Endangered (13 page)

OUT OF MY FATHER'S LINE OF
sight, I power up my phone. Texting Ocie is my first intent, let her know I'm back on the grid and we need to talk. Before I do, I'm overwhelmed by the number of missed texts that are waiting for me. More than thirty taunts, all from the Admirer.

How's it feel to be tattled on?

This is a hard lesson, but you will thank me for it someday
.

Are you ignoring me?

Answer me!!!

That one stops me dead in the middle of the crowded hall, and I get bumped by passersby. Hard.

It happens a couple of times, like it's a game I don't know about. Jostle the Panda. The last collision is hard enough to knock my phone from my hand and send it sliding like a hockey puck. Taylor plays goalie and stops it with his foot.

He says something that I miss because, um, what the hell? How many
times is he going to beam in like that?

When he scoops up my phone, I snatch it back. “What are you doing?”

“Me?” he says. “What about you? Why did you come today?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

He leans in close. “Because people are saying you got Keachin killed.”

“I . . . got . . . ?”

“Come on.” He grabs me by the hand and I have a flash of awkward memory. A lingering fleck of fondness staining my disgust for this boy.

Taylor leads me through the halls, beyond the dirty looks that have multiplied exponentially since yesterday's Gray reveal. We leave Junior Lane, navigate Sophomore Row and the Freshmen Slums until we reach the library. Only a pair of early-morning study hogs are present. He sits me down at a corner table as the warning bell rings.

He takes the seat across from me, then scans the room like he's my bodyguard assessing threats. I nearly laugh because he's so tall and skinny, a stickman in baggy clothes. He couldn't protect me from a breeze.

However, that I've treated him like crap and he still feels this need to do whatever it is he's doing saps some of the humor. What's going on here?

When he's satisfied with our seclusion, he stares me down. “It would've been best if you stayed home.”

“You know what's best for me now?”

“I'm trying to help you. Chill, for once.”

“Don't tell me to—”

“Haven't you seen what they're saying about you on the news?”

That shuts me up. Because I haven't seen. Other than the reporters mobbing us on my front lawn yesterday, I don't know what they're doing, or saying, or showing.

You'll want a friendly telling your story. Trust me
.

Taylor's examining me, his mouth pinched. “So, you don't know.”

“How about you tell me, Taylor.”

“The local stations started talking about your website in their broadcasts last night. They didn't say
Gray Scales
, but everyone knows. Then someone posted a link to one of the segments on the memorial page—”

“The what?”

He rolls his eyes. “For someone who stalked her you sure are uninformed.”

“I'm not a stalker.”

“Whatever. It's a Facebook page for Keachin. It had five thousand likes.”

“Keachin's RIP page has
five thousand
likes?!” Yes. That sounds shitty. Still. Really?

Taylor shakes his head, and I mistake it for him judging my pettiness.

He clarifies: “Had. It
had
five thousand. After those news stories aired, and the link started making the rounds, it's up to”—he checks his phone—“thirty-five K.”

Thirty. Five. Thousand. Likes.

It's sinking in. She's dead. Thirty-five thousand people have expressed some level of mourning with a mouse click.

So what do I—the one who “got her killed”—get? What's the opposite of a Facebook like?

The bell rings. We're both late. I couldn't care less.

I should, though. I really, really should.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I mull over what he's said. “I get she was popular, but she wasn't nice, Taylor. Has everyone forgotten that? What? Don't look at me like that.”

“You're not lying, but”—he squirms in his chair—“she got run over by a car.”

“I don't mean it disrespectfully. It's just blowing my mind. She's everyone's best friend now?”

“My mom once told me people have a way of turning shiny when they die.”

“What's that even mean?”

“It means people exaggerate the good stuff about dead people.”

“So she's going to be prettier even though she was already gorgeous? The time she
didn't
ream some poorly dressed kid becomes her feeding the homeless?”

