Scorpion Shards (5 page)

Ralphy had been whispering lies about Lourdes in science lab, as if he himself believed they were true.
Did you hear that Lourdes was offered ten grand to join the circus? Did you hear that Lourdes donates fat to the Southampton Candle Factory? Did you hear they found some loose change and a TV remote in Lourdes's belly button?
Lourdes tried to control herself. She bit her tongue and gritted her teeth, but there's only so much abuse a person can take. She wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt her—as much as they all hurt her, and so she pushed Ralphy up against the wall, held her hand firmly on his chest, and felt his chest begin to crush inward. Ralphy tried to scream, but couldn't. His face turned red, purple, then blue. By then the teacher had taken notice and come running, so Lourdes stepped away from the limp blue kid, and he fell to the floor. Lourdes ran.

Now, as she lumbered down the stairs, she cursed the steps and the way they rang out every time her bursting orthopedic shoes hit them.

It was at the first floor landing that Lourdes encountered Mrs. Conroy, the principal of Hampton Bays High.

“Hold it right there, Lourdes.” She stood ten steps beneath Lourdes, and her voice was well trained to wield power—power enough to stop the grossly obese girl in her tracks. Lourdes swayed just a bit, and the steps creaked like the hinges of a rusty door. There wasn't any sympathy from anyone in school this year—not even the principal. It was as if sympathy and understanding were limited to a certain waist size, and if a person grew beyond that limit, they were fair game for all forms of cruelty.

“You are coming to the office,” said Mrs. Conroy, “and we're calling your parents. What you've done is very serious, do you understand?”

“Of course I understand,” said Lourdes. “I'm fat, not stupid.” Her voice was thick and seemed to be wrapped within heavy, wet layers of cotton. When Lourdes spoke, it sounded as if she was shouting from inside the belly of a whale.

“I didn't kill him, did I?” asked Lourdes.

“No,” said Mrs. Conroy, “but you could have.”

Lourdes was relieved and disappointed at the same time.

“This school has had about enough of you,” growled Conroy.

“Does that mean I'm expelled?”

“We'll talk about it in my office.”

“Fat chance,” said Lourdes. She took one step at a time as she descended slowly toward her principal.

Boom!
The steps rang out as Lourdes planted her swollen feet on them.

Boom!

In a moment she eclipsed the stairway lights, and Conroy's face was lost in shadow.

“I'm warning you, Lourdes . . .”

Boom!

As Lourdes approached, Mrs. Conroy seemed smaller and less powerful. Why, she was just a wisp of a woman after all, thought Lourdes.

Boom!

“Lourdes, I won't let you past me.”

“So try and stop me.”

Boom!

As Lourdes continued her descent toward the frail principal, Conroy unconsciously gripped the rail, already feeling
Lourdes's pull—her
gravity
, for Lourdes did have a gravity about her. When she was in a room, it was difficult not to find oneself leaning in her direction. If a breeze blew in through the window and scattered papers, they would all stick to Lourdes until she peeled them off. If you threw a paper airplane at her, it would curve around her and come back to you like a boomerang—and if you threw it just right, that airplane would continue to circle in orbit around her until it fell to the ground. Her classmates called her the Planetoid, and she hated them all.

“If you so much as touch me, Lourdes—”

Boom!

The final step. Lourdes stood right before Conroy, and the principal's shoulder-length hair was falling forward across her face, reaching toward Lourdes. Her immense belly pinned the principal against the wall, and they looked into each other's eyes. Fear was in the principal's eyes now. Fear and disgust.

“It's not my fault I'm like this,” said Lourdes. With that the principal's body began to crush inward, from Lourdes's mere touch, collapsing in upon itself. Barely able to breathe, Conroy snarled out her words.

“You don't belong here,”
she said, and Lourdes knew she wasn't just talking about school. “Here,” for Lourdes, meant this world. She brushed Conroy away as if swatting a fly, and the woman gasped for breath, as if she had just escaped the crushing force of a black hole.

