Rodent (19 page)

“Get off!” I shout, pushing Jamie away. He stumbles back, dazed.

I don’t wait to hear what he says. I force my way through the swaying shoulders, couples pressed together. I didn’t volunteer for this—to be a warm body for some total moron. To watch Will hold someone else like he held me. Did he wait a whole week before moving on? Why did I ever feel guilty about rejecting him? Obviously it meant nothing. I should go back and make out with Jamie.
See how that feels, Will
. Knowing I can’t.

My old friend, the bathroom stall.

A minute later Jacquie bangs on the door. “Open up, Isabelle!”

I turn the lock, and the door falls open. Then I perch on the edge of the toilet seat again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Her eyes are on fire.

“I don’t like that guy,” I say.

“You don’t like any guy.” She leans in close, says in almost a whisper, “Are you a lesbian?”

Jacquie drags in some total stranger off the street and wonders why I don’t want to get it on? Obviously I’m a lesbian.

“No, and stop trying to set me up.”

Her chest swells, and she opens her mouth to come down on me like an anvil in Bugs Bunny. I hear voices behind her, on the other side of the door. I raise my finger to her lips, pull her all the way into the stall, shut the door and turn the lock. She looks at me like I’m officially insane.

I motion toward the girls talking on the other side and mouth,
That’s them
. Her eyes light up, and I lower my hand. She twists back the lock and peeks out.

“I told her not to…” Snatches of conversation. Pole Dancer.

“…supposed to get a ride with her,” Ainsley says.

Jacquie watches them at the sink counter. I can only see the back of her head.

Low giggling—the cackle of witches. A tap runs. Then paper towels are pulled from the dispenser.

“Fix my tail,” Ainsley says.

They stay for another minute, fiddling with costumes. I pull Jacquie behind me and peek out. Ainsley is squeezed into a gray unitard with a tail pinned to the back, and she has mouse ears. Pole Dancer is some kind of ’80s rocker. More makeup than usual and a skirt that’s more like a belt.

They wander out, their voices disappearing as the bathroom door swings shut. Jacquie pulls open the stall and pushes past me. Halfway to the door, she turns. Cheeks flushed.

“I’m going to catch me a mouse tonight,” she says.

NINETEEN

“Jacquie!” I stumble after her, the door already swinging shut between us.

I’ve lost her in the crowd of people, my eyes straining in the dark again. Scanning. There. I see her wings pop up through the bodies. She moves low and fast, barely making a ripple.

I trip over feet, bump shoulders. Push. This can’t happen. Even if I pretend not to know her, Mr. Talmage saw who she came with. Ainsley and Jacquie together—this is bad. Through the pulsing light show, I almost lose her again. She moves toward the middle of the gym—the thickest crush of bodies.

I can’t hear the music over the pounding in my ears. A flash of Ainsley’s blond head. Jacquie closing in.

“Hey!” a girl squeals as I cut between her and her partner.

“Jacquie!” I scream after her, my voice swallowed by the noise.

Almost there. I reach out to grab her wrist. As my fingers close around her, Jacquie’s other arm darts out—the flick of a snake’s tongue—and rips off Ainsley’s tail. The fabric tears, a pink patch of skin showing through.

Ainsley’s jaw drops as she twists her head. There’s Jacquie, savage eyes, dangling a tail in Ainsley’s face. Me hanging on her other arm. Pole Dancer opens her mouth and raises a finger to point at the tear. We run. Jacquie drags me, her swift legs dodging bodies. Back, back toward the far door.

We hit the double doors at the same time, one on each side.
Bang
. Once we’re through, Jacquie turns toward the hallway to the library.

“No, this way!” I swing her in the opposite direction. There’s a back door at the far end of the school, the one I used once to get Maisie. We dodge a twisting line at the concession.

“Slow down, you girls!” someone hollers from the counter as we tear by.

The beat of footsteps behind us. I clutch Jacquie’s shirt and pull her through another set of doors, into the dark hall. An eerie glow shines from the Exit sign. Every doorway’s a black gap.

“Is one of these open?” Jacquie pants, pointing to the classrooms.

“This way!” I charge ahead. “There’s an exit down this hall!”

She laughs as she runs, hair streaming behind her. White teeth in the dark. The hall doors open and close behind us, followed by pounding footsteps.

Ainsley shouts after us, cursing, her voice raw.

