by Allen, Jacob
I tried to pretend at first that she wasn’t actually walking to me. For one, I didn’t check out books and forget to return them. I spent so much time in the library that I never had a reason to remove them from the area. Second, the issues of checking social media at school were not the purview of the librarian, but of the computer science teachers.
But there was no mistaking the fact that there was basically no one else in the library—certainly not anyone sitting near me—and that the librarian’s eyes had fallen upon me.
“Samantha Young?” she said.
“Yes?”
“Principal Collins needs to see you as soon as you can.”
What? Why?
“OK?” I said, nervously closing my computer. “Did he say anything? Did he say why he needed to see me?”
But the librarian shook her head.
“He just said he needs to see you as soon as possible.”
I bit my lip. My mind raced as I considered the possibilities. There wasn’t a better behaved senior in our class than me. Maybe he was going to surprise me with some good news? But what good news? I hadn’t applied for any rewards through the school.
Maybe he just needed my thoughts on something. Or maybe he meant a different Samantha Young. I think there was one in our freshman class that I didn’t know. It was certainly more likely than it having to do with anything with me.
Except he somehow knew you’d be on your lunch break and he’d find you here. I don’t think he meant someone else.
I cleared my head as I made my way for the principal’s office. When I exited the library, I saw Nick laughing with Adam, but he wasn’t looking at me; he didn’t even smirk in my direction. I just chalked it up to coincidence, not him being malicious.
That, as it turned out, was an error in judgment.
I got to Principal Collins’ office, knocking on the door.
“Ah, Miss Young,” he said, sounding like the pompous man we all assumed him to be. “Have a seat, dear.”
“OK,” I said. “May I ask what this is about?”
“In due time, Miss Young, in due time.”
I knew Adam hated his father. I assumed Ryan did. The rest of us followed his lead in this regard, a rather strong contrast to the norm. Principal Collins was a man stuck in the past, wearing a bow tie to school every day, a judgmental gaze upon everyone who was not a white male, and with even harsher expectations for them than the rest of us. He was a man who ran this school essentially because he had been a dean at Vanderbilt; he certainly didn’t have high school experience before this.
It wasn’t hard to see why people, including myself, disliked him.
“Miss Young, allow me to ask you a question,” he said. “If I were eighteen years old, and I wanted to sneak a bottle of alcohol onto campus, where do you think I would hide it?”
“I’m sorry?”
I had no idea where this came from. I hadn’t had a drop of booze since the boys’ party back around Christmas. I had a better chance of bringing foul-smelling food into the library than I did a bottle of alcohol.
“I know you are, and you will be,” he said. “But please, answer the question for me.”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling like I was being set up for a trap. “I wouldn’t bring a bottle of alcohol to campus in the first place.”
Principal Collins arched an eyebrow at me and leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk.
“You have a sterling reputation here on campus, Miss Young,” he said. “And yet, not only have you besmirched it with bringing alcohol on campus—never mind that you are a minor—you have now lied about it.”
“Sir!” I said, unable to hide my shock. “I did not bring alcohol on campus. I promise you that.”
“Well then, perhaps you had a friend who brought it on campus for you and then stored it in your locker.”
Fucking Nick! Goddamnit, how did you get access to my locker?!?
Were you watching the combination when you were near it? You fucking asshole!
“I promise you, if someone put alcohol in my locker, that I had nothing to do with it, sir,” I said, trying my best not to show my utter rage and contempt for Nick.
“Miss Young, all respect for your record here aside, we find that very hard to believe,” he said. “You have locks on your locker precisely so that they are not the sort of things that can easily be broken into. If someone did, in fact, plant the liquor in your locker, they would have to know your combination or have such violent force as to break it open, and we have no evidence of forced entry into your locker. So, I will ask you with that all said. Why did you store alcohol here?”
There was no getting out of this without some punishment. My hatred for Nick was growing by the second. I was about to face disciplinary action while the schools I dreamed about going to would hear about this. If I got rejected from Harvard because of some bullshit disciplinary action…
“I don’t know, sir,” I finally said.
It was the best I could muster. It wasn’t a confession, per se, but it gave the principal what he wanted—something of an admission. It was as close to the gray zone of truth for both sides as I could muster.
“This is unfortunate to happen so close to your graduation, Miss Young, but no one escapes punishment here, especially when you break the law. As a result, starting today and going through all of next week, you are going to be held for in-school suspension and a one-hour detention afterward.”
I bowed my head. I took deep breaths to try and calm myself. Me, suspended? Me, detention?
“You are fortunate that we decided not to call the police,” Principal Collins said. “We’re confident that this punishment will serve as enough of a lesson for you not to repeat your actions later.”
“But I didn’t…”
I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. There was no point any more.
“We are, however, going to have to call your parents. Please stay here.”
He then slowly reached for the phone, looking up my parents’ number in the directory. I put my head in my hands—I could not think of a more humiliating outcome than what was going on right now.
