Halifax (5 page)

Rom stretched his arms up and stood on his tiptoes but he still couldn’t reach it. He tried jumping but he was only able to touch the edge of the toy before he landed back on the ground.

Finally, a shadow descended over Rom and a girl’s hand reached above his head and pulled down the Etch-A-Sketch.

“Here you go, little dude,” said the girl. It was the Tall Girl from Rom’s math class. He didn’t know her name, but she was memorably large and, in Rom’s eyes, memorably kind.

The bell rang for class and the hallway quickly emptied leaving Rom and the Tall Girl as the two last students still lingering between classes. Rom watched as Tall Girl walked down the hall towards a class. He adjusted the dials on the Etch-A-Sketch and pointed it towards the girl and down the hall, but nothing unusual came up on the monitor. Rom turned and walked in the opposite direction, scanning the corridors of Lexham for alien activity.

Behind Rom, though, half a hallway in the other direction, Tall Girl was suddenly pulled into a janitor’s closet, snatched by something in an instant. She began to yell out but her cry for help was muffled. Rom turned back. He had heard something, but nothing was there. He pointed his Etch-A-Sketch towards where the girl had been, but nothing appeared on the monitor. He headed off to class, merrily on his way, while behind him the Tall Girl’s hand reached out from the closet and grabbed onto the door jam. Her fingers dug into the wood as something or someone pulled on her arm from within the closet. One by one each finger lifted and her hand gave way. The closet slammed shut.

Coach Gwynn was a wiry little man who lifted weights every day in an attempt to seem larger than he actually was. He had dreamed of playing professional basketball, but his lack of height and his lack of athletic talent never took his game beyond high school. Even in high school he had spent more time on the bench than in any game. At Lexham Academy, though, he had found glory on the basketball court as the coach of the varsity basketball team. They were three time state champions and he was their leader.

Their current tournament, however, hadn’t been a good one. The once glorious Lexham Academy Nimrods were struggling and Coach Gwynn was getting an ulcer. He hoped, though, that the savior of the tournament was now standing before him. Farrell Halifax—the star of the International School of Uruguay’s feared basketball squad.

“Your numbers are impressive, Halifax,” he said to Farrell. “Team captain. Top scorer in your league. Took your team to the championships.”

“What can I say?” Farrell asked. Really, what
could
he say?

Coach Gwynn began pacing the room, circling Farrell. “We take our basketball very seriously here at Lexham,” he said as he sized Farrell up. “It’s not just about how you play the game and all that crap. We’re expected to win. Fall and winter tournaments. The spring season. Summer training camps. This is a year round commitment and I expect you to give it your all. Like your life depends on it.”

“I’ll do my best,” Farrell said, then quickly caught himself. “I mean—I’d give my life. Absolutely.”

Someone passed by the window and Coach Gwynn waved for him to join them. It was Andre Davies, the heartthrob of Lexham Academy. He was bigger and taller than Farrell and practically knocked him over with biceps full of testosterone.

“Andre Davies, this is Farrell Halifax,” the coach said as the boys shook hands. “He’s the new guy from Uruguay I told you about.”

“How you doing?” Andre asked. He was overwhelmingly charming. “Really nice to meet you. It’s great having you with us.”

“I’ve got to go teach a sex education class right now,” Coach Gwynn said as he put on a baseball cap. “Highlight of my God damn day. Davies will get you situated and show you around. Welcome to my team, Halifax.”

The coach slapped Farrell on the back as he left the room. Once he had disappeared down the hallway, though, charming Andre Davies turned to Farrell—and turned on him. His once friendly face became dark as he stepped towards Farrell, invading his space. He was intimidating. Or trying to be. It was hard to intimidate Farrell.

“Listen up, dude,” Andre said, poking his big, muscular finger into Farrell’s chest. “Just to get things straight, this isn’t Coach Gwynn’s team and it isn’t your team. It’s
my
team. You don’t touch the ball without my say so. Got it?”

“I guess so,” Farrell said. He was more amused than frightened.

“I don’t care if you were the Michael Jordan of Nicaragua,” Andre continued. “Here, you’re nothing.”

“It was actually Uruguay,” Farrell corrected him. “Not Nicaragua.”

