After Midnight

  “Come on,” the same voice said, and a boy the size of a grown man came out. His brown and white varsity jacket had the number eight and the name BOONE spelled out in block letters across the shoulders. “Bell’s about to ring.”

  Not quite as tall as my brother, Boone had almost the same build as Gray, except he was a little leaner in the chest and arms. Everything about him said rich kid, from the gilded brown hair that fell in precise razor-cut layers over his ears down to the brand-new designer sneakers he’d already scuffed. Even the dark sunglasses he wore looked like they cost a small fortune.

  He wasn’t especially good-looking, but that didn’t seem to matter to all the girls around him. They stared at him like he was some rock star.

  “Got one here,” one of the jocks yelled. He dragged by the collar a small, white-faced boy out of the shuffling crowd. “Know whatcha use a urinal for? No? Time to learn.” He shoved him toward Boone.

  “You’re a real runt.” Boone circled the younger boy like a shark. “You fall in, we might never see you again.”

  Some of the kids chuckled, and suddenly I could guess why the other boys’ pants had been soaked. Boone and his friends were making the freshmen sit in the urinals while they flushed them.

  “Aaron Boone.”

  A couple of kids turned away and hurried off as a frowning older woman in a bright pink suit pushed her way through to the center of the crowd.

  “Aaron Boone,” the teacher repeated, “what do you think you’re doing here?”

  “Morning, Mrs. Hopkins.” Boone slung his arm around the younger boy’s shoulders. “Me and some of the guys are just showing the freshmen a few things. You know, like how to use the boy’s room.” He looked down. “Right, kid?”

  The pale boy made a strangled sound.

  “Indeed.” Mrs. Hopkins folded her arms. “Four students with soaking-wet pants have come into the office in the last half-hour, asking for permission to go home and change.”

  “That’s too bad.” Boone bared his teeth. “I guess we missed them.”

  As the kids around the teacher choked back their laughter, Mrs. Hopkins’s face turned almost as pink as her suit. “Bullying younger children is cruel and unnecessary behavior, Aaron. You and your friends could be suspended for this.”

  Boone took a step toward the teacher. “Has someone accused us of bullying them, ma’am?” he asked in a soft voice.

  I expected Mrs. Hopkins to take the boy by the arm and march him down to the principal’s office. Instead she seemed to shrivel a little, hunching her shoulders and raising one hand as if to hold him off.

  She was a teacher. Why was she scared of him?

  “No.” The bell rang, and she cleared her throat before she spoke to the kids watching them. “Go and report to your homerooms now.”

  Someone behind me snickered, and Boone turned his head. I didn’t realize he was staring at me until he reached up and took off his shades. His eyes weren’t blue or brown but a light, cold green, like sea ice. Gazing into them gave me goose bumps, especially when he started walking toward me.

  “Cat.” Gray appeared next to me. “What are you … ” He stopped as he saw Boone coming at us. He stepped in front of me, and over his shoulder I saw Boone stop in his tracks. Gray stood there until the other boy retreated. “Come on.” He gave me a nudge. “We’re going to be late.”

  Three

  Everything appears to be in order,” Miss Renda said as she looked through the paperwork Trick had filled out when he’d registered us at the school over the summer. She handed me then Gray a couple of papers. “These are your class schedules and a map of the campus. Freshmen have first lunch period, and sophomores have second and third.”

  My schedule listed all the classes I wanted—English Comp, Biology, Political Science, and Calculus—along with Ceramics and PhysEd as electives, and second period lunch. I handed it over to Gray, who was trying to read it from the side. I wondered which year Boone was in; he had looked old enough to be a senior.

  “When do the juniors and seniors have lunch?” I asked.

  “Most of them leave campus for lunch,” she said, “or take a dinner period.”

  “I’m a junior,” Gray pointed out, “and I’m scheduled for third lunch.”

  The guidance counselor frowned. “I forgot, this is your first year at Tanglewood. Half of our juniors and all of our seniors attend an evening session, the first classes of which begin after your sixth period. A few of our special-needs upperclassmen matriculate by taking classes on their home computers.”

