Only Everything (17 page)

Darla and Veronica looked over at Marion’s table. She was sitting there, silent and still.

“I told you, I don’t think she’s interested,” I replied quietly.

“You just need to get to know her!” True protested. “Give her a chance.”

“Who? Marion the mouse-girl?” Veronica said with a laugh, flipping her thick blond hair over her shoulder. “She hasn’t talked to anyone since the second grade.”

“Why? What happened to her in the second grade?” True asked, her expression concerned.

Veronica made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. She picked up a piece of lettuce between two fingers and bit into it like it was a chip. “Like I care.”

“Well, she talked to me this morning,” True shot back.

Veronica’s blue eyes flicked over True, her nose wrinkling. “Why am I not surprised?”

“True, can you just let it go?” I asked, avoiding eye contact.

“No! I cannot let it go!” True said. “You said you wanted to find love, and I’m going to find you love!”

The entire courtyard fell silent. Her words hung in the air around us. Everyone was staring at me, and something inside of me snapped. I got up and walked away from the table, knowing True would follow. Once I was halfway to the hall where Katrina had long since disappeared, I turned on her.

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Why do you have to be so weird?” I hissed through my teeth.

She pulled her head back, shocked but not offended. “What do you mean?”

I sighed. “Look, I’m actually making friends here. For the first time in my entire life, I have people to hang out with at lunch. People who like me. People who want me to come to their parties and their games and be part of their teams. You can’t keep hanging around
me and spouting weird stuff about love and the universe and all that crap. Please. Let it go.”

“I’m trying to help you,” True said flatly. “If you would come talk to Marion, I know you would—”

“Stop!” I shouted, bringing her up short. I felt bad for yelling at her, but there was no taking it back now. I wanted to get back to my table and hope everyone would forget about this. “Please, just leave me alone.”

I walked away, this time praying she wouldn’t follow me. As I took my seat, the two security guards who had stepped in on the fight walked up behind her.

“Are you True Olympia?” the skinny one asked.

“Yes,” she snapped.

“The vice principal wants to see you.”

Prayer answered.

“He’ll have to wait,” True replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

“
She’ll
see you
now
,” the chubby guard said in a pretty convincingly menacing voice. He hiked up his pants, but they fell right back to where they’d been.

True heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Apparently I’m not wanted out here anyway.”

As she walked off in front of the security guards, the entire courtyard exploded in applause. True had definitely put on a show. I pushed my hands into my thighs again, drying the sweat that had pooled there, and glanced at the door to the hallway one last time. Still no sign of Katrina. I hoped she was okay. Wherever she was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

True

The vice principal’s office was about the size of one of those phone booths that had anchored every street corner back in the last century. I’d once hidden inside one to watch the couple I’d just united make out under an awning in the rain. It had been one of my most uncomfortable half hours on Earth. Linz, Austria, Valentine’s Day, 1974. But the couple was still together today, and the woman had given birth to three children, all of whom were happily wed.

And they say I’m no good at my job.

“Miss Olympia, I’m Vice Principal Austin.” The vice principal had thick light-brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, and wore a brown suit and orange shirt. She did not look like a happy woman. “Have a seat.”

She gestured at a wooden chair as the security guard closed the door behind me. If I had to guess, I would have said we had about five hours’ worth of oxygen in the room before we both passed out. I sat down. The round white clock above the door loudly ticked off each passing second.

“What’s this about?” I asked. I wanted to get this meeting over with as quickly as possible so I could get back to Charlie and Marion.
I could make something out of that pairing. I was certain of it.

Ms. Austin paused halfway into her seat, her hands under her butt as she smoothed her skirt. “It’s about your behavior today, Miss Olympia.”

I laced my fingers together in my lap. She stared at them. “My behavior?”