“Whatever, dude,” Andre said. “If it’s not on a map of the United States, it doesn’t matter. And neither do you.”

Going to the school cafeteria was much like going to a nightclub. It wasn’t about the food, which was awful, or about taking your allotted forced break from the tedium of class work. It was about seeing and being seen, getting the best table, and hopefully hooking up.

Izzy and Carolyn hadn’t made it past the invisible red velvet rope to the coveted central tables where the most desirable and beautiful Lexham students congregated. They sat together with their trays of food before them at an orbiting table, one of those on the periphery of popularity and one that wasn’t shaded from the sun or, by the looks of the layer of muck forever adhered to its surface, ever even cleaned.

Izzy watched the popular kids, the cheerleaders and the jocks, the Kens and Barbies, mingle and flirt. They performed a music-less dance of teenage seduction, complete with small acts of betrayal and broken hearts and who knows what level of scheming. It was fascinating to Izzy. She wanted to know more. She always did. She wanted to know why the people on this planet who were so obviously undesirable, often so selfish and rude and insecure, were the ones who seemed to command the most respect. Izzy was puzzled by that. She could have lost herself connecting to their feelings, studying them, but that would have distracted her from the job at hand. She wasn’t a sociologist. She wasn’t writing a thesis paper. She was looking for an alien.

“I can’t help but notice that all the girls here have the same noses,” Izzy observed to Carolyn.

“They all have the same boobs, too,” Carolyn scoffed. “You could probably build a whole new person out of all their discarded body parts.”

“Don’t tell my brother Rom that,” Izzy said, smiling at her own inside joke.

“Rom?” Carolyn asked. “Is he the cute one?”

Izzy almost choked on the dry slice of pizza she was eating. “Ew. Neither of them is cute.”

“Okay, fine,” Carolyn said, indulging her new friend. “Is he the freshman or the junior?”

“Rom is the freshman. Farrell is the junior.”

“Then Farrell’s the cute one.”

“Don’t say that!” Izzy blurted out. “Seriously. That’s just not something I ever want to hear again.” Carolyn was talking about
Farrell and Rom
for God’s sake!

Izzy watched as Carolyn attacked her rather large tray of food with gusto. She stuck her fork into a pile of mashed potatoes like she was sticking a pitchfork into a bale of hay and hauled a huge bite up to her mouth. A feeling of isolation hit Izzy as she sat with Carolyn. A feeling of not belonging. Of otherness. Izzy shook it off. The feelings she was picking up were too personal. She never liked to get too close to people. Sometimes their emotions were too much for her to handle.

“Look, it’s the new girl!”

Izzy had been lost in thought and didn’t notice the approaching squad of cheerleaders. There were almost a dozen of them, in full force, now surrounding her table. Shana Rowen, the head cheerleader with the best hair and loudest voice, spoke for the group.

“You’re the new girl we met this morning,” she said to Izzy in the friendliest of tones. “And you’re sitting with…with…?”

“Carolyn Holcomb,” Carolyn said through a mouthful of wilted lettuce. “We’ve been in school together since third grade.”

“Right. Of course,” Shana said with seeming sincerity. “Carolyn, you look great today.”

Carolyn was about to take a swig off a carton of grape juice but was so stunned by the comment she ended up dribbling it down the front of her school uniform where it made a lovely, large purple stain across her white blouse.

“We’ll see you at the big Westminster game, right?” Shana said, politely ignoring the disaster that was Carolyn.

“Probably not,” Carolyn replied.

“Then we’ll have to cheer
for
you,” Shana declared in her best rah-rah cheerleading voice.

Carolyn feigned a smile. “Super.”

The cheerleaders left the table, weaving their way through the other students, a merry parade of perkiness headed off to brighten someone else’s day. Izzy watched them in wonder. She had never seen so much peroxided hair and whitened teeth on display in one place before.

“Are they for real?” she asked, bewildered.

“It’s their new Cheerleader Outreach Program,” Carolyn told her as she used her napkin in an attempt to blot the grape juice off her blouse. “They’re trying to be nice so they can help change the whole mean cheerleader stereotype. It’s completely messed up the normal high school dynamic of good versus evil. Without them to hate, now I really am my own worst enemy.”

