Rivals Read online

  As if they thought he might do something interesting, and they didn’t want to miss it when it happened.

  He finished his lunch as quickly as he could and headed for his locker. Lucy was waiting for him there, but before he could reach it he had to pass by a group of girls who were all walking together, clutching their books against their sweaters. He saw the way their hair shone as it bounced with each step. He could see their white teeth gleaming as they smiled. One blonde girl turned and whispered something to a brunette, who promptly blushed. They were popular girls and they had never looked at him before, but now their eyes followed him as he walked toward them.

  “Hi, Brent,” the blonde said. Her name was Jill Hennessey, and she was the richest girl in the school. He knew she was also dating the captain of the soccer team. And now she was smiling at him.

  She was a senior. It did not make any sense. He was a sophomore, and therefore did not exist yet in the school’s social ladder.

  The brunette giggled. Her name was Dana Kravitz and she was the captain of the school’s color guard. She was only a junior but Jill had taken her on as a protégé and now she was the second most popular girl in school. A week ago he would have bet good money she didn’t even know his name. Now she caught his eye for just a fraction of a second, blushed again, and looked down at her boots.

  “Hi,” he said, and every pair of eyes went wide. Some of the girls, hangers-on in Jill and Dana’s circle, straightened up as if they were coming to attention. The girls didn’t stop walking but it seemed to Brent they had slowed down to a lazy stroll. He had no idea what he was supposed to do.

  “Uh, how’s it going?” Brent asked.

  “Us? We’re fabulous. And you? Are you glad to be back among us?” Jill asked. She and her friends were even with him now and they had to turn their heads to keep looking at him.

  Brent shrugged. “Sure. Well, um, I guess I’ll see you around,” he said.

  “Definitely,” Jill said, and walked past him. The circle followed—but Dana Kravitz glanced back over her shoulder and made eye contact with him again. And blushed. Again.

  When he got to his locker Lucy was bouncing up and down in impatience. “I have to get to social studies,” she said, “but I have so got a mission for you.”

  “A mission?” Brent asked. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Did you just see—that was Jill Hennessey and Dana Kravitz, right? I didn’t just think it was them?”

  “Yes, I did see. I saw how shameless they were, definitely. I think you’re absolutely right that they were looking at you, and that that’s something they would not have done before, which I think should tell you something very important about girls like that.”

  Brent shook his head as he worked the combination of his locker. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, I haven’t actually done anything. I still feel like the same person. But everybody’s acting so weird.”

  “Yes, those girls are weird,” Lucy confirmed. “But you know how it is. School can be very boring and we all get excited when something new happens, and now you’re the flavor of the week. I wouldn’t get your hopes up about Jill and Dana, Brent. They’re interested now, but how long could that possibly last? If I were you I would focus more on girls in your own social circle, you know, girls who have known you your whole life and always found you interesting and attractive, even before you became a celebrity, girls who—”

  “Oh, come on, Luce,” Brent said. “There aren’t any girls in this school like that. You’re right. I’m just—” he thought of Weathers sitting in his kitchen, “—front page news. In a week or so they’ll probably walk right past me again and not even say hi. So what’s this mission?”

  “Mission?” Lucy asked. There was something wrong with her face. Her mouth was all bunched up and she had her eyes closed. Like she was about to cry, or sneeze or something. Then she opened her eyes again and nodded and got back to business. “Yes. Your mission. Should you choose to accept it, ha ha ha. Yes. I thought—I mean I’m not sure how you want to handle this, but you are who you are now and there are certain things that will be expected of you, certain stereotypes you’re going to be measured against and I figured it might be good to get started right away—”

  “Started with what?” Brent asked.

  “Fighting crime, of course.”

  Brent laughed. Then he looked at her face. And laughed again. But she was serious. “Crime. Here at the school? Is somebody stealing extra composition notebooks out of the supply closet?”

  “It’s a little worse than that,” Lucy told him.

  Completely serious.

  Chapter 13.

  Classes ended for the day. Maggie changed and headed out to the practice field, watching the football players go through their drills. Her first day back to school had been a little different from Brent’s. She had made plans to see all her friends at lunch, but when she got to the cafeteria not a single one of them was there. Maggie was a high school senior. She knew exactly what that meant.

  Perhaps even worse, not a single boy had looked at her all day. Which was unusual, but she’d kind of expected it. Most of the cute boys were complete brain-dead twits and they looked for girls who were just as stupid as they were—girls they could take advantage of. Maggie was used to being stared at, especially when she was wearing her field hockey uniform which showed off a serious amount of leg, but she knew the football players weren’t looking for a girl who could run faster than they could and beat them up without trying if they got a little too affectionate.

  So they were ignoring her. It wasn’t just that they didn’t say hi. They never had before. But they weren’t whistling at her. They weren’t making rude comments to each other about her body. And they made an all-too-obvious show of not meeting her gaze for so much as a second. As if she wasn’t a girl at all. As if she were some weird species of sea creature that was probably slimy to the touch.

  So when one of them threw a pass that went a little too long and the ball bounced crazily across the grass toward her, she dashed over and grabbed it before Mark Hockenberry, the starting quarterback, could reach it.

