“Liar. Hit it, girls.”
And then, laughing, a few girls on the dance squad pound the flats of their fists against the sides of the dumpster. It dawns on me that Siobhan’s inside it. That noise must be deafening to her in there. My mind flashes to their last formation, a pyramid formation with Siobhan on top. It would have been easy to unbalance the top girl, send her dropping wherever Amanda chose.
“What are you doing?” I cry, running over to Amanda.
The wind whips her chestnut hair about her. She grins proudly. “We did such a bad thing, Kat. We accidentally dropped Siobhan. You know, the way she dropped you once? Luckily, this comfortable dumpster was here to cushion her fall. I figured while she’s in there, she can admit she started the deathwatch group.”
“Amanda, let her out.”
“I’m not letting her out until she admits it,” Amanda says, her voice hard. She kicks her heel against the dumpster. “Admit it, Siobhan, and you’ll be out. Just say it. Three little words. ‘It was me’.”
“Amanda, stop this!” I tell her. “You can’t force someone to admit this. She’ll say anything to get out of there.”
“This isn’t just about you, Kat,” Amanda snaps, her eyes flashing. “She’s lying to me, too. I know it, you know it. She has to confess or she stays in the dumpster.”
“Okay!” comes the muffled voice.
I freeze.
“Okay, okay, it was me. I did it, okay? Let me out!”
Triumph floods Amanda’s face. She hops off the lid of the dumpster and pops it open. Siobhan scrambles out, her hair littered with bits of paper, tears smearing the mascara down her face. She recovers her feet, trembling all over.
“I hate you so much!” she shrieks. Not at Amanda, but at me. Then she runs from the field.
Most of the dance squad hangs back from the tumult. Amanda and her co-conspirators laugh and jeer after her. Amanda throws an arm around me. “I told you she did it.”
I throw off her arm. “Don’t pretend this was for me now.”
“Fine, it was for me. And it got results, didn’t it?” She flashes a smile. “Oh, and I think she’ll really get the point when she realizes there are no clothes to change into in her locker.” With that, Amanda twirls away, and claps her hands. “Okay, girls. Let’s get back to practice!”
Siobhan’s sobs float on the air as I walk down the concrete steps into the locker room. I find her huddled before a fogged-up mirror. She’s picking dumpster debris out of her hair.
“Are you okay?”
She glares at me. Her eyes are smeared black with old makeup. She obviously scrubbed her face. “Go away.”
“Do you need to borrow some clothes? Amanda said—”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Her voice is raw, her eyes full of hate. She’s begun sorting through what she can find of her stuff. Her backpack lies on the floor, her clothes scattered throughout the locker room. “You’ve done enough.”
“That wasn’t me. I haven’t done anything to you, Siobhan.”
“Oh, right. You’re like Mother Theresa.” She rears back, a contemptuous smile on her face as she stares at me in the mirror. “You think you’re so wonderful and saintly because you’re just so nice to everyone. The truth is, you don’t need to be nasty because you have Amanda around to do it for you. She fights all your battles and you just look the other way then pat yourself on the back for being so above it all.”
It’s such a staggering outpouring of hatred. How have I missed the way she feels for so long?
“Is that what you think I do?” I’m genuinely curious. It’s not often I get a chance to hear someone else’s unvarnished opinion of me.
She flips her dark hair, combing it with her fingers. “You totally do. I don’t get why I’m the only person who notices it. At least Amanda is honest when she goes on the attack. You’re the one who makes me sick. I still remember when I first came to this school. You completely screwed me. I was Amanda at my old school. I owned that place. Thanks to you, though, I’m like the plague around here. I have nothing.”
My head whirls. “What are you talking about? I’m the whole reason you have any friends at all. I got you on dance squad.”
She whips around, her slim body quivering with fury. “Sure, you did. Then two weeks later, you told Amanda everything I said to you about her. I trusted you and you betrayed me. You’re the reason Amanda hates me.”
