Rhymes With Witches (10 page)

“I hear you've been complaining to Coach Sloan,” Stuart said. His ruddy cheeks looked like a little boy's. “I hear you've been talking trash about me.”

“Leave me alone,” Camilla said, pushing against one of his arms. She gave him her toughest glare.

He reached down and pinched her nipple, right there in the hall. Camilla gasped and drew her arms to her leotard.

Stuart smirked. “Don't go whining about something unless you want it,” he said as he sauntered off. “Slut.”

Camilla's face flamed. “Asshole!”

I didn't know what to do. My body had frozen when he first started in on her, and now my heart was whamming away, but the rest of me still couldn't move. Camilla's eyes found mine.

“You saw, didn't you?” she demanded. “You saw what that asshole did?”

“I … I—”

“You have to come with me to tell Mr. Van Housen.”

Oh, crap
, I thought. I was a lot better at being nice to Camilla when it didn't involve going public. “I don't think … I mean, I don't know what I would …”

“You
have
to,” Camilla said. She blinked back tears. “Please.”

In the office, Mr. Van Housen put down a brochure picturing a scruffy tomcat glaring from within a cage. “Trap, Alter, Release,” read the caption beneath the photo. “The Race to Outpace.”

He listened impassively as Camilla told her story. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” He was using his broken record technique, where he let a student get it all out while not saying anything in response. “Hmm. I see.”

“He touched my
breast
!” Camilla said. “That's sexual harassment!”

“Hmm. Well, it certainly is a matter of concern.” Mr. Van Housen propped his elbows on the table and touched his fingers together. “You were there?” he said to me. “You saw this happen?”

I shifted my weight. I could tell he didn't like Camilla, and it made me nervous. I hated it when grown-ups went along with the whole social code set up by the students, fawning over the popular kids and treating the underdogs like shit. At the same time, I knew what Mr. Van Housen wanted me to say, and I could feel that pressure weighing on me, too.

“Um, the thing is, I wasn't really paying attention,” I said.

Camilla's head whipped toward mine.

“But, yeah,” I said quickly. “He did … what she said.”

Mr. Van Housen frowned. “Yes. All right. Well, Camilla, you can rest assured that the matter will be taken care of.”

“Will there be a hearing?” Camilla demanded. “Will he be expelled?”

“The matter will be taken care of appropriately,” Mr. Van Housen said, with a look that shut Camilla up. “I appreciate your bringing this to my attention.”

I scurried out of his office. When Camilla came out two seconds later, her face was splotchy. She saw me and blanked her expression, but not before I'd seen what was underneath. She ducked her head and hurried past.

At the other end of the hall, the cheerleading results were posted on the community bulletin board. I took a breath and headed over.

“Oh my god!” I heard Tina Burston exclaim. She clapped, and her crutches fell to the floor. “It's a dream come true!”

Two other girls squealed and hugged.

“Where's Kim?” one of them said. “We have to find her. Kim!
Kim!
You made it!”

I pushed my way through the crowd and scanned the list. Kim, Stacy, Rebecca, Tina, and … Shelly Clarkson.

Oh. Right. It wasn't as if I were surprised, but just for a moment, I'd thought
maybe
.

I found Alicia at her locker.

“I don't want to talk about it,” she muttered. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

“Okay,” I said.

“Anyway, who was I fooling? I didn't even want to be a cheerleader. Cheerleaders just exist to make other people feel bad. Plus, they're stupid.”

“Okay.”

She slammed her locker and headed down the hall. I walked beside her. At the door to her classroom, she stopped. She stubbed her pink-and-gray All-Star against the hall carpet.

“Rae's singing karaoke tonight,” she said. “Want to go?”

“Sure,” I said.

She clamped her lips together. She nodded once, then went into the room.

Mary Bryan trapped me after French. “We need to talk,” she said.

Sweat popped out in my armpits. “I'm sorry I was such a dork at Kyle's party,” I said. “I didn't mean to embarrass you guys.”

“What are you talking about?” Mary Bryan asked. “You didn't embarrass us.”

“But I was such a loser.”

“Well …” She shrugged. “I had a great time. So did Keisha and Bitsy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So don't worry about it.” She ushered me down the hall and out the back door of the building. “There's Bitsy. Let's go.”

“Huh? Go where?”

Mary Bryan tugged me across the parking lot. She climbed into the backseat of Bitsy's car and scooted over to make room for me. Keisha was already in the front.

“But … it's sixth period,” I said.

“So?” Bitsy said.

“So I'm supposed to be in LIFE.”

She looked at me blankly, and I said, “Learning Inspiration from Empathy. LIFE. Today we're taking a field trip to the zoo, to talk to an expert on feral cats.”

“Why?”

“So we can learn more about the cats on campus. So we can learn to coexist, and help other people to—”

“I think you should pass,” Bitsy said. “I'm sure the cats will understand.”

I glanced back at the building. Then I squeezed into the car.
We followed the winding campus road that led to the back gate, but no one explained what was going on. We left the school grounds, and Bitsy selected a song on her iPod.

“Uh … where are we going?” I asked over the music.

“My place,” Bitsy said.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

A shred of hope sliced through me. Was it possible I was still being considered?

