Abandon (12 page)

And okay, I had failed miserably to help the last one.

But you never knew. I had a lot of advantages here on Isla Huesos that I hadn’t had back in Connecticut. At least here I wasn’t invisible, the way I’d unfortunately made myself for too long back at my old school. I could already tell, because some guy
in a white shirt had noticed me and held the auditorium door open for me.

I hadn’t quite been able to believe it myself, actually.

“After you,” he’d said politely.

I wasn’t sure which had startled me more: the fact that he was the first person to have spoken to me all day — besides Jade — or the fact that he was so nonthreateningly gorgeous in a boy-band kind of way: tall, blue eyed, friendly smile at the ready, revealing a set of perfectly straight white teeth, a tan you could tell had come from healthy outdoor living and not from a salon, as had the blond highlights in his sandy-brown hair.

All of this was capped off with a pair of khaki shorts and a white polo that showed off his biceps.

Unbelievable.

Kite sailing, if I had to guess. You didn’t get biceps — but also a tan — from regular sailing.

“Thanks,” I said, not smiling.

It was right then that the ocean breeze swept my pink class schedule out from the top of my bag.

“Oh, here,” he said, letting go of the door. “Let me get that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I just wanted him to go away. He was like the concept of an outdoor cafeteria: I did not understand.

It was too late, though. He’d already peeled my schedule from where it had plastered itself against a trash can with a sticker on it that said T
HIS IS FOR CANS AND BOTTLES
ONLY
.

“So, Pierce Oliviera,” he said, looking down at my schedule as he handed it back to me. He let out a laugh. “D-Wing, huh?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I guess he could tell from my expression, since he was only too happy to explain.

“It’s cool, don’t worry about it,” he said. This seemed strange, coming right on the heels of Jade telling me to give myself a break. At least he hadn’t told me to relax. I hate it when people tell me to relax. “New Pathways, right?”

I stared at him. How had he known? Was I wearing a sign or something? I’d dressed so carefully that morning. It was my first day in public school, which meant my first day with no uniform…my first day of school wearing
whatever I wanted.
What had I done wrong?

“Everyone in D-Wing is in New Pathways,” he explained. “Not that that’s a bad thing. New Pathways is great. I’ve had a lot of friends go through New Pathways. It’s a great program. Really grea —”

I leaned over and took the schedule from him, then stuffed it back into my bag. He was making me nervous. The more attractive people were, the more nervous I tended to get around them.

Maybe that was because attractive people also tended to be so engaged, and engaged people freaked me out. How did they keep their clothes so neat? This guy’s shirt was
so
white. How had he not spilled anything on it by now? That couldn’t be right. The only good thing about not having to wear a uniform anymore — that I could tell — was that at least I could wear black shirts, so the stains wouldn’t show.

John never wore white. To me, this was a good thing.

Oh, right, I was never thinking about him again.

“I have rage issues,” I informed the guy. Everyone was going to figure it out sometime. Might as well get it out in the open.

“Hey, it’s not the worst thing,” he said, showing me all those dazzling teeth. “I mean, you’re still Pierce Oliviera. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling because he had. Jade had told me when I wasn’t sure about how to react to something, I should just mimic the behaviors of the people I saw around me. “I guess.”

You’re still Pierce Oliviera?
What did that even mean? Had that been a smirky “You’re related to Zack Oliviera” smile?

Or a “Your mom’s brother is the guy who went to jail for so long” smile?

Or a “Aren’t you the girl who did that thing to that teacher?” smile?

I couldn’t tell. Maybe all three. Maybe none of the above. I wish John hadn’t thrown my necklace into the night.

No, I didn’t. He was a jerk. I was done with him. I was on a New Pathway.

I pointed at the doors to the auditorium. “Are you —”

“Oh, sure, yeah.” The guy leaned over and opened the door again. A deafening blast of sound hit us.

“Thanks,” I said, and walked away from him.

Shake it off, I told myself. That was what Jade would call a positive interaction. It had been epic.

