Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up (14 page)

****

“Seriously, if I hear one more person tell me how adorable you and Tim are together, I swear I’m going to scream,” Ally said as she set down her tray across from me.

“So I take it Dante and I are old news now?” I said, nibbling on a fry.

“Not exactly,” she said, picking up her fork and waving it at me. “What’s news, though, is that he’s apparently all kinds of miffed about your breakup.”

“That’s news?”

“Well, I never really thought about it, but I guess Dante’s the one who does the dumping. Rumor has it he doesn’t take rejection well.”

“That’s because he’s a cretin,” Talia interjected between bites of her pizza. “I told you so.”

“Indeed, you did,” I replied with a grimace.

Ally leaned forward conspiratorially. “Anyway, Zoe told me that Jenna told her that Lisa said she saw you and Tim being all cozy and stuff this morning.” She looked at me intently. “Something about you guys going down the hall with his arm around you?”

Talia almost spit out her food as her face lit up. “Shut up!” she screamed.

“I know, right? She’s totally holding out on us!”

“You guys. It so wasn’t even like that.” I rolled my eyes. “I was just freaking out about seeing Dante after homeroom, okay?”

Was I imagining things, or did my friends look disappointed?

“Hey, stranger!” I cried out as Finn sat down beside me. “What rock did you finally crawl out from under?”

“Robotics,” he replied with a weary sigh. He took a bite out of his burger. “Jake’s still with the rest of the team. I had to get away before I decapitated someone.”

“That bad?”

He nodded. “The district tournament is in two weeks, and we aren’t anywhere near finished with our entry.”

Talia clucked sympathetically. “You guys will get there. You always do.”

“We’d better.” He took a giant bite out of his hamburger. “There’s scholarship money at stake,” he said with his mouth full, “plus bragging rights and all of that. It seems like none of the other guys even care.”

“You sound like Zack talking about Ephemera,” Talia said with a laugh.

Finn shot her a dirty look before he turned to Ally. “We could use a Katz on the team, you know.”

Curls bounced everywhere as she shook her head. “No can do,” Ally replied. “You’ll have to win without my brothers or me. My schedule’s maxed. And anyway,” she said with an air of superiority, “you have missed out on, like, all the fun while you’ve been busy tinkering.”

Finn smiled. “So I’ve heard.” He turned to me. “I disappear for a week and you’ve not only dumped Dante, but you have a new boyfriend, too?”

“Seriously?” I glared at Ally.

“Oh, this is so not from me,” she said, putting up her hands in mock surrender. “I haven’t even seen Finn in ages. This must have gotten around school on its own.” She furrowed her brow, disappointed.

He laughed. “Someone sent Sandra a picture of you snuggled up against Tim this morning, and she showed it to me in chemistry.”

Ally’s frown morphed into a pout. “I didn’t get to see a picture.”

“So the rumor is that you’re hooking up with your brother’s best friend now,” he said, straightening his glasses. “How does Brady feel about that?”

“If I had it my way, I’d throw her into a convent,” Brady growled behind me. “But we aren’t religious, so with my luck, they’d probably throw her back.”

“People are so stupid,” I declared. I picked up my barely touched container of fries and handed them up to my brother without looking. “I’m not hooking up with him.”

“Yet,” Talia said, and I tried to kick her under the table. She offered a tight-lipped sarcastic smile when I missed.

“At least Tim’s a good guy,” Brady said, his mouth full. “He’s not crazy like your other boyfriend.”

“Or a control-freaky psycho,” Talia agreed.

Finn looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. “I guess we didn’t really factor in the social implications of our little experiment,” he said at last. “I mean, from the popularity perspective.”

Ally stared at him. “English, please?”

He finished chewing and swallowed. “Well, you know Jake and I figured that Homecoming was just a big popularity contest, right? I mean, historically, the girl with the highest PQ gets the crown.”

“‘PQ?’” Brady asked.

“Popularity quotient,” Ally replied. “Try to keep up.”

“What we didn’t consider, though, is that it works both ways,” Finn continued. “I mean, we already know that a high PQ gets you the crown, but who would have thought getting the crown would lead to a popularity boost? In this case, when Bianca was named Homecoming Princess, it boosted her PQ enough to get Dante’s attention.”

“Um, duh?” Talia was incredulous. “Didn’t I say that from the beginning?”

He looked at her over his glasses. “It was an experiment,” Finn said, stressing the last word. “Thomas Edison tried more than, like, six thousand times before he finally got the light bulb right, you know.”

“You’re not experimenting on me six thousand times,” I said.

“Well, anyway, I think it’s safe to say that we were able to prove our hypothesis.”

“Great,” my brother groaned. “So she’s stuck with a higher PQ and a crazy ex-boyfriend.”

