Haters

by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

  “People like what?” I ask.

  “Losers,” says Brianna.

  “Total losers,” says Jessica. “We really want to be friends with you. Okay? You’re cool. And I just know you’re going to rock at fashion design.”

  “Fashion design?” I say. I have zero interest in fashion design.

  “Yes. That’s your cool thing that you do. But there are a few corporate laws you need to know about.”

  “Laws?”

  “Laws,” says Brianna. “Jess even wrote them down.”

  “If you want to go in public with someone,” Jessica says, “you have to make sure it’s someone who’s going to improve our image. Not just yours. All of ours.”

  Brianna nods like a fool. I wish Janet were here, because she would slap these girls silly. Me? I can’t speak. I don’t know what to say. I mean, it’s tempting to be part of their group. They’re very powerful. But I don’t want to have to change to fit in with them. I don’t want to piss them off, either. I’ve been down that path already, and it almost got me killed. It’s like being around a lion. You want to keep it well fed so it doesn’t see you as food.

  “The other thing is, I’m not so sure four is a good number for our company.” Jessica looks at Brianna. They share a wicked smile. “So we’re maybe going to replace Haley with you.”

  “Replace her?” I ask. “How can you just replace a friend?”

  “She’s getting a little weird for us,” says Jessica. “All those beads and the whole turban thing. She’s, like, way ethnic.”

  I can’t find a word to say. What’s wrong with ethnic?

  “Totally,” says Brianna. “Ethnic is so last year.” I doubt she even knows what the word “ethnic” means.

  Jessica nods and makes a face like it doesn’t matter. “I haven’t decided about it yet, so don’t say anything to her. For now let Haley think she’s still one of us. Anyway, so, you can go now, if you understand the rules and the laws.”

  “I understand them.” I’m about to say I don’t agree with them, but something stops me. The amulet in my pocket. It’s getting warmer than ever. I’m in danger. I feel that very clearly. I have the urge to remain quiet and let this scene play itself out.

  “But before you go, I have an errand for you,” says Jessica. An errand? Like I’m her servant?

  She snaps her fingers, and Brianna jumps up and gets a piece of paper from the top of the desk in one corner. She skips back to the bed and jumps on it.

  “Ouch,” says Jessica. “I told you no bouncing, Bree. God.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.” Brianna clutches her breasts, as if they are the only thing in her universe capable of bouncing.

  Jessica rolls her eyes at me. “Brianna forgets a lot of things. But she looks hot on the beach. She improves our image that way.”

  Brianna holds out the paper for me. I reach across Jessica and take it. It’s a letter to her from the co-captain of Jessica’s racing team, listing the name of the girl who is going to replace her in the regional finals, which are going to be held next week.

  “Obviously, I can’t race. Lori McCafferty is my official substitute rider.” Jessica rolls her eyes in disgust. “She’s this total bitch from North County San Diego, Vista. Inland.”

  “We hate her,” says Brianna.

  “But she doesn’t know that,” says Jessica.

  “What does this have to do with me?” I ask.

  “So,” Jessica grins viciously. “When I wiped out, it got me thinking. Accidents happen. You know? They don’t always kill someone. But they happen.”

  I feel my blood slow into a thick, cold glue. “What are you saying?” The amulet warms more, and I get a fuzzy vision of a girl with long blond hair wiping out on a motorcycle. The fuzzy visions usually never happen, they’re just powerful wishes on the parts of powerful people.

  Jessica re-applies lip gloss in a mirror held by Brianna. “I’m not saying anything except that accidents happen and that our company might want to think about how an accident might happen to Lori. Nothing too bad. Just a little accident so she knows she isn’t going to take my place forever.”

  Now I really don’t know what to say. I want to dial 9-1-1. But that’s not an option.

  Jessica looks at me like she doesn’t comprehend my reaction. “Don’t worry. We do things like this all the time. No one has to know it was us.”

  “I don’t understand?” I ask. “You want her to fall?”

  Jessica looks at Brianna. “You know, Bree, I think we might want to keep these plans to ourselves until Paski gets acclimated to our corporation.”