If Nick had actually hit me, yes, it would have been horrible, but it wouldn’t have closed off my escape hatch to a new life in college. If Nick had bullied me and cyberstalked me, that would have ruined my reputation here—if I had one—but it wouldn’t have closed off my future.
But no, he had to find the one way to really make sure I didn’t have a future. He had to do whatever he had to do to make sure that my future was taken away from me, snatched because he planted some liquor in my locker—liquor he must have planted in the last hour and a half, because it sure as hell wasn’t there when I went before my last class before lunch.
“Hello, Mrs. Young? Why, yes, this is Principal Collins at Providence Prep, how are you? Why, yes, I’m calling…”
I tuned out the rest of the call. My parents weren’t going to come to my defense. They believed in utter deference to authority, no matter what. My trouble at home was all but going to double whatever I got in school. It didn’t matter how long I’d been perfect—anything less than that at home was considered unacceptable.
Why did Nick feel it so necessary to ruin my future like this? Was I that much of a nuisance to him? Did rejecting his kiss last Sunday really hurt him that badly?
The whys weren’t mattering as much as they once had. I was turning more and more toward just action. It wasn’t as smart or rational as before, but the guy who played to his emotions instead of his logic sure seemed to be winning right now. It would feel mighty good to slap the hell out of him, to punch him, to hurt him like he hurt me.
At least, it felt good to think about it. Who knew if I’d have the guts to pull it off when I actually saw him.
For now…
“… of course. Thank you, have a good day.”
The clack of the office phone returning to its set drew me out of my head. I looked up at the
principal with fire in my eyes, though none of it was for him. He was just an old, stupid man who didn’t realize the truth.
“The in-school suspension room and the detention room are one and the same,” he said. “Across the hall, it is clearly marked. I will inform your teachers here shortly of the punishment. They will bring any classwork necessary to you here. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Then head over there now,” he said.
It’s like the judge has banished me to prison, except I need to escort myself to prison. Could it get any worse than this?
In a fucked up way, not much was going to change in my day to day. I didn’t go home until 5 p.m. regardless; this just changed where I spent my after-school hours, not that I spent it at home. But if Harvard found out…
I thought of asking Principal Collins before I headed for the room, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. If he said yes, I might have committed murder. If he said no, there were still no guarantees. Silence was simply the best option at this point.
And, wouldn’t you know it, as I left the door, Nick Locke was waiting on the other side. He had such an arrogant smirk on his face.
“Having fun?”
I kept my hands close to my body so the principal couldn’t see me flicking him off. Nick just shrugged.
“I might be in trouble too. Wouldn’t this be great?”
Not in the slightest, you fucking idiot. I know you don’t care about your future since you don’t have one, but I still do. Thanks for nothing, dick.
“Nick Locke!”
Principal Collins’ voice carried past me, and Nick entered, adopting a serious expression. God, I wanted to smack off all the masks that he wore and expose him for the true asshole, the true bully that he was.
It didn’t help matters that, serving the rest of the day in suspension, I didn’t see Nick again. Whatever punishment he had suffered from Principal Collins was not anything compared to mine, which just pissed me off even more. Now, not only did I feel awkward to the student body, I felt awkward around the adults here. I knew “office politics” was a fact of life, but I would have really preferred to have gotten to an office before I experienced it.
I wanted so badly to grab my phone and text my parents to apologize and explain everything. I wanted to text Emily and Jackie and warn them about what the boys were up to. I wanted to just call someone, anyone, to help me out. But the room was too well watched.
When the final bell rang, ending the school day, no one joined me.
Until, about five minutes before detention “started,” Nick walked into the room. He tried to sit next to me.
I got up, sat in the far corner, and did not care if anyone saw me flipping him off.
8
Nick
What an utter delight this whole thing was!
I never realized how fun it could be to plan something like I had. As soon as I’d figured out what I’d wanted to do Monday night, I managed to get Clarke to get me a bottle of Fireball whiskey to plant in Samantha’s locker. Admittedly, I’d had to beg and work quite a bit with Clarke, enduring a whole shitload of trash talk from him, but that was fine. The payoff was going to be worth it.
When I saw her face upon leaving Principal Collins’ office… priceless.
And for what, again? For her rejecting you when you were weird?
It was proof that, even in moments of weakness, I could take over this school if I wanted to. Samantha had just happened to be the target of choice—a pretty, smart, beautiful target, but a random target, nevertheless. That’s what I believed, at least, because what else was I going to believe in if not that?
Given her reaction when she saw me in detention, it sure seemed like the strike had worked effectively. I couldn’t do much when she chose to move to the back of the room—Mr. Smith’s presence prevented that—but I was just waiting for the moment when he took his usual break. Detention really was such a joke. It might as well have been named the afternoon special for students, given that it was so lax and unenforced.
When Mr. Smith did eventually get up, announcing that he needed to make some phone call or something and giving us a weak warning to not goof off or cause trouble, I immediately turned to Samantha with a prideful smile on my face.
