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Salem opened and shut her locker in an animated fury—her dark curls, placed in ringlets around her shoulders, moving with a small bounce. “I hate getting in the middle of dra-ma,” Salem lied. Drama found its way into Salem’s everyday existence. It wiggled there and nudged its way into any open space it found, creating nests and reproducing at an alarming rate. If it wasn’t Salem’s personal drama, then it was her magnetic attraction to the drama of others—breakups and hookups, infighting among social groups, who had a crush on which teacher, who had slept with a teacher, whose parents were getting divorced, who was flunking algebra. Inside Salem’s brain was a catalogue of crisis covering their classmates from kindergarten to the present.
She remembered that:
Haylee Hij peed her pants in the third grade during that field trip to the Aviation Museum and that was why Jordan Warner didn’t ask her to prom: Because when he thought about asking, all he could remember was sitting next to her on the way home and she was wearing athletic shorts that were three times too big and holding a freezer bag filled with her wet and pee-ripe clothes.
Or that Tristin James bought his then-girlfriend, Jackie, a golden bracelet that had “together forever” engraved on the inside. Then, post break-up it was Salem who noticed Cassidy Blaga wearing the same bracelet—jangling it with pride to her girlfriends during physics and swooning over Tristin’s unbridled commitment. And while she could’ve let it go, turned a blind-eye, and let teenage love run its course, it was Salem who tore a picture of Jackie and Tristin out of the yearbook, Jackie clad in her telltale bracelet, and sent it to Cassidy.
Salem knew about Craig Moss, all-American water polo player, and his secret Internet boyfriend, Pedro, for months before the rest of the school even began to whisper about the scandal.
If something bad happened to you, Salem Aguilar would find out.
If something good happened, she would know too. But she might not tell as many people about it.
“Explain,” Lucy commanded, shifting her black and white herringbone book bag up on her shoulder. She shoved her books into the open locker, her three-ring binder, and the mounds of work that would inevitably ruin her vacation.
“Grant Trotter.”
Lucy shook her head. The name didn’t mean anything to her.
“Oh, really? Tall. Blonde-ish. Pole-vaulter. Dated Bianca-dad-buys-everyone-beer-Nelson?” She paused for a second. “Anyway, he dumped Holly during their first date. Just told her that it wasn’t going to work and took her home. Right then and there. That’s like some serious movie crap right there. Who does he think he is?”
“A guy who knows what he wants?” Lucy replied, feeling her phone vibrate against her leg and ignoring it.
Salem stuck a bony finger into Lucy’s face. “Don’t get cheeky with me. That’s a major self-esteem deflater. She’s going to require so much coddling now just to get out of the house! Boys are so stupid. Lie. Right? Just lie like the rest of them? Hey, Holly, I’m totally into you. Kiss her. Then don’t call. Am I wrong here? Wait,” she hushed her voice and drew her mouth close to Lucy’s ear, her breath warming the side of Lucy’s face in short bursts, “that’s him. Look. Look.”
With a furtive glance, Lucy followed Salem’s line-of-sight and spotted the offender; leaning against a locker, his hair flopping to the side, haphazardly whisked away from his eyes and his hands shoved deep inside a Pacific Lake High School hooded sweatshirt, shoulders rounded as he slouched. His group of friends laughed at someone’s joke, but Grant only smirked, rolling his shoulders forward even more and eyeing the ground. When he glanced up, he looked straight to Salem, pulling his hand out halfway for a noncommittal wave.
And just like that, the war was over. Salem waved back and twirled a long curl between her ring and middle finger. “I guess he’s not so bad,” Salem declared. “Holly’s a total bore one-on-one anyway, and she does have that misshapen nostril.”
Lucy snorted. “What are you talking about?”
“Just wait. Next time you see her, check it out? It’s freakish.”
“You notice her nostrils?”
“Bike accident.” Salem shrugged as if this common knowledge disinterested her.
When Lucy turned back toward the group at the lockers, Grant was still looking in their direction.
She smiled. A crooked-tight-lipped smile and then cast her eyes toward a neighboring bulletin board, exercising an interested stare at the ripped motivational posters encouraging her to “Look to the future! Attend college!” with multi-racial friends all sharing a toothy laugh.
The bell rang. Lucy muttered a goodbye and kissed the air in Salem’s direction, then skipped and drifted to her next class.
Halfway during Trigonometry, after Lucy had endured a short geography lesson with her Seychelles-ignorant math teacher and promised that she’d plug along through the four chapters of work, (even though she was certain that was more than they’d complete in her absence, especially considering Mr. Hegleton’s tedious review sessions and a tendency to dedicate entire class sessions to discussing Doctor Who) Ethan sent her an urgent text.
“In trouble. Ride home with Sal.”
A command. Not a suggestion. Ethan was a reliable ride home, so trouble was good for no one.
“Explain. Mom and Dad?” Lucy texted back.
“A
Lucy’s older brother Ethan had an evil girlfriend named A
She may not have been the embodiment of evil, but vilifying her had morphed into a pastime that neither she nor Salem was willing to abandon. Ethan had graduated two years ago and instead of venturing to the University of Colorado where a handsome scholarship awaited him, he enrolled at Portland State and became a commuter student. He was eager to leave his part-time job and his once close-knit group of friends, but for some inexplicable reason, he was reluctant to leave his clingy, cloying, and altogether horrific high school girlfriend.
A
She would say things like, “How are Mom and Dad?” which made Lucy’s stomach flip-flop.
And A
Things had taken a turn for the worst when Lucy showed up in the library during her peer tutor hours for National Honor Society and it was A
Lucy growled at her phone. A few heads snapped up to look at her and she ignored them. “Jerk,” she typed.
“Shut up,” he quickly shot back.
“Break. Up. With. The. Bitch,” Lucy suggested.
Ethan didn’t text back.
“Thanks. Eternally,” Lucy said as she climbed into Salem’s decade-old Honda Civic. The interior smelled of stale French fries and vanilla body-spray; the passenger side floorboard was littered with half-full soda bottles that rolled around with each turn, hitting Lucy’s feet with soft thuds.
Salem pulled out of the school parking lot and traveled past the strip mall and the Lutheran church, up the hill, and into the row of tract homes where Lucy and the King brood lived.
“Have fun,” Salem said, as she pulled into the long driveway lined with well-groomed shrubbery. “I’m trying not to be jealous.”