  “Sure,” says Brianna. “What’s ‘acclimated’?”

  Jessica turns back to me. “Forget I said anything about Lori.”

  “Forget it?”

  “Yeah. It was probably a bad idea.” She yawns, but seems extremely alert to my reactions. “I’m pretty tired now, so if you guys don’t mind, I’m going to take a nap.”

  “You want us to go now?” asks Brianna.

  “Yes, please,” says Jessica. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “We have to go now,” Brianna tells me. We get up to leave and walk toward the door of the room.

  Before we exit, Jessica calls, “Paski?” I turn to see her smiling. “You know what? You’re so much like me, I think it’s better for us to be friends than enemies.”

  “Oh?” I ask, wanting so badly for it to be ten minutes from now.

  “Totally,” she replies. “Because if we’re enemies, you never know what we might end up doing to each other. You are with us, aren’t you?”

  I close my eyes and wait for a feeling to come from the amulet. It’s telling me to go along with this for now. To tell her I’m with them. “Yes, of course.”

  “You are part of our corporation?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Excellent.”

  “Totally,” says Brianna.

  Jessica waves like a beauty queen. “Okay, bye-bye, guys. I’m so happy, Paski. As long as we’re allies, it’s all good.”

  I smile and nod, but what I think is: I might like to ride bikes, and I might be in love with Chris Cabrera. But other than that, I’m nothing like you, Jessica Nguyen.

  As Mrs. Nguyen hugs me goodbye, I realize that this mother is the opposite of her daughter. I wonder if Mrs. Nguyen knows. I also wonder how it’s possible for Jessica to be even more dangerous bedridden than she was when she walked among the rest of humankind.

  37

  On Monday I ride my bike to school, and I’m surprised when Chris rolls up on a bicycle, too. He pedals up right as I’m locking mine and smiles at me from under his bike helmet. He’s wearing jeans again, with a long-sleeved red thermal-underwear shirt with a white T-shirt over it.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, ecstatic to see him.

  “You inspired me,” he says.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, girl. Why waste gas when you can ride?”

  He locks his bike up next to mine, putting his lock through my tire and his. I look at him in confusion, and he tells me that he wants me to teach him how to ride on hills after school. “You’re not getting away until you show me all your tricks,” he says.

  “I can’t do anything after school,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got the newspaper.”

  “Oh, right. That’s okay. I’ll wait.”

  And then we walk through the humid morning air to the building, past the smoking Goth kids, past the chatting cheerleaders. As usual, we bump into each other, shoulders, hips, legs. Bump, bump. I feel like I can’t get close enough to him. It feels like hunger or thirst, this thing I feel for Chris Cabrera. After the third bump, Chris laces his fingers with mine and holds my hand.

  Gulp.

  We walk across the courtyard and through the halls toward our lockers, holding hands, declaring to the entire school that we are officially an item. People stare and whisper. Chris is only, like, the hottest guy in school. M
y chest feels like it’s full of light, expanded with pride and excitement. After we stop at our lockers, we go to Mr. Big’s class.

  We enter class holding hands, and I’m shocked and sickened when I see Andrew Van Dyke sitting in his usual seat, all spiked blond hair and pale yellow polo shirt with a pink-ribbon pin for breast cancer awareness. Is he trying to make a statement? What a weird thing for him to wear. He smiles at me like there’s nothing different about him being here. Instinct kicks in, and I want to run away.

  “Hey, dawg,” he says to Chris. He twists his hand around like he’s a gang member or something.

  Chris nods at him, mostly out of surprise, but doesn’t speak.

  “Oh, it’s like that?” says Andrew.

  “Yeah, it’s like that,” says Chris.

  Andrew slouches lower in his seat, spreads his feet wider, and laughs like it doesn’t bother him, but I can tell it does. Everyone looks at him like he’s diseased or evil. But I also feel almost sorry for him. I realize in that moment, that I am no longer that kid.

  Andrew Van Dyke is.

  After school, Tina comes flapping over to my locker in her oversize black trench coat, holding a framed photograph of her and her beloved Cesar. She grins like a crazy woman and leans to one side.