Except maybe it hadn’t been. Because when I saw the guy in the polo shirt for a second time inside, he looked over at me again and smiled. He’d joined up with a few of his buddies. They all
smiled at me, too. Two girls with flat-ironed hair (a miracle to achieve in southern Florida) started giving me the evil eye. They were tapping on the keypads of their cell phones with their white nail tips. I was amazed that they could type and glare at someone at the same time. That was taking multitasking to a whole new level.

“D-Wing,” one of them sneered at me. Like this was some huge insult.

What was everyone’s obsession with D-Wing around here?

Hoping I wasn’t about to have a full-blown panic attack — the throbbing at the back of my neck was stronger than ever — I looked around the auditorium, unable to find Alex anywhere. I did, however, see a girl I recognized from my econ class. She’d been in the New Pathways office last week, having her own orientation sessions with a different counselor. I remembered her because…well, she was a little difficult to forget. Also, I’d noticed whenever she’d been around, my necklace turned purple. I didn’t know what it meant, but she was sitting on the end of an aisle, and there were tons of empty seats around her.

“Is this seat taken?” I went over to her and asked.

She ignored me. It took me a second or two to realize that she wasn’t snubbing me. She was wearing earbuds. I hadn’t been able to tell because her giant aurora of dark curly hair, shot here and there with streaks of bright purple, hid them.

She looked up from the screen of her cell phone when I tapped her on the shoulder, then said, “Oh, sorry,” and moved her legs for me to get by.

“Thanks,” I said, and collapsed into the seat next to hers.

I should have known, of course, that it was going to go like this. Not just after last night — I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure any of that had happened, even after Alex’s story about the poinciana blossoms. The storm had swept most of them away by the time I got up — but after getting to school and seeing that I was one of the only girls wearing a skirt that wasn’t a mini. Mine, in accordance with the IHHS student handbook, which Mom and I had pored over, especially the section marked
Student Dress Code,
was exactly no more than four inches above my knee, just like the handbook specified.

How was I supposed to know that the dress code was in no way enforced — particularly the ban on “bare midriffs and low-riding or sagging pants or slacks” — when I hadn’t met any people my own age from Isla Huesos until today? What time I hadn’t spent biking around the cemetery in the past week before school started, hoping to catch a glimpse of John, I’d spent hanging out on the couch with Alex and his dad in front of the TV at Grandma’s.

And Alex, a typical guy, had answered, “I don’t know. Clothes,” when Mom and I asked him what girls at IHHS wore to school.

The girl next to me — lip
and
eyebrow piercings — turned back to the screen of her phone as soon as I’d sat down. Some people might have thought it impolite to eavesdrop on what she was doing. Not me. True, to an outsider it might have looked like I was snooping…maybe because I myself had no cell phone.

But actually, Tim, the head of the New Pathways program, had taken mine away before school. He said I could have it back at the end of the day. He thought that I’d focus better and “interact more” if I couldn’t go online.

I didn’t bother arguing. I knew from what had happened at my school last year that everything he was saying was true.

I’d told my best friend, Hannah, the day I’d come back after my accident that I’d protect her from the evil.

But I hadn’t. Instead, hurt by the fact that she had called me crazy, still numbed by what I’d seen John do in the jeweler’s shop, and worried he’d come back someday and do it to me next time, I’d just lain back inside my glass coffin and waited for my handsome prince to come rescue me.

That’s how I hadn’t noticed the evil. Not the kind people like to pretend is real, the kind they tell ghost stories and make horror movies about.

But the
real
evil that had been roaming the halls of the Westport Academy for Girls, looking for the sweetest, most innocent victim it could find.

By the time I finally realized there
are
no handsome princes — that it was all up to me…that it had
always
been up to me — it was too late.

Hannah was dead.

And unlike me, she was never coming back.

I
n a way
, I’m grateful to Mr. Mueller, who started teaching at the Westport Academy for Girls last year, when I was a junior. He gave me the one thing I was beginning to think I’d never have: that interest outside of academics in which to “engage” that Mrs. Keeler recommended my parents find for me after the accident.

