Four Three Two One Read online

  She probably already knew.

  Mom, a teacher’s aide here, must have flitted person to person, room to room, telling staff and teachers the “good news.” Since New York, I’d noticed her treating me delicately. I pictured her saying, “Now, congratulate Golden on the ring, but let’s remember, we don’t relate it to last June, okay?”

  “Your mom said he made a roast.” The secretary said this as if making the roast were the same as summiting Everest.

  “He did. It was amazing. What’s that combination again?” I asked.

  I fielded four additional “Oooooooo! Ahhhhhhhh!” requests to see the ring as I walked to my locker and dumped my extra bag. Several assholes asked me if we were having a boy or a girl. This looked to be a long day.

  Now, in any given class at Braxton Springs High School, I might see a girl writing her first name with her significant other’s last name on her folder. Trying on a surname was like trying on a prom dress: you checked if it fit before you arrived at an event decked out in peach taffeta and chiffon. That was normal enough. Also normal: ninety-nine times out of a hundred, those girls scratched through several last names or had to buy a new folder because they ditched relationships faster than favorite songs. Everyone played house, but no one wanted to buy a freaking house.

  I decided it was better to leave the ring on over panicking every time someone asked to see the goods. I was in no state for class and went instead to a hidden cubicle in the library. Screw 1984. I’d turn the paper in later.

  There was a new message from Rudy.

  Golden,

  Good day today! Maybe that’s because we’re finally talking, or because my nephew just honked my nose and called me Wudy. It’s the small things, you know?

  As you provided me flaming steel wool—nice shot, btw—I have collected these fine facts for you:

  If you put superglue on a cotton ball it will catch on fire.

  Walt Disney World uses compressed air instead of gunpowder for their fireworks shows.

  “Fahrenheit 451” got its name when Ray Bradbury asked a local fireman the temperature a book would burn at. The dude put Bradbury on hold, burned a book, and the rest is a classic.

  I used to love fire. I hate it now.

  Peace—

  Wudy

  I wrote him back: I dream of fire.

  He must have been there, right on the other side of the internet.

  He wrote: Me too.

  I wrote: Tell me about Carter Stockton.

  He wrote: He’s exactly who you think he is.

  I typed, Are you going to New York on Sunday? but the school alarm went off before I hit Send.

  Between the screaming pulses, the secretary issued instructions over the loudspeaker: “Please exit the building now. This is not a drill. I repeat. Please exit the building now. This is not a drill.”

  6. SURVIVOR OF STRANGE ATROCITIES

  $21,291.00

  Teachers directed students out the gym doors. Several tennis girls waved me over as we exited the building, but only Becky Cable waited until I reached her. Becky and I were doubles partners and sometimes we traded biology notes and gossip. I wouldn’t call us bosom buddies, but we knew each other’s basics. Like I knew her parents were local dentists, who wanted her to be a dentist, and she happened to be terrible at science. Really, really terrible. I also knew she thought her voice was too masculine. Not true. Everywhere my voice was smooth and Southern, hers gripped the surface of words like eggshell paint mixed with sand. Husky and distinct. I was glad she was the one who waited.

  “Keep going!” a teacher said. “Farther. Farther.”

  Becky stood motionless, bored by the fluttering masses. “This seems a little extreme.”

  “I’m sure it’s a drill,” I said.

  Braxton Springs wasn’t large by high school standards—Class A in sports, four hundred students most years. Nearby, a mass of kids hovered in a lopsided lump near the teachers. A freshman volleyball girl, who was clearly not flummoxed by the announcement, asked about Becky’s mascara (which was always A+, but today A++), and Becky somehow kept two conversations going at the same time. Becky was good at doubles tennis, and that held true across the board. I couldn’t stay focused on her, let alone the crowd. I was thinking about how every time I spoke to Rudy Guthrie an alarm sounded.

  A whistle blew. I felt the shrill in my chest.

  “Keep going, toward the exterior lot.”

