Endangered (3 page)

BY 6:00 A.M. I ACCEPT THAT
there will be no more messages from whoever-the-hell. I'm exhausted in the worst way possible. It's a tense sort of tired where the fatigue settles into my shoulders and lower back, knotting the muscles into borderline cramps. Staying in bed
sounds
great, except my mind won't switch off. I try to sleep with the same results as trying to fly. As my mom says, in her least attractive adaptations of English colloquialisms, it's “all retch and no vomit.”

So, no sleep. I could play sick and stay home from school. But why? To spend the rest of the day doing exactly what I've done for the last seven hours, clicking refresh on my web browser, waiting to be exposed? No way. I've never missed school the day after a
Gray Scales
reveal. I'm not about to let some sneaky degenerate make me break tradition.

School it is. First, I need to put on my face.

Or pull it off. Depending on how you look at it.

Part of the reason I can do what I do as Gray is because I'm a Hall Ghost. It's a talent that I'm super proud of because at one time, I was the most infamous person in my grade.

Pulling off a complete notoriety reversal like that was difficult, but you'd be surprised how many books and websites there are that tell a person exactly how to disappear in a crowd. A combination of social engineering—which is like psychological manipulation, or “people hacking”—stealth, and misdirection goes a long way.

My dad's sister, Victoria, who comes around annually to semi-ruin Thanksgiving and Christmas, has this saying: “Pretty is natural, but real beauty takes work.”

Usually, it's said directly to me, preceded by a frown, and followed up with a gleaming, optimistic smile. Like she's a doctor who's given me a scary diagnosis, but has high hopes about my treatment options: Shiseido skincare products and gift subscriptions to
Seventeen
magazine.

“You could look like a young Alicia Keys,” she'll mention at some point in the evening, like I missed it the first few years she said it, “with some effort.”

It's clear that Vicky thinks my actual look—an age-appropriate Lauren Daniels—is the epitome of disinterest and laziness. I don't doubt that her standard of beauty takes work. So does invisibility. Her disapproving, squinty-eyed glances are the best compliment she can give.

After a quick shower that does nothing to make me feel more alert, I put on the day's Jedi ninja uniform. Dark-blue cowl-necked sweater that falls to midthigh, some fitted Old Navy jeans, and crisp, clean Skechers (oddly, people tend to notice dirty shoes). In front of my lighted makeup mirror—last year's not-so-subtle gift from Victoria—I add final touches. Plain ChapStick instead of the unopened lip glosses Victoria included with
the mirror. A bit of foundation to conceal the sleep luggage under my eyes and a patch of pimples on my forehead. And I pin my curls back, wrapping the excess in a bun. Finally, the tried-and-true classic that has served the world's greatest superhero for over seventy years, a pair of black-framed glasses to draw some attention from my unusual eye color (gray, ha!).

By themselves, these little tricks and cover-ups don't make me the chameleon I've become. There's much more technique to it than that, but it's the base. I'm proud of how good I've gotten at it.

Until I remember a certain set of photos could undo all my good work, and a corkscrew plants in the bottom of my stomach, turning and turning.

I grab my keys and bag, trod downstairs past the kitchen, grunting a good-bye to Mom and Dad, who are busy making sexy eyes at each other over orange juice.

“Hey there!” Mom calls.

I stop in the foyer, my hand resting on the doorknob. She rounds the corner, tugging her robe tighter, only I still get a glimpse of some black lacy thing before it disappears under her lapel. In spite of myself, my mood warms by a degree or two.

“Are you feeling all right this morning?” she asks.

“You're moving kinda slow, kiddo,” Dad calls, joining Mom, his hand on the small of her back. “You catch a flu bug?”

Mom presses the back of her hand to my forehead. “She is not warm.”

“I'm not sick,” I say, not in the way they think. “I was just up late finishing a project that's due today.”

Mom says, “You should not worry yourself over grades the way you do. You work hard. You will get what you deserve.”

The corkscrew in my belly twists a half turn. “Gotta go.”

