The Predicteds (18 page)

Buses:
Predicted individuals shall not ride on public school buses. Such individuals should make alternative arrangements for transportation to and from school.

Education:
Classes for predicted individuals and nonpredicted individuals shall be conducted separately.

Dating:
Mixed-status dating and general fraternization shall be strictly prohibited.

—
Rules to Live By
, an underground pamphlet circulated at Quiet High

“Say something worthwhile,” Ms. Kaplan warns us. “The point is to gain a richer understanding of the text and the social milieu in which it was written. This should not be a prodigious task, people, if you've been paying attention.”

This is how Ms. Kaplan talks, calling books
texts
and using words like
prodigious
and
milieu
—words that have zero linguistic value in a high school classroom. Nobody thinks she's brilliant. We just think she's wound too tightly. Ms. Kaplan is young, but she seems old—and not the good kind of old, but the bad kind that smells musty and yells at kids to get off the lawn. She has a Master's degree in British literature from a very important college, and you can tell that she's pretty bent out of shape about being stuck at QH, so she compensates by teaching a college-level class. “Work with your partners, people,” she tells us now. “I expect you to use your time wisely. You should have already read your assigned novel. Work on analyzing the book and preparing a presentation for the class based on critical theory. Remember your central question: Should your novel be included or not included in the American literary canon?”

I look over at my partner, who is making exploding sounds meant to sound like cannons—the kind with two
n
's. Great. Fate got pissed off and paired me with Josh Heller. He tried to trade partners, but Kaplan wouldn't bend, noting that he needed to learn how to work with people,
even if they are difficult
. Yeah,
I'm
the difficult one.

Josh and I were assigned
An American Tragedy
, which I've already read. It's very long, and he's been trying to plow through it in class while I wait impatiently and stare into the hallway through the open door. I can't help but notice that he's only a few pages into the book—a fact that drives me nuts.

He puts the cannon away, reads for a minute—his lips moving as he goes—and then sets the book down, not even bothering to mark his page. He moves his desk closer to dopey Sam Cameron, who is inexplicably also in our AP class. Since coming to QH, I've figured out that AP means absolutely nothing—everybody takes the AP classes, leaving the “regular” classes open for only the absolute dumbest or laziest students. “Dude, I'm so glad those losers are gone,” he says now to Sam. He's referring to the predicteds.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

It's the second day of school we've had with the predicteds out of sight. It's almost like they have just disappeared. Nobody talks about them—not even about Lexus, who used to be in our class, and who was Brooklyn's best friend. Now Brooklyn calls her That Stupid Skank, Lexus Flores, as if that is her full legal name. But I detect a certain amount of regret in her voice. Brooklyn misses her.

Sam holds his phone up high for Josh to see the picture he just took. The two of them are flexing their forearms and taking close-up pictures of themselves with their phone cameras. The latest result is a photo that looks a lot like a bare butt. They've probably taken at least ten arm-butt photos already, but they never seem to grow bored. Josh laughs so hard that he snorts.

“Don't you dare bend that book open!” Ms. Kaplan yells at someone in the back of the room. Watching us strain the bindings of paperback books is her own personal hell; she can hear it from a mile away.

I doodle and wonder how many hours it's going to take me to single-handedly prepare and write our presentation in the next two days. I watch Brooklyn step out from the classroom across the hall to take a phone call. She leans against the lockers. “I know,” she's saying, “I can't wear yellow. Not now. Not after what happened at last year's prom.” She sounds disgusted. I try to imagine what might have happened that would keep her from wearing yellow. A swarm of angry yellow jackets were released in the school gym and ended up roosting on her yellow dress? The red stripes painted on the gym floor marking the four-square courts clashed with the dress? She takes out a compact and squints at her teeth in the mirror. The fact that she's worried about gunk in her teeth makes me despise her a tiny bit less. Insecurity is a real bitch.