“Do you hear yourself?” He looks away, motions toward the library's double doors, and beyond them. “You've got bigger problems. Yesterday, when they found out you're Gray, that was like shell shock. Now they've had time to go home and yak it up with their friends, let some talking head tell them what to feel. They've been supplied with an opinion. That opinion says you got the school's most beautiful, sweetest, smartest girl murdered. Now you're as big of a monster as Coach Bottin.”

“I don't get it, Taylor. Why are you trying to help me? Why aren't you mad at me, too?”

Surely, by now, he's realized he was my first target. The one who started it all.

His eyes remain on the door when he speaks again, nonchalant. “I've always known you were Gray.”

“YOU . . . WHAT?” I STAND, BACK AWAY
like he'd just flashed hidden claws and vampire fangs.

“That first picture, me with the jockstraps. Hell, yeah, it was you. What other
photographer
was that pissed at me?”

That is the reason I don't do personal.

“If you knew, how come you never . . .”

“Confronted you? Blew up your secret identity? Because you were right to do it to me. I had it coming.”

This sounds something like an apology. Not quite, but it's so much closer than anything he's ever attempted before.

“I don't know how to take that,” I say, honest.

“However you take it, I suggest you do it later. When we've dealt with the fallout of you going crazy and telling everyone your secret. What was that about? Did you feel guilty?”

“It's not what you think. I was—”

“Let me guess,” Vice Principal Del Toro says, having entered the library unnoticed, standing now with hand on hip and an annoyed stare. “‘Just on your way to class'?”

Taylor rises. He knows what's coming, as do I. He tries to save me. “It's my fault. Lauren shouldn't be punished.”

“I don't doubt you're at fault for something, Mr. Durham. You and I have been here before. Ms. Daniels is still responsible for her own class schedule. Besides, she can probably use a break today.”

She knows about my recent unmasking. Everyone does.

Ms. Del Toro thumbs her walkie-talkie. “Mr. Mitchell, I'm bringing two students to the ISS room for skipping class.”

ISS. In-School Suspension, aka Siberia.

Ms. Del Toro holds the door open and hurries us along. On my way out, I glance into the stacks and see a kid ducking behind the podium where the huge dust-covered dictionary sits. He's actually skipping class, but
I
have to go to ISS?

He sees me seeing him, perhaps wondering if I'm going to tell Ms. Del Toro.

No worries, kid, I'm not ratting you out
.

Too bad I couldn't count on him to return the favor.

The ISS room is located on a desolate back hallway, right across from the old special-needs classroom. There's one window, and an air-conditioning unit partially blocks the sun attempting to stream in. What light remains shines through milky, yellow glass that's stained from the days when kids used to smoke their cigarettes behind the school. Inside the room, eight
or nine desks are arranged in an unrecognizable pattern. Not rows, or a circle. More like chaos-lite.

When we arrive, there are already two kids in lockup. A couple of burnouts who look old enough to be seniors but still have lockers in the Freshmen Slums because, well, burnouts.

Behind the big desk, Mr. Mitchell, the Automotive Arts teacher I thought was pervy until I uncovered the king faculty perv. I can't believe they leave him alone in a secluded room with children, though. Have they learned nothing from Bottin? I feel his eyes on my boobs already.

“Hand over your student IDs,” Ms. Del Toro says.

Taylor—obviously familiar with this routine—has his in hand. He passes it over to Mr. Mitchell and takes a seat toward the front of the room. I have to root in my bag for mine, Ms. Del Toro sighing impatiently while I do. Before I find my ID, my fingers graze the camera I took from my locker yesterday, forgotten in the nightmare that's been my life ever since. It cheers me up a little.

“Today, Ms. Daniels,” Ms. Del Toro says.

“Yeah, sorry.” I hand over my ID. When I take my seat, it's in the corner farthest from Taylor. I'm still processing his claim to have known about my exploits all along. I need some distance.

“I'll be notifying your parents about your misconduct. Provided you hold it together and don't give Mr. Mitchell any trouble, I may consider letting you go back to your regular classes tomorrow. In the meantime, you will work in silence for the rest of the day.”