I'm more like a Car Zombie than a Hall Ghost as I drive, every stoplight tempting a nap. I probably shouldn't be behind the wheel at all.

I pull up to the curb outside of Ocie's house. Drivers motor past so fast my car shakes. She lives on Claremont, a busy four lanes that are so noisy she can't always hear my signal. I wait for a traffic gap before I beep, nearly missing my window because the warm air blowing from my heater and a super-mellow song (thanks, iPod shuffle) have me dozing by the time the road sounds ebb. I jerk from the edge of slumber and quadruple tap my horn, a tone I imagine as “
Come, Ocie, come
” but probably sounds like
Honnk-Onk-Onk-Honnk
to everyone else.

While I wait, I turn off the heat and scroll to something random on my hip-hop playlist. The erratic bass line is sonic caffeine.

Then Ocie's there, hopping into the passenger seat dressed in a green sweater, matching knit cap with her hair flipped up on the sides, dark denim, and black/green high-tops. She's short, so the outfit makes her look like a trendy elf.

She says, “What up with you going off the grid last night? I texted fifty times.”

“What normally happens to people at night? I fell asleep.”

“Oh.”

She's looking at her front door like she wants to escape my carriage of bitchiness. Okay, I was somewhat harsh. All-night anxiety will do that to you.

I change the subject. “Why are you all
Leprechaun in the Hood
this morning? Are you having an episode?”

A sidelong glance tells me this green-on-green thing isn't one of her quirky fixations where stuff has to be in a certain order, arranged in the most precise way ever. “Ocie” is short for OCD. Her real name is Mei Horton.

“No, Panda-Boo.” She pulls her knee to her chest, displaying the emerald sole and swoosh on her shoes. “These Nikes I ordered came yesterday, so I put something together.”

“Explain to me again how your freaky sneaker fetish and the resulting color coordination don't classify as obsessive or compulsive.”

She pokes her lip out. “You and my dad are making me feel really bad.”

“What did he say?”

“He called me ‘Frogger' and told me to be careful crossing the street.”

“Huh?”

“I don't know, the man speaks in riddles. For reals, what do you think? Be honest.” She strikes poses in my periphery.

It's too flamboyant for my Hall Ghost tastes and may be better suited for St. Patrick's Day, but she's working it. “Kinda hot.”

“I know. It's our black.”

She's referring, of course, to our shared lineage. We are both mixed race, half African American, half something else. My mom is German. Her mom is Chinese. Whenever we agree on anything, “it's our black.” Disagreements are “so other.” For a moment, I'm energized by our familiar routine. I shift to drive and start into traffic.

Ocie says, “I hear Coach Bottin got fired last night.”

“What?!” I hit the brakes so hard a car nearly rear-ends us. The driver slingshots around, laying on the horn. Everything I'd managed to forget in the twenty seconds of friend banter comes crashing back.

Driving again, I say, “No way. Too soon.”

You knew there would be consequences, Panda. Not that fast, though
.

“Now who cares about high school soaps? It's unconfirmed,” Ocie says, like she's a reporter. “I've seen Facebook statuses about him losing his job. We know how accurate those can be. It could happen, though. Right?”

“Probably will.”

“He might go to jail. What if we, like, see him on the news doing a perp walk or something?”

My mind's drifting back to the email I got last night. I only half hear Ocie, and the best image I can come up with is
me
doing the perp walk. In front of all my classmates as they hiss and boo like angry villagers sans torches and pitchforks. Headline:
Secret Teen Paparazzo's Identity Revealed
.

“Too awesome,” Ocie gushes, obviously having no trouble conjuring a visual. “Don't you think?”

I want to agree, but all things considered, that crap is so other.

Paranoia ramps up as we near our destination. Sleep deprivation and the power of Ocie's suggestions make me superimpose phantom news vans in front of the school. Channel 9. And channel 13. And channel 20. The reporters forming a loose semicircle, each with their network's camera pointed at them, recording lead-in spots with the brick Portside High School marquee in the background. I turn into the student lot with my neck craned, eyes on the imagined commotion.

“Panda!”

