Endangered (11 page)

DAD DROPS ME OFF AT SCHOOL
on his way to work. He says Mom will pick me up in the exact same spot after school. It's all he says.

The night before seems surreal. The memory of telling the cops my most guarded secrets are softening, drooping like the clocks in that famous painting, yet the stale cigarette smell from Interview Room #1 is still in my hair.

I'm caught up in my own head, fumbling my locker combination. When I get it open, I shuffle through the junk on my top shelf, remembering a forgotten treasure. A security blanket in these uncertain times.

Wedged in the far corner is a palm-sized plastic rectangle. A tiny point-and-shoot camera, won in some long-ago raffle, good for quick-and-dirty shots when all the DP cameras are checked out. I pull it to me, intending to check the batteries, and notice the tightly folded paper square—something foreign slipped through the locker vent. It tips off the edge of the shelf and drops between my feet like a dead bird. When I crouch to pluck it up, my fingers freeze an inch from touching it.

It's him. My Admirer, choosing more traditional/intimate ways to communicate now that we've bonded over blood. What will this twisted love note contain? A lock of Keachin's hair? A tooth?

Forcing my hand to move, I grab and unfold it, bracing for horror and anticipating the vindication I'll feel when I show this to all the adults who doubt me and say, “See, this Crazybags is still out there!”

The note is not made of skin, or written in body fluid. It is a love letter. Or a sex letter, with vivid descriptions of things both contorted and damp. Not for me, though. It's addressed to Corra Oliver, my locker neighbor.

My heart slows and my breathing deepens while an angry red beam shoots through my head.

Can a person be relieved and furious simultaneously?

Corra approaches with her bestie, Marnie Davenport, and pops her locker.

“Corra”—I push the note toward her—“this was in my locker, but it's for you. I read some of it. Sorry.”

There is a knowing look on her face when she takes the note, but Marnie's the one who explains, “Moody can't seem to get her locker right. Last week's note ended up on the other side of the school.”

Moody—not a description of temperament, but a name, as in Derrick Moody. Most likely he couldn't remember Corra's locker number because of all the ditch weed he smokes, when he's not selling it. I thought he might've been a prime target for Gray at one point when I heard rumors of him strong-arming younger/smaller druggies. It never panned out.

Corra rolls her eyes, used to her boyfriend's ditziness. “Thanks, Panda. Me and Moody aren't a secret or anything, but this is a bad time for any personal deets to be floating around. Gray's on a rampage.”

My mouth does not tic. “How so?”

Now she's bug-eyed, excited to be someone's first source for gossip. “You didn't get the email?”

I shake my head, urging her to get on with it.

“He's putting someone else on blast today! You know how Gray do.”

While Corra is beaming, Marnie looks as uncomfortable as the positions described in Moody's note. She says, “It's kind of a douche move to do it so soon after Keachin.”

Corra, with effort, reins in her desire to see another student humiliated. “Totally. Respect the dead, yo.”

The warning bell rings, and Corra finishes at her locker. She and Marnie move along while I stay rooted, my camera/security blanket offering little comfort over what I just heard.

My stomach's sinking and I want to find Ocie for the full scoop, but her locker's a hike, and she's probably already in homeroom since she had to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to catch the bus. Crap.

Gray's
exposing someone today.

I make it to my own seat just as final bell rings, and the anticipation makes homeroom queasy. Infinite minutes pass, torturously.

That misery ends, replaced by new pain that comes during Spanish class.

It's not sudden or subtle. I hear the telltale buzz of someone's silenced phone rattling in their bag. The rule is you power down during school hours, so the sound alone is enough to get your phone taken. This is Mrs. Vergara's class, though, and she's hard of hearing, so you're being considerate if you bother to turn down your ringer at all.

Twisting, I see Holden Goldweather fishing the cell from his satchel and checking the display the way a vain person checks their hair in a hand mirror. Mrs. Vergara's a little blind, too.

