by Nancy Holder
Buffy was halfway up the steps leading to the main entrance of the gulag when Harmony Kendall, one of Cordelia’s so-very Cordettes, stepped in her way with a shake of her blond hair and said, “Hi, um, Buffy, right?” As if she didn’t spend half of every lunch period gossiping with Cordelia about Buffy, Xander, and Willow. Or maybe that was an exaggeration. Maybe they didn’t even warrant that much gossip time.
“Hi, Harmony,” Buffy said uncertainly. Cordelia’s friends were not famous for being nice to anybody, not even to one another.
Harmony had on a pretty royal blue jacket, black jazz pants piped in navy, and a pair of black boots. She was holding a silver clipboard and a pen with a silver unicorn charm dangling from the eraser end.
“I have to do this thing,” Harmony said, sighing, “for extra credit. So I can pass Life Studies.” She looked skyward, as if the angels were surely weeping over her fate. “I’m supposed to help the losers on the Student Council with their stupid fund-raising survey.”
“I’m all for it,” Buffy assured her. “The raising of funds.”
Harmony shook her head. “No, I have to ask you what kind of schoolwide fund-raiser we should have. I said blood drive, but apparently we can’t charge for that. I don’t see why not. After all, this is a free country.”
“But we should,” Buffy shot back. “We give enough.” Seeing Harmony’s confused look, she added, “Um, seeing as how they bleed us dry of the fun with too much homework and pointless surveys.”
“Exactly!” Harmony pointed her pen at her. “You are so right. See? Blood drive is the best idea.” She looked down at her clipboard. “Some people are so lame. Willow wants to have a book fair. Who would spend money on books? I mean, really. They have them for free in the library. And besides, how many books can one person seriously have?”
Buffy pressed her lips together and gave Harmony a very thoughtful look. “Exactly. I mean, why buy books when you can buy shoes?”
“Yes,” Harmony said, her voice rising. “That’s what I told Willow.”
“You have to have a different heel height for every pair of pants,” Buffy continued. “That is not the case with books.”
Harmony’s face was wide with wonder. “Gee, Buffy, you’re really not as hopelessly out of it as Cordelia says you are.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Buffy knew Harmony wouldn’t catch the sarcasm in her voice.
“Oh, sure, no problem,” she said, with total sincerity. “So, shall I put you down for shoe sale?”
Buffy started reading the list upside down. Bake sale, car wash, book fair, blood drive, raffle, play, dance … When one got in trouble at school as often as she did, one got very good at reading upside down.
… carnival.
“Oh.” Buffy glanced from the list to Harmony. She kept her voice deliberately casual as she asked, “Who suggested a carnival?”
“Some lame-o named Jonathan.” Harmony flashed Buffy a what-a-dork expression. Then she grew more thoughtful. “But Cordelia said that might have possibilities, if we made sure there was a carnival queen and her royal court.”
Yeah, I bet.
Buffy was about to ask Harmony if she knew Jonathan very well when Stephanie and David Hahn strolled up the stairs.
Oh my God.
She had no idea where they had gotten their outfits—as far as she knew, Sluts R Us was closed at night—but they had gone shopping somewhere. Stephanie was wearing a black denim miniskirt that would surely get her sent home and a black baby tee decorated with a large pair of red rhinestone lips. And David …
He hadn’t shaved his head, exactly, but call what was left mere stubble. His jeans were tight and he had on a white wife-beater beneath an unbuttoned clinging black silk shirt that outlined his scrawny rib cage. And was that a lip ring poking through his upper lip?
On a TV show they would be walking in slow motion as they sashayed up the stairs—someone should clue David in that hot guys did not move their hips like that when they walked—and preening as heads turned in their direction. But the heads that were turning were not heads of admiration and lust; they were heads that were cracking up at the two of them.
But neither Hahn seemed to notice.
Then they were swallowed up by the crush of morning at school, and Buffy was left to blink in their wake, rendered speechless by what she had seen.