I slam the brakes with both feet. My seat belt snaps tight against my chest, and Ocie plants her palms on the dash as if afraid hers will fail. Our momentum settles and we rock back into our seats. I make eye contact with the person I nearly pancaked.

Taylor Durham.

He's a foot from my bumper, tall and slim. His backpack's cinched tight over the shoulders of his denim jacket. His baseball cap is canted at
an angle, the brim curved like a duck's beak. He thinks it looks cool, but he's twisted partially toward me and partially toward the sun so the hat creates this weird dark shadow that falls over his darker face. The effect makes him look almost as shady as he actually is.

Neither his skin nor the shadow is as dark as the look he gives me. I almost hit him with my car and he's angry. If he were anyone else, I'd say rightfully so.

Taylor slaps my hood with both hands. “Jesus, Lauren!” He points at himself: “Pedestrian,” then points at the white lines bordering the crosswalk, “right of way.”

I glare back. If he's waiting for an apology before he moves, then we're both going to be late for homeroom.

Someone behind me sounds a horn, a short belch. Taylor and I continue our stare down. The belch becomes an extended groan. I ease off my brake so my car lurches at him, like I mean to finish the job of turning him into roadkill.

Taylor sneers, continues across the asphalt shaking his head.

With the road clear, I drive into the student lot, all too aware of Ocie eyeballing me with a
Was that really called for?
expression she must have borrowed from my mom.

“Don't say a word,” I warn.

“Wasn't even considering it.”

I grab a parking space and say, “Thank you for not letting me hit him, though.”

“You're welcome. Nice to know you're not completely merciless when it comes to Taylor Durham. It was a long time ago. I'm sure—”

“No, no, no,” I cut her off, “I only mean my car's beat up enough. I don't need an extra dent.”

But as I kill the engine, I'm thinking, for Taylor Durham, another dent would've been worth it.

Taylor was my first. But not like
that
.

I mean, it
could've
been that way between us. We almost went there.

I thought I loved him.

It was stupidity. When I say he was my first, I mean my first exposé. The one time it was personal. He's the reason I started
Gray Scales
.

What I caught him doing wasn't earth-shattering. More opportune than anything. We were still freshmen. I was on the indoor track team because I'd joined before he made school horrible for me, and I didn't want to quit after because I don't do quit. Taylor was a junior varsity basketball player suffering from a knee injury that kept him sidelined. As a member of the team, he still tried to contribute (which makes him sound more honorable than he is). He got consigned to a manager role, racking the balls at the end of practice, washing the uniforms.

Track practice wrapped up shortly after basketball practice, and I passed by the gym doors as Taylor, alone in his managerial duties, wheeled a big rolling laundry basket of sweaty team gear to the washroom. When I saw him, I said a silent prayer for something horrible to happen—athlete's foot on his face, maybe.

Taylor tripped.

Maybe it was his injured knee giving way. Maybe there was sweat on the floor. Maybe it was an angel answering my prayer. He went down, taking the basket with him, spilling soiled gear everywhere.

He did what everyone does when they fall: his head jerked around, scanning for witnesses. Reflex made me duck away from the porthole windows in the gym doors. A different reflex made me reach for the cell phone in my pocket. I peeked through the windows and saw him grabbing
handfuls of clothing, stuffing it all back into the basket. With my phone, I snapped photo after photo.

To this day, I still don't know what made me do it. I just know that when I got home and uploaded the pics to my MacBook, the seed of revenge was already growing, sprouting fruit.

Most of the shots were mundane—a guy grabbing clothes off the floor. But there were a couple of shots where the clothing was very specific (jockstraps) and the expression on his face could be left up to interpretation. Most likely, he was disgusted, right? I mean, dirty jockstraps.

But a bit of added commentary, say a caption, could suggest something different. Something deviant.

Something special.

I waited until his knee healed and he was back in the starting lineup before I launched the site with that deceptive picture that looked like Taylor grabbing bunches of his teammates' nasty undergarments and sniffing them the way a perfume maker sniffs beakers in a lab.

The caption I settled on:
Most people prefer roses
.