Endangered

For Clem and Britney, my original female protagonists

I'VE HAUNTED MY SCHOOL FOR THE
last three years.

I'm not a real ghost; this isn't one of
those
stories. At Portside High I'm a Hall Ghost. A person who's there, but isn't.

The front of the class is where I sit because despite ancient slacker lore, teachers pay more attention to the back. Between bells, I keep my head down and my books pressed tight to my chest, brushing by other students a half second before they think to look. If they catch a glimpse of me, it's most likely a blur of dark curls and winter-pale skin flitting in the corner of their eyes. Depending on who they are—or the sins they've committed—they might feel a chill.

Okay. Yes. I
sound
like a real ghost. But I promise I'm alive.

Jocks don't bump into me, and mean girls don't tease me, and teachers don't call on me because I don't want them to. Hiding in plain sight is a skill, one I've honed. My best friend, Ocie, calls me a Jedi ninja, which is maybe a mixed metaphor
and
redundant. But it's also kind of true.

I wasn't always like this. There were days during the first half of freshman year when I couldn't make it from the gym to social studies without running a gauntlet of leers and insults.

Time provided new targets to ridicule, fresh scandal—with some help.

Patience let me slip under the radar, then burrow deeper still. From there, it was easy to engineer my Hall Ghost persona. Now, in the midst of junior year, I've perfected it.

My name is Lauren Daniels. On the rare occasion one of my peers addresses me to my face, they tend to call me “Panda.” Not always affectionately. My most popular alias—likely because no one knows it's
my
alias—is
Gray
, the name under which I provide a valuable, valuable public service. I make myself unnoticed by day because I need to be unsuspected by night.

It's what all the cool vigilantes do.

We're all something we don't know we are.

Take my dad, who doesn't know he's romantic because mostly he's not. Sometimes though, like on a random Wednesday or Thursday, he'll bring home a bunch of
Blachindas
—these German pastries filled with pumpkin; here in the States, we'd fill them with apples and call them turnovers. He tells Mom he really likes the taste. Which is true, he does. He skips the part about how difficult it is to get the foreign delicacy. He has to special order a dozen from this Old World bakery in town every time he wants to surprise her, and the extra effort on the part of the chefs isn't cheap.

What he also doesn't say is that she introduced him to the dessert on their first date eighteen years ago, outside of an army base in Stuttgart,
Germany. Every time she gives her account of that night—with her eyes glassy, like she's reliving the evening, not just talking about it—I feel I'm there, too. A time traveler spying on the prelude to my own conception. I love it, and them, and I gulp
Blachinda
even though I hate pumpkin just so I can hear more. While she talks, Dad's dark fingers and Mom's pale ones intertwine like yin and yang in the flesh. She blushes while he nods and eats. It's an incredible ritual to witness, Dad wooing Mom instinctively.

My parents are my Happy Place Thought as I lie prone in the bushes, pinecones and night-chilled rocks clawing at my stomach despite my layered clothing. A beetle slowly prances up my forearm toward my shooting hand. I brush it away as gently as I can and reestablish my aim. My target is stationary, in a parked car, one hundred yards away. A quick lens adjustment turns her face from fuzzy to sharp despite the darkness. An easy shot. Which I take.

Keachin Myer's head snaps forward, whiplash quick.

I shoot again.

Her head snaps back this time, she's laughing so hard. Odd, I was under the impression the soulless skank had no sense of humor.

I rub my tired eyes, and switch my Nikon D800 to display mode. I scroll through three days' worth of dull photos stored in the camera. Saturday: Keachin using her gold AmEx to treat her friends at Panera Bread. Sunday: Keachin dropping a hundred dollars to get her Lexus detailed. Today: Keachin—rendered in stark monochrome thanks to the night-vision adaptor fitted between my lens and my camera's body—belly-laughing at whatever joke the current guy trying to get in her pants is telling. Basically, Keachin being what everyone in Portside knows she is. Rich, spoiled, and popular. Nothing the world hasn't already gleaned about this girl. Nothing real.