With quick jerking movements, I slide my desk closer to the open door, bizarrely interested in the yellow conversation. That's when I see Jesse walking down the hallway. He doesn't see me—he walks with his eyes straight ahead. I sit up straight. He's back in school. The suspension is over, and the school can't do much else right now. So far, he has not been arrested for January's attack, but he is guilty, according to everyone at Quiet High. And he isn't supposed to be in New QH. All of the predicteds are kept in one small area of Old QH. But he walks like he belongs here.

Josh, done with arm-butts for the moment, follows my eyes to Jesse. “I feel kind of sorry for the guy,” he says matter-of-factly. “His dad is probably going to kick him out. My mom wants him to. It's gotta be rough.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“What? I'm trying to be nice.”

I look at him suspiciously. “
Can
you be nice? Do you have that capacity?”

“Come on, Daphne, don't you think you're awfully hard on people? Not everybody is as perfect as you are.”

“I never said I was perfect,” I say huffily. What he said rankles me, though. Melissa is the type of person who makes everyone else feel inferior. Am I a mini-version of her?

“I'm just saying that Jesse is predicted. And it's better for him—and everybody else—if he's not around anyone he can hurt. Believe it or not, I don't want him to hurt you, Daphne. I respect you. I like you.” There's a strange look to him—an eerie shining in his eyes. Is he actually being nice again?

“I really don't want to talk about this.”

“Are you still defending him?”

I don't answer.

“You know he's guilty.”

“Then how come he's not in jail?” I answer.

“What's going on?” Sam asks.

“Daphne is awfully cranky. Must be that time of month.” They both laugh hysterically, like this is some original joke.

I cross my legs one way, uncross them, and then cross them the other way—a gesture unconsciously borrowed from Melissa. I flip my book open, bending the binding until I hear a satisfying snap.

***

“What's wrong?” Dizzy asks me. “You're thinking about Jesse, aren't you?”

We are at Whataburger, an impromptu lunch decision made at exactly the moment we saw the cafeteria's beef stroganoff, a lumpy mess of paste-like substance over chunks of sawdust.

“You've been acting weird lately.” She stuffs a fry in her mouth. “What's your deal?”

“Weird things are happening. For one, I'm working with your boyfriend on this English project,” I say, instead of answering her question about Jesse.

“Lucky you,” she says without irony.

“Even Sam Cameron would be more help, and I'm not entirely convinced he's even literate.”

“Sam has a crush on you, you know. He has ever since he saw you on your first day.”

“If I'm supposed to be flattered, I'm not. Besides, what about Brooklyn?”

“Eh,” she says, “they hook up. It's not a love match.” Dizzy shakes her head at me, first a slight up and down nod, followed by a vigorous shake back and forth. It's a very Dizzy-esque gesture—it illustrates how many contradictory thoughts she is having at once. She reaches for my fries, even though she still has half of hers left. She chews while she pulls out a mirror from her backpack and opens it. She blinks her eyes rapidly at her reflection, making that long-O mascara face at herself.

Dizzy wears heavy blue eye shadow today that matches her low-cut tank top. She looks like she's twenty, at least. I like that Dizzy is not ashamed to be partially manufactured—so different from Melissa. She snaps the mirror shut and skims it across the table, where it lands at the edge near me. Is this a hint? I pick it up and open it. I find lettuce in my teeth.

“I'll be honest. Sam Cameron is cute, I'll grant him that. But he is dull. D-U—” She drops the end of the sentence and adds a series of obnoxious snores. “Not my type. But I thought you two would be good together.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You really know how to increase my self-confidence.” I slide the mirror back, running my tongue over my teeth for good measure.

“I didn't mean it that way. I just meant that you are…good. A good girl. And Sam is good. Two good kids. You kids make us proud,” she says in her best little-old-lady voice. “You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't sleep around, you hardly have any fun at all. Josh has some really hot friends that I could introduce you to. We could—”

“And Jesse?” I interrupt.

