but I was too scared to move my head to get a real look. She said something in Latin, and I made sure to nod as affirmation of my attention.
“You must maintain an above-average grade point average, or you will automatically slip into academic probation. You will be expected to participate in extracurricular activities and to perform community service to ensure that your Ivy League college applications are impeccable. The Academy of the Sacred Heart has a 98% acceptance rate into the Ivies, and I won’t let anyone drag that record down. Do I make myself clear?”
We all nodded.
“Adele, we’re thrilled to have you transfer from Notre Dame International.”
I blinked my eyes repeatedly, trying to keep them from rolling at the pretentious mention of Notre Dame, where I had attended school for only two months, as opposed to NOSA, where I had been for over two years.
“We’ll expect great things from such a worldly artist.”
Worldly artist? These people really do choose to believe whatever they want. “Um, I’ll try not to disappoint.”
Dixie and Tyrelle both looked at me, equally unimpressed. I responded with an awkward smile.
“Well, I think I speak for the three of us,” Dixie said in a heavy Texas twang, “when I say that we are honored to be here, and I can’t wait to get involved with the Academy.” She sounded like a perfectly rehearsed pageant contestant. There was a long pause as she looked over to me and Tyrelle, as if it was our turn to suck up. Neither of us obliged.
Principal Campbell handed us each a thick handbook of the school’s policies and values, which we had to sign and date before she cut us loose into the sea of teenage pirañas.
* * *
We stood outside the office, examining our schedules.
“Well, I’m the token kid from the hood. How’d the two of you end up here?”
Now I could see the outline of a large gold chain underneath Tyrelle’s white button-down shirt and tie. I patted the hidden gris-gris against my chest.
“I have no idea how I ended up here,” I said. “I don’t even recognize my own life right now.”
“There are no tokens at the Academy,” Dixie enlightened us. “We all paid our way in, fair and square.”
“What’s fair and square about paying your way into something?” I asked.
She looked at me with total confusion, as if I had said something in Chinese, and then turned back to Tyrelle. “My family just moved here from Dallas. My father owns the third largest construction company in the South, and he says this place is a gold mine. Lots of things around here need reconstructing.”
I was speechless. I certainly hadn’t bought Dixie’s sickly-sweet Southern-girl act in the principal’s office, but I couldn’t understand how anyone could be so crass about the city’s fragile, post-Storm condition. Sadly, I suspected it wouldn’t be my last encounter with carpetbaggers moving to New Orleans to exploit the current state of affairs.
Dixie got no response from either of us, so she turned her back with a swirl of her skirt and flounced down the hall.
“And then there were two,” I said, watching her walk away with the misguided confidence of a teen beauty queen. I turned to Tyrelle. “What class do you have next?”
He looked me up and down for a few seconds, as if trying to figure out whether to trust me or not. I guess I didn’t meet his criteria, because he plugged in his earbuds and walked off, shaking his head in disgust.
Zero for two. If I couldn’t even befriend the two other displaced students, how would I ever win over the natives? The bell rang loudly.
Lockers slammed. The hands of couples tore apart, and cliques scattered like flocks of startled birds. I double-checked my schedule while the crowd thinned. I didn’t even need to look up from the paper to know that heads were turning as they walked passed me. Like Principal Campbell had said, “They rarely accept transfer students.”
Great.My first period was A.P. English, the senior-level class they had stuck me in since, coming from art school, I was ahead in humanities credits – as if I needed one more reason to stick out.
“Are you lost?” asked a tanned, dirty-blond guy with a polished voice. He stopped directly in front of me.
“Yeah, actually, could you tell me where to find classroom 317?”
He extended his hand, and I surrendered my schedule.
“It’s in the east wing.” He gestured for me to follow.
I became nervous. Is this some kind of trick, or is someone really being nice to me?He didn’t stare at me like all the other people in the hallway had been. I adjusted the bag on my shoulder and prepared to hustle, but he seemed utterly unconcerned about getting to class on time. We strolled.
“If you just explain where it is, I’m sure I can find it… so you don’t have to be late for class.” I peered at my schedule like it was a hostage between his fingers.
“Thurston.” He held out his other hand. “Thurston Gregory Van der Veer III.”
“Enchanté. Adele Le Moyne, NOSA transfer student,” I answered, with a firm shake. There was something about him that exuded elitism. Maybe it was his perfect diction, or maybe the way his perfectly straight back made him appear as if he’d had equestrian training since he was a toddler? Whatever it was, I felt like a total mismatch walking down the hall with him. The instant rubbernecking by the few students left in the hall only reinforced my feelings.
“So, when did they merge Holy Cross?” I asked, following him up two flights of stairs. Holy Cross was even closer to the levee breaches than NOSA.