Principal Conroy clutched the railing to keep from collapsing and shouted at Lourdes, but Lourdes didn't listen. She just continued out of the stairwell and onto the first floor.

T
HE FIRST FLOOR HALLWAY
housed mostly English and history classrooms. The nearest exit was to the left, but the school
security guard and guidance counselor were standing there, blocking Lourdes's escape route. At the other end of the hall stood the vice principal and a whole legion of teachers. They all began to close in.

Either she could run at them, hoping her momentum would take them out like bowling pins, or she could duck into an empty classroom. Since there were too many of them to bowl over, she chose the classroom. Once inside, she would be cornered, but at least she'd have an arsenal of things to throw at them as they tried to come at her. If it had to be her against the whole world, then the whole world would be made to suffer for what it was doing to Lourdes Hidalgo.

She pushed into the classroom, and instantly caught sight of Miss Benson—the new English teacher—and Michael Lipranski in the front of the classroom.

Lourdes was not prepared for what she saw. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open.

Because Michael Lipranski was kissing his English teacher.

The very sight of it distracted Lourdes a moment too long, and she was caught off guard when everyone burst into the room. With so many people trying to wrestle her under control, not even her crushing gravity could save her. In the end, she had to give up. Her only consolation was that Michael Lipranski was also caught, and he would be in as much trouble as she was. Maybe more.

M
ICHAEL
L
IPRANSKI WAS AN
unlikely make-out king. Sure, he was attractive, but there was something about him that was unnerving, unclean, and a bit slimy. He was a bit too thin, his dark hair was a bit too long—and always damp. When he would look at you, you could swear that he was reading your most secret thoughts and thinking great mischief.

He wasn't your typical stud—had no great muscles to speak of, and there was always a constellation of bruises over much of his body. Some of these came courtesy of his father, who was known to use his fists, but most were from fights around school. Michael wasn't much of a fighter, but he had learned to defend himself in a world that turned out to be far more cruel and vicious than he ever thought it could be.

Physically, the only thing truly special about Michael Lipranski was his eyes. He had these impossibly intense turquoise-hazel eyes, layered with rich coronas of color that made them seem as deep, warm, and inviting as a Caribbean sea. The girls in school could lose themselves in Michael's eyes, and often did. It happened last year in Baltimore, and it happened here in the Hamptons. Maybe that's why all the guys hated him.

And maybe that's why no teacher wanted him in their classroom. For several years Michael could never figure out why this was so. He was friendly, funny, and personable. He made an effort to do the work. Still, he seemed to be an epicenter for all sorts of disturbances. Since seventh grade, Michael's classrooms had always been remarkably unruly. He always assumed that this was normal. Kids hit puberty and turned into monsters, right? That's what everyone said . . . but the way his classmates acted wasn't exactly normal.

When Michael was in a room, a clamminess filled the air that pulled at the edge of everyone's senses like a smell so faint it was impossible to identify. Whatever it was, it usually attacked girls and guys differently. It made girls' hearts race and made them suddenly feel like there was something that they desperately wanted. They would begin to sweat, and their eyes would constantly seek out Michael's—for if they could look into Michael's eyes, they would begin to feel just a bit better. And if they could move closer to him, they could feel
relief. Close enough to smell his breath. Closer still, to taste it.

Of course, guys didn't generally feel that way. Instead they felt like beating Michael up.

So when the posse chasing Lourdes Hidalgo burst into Miss Benson's classroom, word got around at the speed of light squared that Michael “Lips” Lipranski had taken his smooth moves to new heights. Everyone acted surprised, but no one really was.

W
HILE
L
OURDES SAT IN
the principal's office under tight guard, Michael had a pressing appointment with Mr. Fleiderman, the guidance counselor, who was everyone's friend—or at least tried to be.

The appointment wasn't held in Fleiderman's office, because when it wasn't too cold, Fleiderman liked to hold his sessions out in the quad—the courtyard in the center of the large school. More relaxed, less threatening, Fleiderman thought. It had never occurred to him that most kids didn't want to talk to the guidance counselor in view of the entire school.