Facing forward, I try concentrating on verb conjugations—
yo veo, tú
ves, nosotros vemos
—when Holden says, “No effing way! Pan—”

The second syllable of my name is drowned by a sudden explosion of hornet-nest vibrations and forgot-to-silence ringtones. At least a dozen phones go off at the same time. The exposé we've all been waiting for.

There's only one person who could/would impersonate me now. Only one story worth exposing.

There's a vibration at
my
desk as well. Not a phone, but my hands. Shaking. With such force that I have to lay my pencil on my paper because my last conjugation had become a scraggly line of dips and peaks, like an erratic heartbeat on some hospital monitor. The combined whispers around me are too loud, not really whispers at all.

Another phone sounds. Late, but the loudest of all with its upbeat mariachi music. Mrs. Vergara, alarmed by the surge of classroom interest, shuns the very rule she's supposed to enforce, retrieves her phone from her desk, checks the display.

She plucks her cat's eyes glasses from her nose and stares me down. “
Señorita
Lauren! You are Gray?”

Sí, señora. I am
.

At the class break, I step into the hall, head down, still trying—and failing—to be a ghost. I am officially and permanently undead. All eyes aren't on me, but I can't imagine the sensation being much different if they were. There's a sense of pressure, like walking under deep water. Getting deeper.

“Yo, Gray, that thing you caught Tam McNamara doing was sick!”

I speed up, until a pair of girls I don't know start clapping. The unexpected applause slows me down, and someone in the crowd says, “I want an autograph.”

Now I'm at full stop, taking in words and expressions. Everything I see is a mix of awe, and good humor, and appreciation.

Until I spot Nina Appleton at her locker. She's looking my way and I smile slightly, a silent but humble admission.
Yes, I'm Gray. I stood up for you
.

Nina's mouth turns down. She gives a slight head shake and fades into the crowd. What's that about?

I want to chase her, and would have. A powerful hand clamps on my arm, hard enough to bruise. I'm dragged into the bathroom, wedged between the sink and the perpetually empty paper towel dispenser before I'm released.

“Is it true?” Ocie says. Her outfit is red-on-red today. She's dressed for anger.

“Ocie,” I say, and try to step toward her.

She shoves me in the chest and I stay cornered. She's a dwarf enforcer.

The hurt in her eyes makes me want to lie. Not because it will help anything, I know it won't, but like a snake hiss-coiling, or an opossum playing dead, the instincts want what the instincts want. I know everything about her, and she thought she knew everything about me. We've both been betrayed today.

“Are you Gray?” she asks.

I inhale, ready to admit what she already knows.

A bathroom stall door swings inward, and Godzilla's niece steps out, her cell phone in hand.

“Yeah,” the giant, stone-faced girl says, “are you?”

Her name is Danielle Ranson. Younger sister to Darius, the former baseball star/doper whose academic and athletic career Gray—
I
—ended.

I take it she's not a fan.

LIE. LIE. LIE
.

Danielle skulks toward me. Her big, clopping Sasquatch feet smacking the always-moist tiles. She's six feet tall, with hips as narrow and shoulders as wide as anybody her brother might've competed against on the field. Her freakish size makes me wonder if Darius had been buying the 'roids for her.

The bell rings, and, as that old saying suggests, I think I'm saved. “We're late.”

The giant blocks my way to the door. “Then we don't gotta rush.”

“Danielle, I don't know what you think—”

“My brother was gonna play ball for UVA, or the farm league.” She plants her palm on the empty towel dispenser by my head, a slow, deliberate THUNK! The cheap aluminum box bows inward. “He was going to buy us a house. You know where he is now?”

She lets it hang, wanting me to give some inadequate answer that somehow adheres to the script in her head. This is a play, and the finale is her pummeling me, no doubt.

“He's a sales associate,” Danielle says, bringing me back to her. “In the mall. At
Foot Locker
.”