Dizzy pushes both our trays to the edge of the table, taking my fries away. She puts her hand on her stomach to indicate she is full. I reach out and pull my tray back toward me. “Jesse is very manipulative,” she says with authority. “Take this thing with Brit Gormley. Now, that's interesting. I knew something was weird about the two of them together. Brit looks like a dumpy version of Lexus. What did Jesse see in her? And then to stalk her? Jeez, I could see if she was like stripper-hot, but you wouldn't ever think that, like, Brit would do much for a guy. Whatever. But I knew something was wrong because—hello! Girls that aren't very cute don't leave guys who are as hot as Jesse. This explains everything. She broke up with him because he was probably, like, beating her daily or something.”

She expects me to respond, but I don't. Instead, I watch Kelly Payne walk in through the front door of the restaurant. She's with Nate Gormley.

“Oh, man,” Dizzy says. “Look at those two. Speaking of predicted romance.” She makes gagging noises.

Kelly walks up to the counter while Nate grabs a handful of ketchup packets and heads to a table near us. He immediately sees Dizzy and me staring at him. “Hey,” he says to me, raising an index finger in greeting. I give him a half-smile. My tutoring work is over now that Nate is in classes with the other predicteds. Naturally, Temple forbade them all from watching Call-Me-Vic's gory videos. They're taking typing instead. Nate shakes his leg and taps his fingers on the tabletop as he waits for Kelly, who is clearly going to bring him food.

“Let's go,” Dizzy hisses at me.

“I'm not done eating,” I respond.

Her eyes widen in alarm, and she whispers, “Daphne, come on. I don't want to be here. Not with him. We don't know what he'll do.”

“You're being silly,” I whisper back.

“No, I'm not being silly. Look what happened to January. We don't know what these”—she searches for the right word—“people,” she finally spits out, “are capable of.”

Nate stops tapping and shaking. “Hey, are you talking about me?” He has a smirk on his face. “Because I can take it. Anything you want to say about me, you can say to my face.”

“No, we have nothing to say,” Dizzy says primly, sliding out of the booth and then grabbing my arm. “We're leaving.” In the process of pulling me, she runs smack-dab into Kelly, who is carrying a tray of food. The food lands down the front of Kelly's pale sweatshirt and white capris. “Watch it,” Dizzy says coldly.

We're almost out the door—our trays of half-eaten food still sitting at our table—when I hear Nate call out, “Hey, hey! Come back here! You owe her an apology! You owe me a burger!” We keep moving, Dizzy dragging me by the wrist.

By the time we get to Dizzy's cute little yellow Volkswagen bug, which she calls Bug-a-boo, she's in tears. “I've never been so scared in my life,” she weeps. “Think about what could've happened to us! We were in danger!”

“Dizzy,” I say calmly, “I don't think we were in danger. This is kind of ridiculous, don't you think? I mean, you weren't scared of them before all this predicted stuff, were you? How is it any different?”

“Because now I know enough to be scared. And you should be scared too, Daph. They take advantage of people like us, people who are trusting and decent human beings!”

Her hands are still shaking, but she's pulled out of the parking lot, and we are going back to school. The sun shines brightly, and I've forgotten my sunglasses, so I pull down the visor. “I don't know, Dizz. I think maybe this whole thing has been blown out of proportion.”

“So, what, you want to hang out with them or something?”

“No. I don't know. I'm just saying that I don't think that freaking out around them is necessarily the—”

“Think whatever you want, Daphne. But I'm warning you—you'll be sorry if you don't take this predicted thing more seriously. Not to mention that you're going to be the social outcast of the century if you now want to, like, be all chummy with that loser Nate and skeevy Kelly Payne.”

“Come on, Dizz. He's not that bad. Besides—”

“Listen.” She holds up her hand. “I'm saying that unless you want to end up like January, you better decide who you're going to hang around with, and you better decide quickly.”

Love the predicted, hate the prediction.

—Sign outside of Quiet Main Street Baptist Church

I spend my time during my morning classes tweaking my presentation notes and messing around with my PowerPoint slides. By the time fourth period rolls around, I'm completely exhausted, but Josh looks refreshed, like he's just had a nap. When I come into English class and sit down next to him, he says seriously, “You look like death, Daph. You should really get more sleep.”