Jacquie cackles and waves the mouse tail in the air, her legs pumping faster.

We hit the exit doors at the same time.
Bang
. Locked. I dart over and try the third one. Shut tight. Ainsley laughs, her voice moving closer. Plan B. We turn and dash for the stairs behind us, the only escape from the two shadows closing in.

Up the stairs, two or three at a time. On the landing and up the next flight. I don’t know yet how we’ll get out. We just need to get away. Or something bad will happen. Feet on the stairs below us. Into another dark hall, the moonlight from the staircase windows mapping a path. Ahead, a set of double doors. Okay, from there we can loop back down through the cafeteria and out the main doors
. Mr. Talmage, please be gone.
A sharp pain spreads in my chest. My feet barely touch the floor as I head for those squares of light.

We slam the handles at the same time and bounce back. Locked. We try again, fumbling for the locks. Can’t see. Rattling the door. Jacquie turns first. Flight done, ready for fight.

I turn, my heart splitting my throat. Two shadows closing in. Jacquie springs, not waiting to be cornered. With a guttural scream, she lunges at Ainsley, shoving her back into a locker. Her body slams the metal.

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” Jacquie growls, already pulling up Ainsley’s shoulders to fling her again.

Pole Dancer shrinks back away from the beast. Ainsley picks herself up and tackles Jacquie’s belly, both of them
falling to the floor. Tries to punch her face. Jacquie dodges fists, grabbing a wrist in each hand. She twists Ainsley onto her back, pinning her.

“Who’s tough now?” Jacquie breathes in her face.

I have a feeling the floor’s about to give way under my feet. She’ll kill her. Jacquie moves like a whip of fury. Ainsley’s roped like an animal.

“Jacquie, stop! Enough now!” I shout. She grips Ainsley’s wrists in one hand and squeezes her cheeks in the other, puckering Ainsley’s lips.

“Say sorry to Isabelle for what you did,” Jacquie says.

Ainsley makes a kind of choking sound, like a sob.

“Apologize to her, or I’ll wrap your little mousey tail around your neck.” She pushes her face closer to Ainsley’s, knees crushing her chest.

“Jacquie!” I want to pull her off now, but I’m afraid to touch her.

“What’s going on?” Another voice from the dark. We jump, Jacquie dropping Ainsley’s head to the floor. She gasps for breath.

Will. There’s a split second of shifting. Eyes back and forth on each other. Reassessing. Jacquie poised to spring again.

“I’m going to get Mr. Talmage,” he says, his voice quiet through the roar of adrenaline. A snort from Pole Dancer.
Way to be the tough guy, Will
.

Ainsley shoves Jacquie off her and rubs the finger marks on her cheeks. She wipes away tears with her sleeve.

“Who the hell are you?” Jacquie spits at him, on her feet again. Ready to take him on.

I step in front of him. “This is Will,” I say. “He’s…” He’s what—a friend, an almost ex-boyfriend? Someone who used to hold my hand? “He’s with me.” Whatever that means.

Now that nobody’s getting killed, Pole Dancer finds her voice. “Well, if it isn’t Beauty and the Beast.” I wonder who’s Beauty and who’s the Beast.

“Shut your mouth,” Jacquie says, stepping toward her. Pole Dancer stumbles back into a locker. To me, Jacquie says, “This must be the one you call Pole Dancer.” Laughs.

Thanks, Jacquie
. As if there wasn’t already a bounty on my head at this school.

Ainsley pulls herself off the floor and shoots a look of pure hatred at Jacquie. Then she turns to me. “You won’t always have your bodyguard here to fight your battles. You know what’s coming, princess.”

“Leave her alone.” Will’s voice erupts behind me, hard. Startles me. I’ve never heard him angry before. Jacquie shifts toward Ainsley, ready to pounce again.

“Why are we still fighting?” I say to Ainsley. “Can’t you see you’ve already won?” Jacquie and Ainsley turn to me, wary. “That poem—it doesn’t get any worse than that. The battle’s over.”

Ainsley stares at me like I’ve started speaking Cantonese. “Let’s go, Janine.” They move slowly, Ainsley holding Jacquie in place with one eye.

As they turn away, Jacquie’s voice follows them in the dark. “If you ever go near my girl Isabelle, she’s going to tell everyone how you got your butts kicked tonight. And there was a witness.” She pauses to let the words sink in. “And I already broke into the school office. I know where you both live.” Her words echo down the hall. Footsteps quicken.