“You trusted me?” I laugh incredulously. “Funny you’d say that, because Amanda also told me everything you said to her about me. Amanda and I are best friends. We watch out for each other. I’m sorry you missed that when you tried to turn us against each other.” I shake my head. “I tried to give you a chance. Back then, and even just now. I really did come down here to help you.”
“Wow, you’re a saint.” Siobhan whips out a tube of lip gloss. She begins smearing it over her lips with an air of pride like she doesn’t have big blotches of mascara smeared under her eyes. “If you really want to help me, you’ll just go die.” Her scarlet lips pull into a smirk in the fluorescent lights of the locker room. “At least I’ll probably get to see that happen real soon, anathema.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Leaving school is nerve-wracking today. The hunters still ring school property, surveying everyone driving out. I am huddled in the middle of Amanda’s car, bathed in sweat, as we pass their infrared sensors. They have no legal authority to stop the cars of citizens even if someone is smuggling Alexander openly. Most cars ahead of us willingly stop to let the hunters peer inside. There are horror stories about anathemas hiding in people’s backseats, after all.
Amanda announces: “Here’s the game plan: we don’t let them in the car. Simple as that.”
I feel a surge of gratitude mingled with anxiety as we roll forward towards the infrared sensors. For some reason, Siobhan’s words are bouncing around in my head. I do feel safe around Amanda, with her in the lead. In moments like this, she’s brave where I’m not, bold where I’m meek. Is Siobhan right, though? Do I look the other way too much when Amanda is involved?
I stare out the window, lost in thought. Despite the consequences, I took some pride in the fact that I stood up for Noelle. What good is that, though, if I shut my eyes to what my own friend does?
Maybe Siobhan is right. Maybe I am a huge hypocrite.
So I’ll change. I’ll speak up more. Even to Amanda
Then I forget it all, my heart wrenching into my throat when the hunters wave us to a stop. The show’s producers and employees peer into the windows.
“Get away from us,” Amanda snarls through her open window.
I don’t hear the reply, but she grows angrier.
“You’ve already gotten us stuck in this parking lot for twenty minutes. Get away from my car. Don’t even touch it.”
She’s too vehement. She’s perfectly in her rights, but I can tell it’s stirred suspicion. And then it happens. One of the camera crew points at me, and others gather about, peering in at us. They recognize me. The girl who helped Alexander escape them earlier. I begin to tremble.
“I am a citizen,” Amanda shoots back at someone. “If you touch my car, I am taking you to court. Now tell them to get out of the way. Tell them! No, don’t film me. I’ll film you!” She whips out her smart phone and points it at them spitefully.
When they finally clear out of the way, she stamps her gas, shooting past them fast enough for several to jump back. But they’re watching us. Amanda keeps her cell phone trained on them until we disappear around the corner. A single car peels off from the rest, trailing behind us. I peer anxiously behind us, my stomach a mass of anxiety.
“They’re following us. Amanda, they’re following us.”
“We’ll get you to your front door, Kat. It’s okay.”
I scrape my sweaty palms through my hair. “What do they want?”
“They probably think you know where Alexander Metz is hiding.” Amanda peers at me in the rear view mirro
r. “Where is he, anyway? How could he possibly have escaped school through this?”
I shrug.
She rolls her eyes. “If I just knew where he was, I’d tell them so we wouldn’t have to deal with the security barricade again. This is so annoying.”
“It’s just an inconvenience for you,” I say quietly. “It’s life or death for Alexander.”
Amanda looks at me, puzzled by my words. “I know, okay, Kat? Don’t get all self-righteous on me.”
“It’s not self-righteous. It’s just something that needs to be said.” But I’m not sure she hears me as we continue to drive to my house, the car on our tail the whole way.
The car lurks outside our house all day, long after my parents return. Then it finally drives away. When it’s been gone several hours, Mom makes up her mind. She orders me to wait in my panic room while they retrieve my car from school. I agree. My ears are still scalding with her blistering words when she found out I’d driven to school on my own. I have a feeling she won’t leave the keys anywhere I can find them again.