  “Faster. Orderly. Faster!”

  “This is not a joke. Stop laughing.”

  I followed the herd. This would be over soon; the teachers were overreacting, as they’d been trained to do. We had a million drills. Natural disasters. Earthquakes. Tornados. Fires. Lockdowns. Worse-case scenario here: one of the lunch ladies burned a pan of broccoli, or the chemistry department dropped a Bunsen burner. Even that was doubtful. There was no visible smoke. Per protocol, the fire trucks screamed into the circle drive. Our crowd reached the gravel lot where the buses perched during the day, and two teachers directed us to board.

  “No,” I said.

  Becky peered at me and noted my discomfort with concern. “No what?”

  “I’m not getting on a bus.”

  Becky Cable had a moment where she remembered I wasn’t Golden Jennings her tennis bud, I was Golden Jennings, survivor of strange atrocities, and in solidarity said, “I’m not boarding either, bitches.” But she kept the bitches part between us.

  God bless Becky Cable.

  The more docile students followed directions promptly. Teachers easily noted our rebellion, as we were the only students left in the parking lot. “On the bus!” they called, as if this were an easy task. It should have been.

  “You go,” I told Becky, but I tightened my grip on her arm.

  Mr. Keller jogged over; he was practically spitting fire. “I need you to board. Now.”

  This might have felt truer if the windows of the yellow fellow weren’t lowered and Dominik Dvorak wasn’t hanging halfway out playing taps on his trumpet and Seth Fallman wasn’t singing about the end of the world in a singsong off-key voice.

  “We never get on buses for fire drills,” I said.

  “This isn’t a fire drill!”

  Half the bus heard Mr. Keller scream. Those who didn’t hear his precise words heard his trepidation. Behind him, speculation began. Whispers. Conversations. Rumors. “Shooter!” someone suggested. No one argued.

  “Girls, I’m not telling you again,” Mr. Keller said. He was a white-hot ball of fury.

  Becky pressed her lips into my ear. “Would it help if you put your face inside your shirt and I guided you?”

  “No.”

  Logical solution. But whatever was out here, shooter, terrorist, kingdom come, I planned to watch it attack from the wide-open space. Hidden things—a backpack abandoned beneath a park bench; a bulky sweatshirt on a dumpy, angry boy; a suitcase idling at airport security—kept the most dangerous of secrets. Mr. Keller kept spitting his instructions, but he climbed the first step toward our classmates and abandoned us. Later, he would call this protocol. I would always label it fear, and fear I understood.

  The whispers, taps, and our insubordination continued. I thought about Chan, who was on the opposite side of campus. Was someone making him board a bus too? I hoped they weren’t. Becky took to Twitter, hoping to discover what was going on. Plenty of teachers’ kids with the inside hookup lived online; there would be something if she searched the right people. Her thumb stopped scrolling.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Becky?”

  “They’re saying it’s a bomb threat.”

  7. OUT OF ORANGES

  $27,466.00

  “I’m leaving.”

  Becky was already tugging me toward the senior lot. “I’ll drive,” she said, peeling off her sweater and stripping down to a bright yellow tank top like she meant business. I was busy tugging my own shirt to my nose, which was b
leeding. I’d lost more than one T-shirt to spiked blood pressure, stress, and allergies.

  Behind our backs Mr. Keller threatened suspension. Behind his back, Becky flipped him off like she was grinding birds into his face. Under different circumstances, I would have laughed. Under these, I was searching for Chan’s truck among the sea of senior automobiles. It wasn’t here.

  “Keller is an unthinking asshole!” she said.

  “Pretty much.”

  We arrived at Becky’s electric-blue Mustang, a vehicle I admired. Every vehicle we owned except Dad’s had duct tape somewhere. There was no duct tape to be found on the Mustang. The paint was always gleaming from a fresh wash. The car sat so low she probably had to change the tires to cross train tracks. Usually she and her closest girlfriends (all with pretty hair and pretty cardigans and pretty ankle boots) tore from the parking lot, horn honking, on their way to Cason’s Market, where everyone hung out after school. I’d never asked to go along. And now I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because I didn’t have razor-sharp bangs or Warby Parker glasses.

