Scorpion Shards

“Fat chance,” said Lourdes. She took one step at a time as she descended slowly toward her principal.

Boom! The steps rang out as Lourdes planted her swol­len foot on them.

Boom!

In a moment she eclipsed the stairway lights, and Conroy’s face was lost in shadow.

“I’m warning you, Lourdes . . .”

Boom!

As Lourdes approached, Mrs. Conroy seemed smaller and less powerful. Why, she was just a wisp of a woman after all, thought Lourdes.

Boom!

“Lourdes, I won’t let you past me.”

“So try and stop me.”

Boom!

As Lourdes continued her descent toward the frail principal, Conroy unconsciously gripped the rail, already feeling Lourdes’s pull—her gravity, for Lourdes did have a gravity about her. When she was in a room, it was difficult not to find oneself leaning in her direction. If a breeze blew in through the window and scattered papers, they would all stick to Lourdes until she peeled them off. If you threw a paper airplane at her, it would curve around her and come back to you like a boomerang—and if you threw it just right, that airplane would continue to circle in orbit around her until it fell to the ground. Her class­mates called her the Planetoid, and she hated them all.

“If you so much as touch me, Lourdes—'

Boom!

The final step. Lourdes stood right before Conroy, and the principal’s shoulder-length hair was falling forward across her face, reaching toward Lourdes. Her immense belly pinned the principal against the wall, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Fear was in the principal’s eyes now. Fear and disgust.

“It’s not my fault I’m like this,” said Lourdes. With that the principal’s body began to crush inward, from Lourdes’s mere touch, collapsing in upon itself. Barely able to breathe, Conroy snarled out her words.

“You don’t belong here,” she said, and Lourdes knew she wasn’t just talking about school. “Here,” for Lourdes, meant this world. She brushed Conroy away as if swatting a fly, and the woman gasped for breath, as if she had just escaped the crushing force of a black hole.

Principal Conroy clutched the railing to keep from col­lapsing and shouted at Lourdes, but Lourdes didn’t listen. She just continued out of the stairwell and onto the first floor.

***

The first floor hallway housed mostly English and history classrooms. The nearest exit was to the left, but the school security guard and guidance counselor were stand­ing there, blocking Lourdes’s escape route. At the other end of the hall stood the vice-principal and a whole legion of teachers. They all began to close in.

Either she could run at them, hoping her momentum would take them out like bowling pins, or she could duck into an empty classroom. Since there were too many of them to bowl over, she chose the classroom. Once inside, she would be cornered, but at least she’d have an arsenal of things to throw at them as they tried to come at her. If it had to be her against the whole world, then the whole world would be made to suffer for what it was doing to Lourdes Hidalgo.

She pushed into the classroom, and instantly caught sight of Miss Benson—the new English teacher—and Mi­chael Lipranski in the front of the classroom.

Lourdes was not prepared for what she saw. Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open.

Because Michael Lipranski was kissing his English teacher.

The very sight of it distracted Lourdes a moment too long, and she was caught off guard when everyone burst into the room. With so many people trying to wrestle her under control, not even her crushing gravity could save her. In the end, she had to give up. Her only consolation was that Michael Lipranski was also caught, and he would be in as much trouble as she was. Maybe more.

***

Michael Lipranski was an unlikely make-out king. Sure, he was attractive, but there was something about him that was unnerving, unclean and a bit slimy. He was a bit too thin, his dark hair was a bit too long—and al­ways damp. When he would look at you, you could swear that he was reading your most secret thoughts and think­ing great mischief.

He wasn’t your typical stud—had no great muscles to speak of, and there was always a constellation of bruises over much of his body. Some of these came courtesy of his father, who was known to use his fists, but most were from fights around school. Michael wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had learned to defend himself in a world that turned out to be far more cruel and vicious than he ever thought it could be.

Physically, the only thing truly special about Michael Lipranski was his eyes. He had these impossibly intense turquoise-hazel eyes, layered with rich coronas of color that made them seem as deep, warm and inviting as a Caribbean sea. The girls in school could lose themselves in Michael’s eyes, and often did. It happened last year in Baltimore, and it happened here in the Hamptons. Maybe that’s why all the guys hated him.

And maybe that’s why no teacher wanted him in their classroom. For several years Michael could never figure out why this was so. He was friendly, funny and person­able. He made an effort to do the work. Still, he seemed to be an epicenter for all sorts of disturbances. Since seventh grade, Michael’s classrooms had always been remarkably unruly. He always assumed that this was normal. Kids hit puberty and turned into monsters, right? That’s what ev­eryone said . . . but the way his classmates acted wasn’t exactly normal.

When Michael was in a room a clamminess filled the air that pulled at the edge of everyone’s senses like a smell so faint it was impossible to identify. Whatever it was, it usually attacked girls and guys differently. It made girls’ hearts race and made them suddenly feel like there was something that they desperately wanted. They would begin to sweat, and their eyes would constantly seek out Michael’s—for if they could look into Michael’s eyes, they would begin to feel just a bit better. And if they could move closer to him, they could feel relief. Close enough to smell his breath. Closer still, to taste it.

Of course, guys didn’t generally feel that way. Instead they felt like beating Michael up.

So when the posse chasing Lourdes Hidalgo burst into Miss Benson’s classroom, word got around at the speed-of-light squared that Michael “Lips” Lipranski had taken his smooth moves to new heights. Everyone acted sur­prised, but no one really was.

***

While Lourdes sat in the principal’s office under tight guard, Michael had a pressing appointment with Mr. Fleiderman, the guidance counselor, who was everyone’s friend—or at least tried to be.

The appointment wasn’t held in Fleiderman’s office, because when it wasn’t too cold, Fleiderman liked to hold his sessions out in the quad—the courtyard in the center of the large school. More relaxed, less threatening, Fleid­erman thought. It had never occurred to him that most kids didn’t want to talk to the guidance counselor in view of the entire school.

When Michael crossed through the wall of steamy fog, it seemed that the rest of the world slipped off the edge of the earth into gray nothingness. It’s how Michael felt in­side too—lost, alone and confused—generally fogged in, but he didn’t plan on letting Fleiderman see that. Let him think I’m calm and in control, thought Michael as he ap­proached the over-eager counselor.

Fleiderman shook Michael’s hand and invited him to sit with him in the moist grass. Michael refused to sit.

“Why not?” asked Fleiderman, pleasantly. “I won’t bite.”

Michael smiled his winning smile. “Standing is better, strategically speaking,” he said. “If you attack me and try to strangle me, I can run. And yes, you might bite, too.”

Fleiderman laughed at the suggestion and decided to stand. “All right, we’ll do it your way.”

They both waited. Michael leaned against a yellowing sycamore tree with his arms folded.

“So talk to me,” Fleiderman finally said.

“So talk to you about what?”

“You know what. Miss Benson.”

“What about her?”

“You tell me.”