  The school hadn’t looked that overcrowded to me. “Why would you need to have two sessions instead of one?”

  “At the moment we’re experiencing a teacher shortage.” Miss Renda stacked some papers before smiling at us. “Do either of you have any other questions?”

  “Yeah. Can these schedules be changed?” Gray asked. “My sister and I don’t have any classes in the same building, or the same lunch period.”

  She shook her head. “We keep siblings separated. In general it creates fewer problems.”

  My brother didn’t like that, but the news made me pretty happy. Gray was a year ahead of me, but from middle school on we’d always had some class or lunch period together. I think he planned it that way; ever since we’d become teenagers he’d been acting as over-protective as Trick. It was nice to know that for one year I wouldn’t have to worry about him hovering around.

  Outside the office Gray checked his school map. “We’re not even on the same side of campus all day.” He scowled at me. “You’re glad.”

  “No way,” I assured him. “I’m depressed. Seriously.” I pressed the back of my hand against my forehead. “How will I ever make it through the lunch line without you?”

  “Brat.” He trudged off.

  The map Miss Renda had given me of the five buildings on campus also showed the room numbers in each, which made it simple to find my first class, English Comp. As I joined the queue filing into the class, a girl barely five feet tall and dressed in brightly-colored, mismatched clothes tugged me out of line.

  “Hi,” she said, peering up at me. “Your name’s Catherine, right?”

  “Uh, no.” I tried not to stare at the wide streaks of blazing fuchsia she’d dyed in her dark brown hair. “It’s Catlyn.”

  “Ooo, I like that better.” The girl grinned, displaying a heavy-duty set of metal braces. “I’m Barbara Riley. Everybody calls me Barb.”

  As if to confirm this, a couple of girls said “Hey, Barb” as they passed us, and she smiled and fluttered her fingers at them.

  “I’m Cat.” When I saw the amount of eyeliner she had on—a good half-inch plastered around both eyes—and the bright, mismatched patterns of her layered top and Capri pants, I realized she was a “scene” girl, one of the kids who liked to dress like a colorblind Goth. “Nice to meet you.” I turned to go inside, but she caught my arm again.

  “Didn’t Miss Renda tell you? I’m going to be your student mentor for the first week. I get to show you around, keep you out of trouble, and introduce you to everyone.”

  “Better clear your schedule, new girl,” a skinny boy said as he edged around us. “Barb knows everyone. When they need the names and numbers to print a new telephone book, they just call her.”

  Barb elbowed him smartly before she beamed at me. “You’ll have to tell me your life story, of course.”

  “Of course.” I followed Barb inside, where she led me to a seat beside her in the middle rows and asked to look at my schedule.

  “We’ve got four classes together, that’s good,” she said as she handed it back to me. “I don’t take Ceramics or PhysEd, but I have second lunch, too, so we can sit together. So where are you from?”

  “We moved here from Chicago.” I went to hang my backpack over my chair and saw Boone sitting at the desk two rows behind mine. “Does this teacher assign seats in alphabetical order?” I asked Barb.

  She shook her head. “We can sit
wherever we want. Ms. Newsom is on major anti-depressants so she doesn’t care. It’s because Mr. Newsom … ” She mimed someone drinking out of a bottle.

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I have eyes everywhere.” Her braces glittered. “Like when I saw you earlier with that really big blond guy. Is he your boyfriend?”

  That startled a laugh out of me. “No, that’s my brother, Grayson. He’s a junior.”

  “Really? You two don’t look anything alike.” She darted a look over her shoulder before she whispered, “Oh, my, God. Do you know that Aaron Boone is watching you?”

  The hair on the back of my neck knew. “Who?”

  “Aaron Boone,” she repeated, leaning closer to whisper more. “Okay, he’s the quarterback of our football team, and the cutest guy in school, and he hangs out with all the jocks. Every girl in Tanglewood has a dire crush on him, but he’s totally unavailable.” She giggled. “Did I mention he’s the cutest guy in school?”