My mind keeps turning as I sit in what was once my closet, staring up at the sword Mom bought me, my back against a month’s supply of water. There’s even a bucket if I have to relieve myself. The heavy locks on the sturdy door could probably protect a bank vault.
I can’t stop thinking of those cameras, those producers. People just doing their jobs. Treating me, treating Alexander like objects for their entertainment. Stalking our every step, and for what? So some people can drink beer and watch him fight to the death between commercials?
It’s like those people commenting on the YouTube video. The people joining my deathwatch page for laughs and guessing on the date of my demise. The casual hunters, even those like Conrad and his friends. It’s all a game to them. A way of networking. A leisure activity.
It’s my life and it’s nothing to them. Alexander’s life, his sister’s life, and it means nothing to them.
I stare at my closed laptop, thinking of the pleasure I’d discovered last year writing dumb, fluff articles. I felt like I was changing the world. But I wasn’t. One person can’t change the world. One person can’t even help another person, really. Stepping in for Noelle hadn’t actually saved her. It just ruined my life. Helping Alexander caused the fight with Conrad and the arrival of the Showdown producers.
We’re just small pieces, all of us, and a great hand of fate can descend and flick us off the board at any moment. We don’t even know it’s coming until it’s too late.
I think of my Susan B. Anthony poster. If she’d lived now, she’d be an anathema. Losing citizenship would have neutralized her before she could crusade for changes. That’s how our justice system changed, after all. In school, we read all about the chaotic forces associated with the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Free markets took over.
Perhaps Susan B. would have the strength to overcome her anathema status, but I don’t think I do. How did I ever imagine I had the courage or the strength to change the world? I don’t even stand up to my best friend.
Mom and Dad are planning to drop me off at the school parking lot an hour and fifteen minutes early just so I’m safely on school grounds. I shower and dress blearily at an obscenely early hour, and Dad pours me a cup of coffee.
“Welcome to our world, kiddo.”
I yawn as they bustle about, getting ready for work. I’m not sure what I’ll do at school with an extra hour, but this is how it will have to be until the Showdown people leave town.
The garish van with Ezra and Ezekiel’s faces on the sides is parked outside the school. The people on duty for the show scrutinize us as we drive past them.
“Don’t stop,” Mom orders Dad, her arms folded, challenging gaze fixed on the Hollywood people as we pass them.
Though a couple point at me, and nod – identifying me immediately – they make no move towards the car. The car never returned to my house, so obviously they’re not staking me out anymore.
“Now, you promise us you won’t step foot beyond the parking lot unless you have a big group of friends surrounding you,” Mom says sternly as we stop before the darkened lobby.
“I promise. Believe it or not, I have no desire to get killed.”
Dad cranes his head around so he can peer back at me. “And you have to be in a car. I don’t just want you walking with your friends. I want you to have two tons of steel separating you from those people.” He nods towards the hunters.
“Dad, of course. I’m not stupid.”
Mom and Dad exchange a weary look, as though silently telling each other it’s just the rest of this school year. I feel a pang of regret.
I’ve heard them talking when they think I can’t hear it, pouring over finances, trying to figure out if Mom should quit her job to serve as my full-time bodyguard. They’ve concluded they’d have to sell the house. They’ll do it if they get desperate. I hate the idea of it. Mom loves her job. They love this house. I’m ruining their lives, too.
I wave to them as they pull away, and stand there on the sleepy campus beneath the dull sky of early morning. In the distance, beyond the parking lot, the Showdown crew still moves back and forth. Their eyes are boring into me.
With a shudder, I step into the darkened school.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There aren’t many places open this early in the morning. I sprawl out on my backpack outside my English classroom, sleep still clenching a heavy hand over me. I doze in and out, figuring the noise of students flooding the hallways will wake me up.
“Mighty fine morning to you,” comes a nearby voice.