“So, Buffy?” Harmony prodded. She had been focused on her list, and so had missed the grand entrance. “Do you think we should sell just any kind of shoes, or only fashionable ones? Boots included?”
“Um.” Buffy turned her attention back to Harmony and tried to care anymore. “Definitely boots.” Harmony began to write that down. “No, wait. A shoe sale at school, I don’t know.”
“It would put us on the map,” Harmony assured her.
We’re already on the map, Buffy thought. We have more deaths per graduating class than any other high school in California.
Then Cordelia’s voice rose above the dull roar. “Excuse me? Who gave you permission to ask me to move?”
Both Buffy and Harmony turned to see what was happening.
At the top of the stairs Cordelia and Stephanie Hahn were facing off. Stephanie, who was taller than Cordelia, was at that moment raising her chin and looking down her nose with derision at the one and only girl at Sunnydale High School to hold dual black belts in popular and mean. They were glaring at each other at twenty paces, and other students, sensing a girl fight, were beginning to form a ring around them. Not that Cordelia Chase would ever stoop to physical blows. Why exert yourself when you had a tongue like a complete Ginsu kitchen knife collection plus the blade sharpener and the shrimp deveiner?
“Just admit it, Cordelia,” Stephanie said, thrusting out her left hip. “You’re pissed off because I am the school’s hottest hottie, and everything about you is so very over.”
There was scattered applause around the ring of onlookers, which ended as soon as Cordelia scrutinized the crowd to see who was doing it.
“Oh my God,” Harmony said, covering her mouth with her hand. “Has that girl lost her mind?”
“Sounds right,” Buffy murmured.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll apologize right now,” Cordelia said. “If you don’t”—she narrowed her eyes—“you’ll be so very, very sorry.”
“I am sorry,” Stephanie said. Cordelia visibly relaxed. “Sorry that anyone has to look at you first thing in the morning.”
The crowd gasped. Cordelia’s answering look could have set off a car alarm.
“Buffy, who is that?” Harmony demanded.
But before Buffy had a chance to answer, Harmony was fighting her way up the stairs through the crowd. Not to come to Cordelia’s defense, it appeared. Just to get a better view.
No one gave ground as Buffy tried to follow Harmony up the increasingly populated steps. There was blood in the water, and the sharks wanted a taste.
Rather than add to the chaos, Buffy left the stairway and jogged up the grassy hill beside it—only to take note of something even more distressing than the impending smackdown between Cordelia and Stephanie:
On the other side of the main building, Glenn Wilcox and Mark Morel, two of the defensive linemen for the Sunnydale Razorbacks, were whaling the tar out of David Hahn. Correction: Glenn was holding him by the arms while Mark was whaling the tar out of him. Gut-punching him, in fact.
“Not the face!” David yelled.
“Stop it!” Buffy cried.
“Hit him harder, Mark,” Glenn urged him.
Mark obliged with another punch, and David’s knees buckled as he gasped, “Don’t touch my face.”
“I’ll touch your face,” Glenn said, letting go of one of David’s arms and wheeling him around. He showed him his fist. “I’ll show it to you after I’ve ripped it off your head. Who the hell do you think you are, loser?”
He was just about to smash in David’s mouth when Buffy wedged herself between David and him, grabbing Glenn’s f
ist and using it to force him backward.
Mark started pointing and laughing, and Glenn got that furious, astounded look bullies got when Buffy interrupted their reindeer games. She had humiliated a bully not only in front of a fellow bully, but also in front of his target, which meant that Glenn Wilcox was now her enemy for life.
What with her habit of defending the weak from jerks like these two, it was getting to be a pretty big club.
“What, is he your boyfriend, freak?” Glenn asked, trying to cut her down to size by humiliating her in return. “The only loser you can get?”
“Just leave him alone,” Buffy said. She grabbed David by the forearm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“No way,” Mark said, taking a quick step in front of her to block her exit. “He’s ours. He came on to our girlfriends and he’s going to pay.”
“You’re just jealous,” David said, sneering over Buffy’s head at Mark. “Because your chicks think I’m hotter than you are.”