Ms. Austin hit a few buttons on her keyboard and glanced at her computer screen, which cast an unattractive green glow over her skin. In my mind’s eye I saw that red sand slipping through the hourglass on my desk. My skin felt prickly and warm, and I glanced at the one small window in the room. It was shut tight, locked. The clock continued its infernal ticking.

“Apparently this morning you destroyed the cell phone of one of your fellow students.”

“He took a picture of me without my consent,” I replied succinctly.

Ms. Austin blinked. She seemed confused by me, though I had no idea why. “Even if that is the case, it doesn’t warrant you destroying someone else’s property.”

“Well, he called me a bitch,” I replied. “Is that merited?”

Ms. Austin cleared her throat. I stared at the window lock, wishing I had my powers so that I could whip it open and get some air in here.
Tick, tick, tick.

“I’ll have a chat with him about his use of language, but your infraction is still far greater,” Ms. Austin told me.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll get him a new cell phone.”

Her lips flicked toward a smile, but didn’t exactly land there. “Precisely the solution I was going to propose. Except the boy would like the money necessary to buy his own new cell phone. It seems he’d like to pick it out himself.”

“Fine,” I said again, unclasping and reclasping my hands. My underarms were beginning to prickle, and my nostrils widened with each breath. “How much?”

“I’ll put you in touch with the student.” She tapped a few more keys on her keyboard, and I heard a
ding
. “There. I’ve sent his e-mail address to your school-assigned e-mail address.”

“I don’t have a computer,” I told her. My eyes kept traveling to the window. My pulse was beginning to accelerate. What was my body doing now? I had thought I’d figured out its new, human peculiarities. I felt each tick of the clock at the top of my spine.

Ms. Austin’s face went slack. She leaned back in her leather chair, the springs squealing. “Is that a joke?”

“I don’t see what’s funny about it,” I replied, my nostrils widening farther as I breathed in. I resisted the urge to blow out through my mouth, though it was overwhelming. There was movement in the hallway, and I saw Katrina pass by with a tall man, his bushy eyebrows his most prominent feature. A door nearby closed, and I heard him talking in low tones in the next office.

“You don’t have a computer? No tablet, no cell phone?” she asked, incredulous.

I shook my head, growing impatient with this useless line of questioning. It was getting warmer by the second in this tiny cell of a room, and lunch was practically over. If I didn’t get out of here soon, my chances of getting Charlie and Marion to speak to each other were gone. Another day, wasted.

Tick, tick, tick.

“No means of retrieving an e-mail at all?” she said.

“No.” I angled my knees toward the door. “Can I go now?”

Slowly Ms. Austin looked me up and down. She sat forward again, resting her arms atop the desk blotter. “Miss Olympia, if you
don’t mind my asking . . . do you have the means to pay this boy back?”

My jaw dropped. How insulting. “Of course I do! Just because I don’t choose to carry around one of those infuriating, soul-sucking devices doesn’t mean I’m destitute! How dare you imply such a thing?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Forgive me!” She raised her pink palms in the air. “You may use the computers in the computer lab or in the library to retrieve your school e-mail.”

“Fine.” I rose from the awful chair, flinching now with each tick of the clock. “Is that it?”

“No. It’s not,” she said, standing as well. “There’s the small matter of an assault you just perpetrated in the courtyard.”

I groaned. “An assault? That Ty person was the one who grabbed one of your students. I was simply defending her.”

“Violence is not the answer to violence,” she said, leveling a glare at me. “Next time, please report any incidents to school security. We wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”

“Fine,” I said again. “I’ll do that.”

I yanked open the door and stepped out into the hallway. The
whoosh
of cool air brought my blood pressure down instantly. The security guards hovered at the end of the hall, keeping a sharp eye on me. I turned in the opposite direction to take the long way back to the courtyard, but at that moment, the bell rang.

