Rebel Belle

Chapter 6

IT WASN’T just the humiliation of having the entire school know that I was puking and crying in the bathroom during Homecoming, or the veiled insinuations that I’d been sick because I was pregnant or on drugs. It was that the school probably already knew that Mr. Hall and Dr. DuPont were missing. And sure, that bathroom had looked spotless, but it’s not like I’d done a sweep for DNA. For all I knew, the police were in Headmaster Dunn’s office right now, with big folders full of evidence that two men had died in the girls’ bathroom last Friday, and asking if anyone was displaying any “strange behavior.” And, oh, look! Here was a convenient picture of me sobbing around the girls’ bathroom.

“Are you okay?” the tall sophomore asked. “You look kinda . . . purple.”

I snapped my head up and smiled, or at least pressed my teeth together in the semblance of a smile. “I’m fine,” I said, but my voice was way too loud. “This is just a silly misunderstanding between me and David. Can I keep this?”

“Sure,” the shorter girl who’d handed me the paper said.

“Thanks so much!” I turned around and headed straight for Wallace Hall.

Before I’d gone more than a few steps, I heard Ryan call my name. He was jogging over from the parking lot, a bunch of papers crumpled in his hand. “Hey!” he said once he’d caught up to me. One hand cupping my elbow, he leaned down, studying me. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” I said, trying to look more okay and less homicidal.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick Friday night?”

“It was nothing,” I insisted, shifting my backpack to my other shoulder. “And I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. Honestly. This is just another one of David Stark’s jerk moves. I can handle it.”

Ryan clenched his jaw, looking up toward Wallace Hall. “What is that dude’s problem?”

“He’s a jackass.”

Not taking his eyes off the building, Ryan shook his head. A muscle worked in his jaw and he shoved the sleeves of his dark blue sweater up his forearms. “No, it’s more than that. He’s always been like this with you, ever since we were little. Back in middle school, I thought maybe he had a thing for you, but—”

“First of all, I highly doubt that. Secondly, sometimes people are just . . . I don’t know, born mean or something.”

Glancing back down at me, Ryan gave a half-smile. “Maybe. Want me to go kick his ass?”

Ryan was joking; I think the closest he’d ever been to a fight was watching UFC with his brother on Saturday nights. But as soon as he said it, it was like someone had punched me in the stomach, an almost overwhelming sense of wrongness washed over me. “No!” I yelped, and Ryan startled.

“Whoa, Harper, I was kidding.” He held both hands up in mock surrender. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

That weird, nauseous sensation subsided, and I rubbed my temples. “I know, sorry. Anyway, let me go talk to David, and I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

“Sure you don’t want me to go with you?” An auburn curl fell over Ryan’s forehead as he ducked his head to meet my eyes, concern all over his face.

But the idea of him coming with me to see David sent my stomach roiling again. I managed to give a little laugh. “No, I’ve got this.”

Ryan dropped a kiss on my cheek and gave my elbow one last squeeze. “You always do.”

He headed across the quad, broad shoulders held back, long legs striding across the grass, and I turned back to Wallace Hall. I don’t know what I looked like, but it must have been pretty scary, because everyone was quick to jump out of my way. Most of them were holding papers, though, so they probably all thought I was about to have a nervous breakdown right in front of them. Which actually was a good thing. After that weird thing with Ryan, a lot of my anger had died down. Hearing people whisper behind my back powered it right back up.

As I pushed open the heavy door, I mentally called David Stark every bad word I could think of.

By the time I reached the journalism lab, it felt like sparks were exploding from my head. There were a few articles taped to the door, and even in my rage, I saw that almost all of them had David’s byline. Gritting my teeth, I stepped inside.

Thanks to all of the computers lining the back wall, the classroom felt a lot warmer than the hall. No one was working at the computers now, and there were only three people in the room. David was sitting on a desk, laughing with two other newspaper staffers, Michael Goldberg and Chie Kurata.