It took me until four in the morning to finish the presentation for English—without Josh's help. I crashed until Melissa poked her head in my room at seven and asked me if I was planning to go to school. I tamed my hair and put on under-eye concealer, mascara, and a coat of pale pink lip gloss. My goal was modest: to try not to look like a cadaver with clothes on.

I ignore Josh, turning my back on him, and wait for Ms. Kaplan to walk in and give her disappointed sigh before we begin. She opens by telling everyone, “Remember, sounding recondite doesn't make you smart—it just shows how much you
don't
know.” Too bad nobody taught
her
that.

Josh and I are first. He stands next to me at the front of the room with his hands in his pockets, head up, shoulders back, as if he's been waiting his whole life to talk to Ms. Kaplan's fourth period English class about Theodore Dreiser's magnum opus. While I talk, Josh looks at the printout that I gave him. Then he picks at a freckle on his forehead. Talk about dead weight.

My first slide is a picture of the author, Theodore Dreiser. I talk about his background as a journalist and his desire to use fiction to talk about social problems, just as a journalist chronicles human events. The novelist, however, seeks to explain
why
people act as they do, rather than merely reporting events. Then I start talking about the book, about how it was based on a true story of a man who killed his pregnant girlfriend, and Dreiser used that true incident as the basis of his novel because he believed it typified the kind of crime that could
only
happen in America—a crime fueled by greed, desire, sex, and the American dream.

Brock Martin—the guy who everyone calls B. M., because he has diarrhea of the mouth—raises his hand. “So what is this book actually about? Can you provide more detail?”

I sigh and go over what I just said. Nobody seems at all disturbed by the fact that I'm merely repeating myself, only using simpler language. “It's the story of a boy with no money who meets a girl with no money who he gets pregnant. Then he meets a rich girl and falls in love. But in order to marry this rich girl, he has to get rid of the other girl. So he murders his pregnant girlfriend by pushing her out of a boat. Naturally, he gets caught.” It's about as much as I can simplify an eight-hundred-page book.

“Makes sense,” Josh says, suddenly coming alive as if I've just explained how cold fronts move rather than told a chilling story about a man who murders his pregnant girlfriend.

“It's just like that one guy,” Brooklyn says.

“Yeah,” a few others say, apparently knowing exactly who she is talking about. She clarifies for me. “That guy in California who murdered his wife. Same exact thing.”

“Yes,” Ms. Kaplan interrupts, “but I think the important thing about the book isn't so much the plot but the themes Dreiser is presenting. Right, Daphne?”

“Yes,” I say, glancing at my notes and then looking at Sam, who is now perched on the edge of the front table, drumming his fingers against the top of it.

B. M. raises his hand again. “B. M.,” I say, knowing that I'm being mean.

The name doesn't seem to bother him, but everyone else snickers. “So you think this guy's behavior was justified—killing the pregnant girl so he could be with the rich girl, the one that he truly loved?”

“Yeah, money is super-important,” Brooklyn notes.

“Well,” I start, realizing that my notes aren't really going to be any help. I drop them on the podium. “It's obviously wrong to murder someone, and I think everybody agrees with that, but in the context of the book and what the author was trying to illustrate, Clyde's actions are somewhat understandable. To end up with Roberta, the pregnant girl, is to end any hope he ever had of living the kind of life he'd dreamed of. He dreamed he would have money, power, and prestige. That's what he thought the American dream was. That's what everybody thinks. And then if you don't get that stuff—the money and the power—what do you do? Maybe our culture kind of sets us up for disappointment.”

Josh picks this time to actually participate. “So you're saying this chick traps this dude by getting pregnant and forces him into staying with her because of that? 'Cause that seems pretty messed up to me.”

“I don't think that's exactly what happened. She just got pregnant, and in those days, she didn't have a lot of other options. She needed Clyde in order to survive. Literally.”