  “Isn’t he dreamy?” she says, sarcastic with the old-fashioned word but not with its meaning. She is completely in love with this guy. Why? What does she see in him? I look at the photo, and I swear Cesar looks brain-dead. I look at her nose. She has a new piercing. She now has studs in each nostril.

  “You wanna go get coffee and visit him?” she asks. “He has a cute friend I could introduce you to.”

  I stash the books I don’t need and put the ones I do need into my backpack. “Can’t. Newspaper.”

  “Oh!” Tina hops up and down in her big red Doc Martens. I’ve never seen her so peppy. “I’m coming with you! I forgot.”

  I close my locker and start down the quickly emptying hall toward Miss Munn’s room. Tina flaps along beside me like some kind of manic, hungry love machine. I don’t understand her whole obsession with a grown man. It’s sort of creeping me out.

  “You don’t need to protect me all the time,” I tell her. “I’ll be fine. You can go see Cesar.”

  “Please.” Tina looks at me with a smile. “I’m not going to the newspaper for you.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Nah. I’m giving Sydney some cartoons.”

  “She talked you into it?” I ask.

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s great, Tina!”

  We enter the classroom, and everyone glances up briefly before continuing what they’d been doing before. Whew. I am officially no longer that kid. I find Sydney curled over a proof of the upcoming issue, a red pencil in her hand.

  “Hey, Sydney.”

  She looks up. “Hi, Paski! What’s up?”

  “Hello,” sings Tina. She fishes through her huge black tote bag and pulls out a spiral drawing pad. “For you,” she says.

  Sydney takes the book, looks through it, starts to laugh out loud. “These are great!” She jumps up and hugs Tina. “Thanks!”

  “So what’s going on with you?” Sydney asks me.

  I sit at the table with her. “Well, there’s some news on the big regional race. This girl named Lori McCafferty from another school district is taking Jessica’s place.”

  “And?”

  “Do you still want me to cover it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” As I speak, I get an extremely vivid vision of the blond girl falling off the motorcycle, only this time I’m pretty sure she’s dead. I shiver.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks me. “You okay?”

  “What do you mean?” I try to smile. I don’t want to tell people about the visions anymore. Not unless I know them really, really well.

  Tina looks over at us. “She’s having a vision,” she declares. I now regret having told Tina about my “gift.”

  “A what?” asks Sydney.

  “Nothing,” I say. “So, I’ll just go and start doing some research on one of the free computers.” I try to sound totally normal.

  But Sydney is perceptive. She stares at me. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “No,” I lie, thinking of Lori’s motorcycle coming apart at the seams as she races. I think of how Haley didn’t believe me about my ability. About how most people think I am crazy when I mention it. I’m not telling anyone about it anymore. I’m retiring from the psychic business. That’s that. I say, “Everything’s fine. Really.”

  38

  Chris and I ride along the path behind school, all the way to the canyon. He’s as graceful on his bike as he is on the motorcycle. Until this moment, riding my bike has been a solitary thing, a time to think and feel, and for some reason, it has been the time I’m most likely to be in touch with my spiritual side. It’s gotten hot out, and he’s changed out of his jeans into shorts.

  Chris is as playful and fearless on his bike as I am on mine, and the simple sight of him in his shorts and tank top, riding and smiling, his leg muscles flexing under his tanned, fuzzy skin, makes me crazy. He’s amazing. How do you describe this feeling? It’s like looking at something really delicious when you’re starving. I want him. Big-time.

  We get to the quiet place where the buffalo and coyotes revealed themselves to me, and without me telling him anything about it, Chris stops. He takes a drink from his water bottle and looks around. “How about here?” he asks. “Take me off the path. Teach me to ride like Paski.”

  I get chills. “Are you sure?”

  “Entirely sure.”

  I lead him through the shrubs and over rocks, going easy at first. He’s skilled enough to stay right behind me, no matter how fast I go. So I turn it up a little. And I keep turning it up. We cruise up the hills and fly back down. After two hills on which Chris even passes me, I stop. I straddle the bike and look at him with a huge smile.

  “What?” he asks, smiling back and circling around me on his bike, a total show-off.