“Something like that,” Finn agreed as he took another bite. He paused mid-chew as he considered something and hastily swallowed. “Of course, the Dante factor could easily be an anomaly,” he said, suddenly more animated. “I mean, it’s quite possible that if we eliminated that part of the equation—”

“No way,” I said. “I think you need to figure out a way to decrease my PQ so I can go back to having a normal life.”

Finn snickered. “I don’t think it works that way.”

Ally bobbed her head in agreement. “He’s right. And you’ve got Legend status now that you’ve dumped him.”

I happened to glance across the cafeteria and found Dante watching me from where he sat with his friends. I frowned at the boldness of his stare. Even with Brady standing right behind me, I couldn’t escape his eerie surveillance. Dante smiled and wiggled a few fingers in my direction, as if he was taunting me, and I visibly shuddered.

“Dumping him doesn’t do much good, though, when he insists it’s not over,” I said, pushing away my tray.

Brady walked me to my next two classes, and I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t seen Tim since before lunch. I wanted to ask my brother if he knew where he was, but after the way my friends had teased me at lunch about our non-existent relationship, I thought better of it.

“Does it weird you out? The whole rumor about Tim and me?” I asked while we walked to my last period Spanish class.

He shrugged. “Whatever. People talk.”

“So you aren’t, like, mad?”

“You could do worse.”

His response kind of surprised me, but I nodded.

“He’s been following around that Schwartz kid,” Brady said.

I glanced at him. “Why?”

He shrugged again. “He wanted to make sure he was staying away from you, I guess. He said you looked kind of freaked out after homeroom.” I nodded, and he asked, “Anything you want to tell me?”

I frowned. “It’s stupid,” I said, “but I thought I saw Dante watching me from across the hall, all smug and stuff.”

“That’s not stupid. That’s creepy.”

“He was doing it again at lunch, too.”

“I know. I saw,” Brady said. He balled his hand into a tight fist. “He even waved to me, like he was daring me to come after him or something.”

“At you?” I asked as we approached my class. “I thought he was waving at me.”

“Does it matter?”

I started through the door but stopped when Brady put his hand on my shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” he assured me.

I threw my arms around his middle for a quick hug before I ducked into my class.

Señora Gutierrez was reviewing everything that would be on tomorrow’s test, but I had trouble focusing on her lecture. I didn’t even notice the principal’s secretary come into the room, and I barely heard Señora Gutierrez call my name.

“
Señorita Sullivan
,” she said, “
por favor vaya con Señora Baker a la oficina principal
.”

I felt the heavy weight of my classmates’ eyes on me as I gathered my belongings and made my way to the front of the room. Mrs. Baker smiled as we left the class and made our way to the front office.

Mr. Hamilton, the school principal, was in his office, speaking to Mr. Jorgensen in hushed tones when I arrived. They both seemed upset about something, but Mr. Hamilton looked almost nervous. Mrs. Baker knocked on the open door, and the two men looked up simultaneously, each bearing the same pained expression.

“Bianca!” Mr. Hamilton welcomed me. He extended his arm toward a green leather chair, inviting me to sit down. “Thank you, Maggie,” he said to Mrs. Baker as she closed the door behind her.

I took the proffered seat but eyed the men warily. My brother wasn’t in the room, so I knew it wasn’t a family emergency, but I couldn’t imagine what could have been so important that they pulled me out of class to talk to me.

I glanced around, taking in my surroundings. I’d never been in the principal’s office before. The space itself was fairly small, not much bigger than my bedroom. Light streamed in from the glass on the west side of the room, and books filled the wall of shelves behind a large oak desk. The other ivory walls displayed framed photographs of Westgate’s senior classes from the past twenty years or so, all showing smiling teens at the start of their last high school year.

Mr. Hamilton glanced at the dean before he straightened his tie and cleared his throat. He stood before me and leaned against the front of his desk. “Bianca,” he said after a few moments, “how is everything going?”

“Um, okay, I guess,” I said.

“Are you having any problems with any fellow students?” he pressed.

“No,” I replied, but it came out more like a question than an answer.

Mr. Jorgensen coughed. “Miss Sullivan, are you aware of Westgate’s rules against harassment?” he asked.

My eyes grew wide. “Is someone saying I’m bothering them? Because I swear—”

The two men exchanged glances again, and Mr. Hamilton shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “It’s been brought to our attention that you may be the, er, recipient of some, er, unsolicited attention.” He looked uncomfortable telling me this.

I, in turn, did my best to keep my expression as neutral as possible though I was mentally running through a list of who knew about Dante’s creepy behavior, trying to figure out who might have said something to the principal or the dean.

The dean coughed again. “We do, of course, encourage students to work out differences on their own before resorting to disciplinary action.” Mr. Jorgensen studied me. “It’s quite possible that this person has no idea that his or her actions are making you uncomfortable.”