I leaned back against the wall and kicked it as hard as I could with the sole of my sneaker. Pain radiated up my leg and jarred my kneecap. I bit down on my lip as the hallway flooded with students. Gods, I hated this place and its narrow halls and its tiny rooms and its hordes of shrieking students. I hated this body and its insane limitations. I had to get out of here. I had to get back to Mount
Olympus and Orion. But I was no closer to achieving that goal than I had been this morning.

The door to the next office opened and Katrina stepped out, her face hidden behind her hair.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Katrina looked up at me, startled, then angry. “Why does everyone keep asking me that? Why can’t you people just leave me alone?”

As I watched her storm off, I started to wonder if Zeus had been right to give me that C in psychology. Maybe, when it came to the human heart and mind, I really was clueless.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Katrina

I am not.

I am nothing.

I can’t live without you.

No one knows.

No one cares.

No one wants to see through.

I tore the page out of my poetry notebook and crumpled it as quietly as I could. Even though I had spent the entire period sitting in the back corner with my hair over my face, writing, I knew everyone in the room was staring at me. The same way they had last year after my father had died and his picture had run on the front page of the paper. Poor little Katrina, the girl whose dad died in a freak accident.

Except now they were thinking,
Poor little Katrina, the girl whose boyfriend abused her in front of the whole school. The weird girl who was so pathetic she had to be defended by an even weirder girl.

At least that’s what Dr. Krantz had called it when he’d scurried me into his office earlier. Abuse. He’d said that if someone grabbed
me hard enough to scare me, it was a “reportable incident,” and he asked me if I wanted to press charges. Against Ty. I almost laughed in his face.

It was one arm grab. One time. It just happened to take place in front of a hundred people. Ty was everything to me. He was my family. He was my home. He was the only person left on this earth who gave a crap about me. He just didn’t like not getting his way.

In the aisle closest to the wall, True sat with perfectly straight posture, staring at the clock. Charlie was right next to her, tapping a quiet beat against the edge of his desk with his fingers. He’d tried to get my attention a couple of times, I think. I’d seen a hand wave through my hair about five minutes into class. But I’d chosen to pretend it wasn’t there. I was too humiliated to look him in the eye. And besides, I didn’t want to get him in trouble with Stacey again.

I looked down at my phone under the desk. Five minutes left. Only three more classes to go in this awful day. I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of here. I was going to practically sprint to the library to blubber on Mrs. Pauley’s shoulder. Thank God I had a shift this afternoon.

“Well, we’ve only got a few minutes left, so it’s time to put you out of your misery,” Mrs. Roberge announced.

My heart stopped. I looked up at her through my bangs. She hovered at the front of the room in an unattractive violet top and black skirt, a Ziploc bag full of paper scraps in her hand. Oh God. I had totally spaced on the project. Today was the day she was going to assign the first chapters.

“If I call your name, please come to the front of the class.”

Please don’t call my name, please don’t call my name, please don’t call my—

“Katrina Ramos! You’re going to be our first presenter on
Great Expectations
!”

I swear I would have thrown up if I’d eaten anything today. My eyes automatically flicked to Charlie. He gave me a bolstering look, which only made me want to heave even more. Yesterday I thought he maybe kind of liked me. Even just as a friend. Today he thought I was a special case. A loser. Someone in need of bolstering looks.

“Miss Ramos? Come on down and get your assignment,” Mrs. Roberge called out happily.

I pushed myself out of my chair. My knees shook as I navigated around the bags in the aisle, leaning up against chairs or dangling from chair backs. At the front of the room, I took a wide step over Stacey’s outstretched leg, which I could have sworn hadn’t been there a moment ago. Mrs. Roberge held out the assignment to me.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS: CHAPTER ONE

Some points to consider for your lecture.

Lecture? She expected me to lecture?

“We’re looking forward to having you lead our class on Monday,” Mrs. Roberge said with a huge smile.

That was all it took. My whole body flushed with heat and my eyes stung. I was going to throw up anyway, even with an empty stomach. The assignment crumpled in my hand as I flung myself out into the hallway, letting the door slam.