  Mrs. Newsom called for everyone to settle down, which ended the conversation, but for the rest of the period I felt uneasy and had a hard time focusing on the teacher. When the bell rang, I sat and waited for Boone to leave before I got up from my seat and followed Barb out.

  In between classes my new friend introduced me to practically every other kid we passed in the hall while at the same time filling me in on Boone and his friends. They were sophomores like us, but they were all football players who came from wealthy families. According to Barb, Boone’s parents owned ten of the largest cattle ranches in the state, and lived in an enormous mansion in one of the exclusive gated communities outside town. Boone’s parents were famous for spoiling their son by doing outrageous things like giving him a brand-new sports car for his sixteenth birthday.

  “He got held back one grade in middle school because of mono,” Barb explained later as we walked into the cafeteria. “That’s why he’s already sixteen and can drive. He should really be a junior.”

  “Why do Boone and his friends pick on freshman?” I asked her later as we walked to the cafeteria.

  “Everybody bullies the noobs a little,” Barb said. “I guess Boone and the other jocks are pretty awful, but it’s the way they are. Did you bring your lunch?” When I shook my head she steered me around the tables to the line of kids waiting for trays. “Don’t ever get the meatloaf, the chili, or the casserole surprise. Mr. Jennings made us use lunchroom food last year to grow mold cultures. Those three turned green and hairy in like only one day.”

  “I’ll start packing my lunch tomorrow,” I told her as I picked out a large green salad, a bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of cranberry-grape juice.

  “I wish I could eat healthy.” She sighed and looked down at her tray, which she had loaded up with pizza, nachos, and sugar cookies. “Maybe when they invent diet pepperoni.”

  We sat down at one of the empty tables, which was round shaped and had built-in seats attached. While we ate, some of Barb’s other friends stopped by to say hi to her, but none of them sat with us. Barb didn’t seem to mind being marooned with me, and while we ate she pointed out several kids from our classes while she told me who was dating who, who had broken up with who, and who was on the rebound. I paid attention to the names but not the gossip; it was basically the same thing at every school.

  “Anyone sitting here?” A thin, dark-skinned boy in an oversize green T-shirt advertising a lawn service and worn black work trousers dropped his tray next to mine. He had a PB&J sandwich and a small carton of milk. “Besides me?”

  Barb sighed. “Ego.”

  “No one else is going to sit with her.” The boy tore open his milk carton and chugged it.

  “Cat, this extremely rude person was my friend, Diego Valasca. Ego, for obvious reasons.” Barb threw the rolled-up paper from her straw at him. “It’s Cat’s first day here. Be nice.”

  “I am being nice,” Ego told her. He peeled a slice of cheese off the outside of his sandwich. “Why do they stick processed cheese on PB&J? It’s not nutritional, it’s disgusting.” To me, he said, “So what’s Cat short for?”

  Now I sighed. “Catlyn.”

  “Where do you live?” When I told him, he began to fire questions at me. “That’s a big farm. You don’t look like a farmer’s daughter. Are your parents farmers? Do they make you work the fields? What crops are they planting?”

  I held back a laugh. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Oh, he’s just getting started.” Barb rested her forehead against her hand. “Why couldn’t we be scheduled for third lunch?”

  “Because her brother has it,” Ego told her before he grinned at me. “He’s in my Trig class. Big blond guy. Doesn’t look like you, Cat. Weird name, Grayson.” He checked the big chunky watch on his thin wrist. “Gotta go.” He stuffed half the sandwich in his mouth, put the other half in his shirt pocket and picked up his empty tray. Through the PB&J he said a muffled, “See you around” and took off.

  “Ego’s harmless,” Barb assured me. “He’s really nice, and super smart, too, but he has issues.”

  I knew the lunch he had was the one they gave to kids who were on the free lunch program. “Why is he dressed like that?”