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Hamilton agreed. “Of course you should speak directly to the, er, person bothering you. If, of course, there is such a person. But we also want to make sure you are comfortable alerting a faculty member if you feel a fellow student’s, er, attentions are making you uneasy.”

I nodded slowly. This was a truly bizarre conversation. It was as though they were expecting me to tell them if someone was bothering me, but they also wanted me to handle it on my own.

But, still, I started to wonder if Dante really knew how much he was creeping me out. I mean, if both the principal and dean thought he might not....

They looked at each other, and Mr. Jorgensen frowned. “Perhaps you’d feel better speaking to your guidance counselor about this? I believe Mrs. Goldberg—”

“It’s not necessary,” I replied.

“Perhaps a peer counselor, then?” he offered. “I believe you know Kira Preston. She can—”

“No, Mr. Jorgensen,” I assured him, a bit more forcefully this time. “I’m okay.”

The principal looked relieved, but the dean seemed skeptical.

“You’re certain?”

I stared at him.
Did he see Dante after homeroom, too?
I wondered. But instead I said, “No one’s harassing me, Mr. Jorgensen. I’m fine.”

“Well, then,” Mr. Hamilton said as he straightened, a satisfied grin on his face, “as long as you don’t feel like anything is amiss, I think we can send you back to class.” He looked up at the clock over the door and chuckled. “Or maybe we’ll send you home for the day, since it looks like the bell will ring in a few minutes.”

Mr. Jorgensen nodded and opened the door. He didn’t seem as convinced as the principal was. “If you need to talk to anyone, Bianca — if anything is going on — please let someone know. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Okay,” I promised before I rushed out of the office.

The bell rang as I neared my classroom, and students began spilling into the hallway at the sound of the final bell. I contemplated going back into class to find out what I’d missed but ultimately decided against it.

I spotted Dante coming down the hall and frowned. Maybe Mr. Jorgensen was right; maybe I needed to confront Dante and tell him, once and for all, to leave me alone. Maybe he really didn’t know how freaked out I was. I knew Brady and Talia would tell me it wasn’t likely, but I figured it was worth a shot. I steeled my nerves, squared my shoulders, and started in his direction.

“Dante,” I said as I approached him.

A sly, seductive grin slowly appeared. “Well, hello,” he said, sounding surprised. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Stop it, okay?”

His eyes widened in mock innocence. “Stop what?”

“You know what,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “It’s over.
We’re
over. Leave me alone.”

He chuckled, a cold laugh that sent shivers down my spine. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, Bianca. But look! It hasn’t even been a week since you said you don’t want me anymore, and you’ve already come crawling back.”

“Hardly.”

“Then what would you call this?” he asked, gesturing to the space between us. “You came to me.”

I shuddered at the smooth silkiness of his voice. It reminded me of a constrictor slowly coiling around its prey, waiting to squeeze the life out of it. He took a few steps closer. I willed my feet to step away from him, but it felt like they were rooted to the ground.

“It’s okay, baby,” he cooed, stroking my cheek. “I knew you’d be back. I’ve missed you, too.”

“Stop it,” I said as I slapped his hand away. “And don’t call me ‘baby.’”

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, and a cool, arrogant smile crept across his face. He looked formidable. I staggered backward.

“It’s okay, baby. We can do this your way,” he said, coming closer to me. “I don’t mind playing rough.”

“Dante, stop it. You’re seriously freaking me out.”

“Why? I thought you wanted this,” he said with a pout. “Isn’t that why you're here?”

“No!” I insisted. “I want you to stop being creepy and leave me alone! I don’t want this. I don’t want you!” A few people turned to glance at us but hurried on, talking to their companions in hushed tones.

“Don’t fight it,” he said.

“Leave me alone,” I whispered. I backed into a wall and furtively glanced around for an escape.

He put his arms on either side of me and leaned forward. “You don’t really mean that,” he said.

I could smell peppermint on his breath mixed with the lingering remains of his cologne and tried not to gag. “Get away from me,” I said as I turned my head to avoid his kiss. I tried in vain to push him away. He was too strong.

“I’ve missed you, Bianca,” he said, taking my face in his hands. I fought against him as he lowered his mouth to mine. I shoved hard, but he was immovable. I struggled and bit down hard on his lip. I tasted something bitter and metallic and knew I’d drawn blood.

“Ow!” he yelled with a string of curses as he shoved me hard toward the wall. I felt a sharp sting against my cheek and heard my head hit the cinderblock with a soft
thunk
.

“Bianca!” someone shouted.

The hallway was spinning as I tried to focus. Blurry shapes started to collide, and I heard the sounds of a struggle and a discernible crack before my legs gave out and everything faded to black.