“About two weeks ago.”
“Sorry about your school.”
“Luckily only a fraction of each school’s student body has returned post-evacuation, so this campus is not too overcrowded, yet. But I’m ready to get out of here.” He examined the rest of my schedule as we sauntered down the third-floor hall. “You’re a junior? In A.P. English? Only the best at the Academy, eh?”
Did I sense a hint of sarcasm?
“Yeah, well, don’t get too impressed. I’m also in the sophomore-level science class. So, I guess that means you’re a senior?”
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“Oui, we also have French III together. Wait a second, why do you only have four classes?”
Before I could answer, we arrived in front of the door marked 317.
“Well, thanks for showing—”
He opened the door and held it for me. “I apologize for our tardiness, Sister Cecilia. I found Miss Le Moyne wandering the hallways, lost.”
I tried to whisper, “Wait, you’re in this class, too?”
“How chivalrous of you, Thurston,” she replied with annoyance. “Oh, yes, Le Moyne, the junior.”
I felt my face turn red as all the ears in the class perked up at the mention of the lowly word.
“You can take the empty seat right here in the front row.”
I scurried to the desk, while Thurston took his seat on the other side of the room.
“Who is that girl?” someone whispered behind me.
“I don’t know, but I’m texting Annabelle.”
I sank into my seat, already regretting walking in the room with Thurston Gregory Van der Veer III. The one advantage to sitting in the front row was that if I didn’t turn my head, I couldn’t see the gossiping, glares, or other snide gestures. Adversely, my back felt exposed for anyone to stab, which escalated my paranoia.
My back.
My back was sore where Niccolò had caught me. I could still feel the imprints where his fingers had held me – they’d better not bruise.
“Before his metamorphosis,” said Sister Cecilia, “Gregor is alienated from his job, his family, his humanity, and even his own body. This is evident when he barely even notices his transformation…”
How could someone barely notice they had turned into a giant bug?
As hard as I tried to pay attention to the lecture on “Guilt and Sense of Duty,” I couldn’t stop thinking about Niccolò. I couldn’t get the image of his bloody mouth out of my head. More importantly, was I being followed before I bumped into him? The thought made me shudder.
* * *
“Welcome to Sacred Heart. I’ve just arrived from Holy Cross – maybe we can figure out this place together?” Mrs. Burg joked when I entered Pre-Cal.
My classmates seemed unimpressed by my instant bond with our math teacher. I chose a seat in the middle, not wanting to insult her by going straight to the back row. I had arrived with plenty of time, but that wasn’t going to make my assimilation any easier. Now I had to fill the awkward minutes before class started. I opened my notebook and began sketching out theSacré Cœursymbol.
Five girls entered the classroom together.
A gorgeous girl with thick, auburn hair and perfect, creamy skin walked a beat ahead of the rest. I sensed all eyes follow her from the doorway across the room. Dixie Hunter walked directly behind her, talking excitedly. Jealousy plagued me – two and a half hours into the day and Dixie was already hobnobbing with the inner circle? Had this chick arrived with some kind of popularity manual that I was not privy to? Désirée trailed behind them, uninterested in whatever Dixie was babbling about.
I sat up straight. Would Désirée actually acknowledge me in front of her friends?
The redhead walked straight to my desk. The group followed suit, creating a cloud-like clique hovering over me. Dixie and I were the only ones who seemed surprised by their pit stop.
None of them said a word. They just looked me up and down, probably trying to figure out if they had prejudged me correctly. Désirée rolled her eyes in boredom.
I stood up so I’d feel less like I was being preyed upon.
“Nice bag,” Dixie said in a sweet voice wrapped in bitchy sarcasm.
All eyes went to the black canvas tote hanging on the back of my seat. The girls standing around me were all carrying leather ranging from Vuitton to Hermès. I immediately regretted not unpacking the Chanel bag ma grand-mère had bought me in Paris.
No expensive bag is going to make you one of these princesses, Adele.
The redhead touched the canvas and examined the barely noticeable, hand-painted fleur-de-lis – the bag’s only marking.
“It’s from this season’s Mode à Paris.” She shot Dixie a look of disapproval, and for the second time that day I saw confusion sweep over Dixie’s face.
“That’s Fashion Week in Paris,” Désirée translated for her.
“How’d you come across one?” asked the redhead.
“I went to the Comme des Garçons show,” I replied as if it wasn’t a big deal, even though it had been the most exciting twenty minutes of my life. I didn’t feel the need to tell her I had actually PA’d the show, or that the stage manager had swiped the swag bag for me as a thank you for the abuse I had suffered during the twenty-two straight hours of manual labor I had contributed for free.