I’d planned out this whole speech in my head amidst all the bad words—yay, multitasking!—about how what he’d done was not only personally offensive to me, but demoralizing and degrading to the school, because when we make one of us look bad, we all look bad. And honestly, how did he expect to get away with this kind of crap? He had to have written the article and printed up the paper over the weekend. That meant he’d done it behind Mrs. Laurent’s back, and that had to be a detention-worthy offense at the very least.

But something about seeing him sitting on top of a desk, eating yogurt and laughing with his friends made me snap. I could feel my face get red, and this intense, trembly feeling rose up from the middle of my chest. My intelligent and calm speech flew right out of my head.

“WTF, David?” I asked, storming into the room and throwing the paper on the nearest desk.

He at least had the good grace to look chagrined. “Harper—”

“No!” I said, or at least I meant to say. It came out a little shriek and Michael flinched and looked at his feet. Chie, a pretty, petite Asian girl who’d transferred to our school just this year, raised her eyebrows so high they disappeared underneath her heavy black bangs.

David stood and put his hands up in front of him in the universal sign for “calm the heck down.”

But there was no stopping me now. “Why would you do this?” I gestured angrily at the paper. Just over David’s head, there was a poster featuring a typewriter and the quote “Journalism Is History on the Run,” and I made myself stare at that rather than meet his gaze. Man, laser eyes really would’ve come in handy now.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He was always doing that, which is why he usually looked like he’d been electrocuted by fourth period. “It was a valid story, Pres,” he finally said. “Something was definitely wrong with you that night and I think the student body of the Grove has the right to know if their golden girl is hiding something.”

“No, they don’t,” I fired back. “What was going on that night was none of your business!”

“I was involved that night too, Harper.”

“Um, you held my hair while I puked. I don’t think that exactly makes you a major player in the night’s events, David.”

“You held her hair?” Chie asked. She had slid down into one of the desks, twisting around to face us.

He glanced over at her, his mouth turning down with impatience. “Yeah, but that’s not the point.”

He turned back to me, and he didn’t look even a little bit sorry anymore. “When I see a story that affects the school, it’s my journalistic duty to report it.”

I laughed. “Your journalistic duty? Look around you, David.” I snatched up the paper from the desk, gesturing around the tiny, hot room with its posters of famous dead journalists and lame quotes. “You write for the tiniest school paper ever. This”— I rattled the paper—“is a glorified newsletter. You don’t even send it to a real printer. You just print copies off the secretary’s computer! Don’t you get it? No one wants you to dig up corruption in the SGA, or uncover health violations in the cafeteria, or write nasty stories about a girl who works hard to make the Grove an awesome place for everyone, even total jackasses like you. I can’t believe you would do something like this when—”

I broke off. I was breathing hard, and the paper was crumpled in my hand. Michael had gone to one of the computers, his back to us, but his shoulders tight and his ears nearly as red as his hair. Chie was still sitting in her desk, stunned. Truth be told, I felt kind of stunned, too. I mean, I hardly ever lost my temper, and I’d certainly never done it in public. But here I was, panting, sweaty, my hands smudged with ink. My face was on fire, and I could feel some of my hair sticking to my cheeks and neck.

Was this part of being a Paladin/superhero? Was I like the Hulk, only sweaty instead of green? What was wrong with me?

Okay, I mean, obviously I was freaked out that David’s little exposé might get me, um, thrown in jail forever, but my anger seemed to run deeper than that. What had I been about to say to him? I can’t believe you’d do something like this when . . .

When you were nice to me that night.

That’s what I had been about to say. I was angry because David Stark had hurt my feelings. I took a deep breath and dropped the paper onto the nearest desk. Then I carefully smoothed my hair away from my face and willed my blood pressure back to a non-stroke level. I straightened my shoulders and looked at David with haughty disdain.

“Anyway,” I said, “I expect a printed retraction and apology in the next issue.”

