Dead Rules

It was her first day at her new school and everyone on the bus looked distinctly peculiar. She felt her face with both hands to be certain she wasn't dreaming. The inside of her mouth tasted like strawberries. She didn't remember eating breakfast.

Her hands lingered upon her face. Her fingers felt cool.

“It's the back of your head,” the girl sitting next to her said. “Not your face.”

“What's that?”

“Your hair's messed up in back. Did you fall down?”

“I guess I did,” Jana said. She was beginning to remember.

“I'm Arva Davis.” The girl choked out her name in a harsh whisper.

“Jana Webster.”

Of Webster and Haynes
, Jana wanted to add, but didn't. Everyone at her new school would soon learn that Jana wasn't alone in this world.

“Oh, I know. We're roommates. I'm here to help with your orientation, first day and all.”

If Arva was trying to be cheerful, it was difficult to tell. She spoke in a strained whisper, like the bad guy in a movie after he's been shot.

“There's a school guidebook in the library,” Arva said. “But if you have any questions, you can just ask me.”

Jana gazed out the window. The houses on the street seemed to slide by, as if they were moving instead of the bus. It wasn't a street she had seen before.

“Where's Michael?” Jana asked. It was the most important question she had.

“Which one?”

“My boyfriend. Michael Haynes. We're never apart.”

They were famous at her school for being together, for being a couple. Jana felt undressed without him. With Michael, she was the perfectly content Jana, the confident and talented Jana. Without him, she fidgeted.

“He's at your old school, I guess. Are you feeling homesick? Everybody does at first.”

Something was stuck in Arva's throat, Jana decided. Nobody could talk like that on purpose. Jana wanted to pound Arva on the back until her voice turned normal.

“He won't leave me here alone,” Jana said. “He'll be waiting for me in the parking lot when we get there.”

“Closed campus,” Arva said. “No visitors.”

Jana turned around in her seat to look out the back window of the school bus. Michael was probably following in his car. He couldn't live without her.

The students in the seats behind her stared at Jana. There was something odd about every one of them. Even the cute guy sprawled out in the backseat of the bus looked a little crazy. He smiled at her.

He had beautiful blue eyes and perfectly arched dark eyebrows, but Jana knew his kind with one glance. Every school had them. They acted tough and talked dirty. Michael could scare them off with a wave of his hand. So could Jana.

She held up the back of her left hand to the boy at the rear of the bus, the hand with Michael's white-gold senior-class ring on it. Jana waved her fingers at herself.

The boy at the back of the bus nodded and grinned. Then flipped her the bird. A tall guy with his leg stuck out across the aisle laughed.

Jana turned around in her seat.

“Don't look at them,” Arva warned her. “The guys at the back are Sliders. They're dangerous. They'll get you into real trouble. That's all they're good for.”

Jana's new roommate sounded like a frog trying to talk.

“If I strangle you right now as hard as I can, will you quit talking like that?” Jana asked.

Arva giggled. It sounded like car brakes squeaking.

Jana looked for her cell phone and noticed her clothes. They were the same clothes that Arva wore: a pleated plaid skirt of dark greens and a white button-down blouse with a man's collar. Knee socks and black loafers. These weren't clothes she'd owned before. Ever.

They didn't smell like her clothes. They didn't smell like her fabric softener or like her perfumeâthe one Michael had given her for Valentine's Day. Jana wrinkled her nose. Her new clothes smelled like Ivory soap. And so did she.

She slid her bottom forward in the bus seat and checked her new clothes for pockets. There was one on each side of the thick cotton skirt. Both were empty. She checked the top of her socks.

“Are you looking for cigarettes?” Arva asked.

Jana shook her head. “Cell,” she said. “I need to text Michael.” He would meet her wherever she said. Whenever she said. He would leave class if he had to.

“Can't,” Arva told her. “Cell phones don't work here. Not on the bus, not at school, not in the dorm.”

“Oh,” Jana said. “Really? That can't be true.”

Her white blouse had a chest pocket. It was empty.

“Definitely true,” Arva said. “If you had one on you when you came here, it will be back in the dorm with the clothes you were wearing, but it won't work here. There's no signal.”

“Purse?” Jana asked, startled that she might have lost so many things by transferring to the new school. Not the least of which was Michael. “Where are my books? My laptop?”

“Purses and bags are not allowed on campus. Your books and notebooks for each class will be at your seat when you get there. You just leave them where they are and then they will be in the dorm room when school is over. It's one of the things they do. And there's a computer in the dorm room, but you won't like it.”

Jana didn't care whether she liked the computer. Email would save her life. She'd just have to wait.

“What time do we go home?” Jana asked, her thoughts shifting.

Arva laughed again. Or at least Jana interpreted the two harsh squeaks as a laugh.

“It's a boarding school, of course,” Arva said. “You'll get out for a funeral and field trips, things like that.”

Jana looked out the window again.

Nothing made sense, really. No one should be plopped down in a new school in the middle of the year. Especially not her junior year when she was dating a senior. Jana touched the back of her hair. It felt messy. Her brush was in her purse, wherever that was.

“We're almost there,” Arva told her. “We'll be in homeroom together. But if you have any more questions, you should ask them now. When I talk in class, they know it's me.”