Mr. Mueller skyrocketed to instant popularity with both the student body and their parents at the Westport Academy for Girls after being hired as the new basketball coach and taking the team to the state finals.

As if that were not enough, he also began offering free private tutoring sessions after school for his “special” students…even those of us who, like me, had been moved to all “alternative” classes, thanks to what had finally been diagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly inattentiveness.

Of course, being the only young, good-looking male instructor at a K–12 girls’ school — not to mention an athletic coach — Mr. Mueller probably would have been popular anyway.

But the free tutoring helped.

I seemed to be the only person in the entire school who was suspicious of Mr. Mueller and his motives right from the start. Maybe it was because one of my dad’s favorite expressions was “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” No one is
that
self-sacrificing, especially when all he’s getting out of it is homemade cookies from his students’ grateful moms.

It was only when a crumb from one of those cookies fell onto my bare knee as Mr. Mueller was bent over my desk, helping me with a particularly difficult algebra problem during class one day, that I first noticed anything strange about him, aside from his stunningly good looks and apparent overabundance of free time.

“Oops,” Mr. Mueller said, pressing the crumb into my knee with his finger. He then lifted his finger to his mouth and sucked the piece of cookie off it. Then he smiled down at me. “Sorry about that!”

Maybe a girl who hadn’t died and then ended up getting followed around by a disturbingly large, silver-eyed guy who’d once tried to force her to live with him might have said to herself only
Huh. That guy must really like cookies.

I, however, felt as if I’d been given an electric shock.

And not in a romantic
Oh, he touched me!
kind of way. Other girls in my class might have been sighing over him, but I definitely did not like Mr. Mueller, nor did I want him touching me.
I did not even want him touching cookie crumbs that might have fallen upon me.

It wasn’t until I got home that afternoon that I saw it.

Mr. Mueller just touched Pierce Oliviera’s bare knee, then licked his finger. HOT!!!!!!

This was followed by tons of comments on the various social networking sites to which this remark was posted, such as
She’s so lucky
and
What did she do to deserve THAT?
and
Who the hell is Pierce Oliviera?

These remarks actually managed to sink through the thick glass of my coffin. They made me feel uncomfortable, not only because they raised old demons (I had been managing successfully to avoid any trips to the guidance office lately), but because then Mr. Mueller asked — in front of
everyone
— a day or two later, if I’d like to start coming in for some private tutoring sessions.

Things only went downhill from there.

Mr. Mueller just asked Pierce Oliviera if she wants private tutoring! She’s so lucky! He’s SO hot!!!!

“I don’t understand,” Mom said. “Mr. Mueller told me at his parent-teacher conference with me that he offered to tutor you because you’re behind in so many of your classes, and you said no. Why would you do that?”

“I already have tutors,” I said. I did, too. Dad made sure I had tutors for nearly every subject. Not that it helped. You had to care for tutors to make a difference.

“But Mr. Mueller seems so nice,” Mom would say.

I should have said something then.
Mom,
I should have said.
Mr. Mueller isn’t nice.

The problem was, she wouldn’t have believed me. That the guy gave me the creeps wasn’t proof of anything.

Especially since Mom wasn’t the only one who thought Mr. Mueller was God’s gift to the Westport Academy for Girls.
All
the moms were giving their daughters cards and tins of homemade cookies to present to Mr. Mueller to show how much they appreciated him, and basketball season was long over.

Mr. Mueller would always beam with pleasure when he’d find these on his desk, and say chidingly (but really, you could tell he was delighted), “Girls! You didn’t have to do this!”

Until my ex–best friend, Hannah Chang — who’d really filled out over the summer that we hadn’t been speaking and who’d become the Westport Academy for Girls basketball team’s star player and one of the most enthusiastic attendees of Mr. Mueller’s private tutoring sessions — left a note on his desk that actually made him frown.