She holds her tough-girl pose until we hear the footsteps pattering on the stairs. “Ha!” She turns to me. “Problem solved.”

Everything in the last fifteen minutes rushes at me, sucking my breath away. I turn to her. “Are you insane?”

“What?”

“I thought you were going to kill her!”

“
I
thought I was going to kill her,” Jacquie says, laughing.

“Why’d you go after her in the first place?” My voice climbs. Will disappears into the shadows near the stairs.

“Trying to save you!” she shouts back.

“I didn’t ask you to save me!” Right in her face.

“You don’t ask for a lot of things you need.”

“Like bringing Tweedledee and Tweedledum with you tonight, with their combined
IQ
of fifty?”

“What, compared to your wussy boyfriend? Who here saved your sorry butt tonight?” she roars.

“Leave him out of this!”

Red faces, arms waving. Jacquie and I have never fought like this. The anger of the whole night rushes from my mouth. I take a step away, trying to disengage from the torrent between us.

She swallows, voice low. “Look, Isabelle. I’ve only ever tried to help you. You have a sad life, watching it all go by from the sidelines.”

Every word stings, truth and hurt mixed into one. She has always tried to help me—like running in the night with Evan on one hip. She’s the only person who understands my life. At the same time, there are all those moments when she becomes someone else I look after. Trying to hide her from the flashing lights and sirens that come when she smashes bottles on cars. Dragging her home from parties in the middle of the night when she’s too drunk to stand. Stopping her from shoplifting or beating someone to death.

A sad life
. The words sink in, cutting a bloody groove. All true. But even in an ideal world, maybe the life I’d choose would never measure up. Hers would be full of police chases and explosions, kinky sex in moving vehicles—like some James Bond movie. Mine would be more like an episode of
Barney
, baking cookies and picking flowers in the garden.

“I don’t think it’ll work, us moving in together.” The words fall from my lips before I can stop them. Before I really know what they mean.

She stands still in the dark. I can’t read her expression. Then she throws her hands up like,
I surrender
. “You know what?” She backs away from me. “From now on, you can live your own pathetic life. Keep me out of it.”

“Jacquie—”

“And fight your own battles.” She turns, walking toward the stairs. “See how that goes for you.”

“Jacquie, wait!” I call to her. I can’t bring myself to chase her, stand in her path.

“Because I’m done!” Her silhouette moves past the windows, then onto the stairs. Footsteps descend, and then she’s gone.

And there’s just me. In the dark. Every part of me trembling. I lean against a locker and slide down, the metal cold against my back. I put my head on my knees and try to breathe. What just happened?

A noise. I look up but don’t see anything. Probably Ainsley and Pole Dancer coming back to find me alone. I don’t even care anymore. Let them beat me up. Then Mom will let me change schools. I put my head back down and wait for them.

Footsteps come toward me. I have no more run in me. Can’t move at all.

Something nudges my feet. I lift my head. Size 12 runners with red stripes.

“You do have a knack for finding me in dark places, Will.”

He crouches and lowers himself next to me, his back against the next locker. Touches my hand for a second. “You’re shaking,” he says, pulling his hand away again. Me in my compartment, he in his.

I lift my head and lean it back against the locker. Glance over at him. He looks how I feel tonight—heart ripped from my chest and pounded back in with a meat mallet.

“You heard all that?” I say.

He nods. There’s something different about Will tonight—a little unbalanced, dark around the eyes. Unfair of me to think of him as an unending sea of calm.

“Do you want to come downstairs?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Can’t move.” We sit in silence, a little warmer now that he’s here. “Will, I’m sorry.” I close my eyes to make the words easier. “I have to explain, about what I said.”

Now he pulls his knees up and rests his head on his arms. Face away from me.

“I did like you.” Take a breath to keep going. “I still like you. It—” I swallow. “It hurts to see you with Amanda.” The words limp out. He doesn’t say anything. “I have a complicated life. Maybe you’ll believe that now. I didn’t know how to fit you in. Was afraid, I guess.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” he says.

“I know. Sorry.” I try to see his expression in the dark. “I don’t want you to think it was you, or that I was embarrassed.”

“Well, that explains the mixed signals.”

“Yup.”