  Inside, the Mustang was a thing to behold. “Make space, Jennings,” she told me. When I didn’t respond swiftly, Becky raked her arm across the passenger seat and junk? stuff? all her worldly belongings? fell onto the floorboard. I wiggled into the remaining available space and made sure I didn’t bleed on the fabric. She squealed from the lot, leaving fresh treads on Main Street.

  “Grab that for me, will you?” She flung a hand in the general direction of my feet. I handed her four different items of various shapes and sizes before she said, “The lipstick, silly.” I had to dig under the seat but was eventually successful. Mechanically, she flipped the sunshade, leveled her face with the mirror, and painted her lips brick red.

  “You should try this color,” she said, and passed the tube to me.

  My hand was shaking too badly to try. I guess Becky was amped too, because she chewed the lipstick right off her lips.

  By the stop sign at Cason’s my nosebleed had settled down. Becky gave it a once-over and said, “So . . . you and Chan the Man?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You preggo, Jennings? Got Chan’s little western sizzlin’ in your belly? Because I’d rather not train a new tennis partner.”

  “No. I’m semi-promised.” I fluttered my left hand where she could see the ring.

  “Seems that you’re semi-unhappy. That because of bomb drills or whatnot?”

  “That’s because—”

  “Oh, just say it, Jennings. Chandler Clayton is a jalapeño pepper, but there’s plenty more like him who have mastered the incredible art of . . . smiling.”

  “It’s not so much Chan as it is the ring doesn’t make sense.”

  “Because you don’t love him? Or because you only high school love him and plan to bone some lawyer with a trust fund in college? Or do you mean you wanted white gold and a little more flicker?”

  My cheeks were on fire as I thought of a proper way to respond. “I love Chan, but . . . aaahhh, this is the dumbest thing he’s ever done.” I growled and clutched the ceiling handle until my arm muscles trembled with fatigue.

  “You want to throw something?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s an orange on the floorboard. That’s biodegradable. Launch that bastard at a street sign.”

  I did. And unsurprisingly, I underestimated our speed, missed the sign by a yard, and didn’t feel better. Becky noticed.

  “I’m out of oranges, so you’d better just tell me everything.”

  I decided I would. The Mustang was blocking the city park for the third time—probably because I hadn’t given her specific directions—when I unloaded. “We were fine, Becky. You know, couple of the year for like—”

  “Ten years running.”

  “Six. But exactly. Then New York happened, and everything changed. Like literally everything. I get that trauma makes you crazy sometimes, but shouldn’t it be the same type of trauma if we lived through the same event? It makes you ask weird questions. Like what if we were this way before and I can’t remember. Whatever we were before Bus Twenty-One . . . I don’t know what we are anymore.”

  The windows were down from my orange launching so she was forced to yell over the wind. “I know what you are. You’re semi-promised.”

  I laced my hands around my skull and squeezed. “Do you know what I want?”

  “What?”

  “To get off the Hive. See who we are. See if we can get over who we’ve been.” The phrases slipped out like someone greased my windpipe.

  Becky beat a drumroll on the steering wheel. “Yep.”

  “But I clearly can’t.”

  “Yep,” she said again. “Preaching to the choir.”

  “At least we got away today,” I said, hoping that sounded enough like thank you.

  “Let’s just keep driving,” she said.

  “Fine by me.”

  She stomped on the gas.

  We weren’t really leaving town, but the speed and the wind made everything better. We were nearing the interstate when Becky’s phone rang.

  “School?” she said, and answered.

  Mine rang immediately after. We sat in a pull-off, fingers plugged in our opposite ears, listening to Principal Sanduskin in Becky’s case and Mom in mine explain we’d been suspended for leaving campus during a bomb threat. Oh, also, some freshman boy called the threat in from his cell phone because he didn’t want to take an algebra test. Mom didn’t blame me, and based on her tone, Sanduskin had his work cut out for him.