“I heard you were an alcoholic,” I said.
Samantha wouldn’t look at me. Of course. Just like she wouldn’t kiss me. Just like no one would give me attention.
“I heard that you had some Fireball in your locker.”
She still wasn’t looking at me. I saw the slightest of hints that I was getting through to her—a twitch of the eyelid, a grimace on the lips, a tightening of her hands—but there wasn’t the outburst I was looking to get. There wasn’t that triumphant payoff of her feeling… feeling the same way I was these days.
“Well, if you’ve got some left over, maybe you could share it? Or maybe you could bring it to the next Broad Street Boys party. Assuming, of course, we invite you.”
Still, nothing. She was doing a good job of not reacting, but I also recognized I wasn’t provoking her in the right way. I licked my lips, raised my eyebrows, and moved in for the kill.
“You know,” I said, slowly and for full dramatic effect. “It would be a real shame if your alcoholism somehow prevents you from getting into Harvard. Because—”
I could see her rising out of her chair and coming over to me. I knew she was about to slap me, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have notice of that about to happen. Her movements were purposeful, swift, and decisive. She covered a lot of ground with those long, slender, sexy legs in a matter of seconds, but I still had plenty of awareness of what was about to happen.
And did I stop her?
Nope.
I wanted that reaction. I wanted that reward. I wanted that feeling of producing an outcome I desired, something that apparently was quite good at eluding my grasp.
When she did slap me, though, I began to wish I hadn’t reacted so nonchalantly. Her slap in downtown Nashville had stung; this felt like a scar. This felt like the kind of shit that was going to leave a permanent mark. She hadn’t hit me; she had tattooed me.
And I probably deserved it.
I deserved it for finally breaking through.
“What the hell do you have against me?!?” Samantha said.
She was not the awkward teenager anymore. Instead, she…
She was me.
She was me yelling at my brothers for continuing to mock me for not being on the same level as them. She was me fighting back against my father for treating me like a toy to be customized and placed in conditions on his whim. The way she spoke that line brought back all those memories.
“Is it really because I just rejected your awkward attempt for a kiss at ice cream? Is this really what this all is?”
That brought me back into the present, but the Deja vu I felt was unshakable and not particularly pleasant. All of the other associated memories tied into it—the lack of scholarships, the feelings of inadequacy no matter what I did in sports, the feeling of never having “enough”—they all remained. They all lingered.
“Seems like you and everyone else are doing that these days, huh?”
I tried to sound poised and certain. I knew I wasn’t. I just hoped Samantha didn’t.
“What does that even mean?” Samantha said. “And why does that have to lead to you planting liquor in my locker?”
“It doesn’t matter what it means,” I said. “So go sit the hell down. I got what I wanted. I don’t need you asking questions anymore.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t got what I’ve wanted,” Samantha said. “I want to know what the hell your problem this past week has been.”
I turned away from her, now being the one who would refuse to look at the other.
“For as long as we’ve known each other, we’ve run in separate circles. Our paths would occasionally cross, but never in any meaningful way. Then, by coincidence, you and I are at the same library
on Sunday. You get in some kind of mood, try and kiss me, and now you hate me for it. You need to tell me what the hell is going on so we can move past it.”
“There’s nothing to move past, Sam,” I said, ignoring her flared nostrils. “There’s nothing to move toward, either. So sit your ass down before—”
Mr. Smith started to open the door a second later. Both of us went deadly silent. Samantha took a seat behind me, drawing a confused look from Mr. Smith.
“Miss Young, is there a reason why you are now seated behind Mr. Locke?”
“I… he had something of mine from class earlier, a homework assignment from history.”
“Is this true, Mr. Locke?”
Oh, the things I could have done. The pretty, straight-laced student was suddenly caught in a lie. I could have ruined her right there. Devastated her. Made her life a living hell.
“I’m not allowed to talk during detention, sir,” I said, using the word “sir” in a mocking voice.
“I am giving you permission to speak right now, young man, and I suggest you take advantage of it.”
I just shrugged casually, looking at him with contempt. I didn’t even know why I was doing this—I think at this point, the momentum of my emotions was so strong that I didn’t see a reason to stop it.
“You both are a disgrace to the school,” he said. “Whether or not you had a homework assignment to get from him, you both had no reason to linger near each other. I will see to it that you both have an extra day of detention. Miss Young, please return to your seat.”
I felt her flick me as she walked back, giving me an amused smile. She, apparently, didn’t know that Mr. Smith had the memory of a goldfish. Hell, he’d probably forget this conversation even happened before he went on his next break.
He did just that about twenty minutes later. As soon as the door shut, I turned around.
“Fuck you,” Samantha said. “Every time I talk to you, you ruin my life.”
“You realize that I could have sold you out back there, right?” I said with a chuckle. “What would it be like if the pretty, innocent, goody-two-shoes student at Providence Prep was found, gasp, lying to a teacher? Why, it would be a full blown scandal! It would be an outrage! Nothing would ever be the same!”