I jolt upright. An unfamiliar man with light orange hair, freckles, and a bland smile stands above me. I leap to my feet.
“Let me introduce myself,” he drawls. “I’m Mitch Larsen. I’m a producer with Showdown.”
I stumble back from his outstretched hand like it’s a snake, my back hitting the locker. “You can’t be here.”
He smiles slowly. “And why not?”
“This is a school!” My voice is hysterical. “You can’t hunt in a school.”
He looks back and forth down the shadowy hallway, half-lit. “Don’t see anyone around. Nobody will notice if I just drag you outside and say I caught you out there.”
Horror surges inside me. My back presses into the locker behind me so hard the metal locks dig into my skin.
Suddenly, Mitch chuckles like it’s all a joke. “Oh, I’m not being serious here, sugar. I’m not even here to kill you. I told your town mayor we were planning to shoot an episode here. She authorized us to take some location shots from inside the school.”
“Mayor Alton?” I say, feeling a surge of disbelieving bitterness. Probably she was hoping they’d kill me while they were here.
“Mighty fine lady,” Mitch agrees in his faint drawl. “I tell you, you’re not easy to get in touch with. I parked outside your house last night hoping I’d get a chance to chat with you, but you weren’t coming out. I called your house, but your parents hung up on me. I figure we can come to an agreement, you and I.”
I stare at him, acutely conscious that we’re alone in here. “What sort of agreement?”
His smile is easy. He looks so harmless. “See, you’re just a schoolgirl. Nobody orders pay-per-view to see some helpless little girl anathema get butchered. That’s what snuff porn sites are for.”
He chuckles. Then his smile falls away, his expression growing serious.
“What we need is your friend. The other anathema. The HI-9. I bet you know where he is. Where he might be hiding. He slipped past us and we can’t quite figure out how. But we are just dying to have him on our show.”
My fear fades, the first prickles of anger stirring within me. “So he can die for you.”
He shrugs. “Sooner or later, it’s bound to happen. Bounty that high, handsome young buck like that, his number’s gonna be up someday. The question is, will you get a cut of the finder’s fee for giving him to us, or not? Will
he get an exit with the dignity he deserves, or will it be some hick hunter who catches him by surprise?”
“What dignity is there in dying on your screwed up show?”
“What dignity is there in boxers pummeling each other, or football players crashing into each other, chasing a ball? There’s the dignity of the athlete. The sportsman doing what he does best. The modern-day warrior.” His pale, lashless eyes glow with passion, with earnest conviction. “I saw that YouTube video. That kid is a warrior. His fighting is poetry. He deserves a great send off.”
“I don’t even know Alexander that well, but I doubt he’d agree.”
Mitch nods. “Well, you think it over. No one on my crew is going to hurt you if you give us a hint about where he might be. We may even give you a hefty reward. That boy’s bounty is nothing to the budget of a show like ours, we could definitely give you a cut. You can hire a bodyguard with it, maybe even buy an exit visa. Pretty thing like you, low hazard index…” I stiffen as he lifts a strand of my blonde hair with his finger. I flinch back, and he tsks. “You’d better start watching out for yourself, too, little girl.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sure about that?” His pale eyebrows rise. A hint of something else creeps over his face. Suddenly he doesn’t look so friendly. “Thing about being an anathema is, you’re fair game.” He leans closer. His breath smells like coffee. “If we don’t get our hands on Metz, we’ll have wasted our money shooting around here. That means we’ve got to recoup some production costs. Five thousand is just a fraction of that, but it’s better than nothing.”
I curl my fists against the cold locker behind me. “So either I help you find him and take your blood money, or you’ll kill me?”
“You sure do catch on fast. But hey, if you don’t want our dirty blood money, feel free to just help for free.” He chuckles at his own joke again.
He is a monster. My throat feels constricted with a ball of anxiety. “I really don’t know where Alexander is. I’m not lying about that. I swear, I don’t know how he got past you.”
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