David folded his arms over his chest and grinned, clearly deciding to battle haughty disdain with snarky nonchalance. Well, his posture was snarky nonchalance at least, but his eyes were practically burning. “Expect it all you want, Pres. I stand by that story.”

If I hadn’t already been so rattled, I wouldn’t have said what I said next. But David had pushed so many of my buttons that I just smirked back. “Retract it, or I am going to file a formal complaint with the school board.”

The grin faltered.

“It would be the second one, right? Didn’t someone on the debate team file in September after you accused him of cheating?” I rolled my eyes upward, like I was trying to remember something. “And didn’t your aunt say something like if you got one more demerit, she was making you resign from the paper? I seem to recall her mentioning it to my mom at Cotillion practice.”

The look of naked fear that skittered across his face made me feel sick. So did the sound of my voice. I sounded so much like Leigh-Anne.

He made me do it, I told myself. You’re not a mean girl, but he made you be one.

David recovered quickly, but his grin was ugly now. “Fair enough, Pres. Next issue.”

“Thank you.”

I cleared my throat and picked up my book bag. As I turned to go, David called out, “Harper?”

“What?”

He took a minute, like he was trying to decide if he should say whatever it was he wanted to say. I wondered if he felt like I had, like he didn’t want to say something hateful, but I’d made him.

“You know, all the articles aside, I actually thought you were better than this,” he finally said. “Nice to know that you are just another high school bitch.”

Maybe it was that his words were so close to what Dr. DuPont had said right before he nearly murdered me. Maybe it was because a little part of me felt like David might be right. Or maybe it was because I just really didn’t like to be called names. Whatever the reason, my right hand shot up to slap David Stark across the face. I didn’t even consider my new superpowers, and if those new powers would mean David’s head would go flying off.

But it didn’t matter. Half an inch from David’s cheek, my hand stopped in midair. And it wasn’t because I had some crisis of conscience, either. It was like my hand hit an invisible wall right by his head.

He had flinched in anticipation of the slap, but now he opened his eyes and looked at my palm as it hovered next to his face. I wasn’t sure which one of us looked more surprised.

I drew back my hand a little, then pushed it forward again. Again, my hand stopped like there was Plexiglas between my hand and his head.

I tried the left hand, making David raise his shoulders and shut his eyes again, but the same thing happened, so now I was standing in front of him with my hands poised on either side of his face.

This time when he opened his eyes, he looked at my hands in confusion. “Um . . . Harper? Are you gonna hit me or not?”

I stood there, looking at my hands and at his face between them. I still really wanted to hit him, but it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to.

So I dropped my hands and raised my chin. “No, I’m not.” I let my tone say, Because I am totally a better person than you and hoped he hadn’t noticed the fact that my hands didn’t seem to work when it came to slapping his face.

“Ooookay,” he said slowly, and I heard someone stifle a giggle behind him, so I had a feeling this bizarre little story would run right next to my apology next week.

“I’ll see y’all later,” I mumbled, grabbing my book bag and trying not to run out of the room.

The bell rang as I ran down the hall, passing the bathrooms. There was no police tape across the doors, so that was a good thing. As I turned the corner to go down the history hall, I glanced in Dr. DuPont’s room. Mrs. Hillyard, a substitute teacher I’d had a few times, was standing at the front of the class. All the stuff in the garden had pretty much convinced me that my fight with Dr. DuPont had been real, but I was still super relieved to see Mrs. Hillyard. There had been a tiny (okay, not that tiny) part of my brain that had been terrified of coming to school and finding Dr. DuPont and Mr. Hall there like nothing had happened.

But they were definitely gone and I was definitely a superhero . . . er, Paladin. Hadn’t that thing with David proved it? If I was guardian and protector of the Grove, I couldn’t just run around slapping people in the face. My body actually wouldn’t allow it; that’s how good I was now.

Or maybe it was just David.