  “He’s on a work program, you know, you go to a real job half the day and they give you vo-tech credit for it.” She brushed some crumbs from the front of her blouse. “His parents were pickers who came here to work in the groves when he was little. When they moved on to the next job, they left him behind.” She scrunched up her face. “Never came back for him.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Barb sighed. “He has nice foster parents, but being dumped by his real folks, well, it’s a lot to deal with. I told him he should talk to this therapist I see sometimes, but he got very huffy about it. Oh, and I’ll warn you now: Ego likes to play practical jokes. He hasn’t gotten caught yet, but one of these days . . .” she trailed off as a group of girls in brown and white cheerleader uniforms surrounded us. One of them, a petite redhead with big blue eyes and a sulky expression, glared down at Barb.

  “This is our table,” the cheerleader told her. “Move it somewhere else.”

  Barb instantly got to her feet and grabbed her tray. I was tempted to stay where I was—there were plenty of other open tables around us—but I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. The cheerleaders wouldn’t step out of the way, so I had to elbow my way through them. Then something caught my right ankle and made me stumble. I managed to hang onto my tray, but the half-finished bottle of juice on it tipped over and splashed all over the redheaded girl’s immaculate white uniform top.

  Time seemed to stop for a second as we all froze in place. Then the cheerleader shrieked, and every kid in the cafeteria stopped talking and turned around to look at us.

  “Oh, no.” I grabbed the bottle, but most of it was already spreading into a huge purple stain down the front of her uniform. “It’s all over you. Here.” I tried to hand her some of the paper napkins I hadn’t used, but she shoved my hand away. “I’m so sorry—”

  “You’ve ruined it, you idiot.” She pushed me back. “Get away from me.”

  I retreated, blindly following Barb to the tray drop-off. Everyone stared at me. When I looked back at the cheerleaders they stood huddled around the girl I’d doused.

  “I tripped,” I told Barb as she hurried me out of the cafeteria. “It was an accident.”

  “I know it was.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “It’ll be okay. She’ll probably forget about it after she calms down. In a few months. Or years.”

  I understood why everyone had stared at us, but the silence didn’t make sense. When something like that happened, kids usually laughed. “Who is she?”

  “Tiffany Beck. Head of the cheerleading squad, and the most popular girl in school.” Barb tried to smile. “She’s the reason Aaron Boone is totally unavailable. They’ve been going steady since fifth grade.”

  After that I didn’t think my first day at Tanglewood could g
et any worse. I’d attracted the attention of a bully and dumped juice all over his girlfriend. For the rest of the day every kid I passed gawked at me, and everyone in my classes whispered around me. At least Barb kept talking to me, but she stopped calling people over to meet me in the halls. I’d obviously made a major mistake.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of school, which was why after my last class I practically ran to meet Gray at his truck. But when I turned around the corner of the hall, I almost walked into Aaron Boone.

  I looked up from the brown and white jacket to his face and tried to go around him, but he stepped in front of me. “Excuse me.”

  He didn’t move. “What’s your name?”

  Tiffany must have told him what had happened in the cafeteria. I went the other way, but he blocked me again. “I really need to go.”

  His upper lip curled. “Want me to show you where the girl’s room is?”

  I thought of what he and his friends had done to the freshman and shuddered. “No, thanks.” I wrapped my arms around my books a little tighter and tried to think of what to say. “My brother’s waiting for me.” I hoped.

  “Let him wait.” He moved closer, and his sneer softened into a smile. “Relax. I only want to talk to you.”

  “Catlyn.” Gray appeared out of nowhere and stepped up to Boone. His eyes never left Boone’s as he said to me, “Go and get in the truck.”

  Boone’s expression turned sulky. “I’m just having a little private conversation with your sister.”

  “No.” My brother’s hands tightened into fists. “You’re not. Cat.”

  “I’m going.” I hurried off toward the parking lot, looking back every couple of steps. My brother and Boone just stood there, staring at each other like a couple of cavemen.

  I waited by the truck for five minutes before Gray came out of the school. He didn’t say anything when he walked over and unlocked my door for me. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. He won’t bother you anymore.” He went around and got in behind the wheel.