Words bubble up my throat, not the whimpering plea or shamed apology she's expecting.
I don't care where he is as long as he's not on a baseball field because he shouldn't have been a bully and a cheat
.

“Back off,” Ocie says before I blurt, saving me from myself. She wedges herself between me and Danielle, like a little dog facing off against a pit bull because she doesn't realize they are different sizes. Ocie shoves the hefty girl back a few feet. “You got a problem with her, get in line.”

Whoa! Ocie's aggression warps my mind. We're both learning something new about each other today.

Danielle seems less impressed. “Shouldn't
you
be the Panda, Horton? Aren't those bears from your freakin' continent?”

“China's a country, not a continent. And I'm from America, thank you.”

“Whatever. Get back before I dip you in some duck sauce and take a bite.”

Ocie's head tilts. “Now that's just racist!”

Danielle sweeps Ocie aside, all talk done.

She draws back her meaty fist, ready to whale on me, when our vice principal, Ms. Del Toro, enters, her trademark walkie-talkie stitched to her hand. “What's the commotion in here?”

Danielle reaches past me as if checking the dispenser for towels: “Darn, empty.”

Darn?

“You're supposed to be in class.”

“Sorry,” I say, slipping past Danielle and hooking Ocie's elbow so we're leaving together. “We're going now.”

We're halfway down the hall before Danielle leaves the restroom. I glance back at her, knowing what I'll see. A promise. She and I aren't done.

Around the corner, Ocie shakes loose.

“You were awesome in there,” I say, knowing this isn't
that
kind of moment, but desperately wanting to avoid a fight with her. “That was our black.”

“Don't even,” she says, and her fierceness is dampened by tears. She goes to her next class, which is in the opposite direction of mine. Mrs. Del Toro rounds the corner, watching, so I can't chase my friend. Maybe that's a good thing.

Enough truth has caught up for now.

There's rumbling around me for the rest of the day. Nothing as in-your-face as the bathroom showdown, but the news spreads.
I'm
the center of attention, the exact reverse opposite of what I've strived for my whole high school career. Some of it is . . . gratifying. Some of it gives me eerie flashbacks of Keachin's final days. I cut those thoughts off. They spiral into dark places.

I skip lunch once I peek through the cafeteria window and see Ocie sitting with some bandmates instead of at our usual table. I know she's mad, and may be that way for a while. I get it. I just hope she doesn't take too long to get over it. I . . . I need her right now.

As much as people seem to be taking my secret identity in stride, it's foolish to think there's more goodwill than bad out there for me. I mean, okay, I think a lot of people—most, probably—appreciate what I do. Or did. They might outnumber the douche bags I caught unawares over the
years. But I can't count on any of them to have my back like Ocie does. Or did?

Unlike Darius Ranson, most of my targets still roam these halls. They were always bigger predators than me. I think I can deal, though. I know who they are, and what to expect.

It's the unpredictable predator that worries me. Especially since I've got a class with him next period.

Only, DP class doesn't put me face-to-face with my Admirer. Marcos doesn't show. Again!

What if he's absent because the police picked him up? What if they kicked his door in a second after he sent the email blast that exposed me and is now in Interview Room #1 trying to explain his whereabouts when Keachin died.

What if this is over?

I want to believe me and my Admirer are through.

But he's surprised me before.

Fifteen minutes after the last bell, Mom's a no-show. With no cell phone to summon her, I turn back toward the building to call her from the main office. Through the foyer windows I spot a familiar face.

Nina Appleton waits for the automated door to finish its slow opening. When the gap is wide enough she hobbles through. She hasn't spotted me yet. I approach with a wide, unnatural grin. Emphasizing my friendliness. “Hey, Nina.”

The sun's behind me, and I can tell she doesn't know who's calling her. She returns my grin until I step beneath the awning and become fully visible. She
doesn't scowl or flash the sign of the cross, but she shuffles on her crutches, glancing over her shoulder like she wants to duck back inside.

