Beautiful things that most people take for granted.” I looked at her as I said it. I didn’t mean to sound smooth, but it kind of worked out that way. She gave me a little smile.
“That’s pretty sweet, Bex.”
I decided to seize the opportunity. I leaned in for a kiss. But before we connected, I heard Jake swear and I froze. I looked in his direction and saw the problem. The bright beam of a flash-light was pointed right at us.
“Hold it!” a deep voice barked out from the shadows.
A guard.
We scrambled back toward the hole that I’d ripped through to the stage. Jake got there first and dropped down the rope into the tunnel. Then I held the rope steady as Asha descended. By the time I was climbing backward down the hole, the guard was close. Too close. I let the rope slither fast through my hands and winced as I felt my fingers burn.
With a thump, I hit the tunnel floor and rolled. Jake and Asha helped me up. Then we were moving fast through the tunnel, our footsteps echoing loudly in the tunnel. But the guard didn’t stand a chance of catching us.
By the time we were back on the street, we were still hyped on adren-aline. All the way to the bus stop, we kept laughing and retelling the best bits of our adventure. All that adrenaline eventually crashed out of us. On the long bus ride back toward our neighborhood, I just felt tired and hollow. Asha was asleep on my shoulder. Jake was snoring too, his head against the bus window.
The city at night scrolled by outside. I imagined we were floating along, sealed in a glass bubble. A perfect bubble. I had an awesome girlfriend. My best friend always, always had my back. I was even doing all right at school. And at night I was a superhero, able to go where no one else could. I didn’t want anything to change.
I still had that feeling the next day when I met up with Asha again. We were in the first-period biology class at school. I’d first met Asha when she was assigned as my lab partner. Things had worked out pretty well. We’d been together for a couple of months now.
I was good at the textbook part of biology. But I don’t have a high tolerance for gross. Asha, on the other hand, watched splatter films for fun. She wanted to go to med school and be a doctor. The dissection we were working on was particularly nasty, so she took the lead on it. Some sort of reptile was staked to a tray in front of us.
“Pass me the scalpel,” she said. She smiled a little as she began carving away at the thing in front of us. I carefully kept my eyes on her and away from the green goo.
“Bex, you are such a wuss,” she said without looking away from her work. There was a squelching sound from inside the thing’s body cavity. Ugh.
“Hey, I can be brave. I’m good at dark tunnels. Spiders, totally fine,” I said. “Just not slimy dead things.”
“Whatever,” she said. She paused to pin down a flap of reptile skin. “ So I heard back from Camp Kinnikee.”
“Okay,” I said. “Was that the one up in the mountains or on the coast?”
“The mountains. Turns out they decided to give me the head camp counselor job!” She waited for me to get all excited. When I didn’t, she seemed a little thrown. She started speaking faster. She still didn’t look at me.
“Here, hold the tray for me. Anyways, the pay is way better than what I could make working at the cafe. I’ll make over four thousand dollars.”
My stomach was squirming, and it wasn’t the dissection that was bugging me.
“I won’t even have to spend money on food ’cause we eat in the cafeteria at the camp,” she kept going. “And because it’s in the middle of nowhere, I won’t be tempted to spend any money on movies or whatever. I’ll have my tuition saved in no time.”
Money was a big deal to her right now. I knew that Asha’s parents had made it clear to her that if she wanted to go to university, she needed to work to raise the cash.
“So you took the job?” I said.
Asha finally put down the scalpel and looked at me. Her brown eyes locked on mine.
“It’s not for too long, Bex. It’s just a couple of months. Maybe two and a half.”
“So you took it.” I wanted to be happy for Asha, I really did. But there was no way I could be happy about a summer away from her. Suddenly I felt awkward and nervous. Asha finally put down her tools and looked at me. Her face was serious. Oh, crap. It hit me.
Was this her way of breaking up with me? Was she going away just to get rid of me?
There was a knock on the classroom door, and everyone in the class looked over. That’s when the new kid walked in. He had long blond hair in a pony-tail and wore a black T-shirt with baggy camo pants. Mr. Kurtzia, the teacher, introduced him.
“Everyone, this is Kieran Ridgeway.” Kieran looked edgy, like he wanted out of the spotlight.
Jake leaned back from the row in front of me.
“I heard about this guy,” he whispered. “Bad stuff.” I’d heard it too. Kieran had only arrived at school yesterday, but there were already rumors about why he’d transferred from another school in the middle of term. Everybody knows that gossip is vicious in high school. But these rumors were bad even when you accounted for exaggeration. My friend Graham had said he’d heard that Kieran had hit a teacher at his last school. Someone else had said he’d started a fire in a chem lab.
You could tell that the teachers knew something was up with this kid. Mr. Kurtzia was looking at Kieran like he was an animal that might bite if you got too close. Then I realized Mr. Kurtzia had led Kieran over to our lab bench.
“Taylor, I want you to take Kieran around for his first day. You know, show him how things work. Asha, how about you join Jake for today’s lab?”
Trapped. I just nodded at Mr. Kurtzia. This day was going downhill for me, fast. Asha piled up her books and moved away. She didn’t look back.
“Kieran, listen to Taylor,” continued Mr. Kurtzia, turning to head back to his desk. “You can learn a lot from him- he’s a good kid.” Kieran looked me dead in the eye. His eyes were weird, a pale light blue like a husky dog.
Sitting down, he checked out the dissection on the table. Then he passed the scalpel to me.
“I’m not doing this,” he said. “You cut. I’ll watch.”
“Yeah, well, I think you get the honor,” I said. “As the new guy.”
“Whatever.”
“Fine.”
Kieran and I sat with our arms crossed, staring at the mangled thing on the dissection plate. Neither one of us moved. After few minutes, Mr. Kurtzia noticed and came back over. He looked concerned.
“What seems to be the matter, gentlemen?” he asked. “Is Kieran causing a problem?” Before I could answer, Kieran slammed his palm on the table.
“What the hell?” he said.
“That language isn’t acceptable in my-,” Mr. Kurtzia started to say. But Kieran cut in.
“You assume that I’m the problem? How long have I been in your class-room? What, ten whole minutes? Have you even given me a chance?” Kieran’s voice rose in volume. His face had gone all tight and white, his blue eyes squinting with rage. Then he stood up, spilling the stool over behind him.
“Right now, you clearly are the problem. Calm down. Now,” said Mr. Kurtzia.
“I won’t calm down! This is the same old shit as my old school,” shouted Kieran. “Screw you! I don’t need any of this.” Kieran dropped back into his seat. There was a sudden silence. Mr. Kurtzia took off his glasses and rubbed them slowly on his sweater.
“Kieran, walk with me,” he said. “We’re going to visit the principal. Now.”
Chapter Three
Mr. Kurtzia still hadn’t returned by the time the bell rang. I packed up my binders and grabbed my backpack. I was about to leave when I realized that Kieran had left his cell phone on the bench. I picked it up and held the