The redhead looked impressed, but the moment was fleeting; I could see her begin to mull over the question of whether or not I was a threat.
“She just got back from Paris a couple of weeks ago,” Désirée said, throwing me a bone.
“Bienvenue au Sacré Cœur. Je m'appelle Annabelle Lee Drake.”She smiled and went to her seat before I had a chance to respond.
Dixie was in a total state of shock at how quickly the tables had turned. I couldn’t help myself and gave her a tiny don’t mess with me look, which Désirée caught – she cracked a smile, which felt like a major score, considering the only other time I had seen Désirée smile was around Gabe. As they walked to their seats, she turned to me with a look that said: don’t say I didn’t warn you about Annabelle Lee.
“That’s the girl who was hanging all over Thurston this morning,” came a voice from behind.
I turned around to find the girl pointing at me. Hanging all over Thurston? We’d barely exchanged fifty words! My pen shot off my desk.
“Sorry!” I said to the pimple-faced boy who handed it back to me.
If they were purposefully whispering loud enough to get a rise out of me, it was definitely working. I closed my eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, and focused all of my attention on the logarithmic functions being drawn on the chalkboard.
Chapter 17 Downtown Boys, pt 1
As soon as the bell rang, I practically skipped off campus, elated to miss the terror that was the lunchtime cafeteria and go to my mentoring session, but I came to a halt when I got to the street – I hadn’t thought about getting home from school without Désirée. The St. Charles Streetcar line wasn’t close to operational. I contemplated calling my father, but I was curious about how the rest of this side of town had weathered the Storm and decided that three miles wouldn’t kill me.
Walking in public wearing the Catholic school uniform made everything feel even more surreal; the fact that I had survived my first day at Sacred Heart only exacerbated the weirdness. The fact that it hadn’t been that bad made me nervous, like the calm before the storm. I plugged in my headphones, floated my phone from my pocket, and searched for happy music. By the time I reached the desolate streets of the mostly abandoned Warehouse District, I had already forgotten about the catty girls.
It was easy to identify which houses had residents who had returned post-evacuation. The garbage-collection service hadn’t started back up, so the occupied buildings had mounds of trash sitting outside them on the curb. Dismantled storm boards, fallen trees, uprooted shrubs, piles of ruined sheetrock, moldy furniture, and boxes and boxes of books, clothes, and toys beyond salvageable – all stacked up in hill-sized heaps twice my height. Even the pop music couldn’t change the sullen atmosphere as I passed by one blighted building after another.
When I arrived at our house, I found that our own trash mountain had grown considerably since I had left that morning. Several jars of dried paint told me that my father must have been cleaning out his studio. I pulled a thick bundle of canvases from the pile and unrolled the top layer. It was a sketch of the Mardi Gras masked ballerina. She always had a certain sadness to her – like she was dancing a tragic scene – but now water had dripped down the canvas and the charcoal had dried in streaks, ma
king her appear to have been weeping.
It made my own eyes well. My father had always been so attached to this piece of work, seeing him let go of it into a giant pile of garbage was not something I could deal with. I rolled the canvases back up and ran up to my bedroom to stash them, not wanting him to argue about me reclaiming them.
* * *
“Dad?” I yelled as I bounced back down the stairs.
Music poured from his studio. I opened the door to find a shirtless guy, who was certainly not my father, ripping down the remaining plaster from the damaged wall.
I tried not to stare, but it wasn’t often I came across a half-naked man in our house. His ratty jeans were covered in splatters of dried paint, and his light-brown hair was just long enough to fit into a tiny ponytail. I was watching the way the muscles in his back moved as he swung the sledgehammer when my father shouted my name from another room and caused the guy to turn around—
“What areyou doing here?” I asked, hearing the shock in my own voice.
The corners of Isaac’s mouth immediately turned up, and I crossed my arms in an aggressive stance.
“What areyou doing here?” he echoed.
“I live here!” I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked at finding Isaac in my house or at the tone of his upper body. Either way, I was at a loss for words.
“Nice uniform. I didn’t take you for the Catholic schoolgirl type.” He laughed. “I can’t believe you’re Mac’s daughter.”
What the hell? Isaac is on a first-name basis with my father?
“You expect me to believe this is just a coincidence?”
He held up his hands in innocence, although he didn’t really seem that surprised to see me. My father walked in from the hallway with two stools from the kitchen. “Isaac, keep your shirt on in front of my daughter, please.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Le Moyne—”
“I told you, call me Mac.”
Isaac grabbed a dirty, white T-shirt and stretched it over his shoulders. I snuck another glance of his chest as I grabbed my father’s wrist and pulled him into a corner. “What is he doing here?” I asked in a hushed voice.