“I don't know,” Josh says. “She sounds like a whore.” Everyone laughs. Ms. Kaplan rolls her eyes but doesn't say anything. It's patently obvious that Josh hasn't read the book, but Kaplan probably doesn't even notice.

Brooklyn raises her hand again. I look to Ms. Kaplan for help. Am I going to get to give my presentation or what? Monday's presentation on
The Great Gatsby
ended in ten minutes without a single question. “Brooklyn,” Ms. Kaplan says. “What would you like to add?”

“So,” Brooklyn says from the back, throwing her hair back in pageant pose, “what would you have done if you were Roberta?” Ms. Kaplan is looking at me like I am supposed to answer the question. I really just want to get back to the presentation. I look to Josh, who has now lost interest in the discussion and wandered over to the windows, where he is staring longingly outside at one of the custodians who is making wide loops on the riding mower. “I don't know. This isn't exactly part of my presentation.” Ms. Kaplan waves her hand at me, a gesture to go on. I sigh. “I guess I probably wouldn't wind up pregnant like Roberta, and I certainly wouldn't trust somebody like Clyde, who seems pretty shifty throughout the book. The novel just proves why women need to be responsible for their own futures. Roberta never should have been with somebody like him. She should've believed in herself and demanded a guy who would treat her with respect.”

Brooklyn smiles at me, a wide, lipsticked smile. Ever since that night at the diner, when she tried to hit me with her purse, she's been very cold to me, a blocky gust of wind at waist level. She clears her throat. “Kinda like a girl who's going out with a guy who is predicted?” She winks at me then.

I blink once. Then twice. “Excuse me?”

“Well, everybody here knows, right?” She looks around her.

Ms. Kaplan looks interested—an unusual look for her. “Brooklyn,” she says, “I'm intrigued. Are you finding parallels between real life and the novel? Class, this is called a
mimetic reading
.” She hurries to the board and scrawls the words in yellow chalk, forming big, bubbly letters. “Go on, Brooklyn.” She seems to forget that I'm supposed to be giving a presentation.

Brooklyn smiles, because all eyes are on her. “Everybody knows what happened to January.” A couple of girls in the corner begin whispering to each other. “And everybody knows that Jesse is a suspect, and he's predicted. So this is pretty much a closed case.”

“I don't think this has anything to do my presentation,” I tell Ms. Kaplan.

“Mimetic readings can be multi-layered,” Ms. Kaplan tells me and turns back to Brooklyn. It becomes clear that she's enjoying being part of the gossip. I bet she has a Facebook profile and tries to friend all of the cool students.

“And everybody knows that January and Jesse were
together
.” Brooklyn emphasizes the word
together
, making it feel like more than just an adverb. “And January was pregnant—some of us knew that. You do the math.”

The room goes silent. Even the lawn mower outside comes to a grinding halt. I get that nervous feeling—the feeling that comes over you right before you puke all over the floor in gym class or get a horrible gas pain as soon as you're alone in a room with a guy.

“Well, Brooklyn,” Ms. Kaplan says, walking to the board, “this may not be the most appropriate time to have this conversation.”
Finally.
“Daphne, why don't you finish your presentation.” It's not a question. Brooklyn doesn't meet my eyes. She looks guilty, because even she knows she's gone too far.

I can hardly find the words to talk. They all stick in the very back of my brain, where I've been storing all my fears about Jesse.

***

It doesn't take long to gather gossip and figure out what Brooklyn was talking about in class. According to Cuteny's dad, Dizzy's constant source of information, January
was
pregnant. As in, she is not currently pregnant. She had a miscarriage a couple of months before the attack; Dizzy doesn't think she told anyone.

It's impossible not to speculate about who the father was, which is exactly why Brooklyn decided to throw January under a bus and announce this “secret” to me in front of everyone.

Dizzy shows up at my house the night after the presentation. She hands me a mint chocolate chip ice cream sandwich. “Let's not fight,” she says, plopping down on the steps off the sun porch.