That thought leapt into my brain and I stopped in my tracks. Hadn’t the Paladin definition said that we were guardians of places or people? But why would David need a Paladin unless there was some group dedicated to removing the world of self-righteous jerks, in which case I was totally on the wrong side?

Then it occurred to me that there was a pretty easy way of figuring out if it was just David I couldn’t hurt or people in general.

I looked around until I saw Brandon by his locker. “Bran!” I called, waving him over. I kind of felt bad about doing this experiment on Brandon. It felt like slapping a puppy. A dumb, perverted puppy, but a puppy nonetheless.

Brandon looked as concerned as he was able to. “Hey, Harper. You okay? The paper said you were sick Friday night, and Bee said she didn’t hear from you this weekend, and—”

“I’m fine,” I said with a wave of my hand. “Food poisoning. Anyway, would you mind if I tried out an, uh, experiment on you?”

His face brightened and he gave me a look that I guess was supposed to be sexy, but was vaguely stupid instead. “Does this experiment involve nakedness?” he asked, leaning one shoulder against the lockers.

“Brandon, your best friend is my boyfriend. And my best friend is your girlfriend.”

He shrugged, flipping his hair out of his eyes. Brandon’s hair was a few shades darker than Bee’s, more gold than blond, and while I guess he was attractive in a clean-cut jock kind of way, I’d never go for his type. Too many muscles, too few brain cells. “And?”

Well, at least now I wouldn’t feel bad about hitting him. I raised my hand and brought it down on his cheek with a really satisfying SMACK.

He yelped and a bunch of people in the hall turned to stare.

“Sorry!” I said. “You, um . . . there was a bug. Okay, see you later, bye!”

I dashed into my first period class, my hand stinging and my mind whirling. Normally, first period AP European History was my favorite class, but that day, I didn’t even take notes. I spent most of the time wondering why I’d been able to slap Brandon and not David. If I was Paladin for the Grove, I shouldn’t have been able to hit any of its students.

I wrote in my notebook, “B said offensive thing, so could be hit as he is jerk.”

That made sense. But then I wrote, “D also said offensive thing—called me bitch. But could not hit.”

Then under that, “But you were a bitch to D, so deserved it, so D not jerk, so could not hit.”

Hmmm . . .

Clearly, I needed a test subject, someone totally innocent. If I couldn’t hit him or her, then I was right, and it was my job to protect the Grove. If I could . . . ugh, I did not want to think about that.

I glanced around until my eyes landed on Liz Walker. She was sitting one desk over and up from me. I had several classes with her, but we weren’t exactly friends. She ran with a group some of us called “the churchy people.” Other, less-nice people called them “the Jesus freaks.” Basically, if I were looking for one of the nicest people at the Grove, Liz was it.

So that’s why I did feel bad when I fished a pen out of my bag and chucked it at her, figuring that if I were Paladin of the Grove, it would stop about an inch from all that shiny blond hair.

It didn’t.

I flinched as the pen smacked Liz right in the back of her head. She gave a startled cry and whirled around, hand on her head, eyes full of not-so-churchy anger.

“Harper?”

My teacher, Mrs. Ford, was looking at me with total confusion. “Harper,” she said again, “did you just . . . did you just throw a pen at Liz?”

Now the whole class was looking at me. I turned on my best smile and said, “Oh my gosh, no, Mrs. Ford! I was just . . . um . . . writing really fast because there was so much information to take in, and I had, like, some lotion? On my hands? Anyway, the pen flew out of my hand and hit Liz.” I turned to Liz. “Really sorry about that. Total accident.”

“It’s okay,” Liz said, but she was scowling and rubbing the back of her head.

Mrs. Ford was watching me like I had just sprouted a second head, but she eventually shrugged and said, “Well, be more careful.”

“Will do!” I chirped. Then I turned back to my notebook, my heart pounding and my mouth dry. Holy crap.

I had a noble cause, all right. But it wasn’t Grove Academy.

It was David Stark.