  He stared at her in confusion, then glanced back at the other players. “Little help?” he asked, when she just stood there smiling at him, balancing the football on her index finger.

  “Sure,” she said. She pulled her arm back and threw the ball at Hockenberry as hard as she could.

  Because he was a jock and because he had a reputation for never flubbing a pass in his entire athletic career, he made the mistake of trying to catch it. She’d known he would. The ball hit him in his armored sternum and knocked him backwards across the lines painted on the grass. He slid ten yards before he came to a stop. And lay there, groaning.

  Maggie frowned. She hoped, sort of, that she hadn’t hurt him.

  But then he sat up and held the ball in the air. The rest of the team cheered and rushed over to help him up and pat him on the back. And still, they didn’t so much as glance at Maggie.

  “That was unnecessary, Maggot,” someone said behind her.

  She whirled around and saw Jill Hennessey standing there, with Dana Kravitz close by but just a few steps behind. Maggie and Jill were not exactly what you would call friends. They were both on the field hockey team, and they had worked together to win a lot of games. But they never went out for pizza together after a victory. More tellingly, they did not have each others’ numbers in their respective phones.

  “It amused me, Pill. And I crave amusement. What do you want?”

  “Not a thing for myself,” Jill told her. “However. An associate of mine had a question that I thought you could answer. If you’d like to earn a little goodwill from the student body.”

  By which, of course, Jill meant her circle of stuck-up friends. They were the only ones, in Jill’s opinion, whose goodwill mattered.

  “Whatever,” Maggie shrugged. “Shoot.”

  Dana Kravitz looked over her friend’s shoulder at Maggie. She loo
ked scared.

  Maggie kind of liked that.

  “It’s only of passing interest, but this associate of mine, who shall not be named, wanted to know something about your brother. She was curious—just curious, mind you, we are not brokering any kind of social arrangement here—whether he’s seeing anyone.”

  Maggie laughed out loud. “What, my little dweeb brother? Be serious. I doubt he’s ever seen a girl with her shirt off. Oh, I suppose there’s Lucy Benez.”

  “Who? You mean the cripple?” Jill asked. “He’s dating that?”

  “She’s painfully obvious about being in love with him. But I don’t think they’ve even held hands in a romantic fashion.” Maggie smiled wickedly. “Not that I would know. I don’t exactly keep tabs on his love life.”

  “No, of course not,” Jill said. She turned around. “Alright, Dana. You may go now. Maggot and I have practice in a few minutes. I’m sure you have some batons to twirl to keep yourself entertained until I’m done.”

  Dana Kravitz nodded primly and fled the scene.

  “You really are a vicious animal, aren’t you, Pill?” Maggie asked.

  Jill hefted her stick in the air. “I’m a competitor.”

  Coach Peters blew his whistle and the girls’ field hockey team lined up for orders. Maggie had been on the team since freshman year and though she’d never been a star player the others had learned to rely on her. She was great on defense, usually serving as the team’s sweeper, and she was always willing to smack an opponent in the shinguards at the right moment, even if it meant taking a penalty.

  The coach had always liked her, she thought. She put everything she had into the game. She honestly loved it, in a way she loved very few things. Yet as he walked down the line toward her, his face was scrunched up with worry and he had trouble meeting her eyes. Just like the football players.

  “Maggie, you can go change,” he said, finally. He was speaking in a voice barely louder than a whisper. She was used to him shouting commands at her—she liked it when he did, because things made sense when you were out on the field with your stick in your hand and somebody was telling you what to do. Now he sounded apologetic and she felt very lost.

  “Why? What’s going on?” she asked.

  He grimaced and looked at the rest of the team. They were disciplined, winners all, and they looked straight ahead. Of course, Jill couldn’t resist the urge to whisper something to the girl who stood next to her, who started to laugh and then controlled herself. Coach Peters shot a nasty look at Jill and then put his hand on Maggie’s shoulder.

  She shrugged it off. “I want to know what’s going on,” she repeated.

  “Do you want to maybe talk to the principal? Because I need you to understand this wasn’t my decision. But there’s no way we can let you play this season. It wouldn’t be fair to the other grils—or the other teams, for that matter. Not now that you’re… enhanced.”

  “I’m not taking steroids!” she insisted. “This is ridiculous!”

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “The decision is final.”

  She grabbed her stick hard enough to make the fiberglass creak and then took her mouthguard out of her pocket. “Here,” she said, and shoved it in the coach’s hand. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I was stealing school property. You can have my stick if you can find it.”

  “It’s in your hand,” the coach said, looking puzzled.

  She spun from the waist and flung it into the sky. It would probably land in the next town over. “Whoops,” she said.

  “Maggie!” he said, suddenly angry. “What did I teach you about self-control?”

  “I can’t remember. It must have been the day I wasn’t paying attention—the same day you gave us the speech on how everyone should get a chance to play.” She pushed past him and walked down the line of her former fellow players, trying to get a reaction out of any of them. Hoping at least one of them would protest, or even just say they felt bad. The only one who would look at her was Jill.

  “Maybe they need someone in the pep squad,” Jill suggested.