The school bell rang indicating the end of the lunch period and all the students began bussing their trays and gathering their books and heading off to their various classes. Carolyn looked down at the stain on her blouse. She was a marked woman. Marked as a slob.

“I’m going to go clean up,” she told Izzy. “You better get to class before the second bell rings. They tend to be a bit totalitarian about that second bell. You don’t want to get an infraction on your first day.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later,” Izzy said as she watched Carolyn head off towards the girl’s bathroom.

Carolyn kept a look of indifference on her face the whole way to the bathroom. It was just grape juice. Everyone spilled something on themselves sometimes. It was funny. What a silly fool she was. Once she stepped into the girl’s bathroom, though, her shoulders sank and she let out a huge sigh, releasing a lunchtime full of stress and a days worth of disappointment.

She peered under the doors of the stalls to check to see if anyone else was in the bathroom, but it was empty. Carolyn turned to look at herself in the mirror. She frowned at what she saw. She was a total mess and that was even without the grape juice stain. It may have come easily to others, to the cheerleaders, to the popular kids of the school and of the world, but just getting up and dressed and ready for the day was a chore for Carolyn.

“Why do I have to be me?” she said to herself as she began running water in the sink. She pulled off ten or so sheets of hand towels from the dispenser and began trying in vain to clean some of the stain off her blouse.

The door to the bathroom swung open. Carolyn didn’t even look up. She just shook her head slowly from side to side. Why couldn’t she just be alone? She finally turned around, ready to smile or smirk or put on whatever brave face she needed to face whatever perfect person had just come to make her day even more challenging. When she looked back, though, no one else was in the bathroom. She was sure she had heard the door open, heard it squeak on its rusty hinges.

“Hello?” she asked softly. No one there. She shook it off and turned back to the mirror but suddenly gasped at something she saw there. She barely had time to react before her feet were pulled out from under her and her body slammed to the floor. Something began pulling her along the floor towards one of the stalls. Carolyn tried to break free, tried to stop her slide across the floor, palms down, nails scratching across the tiles, but it was of no use. She quickly disappeared under the stall door.

All she had left to do was scream. It was long and loud and blood curdling, but no one would ever hear it. Carolyn’s scream was drowned out by the ringing of the second bell. It was time to get to class, but Carolyn wouldn’t be making it to English literature that day.

Farrell was doing what he liked to do best. He was reading. He was stretched out on a long, suede sofa, his head resting on an overstuffed pillow and his legs propped up on the armrest. The book he was reading wasn’t for pleasure. Most definitely not. He was studying for school, intently pouring over the pages of
Basketball for Dummies
, an instructional book on the basics of the game. He really did believe that anything you needed to know could be found in the pages of a book.

Izzy was slumped in the chair across from Farrell, earphones from an iPod firmly attached to her head, eyes closed, lost in the rhythms of a song, escaping into her own mind, shutting out the rest of the world. It was one of the few ways Izzy had to tune out, to block out other people’s emotions and finally feel some of her own.

Their down time, though, was rudely interrupted by Mom, who dropped a board game down on the table in front of Farrell and Izzy with a loud thud, startling them both. “It’s game night and I choose Candyland,” Mom declared as she expectantly stood over them. Rom came up beside her. He was almost dancing with excitement.

“I love Candyland,” Rom said, rubbing his hands together with glee.

Izzy took the earphones out of her ears just long enough to say “We’re busy, Mom. Very, very busy.”

“Does it look like I’m asking, Izzy?” Mom said. She most definitely wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Rom pushed everything on the coffee table aside and began to set out the Candyland board. He pulled a red plastic gingerbread man out of the box. “I’m going to be red. What color do you want to be, Farrell?”

Before Farrell could answer, the doorbell rang. Everyone froze. “Not the door bell,” Rom said. “I hate the door bell.”

“Great,” Izzy added. “What now? Child protective services? The FBI? KGB?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mom said as she marched off towards the front door.

“We shouldn’t have picked such a nice neighborhood,” Farrell told them. “We don’t need to be so conspicuous.”

“We go to a private school,” Izzy reminded him. “We have to have the kind of house private school kids have.”