You know you can't outrun me
, I think. It's mean, and I'm sorry as soon as the words skim the surface of my brain. But, really, what's up with her?

I close the distance between us. My jaws aching from smiling. “Nina, you got a second to talk?”

“I guess, Panda. What do you want?”

Okay, straight to it then. “So you heard about my secret? That I'm Gray?”

“I heard.” She's gazing down the fire lane in front of the school with a cold sort of panic, like a bank robber whose getaway driver is late.

I say, “Are we cool?”

Her eyes are all over. Everywhere but on me. “We don't really know each other like that, Panda.”

“Yeah, I know.” My smile's gone, and my patience is right on its heels. “What I'm saying is, do we have a problem?”

She's taken aback, shuffling away from me an inch or two. We're alone, and I'm being aggressive. Not Danielle Ranson's level of aggro, but if there were bystanders present, this might come off as me threatening a beloved disabled girl. I soften my voice, clarify. “You've been giving me weird looks and I'm trying to understand what you would be mad about since I only wanted to help you.”

“Help me?” She shuffles forward and her voice has the edge now. Totally aggro. “How does your creepy perv act have anything to do with me?”

Creepy perv act? Is that one of her jokes? The Old-Time Appleton Humor. If so, that one falls flat. “I went after Keachin because of what she did to you. The way she shamed you. I got you some payback.”

“She didn't get paid back, Panda. She got killed. You know that, right?”

I blink rapidly, like she'd triggered a flash an inch from my eyes.

For a second, I'd forgotten that Keachin was dead.

I'd pushed it down and behind today's events. Lumped her with all the other Gray targets, exposed and well.

“I don't know what sort of weakling invalid you think I am,” Nina says, “but I don't need your kind of help. Not ever. When all this stupid Gray stuff blows up, make sure you don't mention my name. I didn't make you do it. The devil didn't either. It's all you, Panda.”

The same way she lands a punch line—with expert timing and the perfect inflection—is the way she closes an argument. Crisp, clear. As strong as a Danielle Ranson jab, I imagine.

There are no benches outside of the school entrance, but I need one. Nina's backlash is dizzying. I nearly ask if I can borrow one of her crutches.

“Are you okay?” Nina says. She hobbles closer like she somehow plans to catch me if I collapse.

“Fine,” I say, and wave her off. “Skipped lunch.”

A motor approaches, Nina's father's minivan.

“Eat. Soon,” Nina says. She goes to her ride, done with me.

I'm not done with her, though. I need to know something. “Nina.”

She whips around in a way that makes me think she might overbalance and fall. There I go, underestimating her again. Of course she stays upright, her gaze communicating a clear
make it fast
.

“The day after I posted the pictures of Keachin and Coach, I saw you. You were cheesing ear to ear. What was that about?”

She lowers her head, thinking. She's struggling to recall the moment. When our eyes meet again, I have a spark of intuition. I know what she's going to say—some version of it anyway—before she says it, and I cringe before she speaks.

Nina says, “I don't know for sure. I'm happy about a lot of things, and I don't keep score like you do.”

If she'd breathed fire on me like a dragon, it would've burned less.

Her dad parks the van, gets out, circles the vehicle to open her door for her. When she climbs into her seat, he asks, “Friend of yours?”

“No way.” Nina doesn't spare me another glance.

My mom arrives as Nina's dad seals her into their vehicle. Mr. Appleton climbs behind the wheel and pulls away. I only stop watching when my mom honks.
Come, Panda, come
.

I strap myself into the passenger seat. Mom examines me, the frown lines around her mouth strained. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing. Can we just go?”

She's not satisfied, but she honors my request and shifts to drive. I zone out, resting my head against the window, staring into the side mirror. I'm thinking of what Nina said, and trying not to think of it.

I notice a car—an old, dark-green Jetta—parked behind my mom's. A young guy's driving it. Somebody's brother or cousin, I figure. When Mom pulls off, so does he.

Oddly, he doesn't pick anyone up.