Could you be any more self-destructive? Buffy thought.
She said to Mark, “Let me get him out of here. You can see that something’s wrong with him.”
“Yeah. He’s alive,” Mark said, shaking his head. “That’s what’s wrong with him. And he’s going to be very sorry about that.”
“Sorry is good,” she said. “How about if he apologizes?” She blinked at David and tugged on his shirt.
“Hey, watch the outfit,” he admonished her.
Oh my God. You are so whacked. Buffy turned back to Mark. “See? Seriously wrong.” Because no one on earth should be seen in that outfit, much less defend its right to exist.
As an answer, Mark made a fist and slammed it into his open palm.
“Listen,” Buffy said, “I really don’t want to hurt you.”
He snorted and looked her up and down, the big sneer on his face instantly changing into the huge sneer on his face.
Then he took a swing at David, over her head, so technically, not at her—give him points for chivalry, not—and Buffy blocked him by raising her arm to block, then extending her arm in a downward arc, using the force of Mark’s punch to throw him off balance. It worked: He fell on his butt.
Mark yelled something at Buffy that was not appropriate for family viewing. Then he lunged forward, grabbing for her.
She drew her leg up to a modified stork position and was just about to connect with his chin—
—when Principal Snyder stomped around the corner, froze, and shouted, “Summers! When they told me there was a fight, I should have known.”
Without missing a beat, he walked up to David, glared at him, and added, “Visitors are required to check in at the office, and we are a zero-tolerance campus. No weapons, no drugs, and no motorcycle gangs.” Obviously he didn’t recognize David. Or maybe he had never noticed him before. In their normal state the Hahns were overlookable to the max.
David tentatively pressed his fingertips over his cheekbones. “Are there any bruises?” he asked anxiously.
“As if,” Mark said. “Nice going, hiding behind a girl.”
“I had to protect my face,” David said. “It’s my passport out of here.”
“Are you on drugs?” Snyder demanded.
“That guy was hitting on our girlfriends,” Mark said.
“Is that true? Were you harassing our coeds?” Snyder asked David. Then, frowning at him, “Are you even a student here?”
“I’m a sophomore,” David said. “And I wasn’t bothering their girlfriends. I was only asking them out.”
“And they started beating him up,” Buffy interjected. “Those two, not the girlfriends.”
“The only hitting I saw was you,” Snyder told her.
“You … didn’t,” she argued.
Snyder grinned. “I think I smell an expulsion in the air. Possibly two—one for brawling and one for sexual harassment. What a wonderful way to end a long, exhausting week of school.”
He was practically rubbing his hands. “Do you have parents?” he asked David. “Because they should be called.”
Buffy wasn’t finished. “They were the brawlers. He was the … brawlee.”
Snyder crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, you’re the expert on violence on campus, and, may I add, these are two of the finest first-string ballplayers we have. Because of them, we may actually have a shot at the championship this year—if nobody on the football team dies before the end of the season. So you can see that I have every reason in the world to believe you when you accuse them of something that could get them benched.” His voice dripped sarcasm.
“What?” Mark said anxiously.
“Relax, brain trust, he’s on our side,” Glenn told him.
“Yes. I am. And in case you have trouble following me, Miss Summers, follow me. To my office. Now.”
She held out her hands. “But …” Dropped them, because really, what was the point? “Fine.”
He cricked his finger at David. “We’re walking.”
“But I look all right. Right?” David asked Buffy anxiously.
You look like you’ve lost your mind.
“Sure,” she said, “you look great.”
“You want me,” he said. His voice dripped lounge lizard.
Buffy couldn’t help the dull flush that traveled up her neck and fanned across her face. She also couldn’t help the fact that as soon as her mother heard about this—and Snyder would make sure she did—there would be no mother-daughter shopping trip to the mall. Joyce would ground her faster than one could say “single moms overcompensate.”
As she and David trailed after Snyder, Mark and Glenn burst into fresh, rollicking laughter.
“See you, gorgeous!” Glenn yelled. “You too, Summers!”