  Becky was equally unfazed. “What are we doing with our vacation? Don’t say tennis. Don’t say homework.”

  Strangely, the we worked. She was a quality person with a quality car and über-quality lipstick. That plus loyalty was enough to start. I could be a Becky person.

  “You won’t be in trouble?” I asked.

  “I’m sure I will.” She said this in a way that conjured no pity.

  “Figure that out and we’ll make a plan.”

  We turned around and Becky drove me home. Before she entered the outer Hive gate, she said, “Am I allowed in here, Jennings?”

  My left eyebrow shot up. “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “My first commune experience.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s the first time in ten months I’ve ridden in a car I didn’t check beneath.”

  “Guess we’re both living on the edge.”

  8. THE EXCLUSIVE AND PRIVILEGED CLUB

  $31,087.00

  Becky dropped me in the driveway and promised to call later. I left Chan a message that I was home and went inside for a long shower. The water was scorching, and I stayed until my skin was pink and raw.

  That stupid, stupid freshman. Bomb threats weren’t pranks.

  There I stood, naked and angry and wet, thinking maybe I should drive to school and kick that douchebag kid in the crotch. And then I was suddenly and inexplicably angry with Chan. Where was he in all this? Why should I be the crotch kicker? He had two legs. He should kick that kid twice on our behalf. Or at least want to. But he’d be passive about this. “Golden, let it go,” he’d say. And then I’d be staring at his ass and the back of his shoulders as he walked away. Our next conversation would be about the latest Nolan movie or a new photo technique.

  How was it that two of the four survivors of Bus #21 lived on the same property, and we never talked about what happened or how it kept affecting our lives? How? was the wrong question. Why? was better.

  Gran knocked on the bathroom door and I told her to come in. She dropped the toilet seat lid and lowered herself slowly to a resting position. Still dripping, I tightened a threadbare towel around my chest, flung back the curtain, and took the tub ledge. We sighed together. Maybe from the steam, maybe from the day.

  “Rough one?”

  “I got suspended.”

  She grabbed a second towel from under the sink and flung it in my direction. “Did you do anything wrong?”


  “No.” I wrung my hair and twisted the towel into a turban.

  “Will you miss anything that keeps you from graduating?”

  “No.” Thank God. I didn’t think this would hurt my grades.

  “Then take the vacation, kid.”

  “Did you check the fund?”

  She eyeballed a tube of drugstore mascara, examining the color. “You bet I did. Three times today. Hit it like a joint.” It occurred to me that Becky and Gran would be great friends. I gave an appropriately chastising expression. “What?” she said. “Do kids not call them joints anymore? Also, the fund’s almost to thirty-two thousand.”

  “Dang.”

  She looked a little nervous and confessed, “I put in another ten dollars. Couldn’t help myself.”

  “Gran! Stop it.”

  “Don’t tell your elders what to do with their money. It’s insulting.”

  On the one hand, I imagined eight thousand dollars for college. On the other, I knew I didn’t deserve those donors’ hard-earned money. I shouldn’t have been on that bus to begin with.

  “Where would you go?” Gran asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. Every kid has an answer to that question. You’re just scared to say it out loud in case that makes it come true.”

  “College.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a place in Boston.”

  “Maybe you should go to New York this weekend and swing by Boston on your way home.”

  “Gran!” She was being ridiculous.

  “I’m just saying”—she eased her body off the seat, around the corner, and then poked her face back into the bathroom—“you’ve got the time.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  She put a hand on my forehead and the weight and coolness of her skin made me melt. “Golden,” she said, “you can always come back if it doesn’t work out. That should make it easier to leave. Not easier to stay.”

  I nodded to make her happy. I went straight to my computer and discovered Rudy Guthrie had left three messages in my absence.