I didn't bring any work with me, leaving the option of napping like the burnouts. But within twenty minutes, an office runner arrives. I barely notice until he begins handing out class assignments passed along from the teachers we won't be seeing today.

Taylor takes his, leafs through the pages, gets to work.

Both burnouts tuck their assignments in the baskets under their desks as if the papers are for someone who will be along later.

When the kid gets to me, he drops my handout on my desk and leaves the room in a hurry.

My assignment is four pages stapled together. I peel back the first page and understand his rush. Sticky blue bubble gum, thick and moist, is pressed between my papers. A not-so-subtle message.

Now I know what the opposite of a Facebook like is.

A different runner brings my second-period assignment. No gum this time. Just spit.

The third-period runner just scrawls the word “KILLER” in red crayon on the back page of my history worksheets. I spend most of the period wondering where he got crayon from.

Fourth period is lunch for the ISS kids. We go before the first regular lunch period so our isolation is not interrupted. The silence rule is supposed to be maintained while we eat, but Mr. Mitchell has had enough of it by then—he's got no one to talk to either—and leaves us alone in the cafeteria while he does whatever suits his mood when he's not eye-humping young girls.

As soon as he's gone, Taylor's next to me, whispering, “I'm sorry I got you in trouble.”

“This isn't your fault.” Me, saying
that
to him. So many surprises this week. “Besides, I'm getting the impression ISS might be the safest place for me right now.”

“What?”

I tell him about the various assaults on my schoolwork. It's no surprise to him. “A lot of people are mad. Why'd you blow your own cover?”

“It wasn't me,” I said. “I was outed.”

“By who?”

“That . . . is complicated.”

“We've got time. Like nine minutes, but time.”

The burnouts have stopped murmuring to themselves, keying on our conversation. I can play Secret Squirrel and try to conceal the truth, but it hasn't been my week for subterfuge, now has it? I tell as much as I can in eight minutes. Not the whole story, not the parts about
Dante
or scheming my way into the Cablon construction site or Keachin's crime scene photo because I'm still not sure what to make of all that, but Taylor gets the gist.

With a minute to go, he says, “Someone you don't know followed you, photographed you in stalker mode, then used your own mail list to show the world what you do when no one's looking.” He cocks his head, squints. “And you think this person
admires
you?”

I shoot him a look.

“Just wondering.”

A sharp whistle interrupts the conversation: Mr. Mitchell signaling the end of the lunch period, ushering us from the cafeteria like lepers unfit to be seen by the good and free students of Portside High.

I leave my seat, contemplating what Taylor said. I'd been so caught up in
what
happened, I'd never considered
how
it happened. I never saw the message the Admirer sent when he did what he did, but the buzz leading up to it had everyone thinking
Gray
was making the reveal. Taylor asked why
I
exposed myself. So did Quinn Beck. People think
I'm
doing this because the Admirer's using my own system against me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Panda
.

Mr. Mitchell stops us outside the cafeteria doors. “Hang tight, prisoners. We've got some new inmates joining us.”

More burnouts, I presume. Ms. Del Toro rounds the corner. I'm very wrong.

She's walking Danielle Ranson down the hall, and the girl's staring me down. Her hair's pulled back, slick and greasy with Vaseline. Her ears are bare, the chunky, gaudy earrings she usually wears absent. Her forearm muscles dance as she flexes her fists.

Our bathroom encounter from the day before is so fresh, I focus on Danielle first, neglecting the other two girls accompanying her. There's Simone Presley, who missed part of last year because my pictures got her sent to rehab. And there's Lanie Jackman, Keachin's freshman cousin. I have photos of them hanging together in the days before the coach scandal broke. Lanie idolized her older cousin.

Del Toro says, “They all seemed quite determined to get tossed in ISS today, Mr. Mitchell. I'm more than happy to oblige.”

Mr. Mitchell shrugs it off, either ignorant of the conspiracy unfolding before his eyes, or indifferent. “The more the merrier.”