“Oh my God, things are seriously weird,” Buffy said as she sailed through the double doors of Slayer Central—i.e., the school library—as soon as the after-school detention bell rang and she was set free.
Willow was already seated at the study table, a two-foot-tall stack of big, dusty, leather-bound tomes beside her. She had on a standard-issue Willow ensemble—jumper, tights, and running shoes—and her straight red hair hung loosely over her shoulders.
Xander had been pacing, and he stopped when he saw Buffy; he was wearing cords and an oversized plaid shirt topping a dark blue T-shirt. His dark bangs hung in his eyes; he raked them back a little self-consciously and said, “Hey, Buffy.”
“Ah. Good.” A beat. “You’re late.” Giles bustled out of his office with a cup of tea and another big thick book, his personal version of Brit nirvana. In tweed, of course. No vest. After all, it was southern California, where the teachers could wear casual clothes like regular people. Except for Giles, who still dressed like Sherlock Holmes.
“That’s always good,” Buffy ventured, confused. “Being late.”
Giles said, “Did you encounter some difficulty getting here on time?”
“No, she’s been right here all along, only we didn’t notice it,” Xander supplied, giving Giles a quick grin.
Giles sighed and sipped his tea, waiting for Buffy’s response.
“I did,” Buffy told Giles. “Encounter some difficulty. There was a fight this morning. Two football players attacked David Hahn. Who is a sophomore.”
“Who has a twin sister named Stephanie Hahn,” Willow supplied, eyes wide as she earnestly nodded. “Who Cordelia has declared war on. Actually, that should be ‘whom,’” she said thoughtfully.
“I saw the beginning of that fight, but I also saw what led to it. Last night.”
“Oh?” Giles took a sip of his tea.
“I was patrolling last night,” Buffy began. “Looking for the Rising.”
Giles raised his teacup. “Which has been found. It’s a carnival. Angel came by and told me,” Giles said. “At the Lucky Pint.”
“He was everywhere last night,” Buffy muttered. “How come I never saw him?” She moved on. “Okay, evil carnival. And?”
“Angel’s informant didn’t give us much. Neither of his informants, actually. Seems he saved a soldier in an alley who had also heard about the Rising. He called me about it later.”
“So you saw him and spoke to him on the phone,” Buffy said. Humph.
Giles took another sip of tea. “Which reminds me. Willow, can you see if you can find out anything about possible covert governmental activities here in Sunnydale? Perhaps in the Marine Corps?”
Willow pondered that. “Well, sometimes even asking sends up a red flag, you know? I’ll probably hit a jillion firewalls. I should probably use a computer in the lab so it’ll be harder to trace the search to me.”
“Governmental activities?” Buffy asked. “You mean, like making the enemy go crazy by playing the calliope?”
“The army I was in would so do that,” Xander informed her. He had become a soldier last Halloween, when a sorcerer named Ethan Rayne had rented the gang enchanted costumes.
“So now we’re worrying about the government,” Buffy said.
“Not necessarily,” Giles said. “Please, continue, Buffy. What did you discover?”
“Well, I was in Blessed Memories, near the du Lac tomb, and the twins came screaming past me,” Buffy said. “Half a dozen vampires were chasing them. So I went after them.”
“Of course,” Giles said approvingly.
“And were the Hahns totally into themselves at that time? Maybe trying to date the vampires?” Xander asked.
Buffy pondered. “Hard to say. They were so busy screaming and running for their lives.”
Xander nodded. “I’ve been on dates like that. Several, in fact.”
“I think the vampires were only in it for the usual vampire thing,” Buffy said.
“Only in it for the necking. I’ve been on dates like that, too.” Xander’s voice had an unusual edge to it.
“Go on, please,” Giles said, sounding a little weary.
She told the whole story, including the “boo” part in the forest and the entire adventure in the fun house, complete with the wicked-scary clown.
“Brrr,” Xander said, shuddering.
“I double that,” Willow said.
“And this Professor Caligari …,” Giles said, then set down his tea as Buffy fished the passes out of her purse and held them out to him.