“We aren't,” I say.

“I know, but yesterday, after we left Whataburger, I just felt like you were mad at me. Because of what I said.”

I take the ice cream. I don't have the energy to argue with Dizzy. Besides, she's probably right—if I want to be accepted at QH, I need to accept that predicteds and nonpredicteds are not going to be best friends with the rest of us. We sit on the porch, listening to the crickets chirp. Dizzy's wild hair is wound up in a tight bun on the top of her head—she has two brightly colored chopsticks (or maybe pencils—I can't quite tell) stuck through the curls. She's wearing some kind of a denim jumpsuit—the kind of thing that a famous person would wear to a private club at three a.m. Dizzy somehow manages to pull it off. “I've got a date tonight,” she finally says.

“Josh?” I ask.

“Josh,” she repeats. “I think I've made him wait for me long enough. He's dying to officially get back together with me.” Any other girl would sound arrogant saying this, but Dizzy sounds as if she's just reporting the facts, like a disinterested ten o'clock news anchor.

I debate telling her what a complete jerk Josh is and decide against it. One time, when I was in sixth grade, I desperately wanted Melissa to buy me this red dress with white buttons down the front. I coveted that dress, but Melissa wouldn't hear of buying it. It was eighty-three dollars, which Melissa announced was exactly four times—plus three dollars—more than what any reasonable person should pay for a dress.

I begged for that dress, promising to do extra chores, to babysit, to forego Christmas and birthday gifts forever, if necessary. The thing was, I could
see
myself in that dress, and the more she told me how wrong it was—how cheap the material, how unflattering the style, how overpriced—the more I couldn't be dissuaded.

Eventually, she caved and bought it for me, and not for Christmas or my birthday or any other special occasion. She just put it in my closet one day, and it was mine. Naturally, I wore it once and realized the white buttons were tacky, the red a funny tomato color, the hem too short for my long legs. I never wore it again. In fact, I felt guilty for years every time I saw it in my closet. I only got rid of it when we moved to Quiet, and when I threw it in the donation pile, I said to Melissa, “Why didn't you try harder to talk me out of that dress?”

And she said, “I did. And that just made you want it more. It was an eighty-three-dollar lesson for me: Never try to talk someone out of something that's bad for them.”

I imagine that Josh is Dizzy's tomato-red dress with obnoxiously large white buttons.

“What do you have planned?”

She shrugs. “We're going to hang out at the tracks, I guess.” She says this as though it's perfectly obvious that's what they will do. I think of the night I saw Josh there, the night of the thunderstorm, when Jesse rushed to find January.

“It's not a surprise, you know,” Dizzy says, adjusting one of her chopsticks. “January is predicted for alcoholism and out-of-wedlock teenage birth.” The words come out like names for conditions: measles, smallpox, the mumps. “Getting pregnant and all was obviously, like, destiny or something. Just one of those things you can't stop.”

“Like an oncoming bus,” I say.

She leans over and links her arm through mine. “I'm sorry. I know you really liked Jesse.”

The mention of his name makes my stomach lurch—it's fear and grief rolling around inside of there, mixing up a toxic cocktail for me to carry around in my duodenum.

Dizzy touches my back. “How do you feel?”

I stare glassily across the street, watching a fluffy white dog scratching at a tree. “Harold!” a woman in too-short shorts screams at him. “Not on the magnolia!”

“I don't know.” I can't put how I feel into words.

Dizzy pats my hand, her fingers just a tiny bit sticky from her ice cream sandwich. “Don't be so hard on yourself. You're just a trusting person, Daphne. Anybody could've been fooled by a sociopath like him. I mean, it seemed like he had it all—rich, smart, super-hot. I'm not surprised you fell for him,” she says soberly. “The best thing you can do now is just forget about him. He's a loser. He was stringing you along, making you look like an idiot while he was plotting to kill January. That's so messed up! What you need to do now is…”

She keeps talking, but I stop listening.