  Maggie told her exactly what she could go and do.

  Chapter 14.

  “Okay,” Lucy said, quietly. “That’s the guy. You see him?”

  They were sitting on a hill overlooking the school parking lot. Classes had let out a few minutes ago and normally Brent would be on his bus headed home but Lucy had assured him this would be worth his while. He wasn’t so sure yet. “Yeah, I see him just fine.” Lucy had brought a pair of binoculars and had pointed out a kid, just a freshman, walking along the edge of the parking lot. Brent could see him just fine—apparently his eyesight had been improved as well as his physical strength. The kid had his head ducked down and his arms were around his backpack as if someone might try to steal it from him. He looked scared.

  “Now—the target. He’s coming up from the gap in the fence, there.”

  The target was a senior. Brent knew him, or at least he’d been pointed out to Brent very early on when he got to high school. It was Matt Perkins, the notorious bully. Perkins was overweight and not particularly tall. He had hair that fell down over his eyes and bad teeth. For the last two years he’d been preying on the incoming freshman class, always choosing one or two new kids to pick on. He would harass them until he grew bored and then he would pick a new one and start in on them. He’d never bothered Brent—Perkins only went after the scrawny kids, the little ones who couldn’t fight back.

  “You want me to beat him up?” Brent asked. He had to admit the idea was kind of exciting.

  “Yeah, but you have to do this right. He has to know why he’s getting beat down,” Lucy explained. “He has to know it isn’t cool to prey on little kids.”

  Brent frowned. “Hey,” he said. “This isn’t personal, is it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Lucy said. “If you’re trying to suggest something, such as, I don’t know, maybe last year Perkins and I had a run in, you know, maybe he shook me down for my lunch money every day for three weeks in a row, and maybe he knocked me down and I couldn’t exactly fight back with these braces on my legs, well—no. That has nothing to do with anything.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay. They’re about to cross paths.”

  “Good luck,” Lucy said, and squeezed his bicep. “Go be a hero.”

  Down in the parking lot Perkins was leaning against the side of a car, smiling so hard his teeth flashed in the sunlight. The freshman was trying to back away but Brent knew exactly how this was going to happen. If the freshman ran, Perkins could chase him down easily. If he stood his ground Perkins would just beat him up. The kid didn’t have a chance.

  Which was where Brent came in. Right? He knew that was how it was supposed to work. He was supposed to protect the defenseless. Stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Nothing had ever looked so pure, or so easy.

  He dug his feet into the ground and jumped. He could hear Lucy cheering as he dropped through the air, down the side of the hill, to land not more than ten feet away from Perkins.

  The bully jumped in place as if he’d seen a ghost. “What—?” he had time to ask, before Brent grabbed him and lifted him off the ground with one hand.

  Perkins struggled, kicking at Brent’s face and shoulders while his hands grabbed on to Brent’s shirt and pulled. It was easy for Brent to fend him off, though. Perkins wasn’t even particularly strong, just massive, and his weight meant nothing to Brent’s new muscles.

  He looked down at the freshman, who had fallen over backwards and landed sitting on the sidewalk.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Ryan,” the freshman said. “I mean, Ryan Digby.”

  “This guy giving you a hard time?” Brent asked.

  The freshman just nodded. He looked like he couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “You want me to teach him a lesson?”

  Ryan Digby got up slowly and shrugged. “I—I don’t know, I just want him—I want h
im to stop. Every day he’s here. I live just over there,” he said, pointing at some houses on the other side of a chainlink fence. “This is the fastest way for me to get home. I tried taking the long way but he was just waiting for me there, too. He kept telling me he was going to kill me. He said if I gave him money he would let me live a little longer. I tried telling my Dad but he just said I should learn to stick up for myself. I tried that, and he—Matt—beat me up pretty bad.”

  “Okay,” Brent said. “I’ll take it from here. Why don’t you go home, now? I don’t think he’ll be here tomorrow.”

  The freshman nodded and ran off. He looked terrified—but maybe that was just the shock of seeing the tables turned on the bully.

  “You’re dead,” Perkins said, up in the air. “When you put me down, you’re going to be dead.”

  “Interesting,” Brent said. He put Perkins gently back down on his feet. “You going to kill me now?”

  The bully roared like an animal and came charging at Brent. He was faster than Brent had expected for someone so heavy and Brent had no doubt he could have seriously hurt a normal freshman. To Brent it felt like he was being attacked by a chipmunk. As Perkins punched and kicked at him, Brent just picked the bully up again and then walked over to a patch of grass and dropped him on it.

  Perkins collapsed with an unpleasant “Oof,” as the wind sagged out of him.

  “Are you going to leave Ryan alone, now?” Brent asked.

  The bully’s eyes were burning with hatred as he propped himself up on his elbows. “That depends. Are you going to be here tomorrow? Are you going to walk him home every day?”

  Brent dropped to one knee and made a fist. He raised it high and prepared to bring it down. He would have to judge this carefully—he needed to hurt Perkins, but not permanently. He thought about what Maggie had said the night before. We can kill people pretty easily. Way too easily.

  If he hit him just hard enough, though—

  “Go on,” Perkins said.