  “You’re such a punk,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Because you asked me to bring you up here to teach you to ride hills, but you’re already good.”

  He gasps as if this were news to him, sarcastic.

  “Why would you do that?” I ask.

  He stands over his bike right next to me. “That’s easy,” he says. “I wanted to see you sweat.” He touches my arm. “I like how your skin feels when you sweat. Kind of clammy, kind of slick.”

  The feel of his fingers on me is electric. “You’re a punk,” I repeat in a whisper. I don’t mean to whisper, but honestly? I can’t speak. I am completely overwhelmed with longing for this guy.

  “I’m a punk who really likes you,” he says. He kisses me, and the kiss lasts a long time. He looks in my eyes when we finish and says simply, “I want to spend as much time as I can with you. I wanted to come out here to watch you ride. There’s nothing as beautiful in the world as your body on that bike.”

  My heart pounds like a million bird wings. I open my mouth, and the words come out small, in a hoarse whisper, truer than any I’ve ever said. “I think I might, uh, I mean I, I really like you, too.”

  “Let’s go back to my house,” he says. He moves in and nibbles my neck, kisses my shoulder. Heat fills my body. “My parents won’t be home for a few hours.”

  I inhale deeply and listen to the wind. I listen for an answer. I look over Chris’s shoulder to the top of the hill where I stood that day, alone with the visions, and I see the head coyote staring down at us with her warm yellow eyes.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go to your house.”

  39

  Chris lives in a beige, Mediterranean style house on a ridge with stables in the backyard and flowers and palm trees in the front yard. It’s a very nice house, from what I can see so far. His parents have a lot of money; I don’t know why this surprises me. I think it’
s because he doesn’t carry himself the way the other rich kids do. He’s more humble or something.

  I follow him to the side of the house, near the garage, where he gets off his bike and punches a code into a black box. I hear the garage door opening. This thing is huge, like, for six cars, and it’s got a gray floor that’s all shiny. It has shelves and drawers and Peg-Board with tools and things all perfectly arranged. We walk our bikes to one corner, next to a bunch of other sports equipment, all perfectly lined up and organized, and I lean my bike next to his. My heart is pounding. I don’t know what to do. I’ve kissed two boys, but I’m not exactly what you’d call an experienced girl. Something tells me Chris has a lot more experience than I do.

  I follow him through a door into a small room with benches on the floor and coats on the wall. We take off our shoes, and stash them under the bench. The house smells good, like apple pie baking. There are cute paintings on the wall, of bunnies and things, with lines like home sweet home underneath. Something a mom would put up. Something we’d never have in our home, only now, with Melanie coming along, we might?

  We go from the shoe room into the kitchen. It’s unlike most of the kitchens I’ve seen in Orange County so far, in that it’s very modern and sleek. The others have been more country or something. I’ve never seen counters like this, and I run my fingers over them. He tells me they’re made of stained concrete.

  “It’s really big in Europe. My mom’s from Spain, so, you know, she likes to get everything from over there. Even her jeans. She’s obsessed.”

  He gets a couple of glasses out of a cabinet and fills them with ice and water from the door of the stainless steel refrigerator. I thank him, and we stand at the island in the middle of the kitchen, drinking. I’m sweating so much it drips down the sides of my face. Chris is sweating, too. He grabs some paper towels and gives me some.

  “You are so sexy, sweaty,” he says.

  “That’s gross,” I say.

  “Nah, it’s sensual.” He leans over and sniffs me. He is European, I think. Don’t they like body odor over there more than we do here? I can smell him, too, and even though he’s damp, he doesn’t stink. He smells like earth and ocean, actually. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like a clean sweat, with something chemical in it that makes my body tense up and fill with excitement. Chris sets down his glass and moves closer. He presses his body against mine. I set down my glass, too, and wrap my arms around him. His lips touch mine, and we kiss. And kiss. His kisses are gentle, searching, warm, amazing. I feel heat in my belly and between my legs. He presses against me harder, and I let my lips brush across his cheek, then his ear. As I nibble his earlobe, he lets out a little groan. I move my lips to his neck and taste the salt of him. Oh. My. God.