Jana was puzzled by a girl who sat at the front of the bus. Everyone else wore school uniforms. She wore a shimmering white gown. It looked like satin.

“Okay, then,” Jana said. “The girl in white. What's her story? Is she in a cult or something?”

“Shhh.” Arva held her finger to her lips. “Don't make fun.”

“I'm not making fun,” Jana said. “She just looks so pale. Except for her lips and eyes, she's the same color as her dress.”

“I know. It's like you can see right through their skin. She's a Virgin. They're diaphanous. Ethereal.”

“Why is she wearing a gown? Is she in the choir or something?”

“Sort of,” Arva said. “Virgins sing. Otherwise, they don't do much at school. They aren't in classes with the rest of us. They're not allowed to talk to us either. They're almost angels.”

“How do you get to be one?” Jana asked. She wouldn't mind skipping class for a year and a half.

“A Virgin?” Arva grinned. “Think it through. You start out as one.”

“Well, crap, then. I'm a virgin!”

Arva shook her head slowly, looking directly into Jana's eyes. “Fingers count,” she said.

Jana stared at her new classmate in disbelief. That wasn't fair. You've either had intercourse or you haven't. Jana and Michael hadn't. They'd made a unanimous decision not to. They were going to, but not yet. Jana was almost an angel too. Almost.

“Anything else?” Arva asked.

Jana shook her head.

“You want to know his name, don't you?”

“Whose name?”

“That guy in the backseat. He's beautiful, really. I look at him all the time when it's safe. But don't let him see you doing it. He has a smile that can melt the buttons off your blouse.”

“No,” Jana said. “I don't care what his name is.”

He was rude and crude and that's all she needed to know.

“Mars,” Arva said. “Just like the candy bar they used to have when we were kids. His name is the only good thing about him. Those boys are poison, Jana. Pure poison.”

Jana turned in her seat. She was on a school bus with an almost angel in the front seat and pure poison sitting in the back.

She looked hard at Arva. Her orientation adviser's lips were tinged slightly blue at the edges and they were quivering. There was a small feather in the corner of Arva's mouth. It looked like pillow down, except for the color.

Arva noticed her stare. She touched her mouth and pulled the little black feather away. “Happens,” Arva said.

Jana had fallen.

She remembered it now. That's what messed up her hair in back.

When Michael told her that Nathan Mills wanted to double-date, Jana wasn't happy with the idea. Nathan was a jerk. Michael was only best friends with him because they'd grown up across the street from each other. They had walked to school together every day in junior high, before Michael and his father moved to a better part of town.

“We see him all the time,” she said. “Does he have to go out with us too?”

“It's special this time, Jana. He wants to impress this girl who has a crush on him. He thinks this could be the real thing, the one who waits for him to come home from the Navy.”

Michael had that look in his eyes. The one that promised Jana the world. How could she say no?

“Why is he joining the Navy?” Jana asked. “He doesn't know anything about boats.”

“To get away from here,” Michael said. “To see the world. Just like us.”

“But we're not going to float around in a boat, Michael. We're moving to the city where there's
real
theater.” She had explained this a hundred times.

“We can go to Hollywood right out of college,” he reminded her. He'd learned the easiest way to get along with Jana was to keep her dream alive. College came first in Michael's world.

“Or New York,” Jana said. “Denzel Washington started out in New York.”

Webster and Haynes were destined to be famous actors. They had won regionals in Duet Acting last year. And this year they were going to win state. Everyone said so. Jana had also qualified in Solo Humorous Interpretation with a reading of
Horton Hears a Who
, while Michael had taken a regional in After Dinner Speaking. They were that good.

“Okay,” she relented. “Who wants to go out with Nathan, anyway?”

“Sherry Simmons. She's a sophomore.”

Jana groaned.

“Do you know her?” Michael asked.

“Does Nicole know Kidman?” Jana said.

“Does Sandra know Bullock?” Michael countered.

“
Practical Magic
,” Jana answered. “Too easy.” It was their private game. It made her smile.

“I should have said Stockard Channing.”

“You should have told Nathan no. You know he gives me the creeps. And Sherry Simmons is a slut. Nathan's not going to marry Sherry Simmons. Nobody in this town is.”

“She just wants to be liked,” Michael said. “And doesn't know how to go about it.”

“Oh, she knows how to go about it. And she's already been liked by half the boys in school.”

Sherry was short and round. She wore hickeys on her neck like they were jewelry. She got a fresh set every weekend. Her father was a locksmith. The only thing Jana had ever heard Sherry talk about was how to break into stores and people's houses. The guys in school ate it up.

Sherry was always watching Jana in the halls. When Jana looked back at her, Sherry would make a face like she and Jana were supposed to be friends. They weren't.

“Come on, Jana,” Michael said. “It's not going to kill you.”

“Okay. But they go home early and I mean it. I'm not riding around in the car all night while Nathan drinks beer and giggles until he throws up.”

“Nathan asked her out for Thursday. So we're booked?”

“You owe me one,” Jana said.

“You can decide what we're going to do. I was thinking maybe a movie.”

“Movies are just for us, Michael. You know that.” Jana considered their options. “I'll come up with something,” she said.

And she did. Jana wished now that she had thought of something where you couldn't fall down so easily and so hard.