I intend to fix that. If she ever gives me something good.

Keachin Myer is as clueless about what she is as anyone else. And being unfortunately named is not the part she's unaware of. If you let her tell it, her parents strapped her with such an ugly handle because, well, she couldn't be perfect, right? That sort of conceited admission would come off like a dare from most kids, opening them up to a barrage of teasing akin to machine-gun fire. No one challenges Keachin, though. Because she's beautiful.

That
she knows, too.

She's girl tall, with a curve above her hips that seems custom-made for football players to grab and lift and spin her while she squeals and fake-pounds their chests. I swear, it happens at least three times a week. Her eyes are
blue
blue. Her hair is long and shines like black glass. She's got boobs that more than a few girls in the school may be describing to a cosmetic surgeon one day.
I need something slightly bigger than a C, but really round and perky, like, well—have you ever seen Keachin Myer?

Here's the part that Keachin doesn't know about herself: she's a Raging Bitch Monster.

I'm sure she suspects it, but not in the way, say, a meth-head might suspect that smoking chemicals brewed in a dirty bucket isn't the best move, thus triggering thoughts of a lifestyle change. Keachin, as best I can tell, does not have such moments of clarity. To her and her pack, bitchiness seems to be something more altruistic. An act of kindness because, otherwise, peons might not know their place.

I've watched her do it for years. Not the way I watch my dad and his pastries. There's nothing about Keachin's judgy tirades that I like. I'm an observer by nature. I needed to know if she required more of my attention.

For a long time I thought not. Sometimes my peers are douche-nozzles. Period. There aren't enough hours in the day for me to nip that bud. But,
there's mean, then there's what happened to Nina Appleton.

My fingers are shaking, and not from the cold. What Keachin did to that girl . . .

Breathe, Panda, breathe
.

I suck in frigid air, so cold it feels like ice chips cartwheeling down my throat and into my lungs. I fight the shivers. Something rustles a nearby grove of trees, and I'm no longer breathing or shivering. I'm stuck mid­exhale, listening, or trying to. My suddenly elevated heart rate causes blood to roar in my ears. Of all my senses, unimpeded hearing is the one I want most in this moment because my eyes are useless under the moonless sky. Unlike my namesake, I don't have an enhanced sense of smell. I need my ears to confirm/deny what I fear is true.

That I'm not the only watcher in the dark tonight.

A twig snaps and I choke down a yelp. Screw this. I point my camera in the general direction of the commotion. The whole forest flares neon white and gray in the LCD display. I pan left to right over X-ray-like images of inanimate trees, and brush, and long dead leaves. Nothing capable of making any noise without assistance from the wind, or, um, an ax murderer.

My heart keeps pounding, I keep panning, and when I detect movement to my extreme left, I freeze.

There. Staring at me. A raccoon.

It scopes me like the trespasser I am, a silver animal shine in his eyes. I toss one of the pebbles that's been making my evening uncomfortable in his general direction. He jerks a foot to his right, though he was never in danger of being hit, then slinks off into the night, rustling more forest debris on his way.

I reposition, adjusting my lens for another clear view of Keachin in the car. The scene change is apparent.

She's no longer laughing her head off, or facing the proper direction. She's turned toward the rear of the car, propped on her knees and hunched, her head lightly bumping the vehicle's ceiling. The passenger seat she occupied is reclined so it hovers inches over the backseat. Also, the guy who drove Keachin to this secluded spot, his face in shadow, is in the seat with her.
Under
her. Directing her slow up and down motion with hands on hips, which has the car rocking to their rhythm, the geeky
My Other Car Is an X-wing
bumper sticker rising and falling by degrees. . . .

As a reflex, I reach for my shutter release to take the picture. My finger jabs the button with half the pressure required to trigger a shot. I pause, waiting for the perfect moment.

The guy's having a good time, he's thrashing his head in ecstasy, first to his left, toward the steering wheel. Then right, toward me. His face is visible in my display now.

Oh. My. God
.

I recognize him. Anyone who goes to Portside High would.

He's been teaching there for years.