Idiot, idiot, idiot
, I scolded myself.
Don't even go there.
I didn't ask any more questions.

The neighborhood Bitsy lived in was even ritzier than Kyle Kelley's, and her house was unnervingly gorgeous, with vaulted ceilings and gleaming hardwood floors. Mary Bryan disappeared into the kitchen and returned with Diet Cokes, pitas, and hummus. I sat on a white leather sofa across from the others, and I crossed and recrossed my legs. On the glass coffee table sat an ornately painted vase. I could hear the ticking of a clock.

“We brought you here to tell you that we're interested in you,” Keisha said at last.

“Not to be blunt, but we don't have much choice,” Bitsy said. Keisha shot her a look of warning, and she added, “Of course we adore you, it goes without saying.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. I tried to form my mouth into a smile.

“It's true,” Mary Bryan said. “Out of all the candidates, you're our top pick. It was unanimous.”

“Candidates?” I said.

“Chelsea Campion had potential,” Mary Bryan said, “but her dad's this Hollywood mogul type, so she's got all sorts of contacts already. She doesn't need us.”

“She certainly needs something,” Bitsy said. “Her bum's as big as a bloody buffalo's.”

“And we almost asked Lynn Seigler,” Mary Bryan continued, “but we decided she's
too
pretty. She looks like a model, practically.”

She continued listing girls—as well as why they were axed—and my stomach folded in on itself. Too pretty, too well connected, too smart without being nerdy … All of these descriptions sounded like
good
things. I didn't understand what any of it meant.

“Carrie Beale came this close,” Mary Bryan said, holding her finger an inch from her thumb. “But then we were like,
Ohhh. She doesn't
mind
being a free agent.
Which made us realize that she wouldn't want it bad enough.”

“Want what?” I said.

“Do
you
?” Keisha asked. “Even after Kyle's party?”

“What, to be a Bitch?” I tried to play it cool, but my words tumbled over themselves. “Yes. God, yes!”

“Enough to do whatever it takes?” Keisha pressed.

“Well, sure,” I said.
They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted
, came a voice in my head. I faltered. “I mean, I think so … but what do you mean?”

Mary Bryan got up from her sofa and moved to sit by me. “Don't worry, Jane. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. Anyway, we're not talking, like, bank robberies or kidnapping innocent children.”

“But we're not talking a new hairstyle or a cute new pair of boots, either,” Keisha said. “Jane's entire life would change. She needs to know that.”

Mary Bryan made a face, like
Don't mind her, she's being such a grown-up
.

Bitsy put down her Diet Coke. “I think you're both forgetting the point of being a Bitch, which is to dump your grotty old life and start over again. So of course Jane's life would change. That's what it's all about.” She stood and walked to the entertainment center, where she opened a wooden door to reveal a large-screen TV. She pivoted to face us. “Get comfy, dearies. I think it's time for our video presentation.”

The video was of Mary Bryan, only I don't think Mary Bryan knew it was coming, because she turned pale when the images flickered onto the screen. “Oh my god,” she kept saying. “Oh my
god
.”

It
was
pretty creepy. Someone (Stuart Hill?) had videoed a rafting party that I guess happened last fall, because the Bitsy in the tape had a short, flippy haircut that now had grown out. She was there along with Keisha and a bunch of other kids, all piled onto big rubber rafts stocked with coolers. One of the rafts had a keg floating along behind it, tied to the raft so it would stay cool in the river.

Bitsy was wearing a turquoise bikini, and she looked fantastic. Keisha was wearing a black one-piece, and
she
looked fantastic. They both laughed and sipped their drinks while the other kids drooled all over them. Just like at Kyle's party. A third fantastic-looking girl was there, too, and after a moment of confusion I deduced that she was last year's senior Bitch, now graduated and out in the real world. She was stretched out on the rim of the main raft, wearing cut-offs and a red halter. While I watched, a guy dipped his fingers into his cup and sprinkled beer on her tummy. She shrieked and swatted him, and the guy turned about a hundred shades of happy.

The camera jerked around a lot, so it was hard to see everything. Mainly Stuart stayed focused on Keisha, Bitsy, and the red halter girl, but occasionally he'd pan in on a guy belting out a burp or drumming his chest like Tarzan.

And every so often there'd be a glimpse of Mary Bryan.

It made my heart hurt to see her. She had on a hot pink one-piece made to look like leather, and it was cut too high on the legs and too low in front. Physically I guess she looked pretty much the same as she does now, only it didn't seem that way at all. Part of it was how she held herself, with her stomach held in super tight and her chest sticking out. And part of it was the way she clutched her Styrofoam cup and ripped off the top in little bits. But mostly it was her expression: bright, bright smile even though no one was talking to her. Desperate, shiny eyes.

My thighs felt heavy. Was that how I came across at Kyle's party?

On the tape, Mary Bryan adjusted her bathing suit. She stood in the raft and wobbled toward a junior named Chase Mattingly, then dropped down beside him. Her drink sloshed onto his leg. He glanced at her, annoyed, but kept talking to his buddy Steve. Several times Mary Bryan opened her mouth to speak, but each time she chickened out. Finally she leaned forward so that her breasts practically fell out of her suit.

“Um, you're on the soccer team, right?” she asked.