When Michael crossed through the wall of steamy fog, it seemed that the rest of the world slipped off the edge of the earth into gray nothingness. It's how Michael felt inside too—lost, alone, and confused—generally fogged in, but he didn't plan on letting Fleiderman see that.
Let him think I'm calm and in control,
thought Michael as he approached the over-eager counselor.

Fleiderman shook Michael's hand and invited him to sit with him in the moist grass. Michael refused to sit.

“Why not?” asked Fleiderman, pleasantly. “I won't bite.”

Michael smiled his winning smile. “Standing is better, strategically speaking,” he said. “If you attack me and try to strangle me, I can run. And yes, you might bite, too.”

Fleiderman laughed at the suggestion and decided to stand. “All right, we'll do it your way.”

They both waited, Michael leaned against a yellowing sycamore tree with his arms folded.

“So talk to me,” Fleiderman finally said.

“So talk to you about what?”

“You know what. Miss Benson.”

“What about her?”

“You tell me.”

Michael shrugged and looked away. “She kissed me. So?”

“Don't you mean
you
kissed
her
?”

Michael smiled slyly. “What makes you so sure?”

Fleiderman grunted slightly. Michael could see irritation building in the mild-mannered man.

“I want to understand where you're coming from, Michael.”

“Baltimore.”

“No, inside. I want to understand you.”

That made Michael laugh out loud. “Good luck.”

“I know you keep yourself pretty busy with girls in school. I know you're . . . shall we say . . . ‘active.' ”

“Active?” said Michael. “Like a volcano?”

“Sexually active.”

“Oh,” said Michael. “That.” He looked away again and paced around to the other side of the sycamore. Fleiderman followed, and Michael noted how the guidance counselor's irritation had already built into frustration.

“I make out a lot,” explained Michael. “I don't go much past that. Second base, maybe. You know.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Believe what you want,” said Michael. And then Michael smiled again. “But to tell you the truth, sex scares me.”

“Why?” asked Fleiderman. “Afraid you might explode?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah. Or that the girl might.”

Fleiderman laughed uncomfortably, but Michael didn't. He became dead serious and noticed that Fleiderman's hands had involuntarily tightened into fists.

“Let's get back to Miss Benson,” said Fleiderman. He reached up to wipe steam from his glasses.

“What happened wasn't all my fault, okay?” said Michael, beginning to say more than he had really wanted to. “She didn't
have
to keep me after class to talk about my book report. She didn't
have
to come up to me and touch my shoulder like that—and she didn't
have
to kiss me back when I kissed her.”

Fleiderman gritted his teeth. Michael could see his anger heading toward meltdown. There was no logical reason for it; Michael wasn't antagonizing him—Michael was, in fact, being honest and spilling his guts, just like Fleiderman wanted. Still the guidance counselor seethed with anger. “Miss Benson will be dealt with,” Fleiderman said. “But now we're talking about you and your problem of self-control.”

“How the hell am I supposed to control myself when all the girls in school are after me, and all the guys want to beat the crap out of me?”

Fleiderman's whole face seemed clenched as he spat his words out. “Oh, I see. Everyone either loves you or hates you. You're the center of the universe and everyone's actions revolve around you.”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “That's it!”

“Delusions!” shouted Fleiderman. He was furious, and Fleiderman
never
got furious at anything. Staying calm was his job. “It's all in your head!” he shouted.

“Oh yeah?” Michael took a step closer to Fleiderman. Michael was five-seven, Fleiderman closer to six feet. “What do you feel now, Mr. Fleiderman? Do you feel really pissed
off? Do you want to grab me and rip my head off? It's like you're turning into a werewolf inside, isn't it? An animal. Everyone who hangs around me long enough starts acting like an animal out of control. They either want to kill me or kiss me. Actually I'm glad that you'd rather kill me.”