Freaks of Greenfield High (3 page)

A tight lump settled in her stomach. For a moment she was confused by the sensation, and then she dismissed it as hunger pangs—merely her body’s way of reminding her to re-fuel if she wished to maintain her optimum physical condition.

Humans were lamentably prone to exaggeration. How bad could high school possibly be?

~~~

Tyler’s gel-slimed fingers paused mid-sweep through his shaggy hair. His gaze zeroed in on a reddened blotch. He thrust his chin closer to the mirror to examine the emerging zit. Great. Just freaking great. As if today wasn’t gonna suck enough already.

A rattle of the bathroom door was followed by a muffled curse and loud thumping. “Hurry up, Tyler!” His sister’s voice was a banshee-worthy screech.

He rinsed his hands, wrapped his towel more securely around his hips, and unlocked the door. His twin, Caro, squeezed her eyes shut, counted to five, and then opened them again to gaze at him like she hoped she’d been imagining things. Her gasp reeked of unmitigated horror. “Omigod!”

The lump on Tyler’s chin gave an answering throb. His hand crept to his face.

“What have you done to your
hair
?” She advanced toward him with hands outstretched, a determined expression in her eyes. He grit his teeth and resigned himself to the coming torture, smothering yelps and blinking furiously watering eyes as she combed her fingers through his hair and roughly tugged it into submission.

Caro had gotten one hundred percent of their allocated personal style gene. She shopped at thrift stores and camped out at the mall when the sales were on, but the truth was no matter what she wore, the popular girls forgave her. And the jocks wanted into her panties. Tyler knew this because many of his former so-called friends had made a point of telling him so, hoping to provoke him into losing his cool. But Tyler had given up getting pissed about what they said,
and
how they said it. Apart from the major downside of risking getting pummeled for mouthing off, he’d finally realized his sister loved the attention—thrived on it, even.

Mind you, if any girl could keep a bunch of guys with sewers for brains in line it was his sister. When Caro got seriously riled, she put every evil twin ever portrayed in a horror flick to shame. Tyler wished she’d turn some of that evil twin mojo on her current boyfriend and quit giving him second chances. Shawn was a douche—among other things.

“There.” Caro backed off and eyed him, head tilted to one side, lips pursed. “Yep. You’ll do. You know, as much as it kills me to say this, the whole tortured emo look suits you. Those dark smudges under your eyes really give it authenticity.”

She said it in an admiring way, like he’d deliberately chosen to emulate the living dead.

As if. Tyler’s “look” was a long overdue trip to the barber and plain old insomnia. He’d spent most of the night either pacing the floor and humming to himself, or hunched over his desk scribbling down lyrics. When the muse got vocal, he had no choice but to surrender.

“Go find some clothes before my eyes start bleeding,” Caro said. “Unless of course you’re planning on going to school wearing that towel?” She threw him a wicked grin. “If nothing else, it would make one heckuva fashion statement.”

He glanced at his watch. His stomach somersaulted. “Jeez! Would it have killed you to mention how late it was?”

“You can catch a ride with me and Nessa if you want,” she said.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Last thing he needed was to be cooped up in a confined space with his sister’s BFF, Vanessa. Who also happened to be his ex. And treated him like something she’d scraped off her shoe despite everything he’d done for her.

His sister heaved a long-suffering sigh and shrugged. “Whatever.”

Tyler raced into his bedroom. He yanked clothes from drawers, discovered his jeans in the pile on the floor, and threw himself into them. He located one sneaker in the corner by the wardrobe. The other had mysteriously ended up so far beneath his bed he had to crawl under it to fish it out. He raked his hair out of his eyes. So much for his styling-by-Caro look.

He grabbed his backpack and clomped downstairs. No time for breakfast—not that he could stomach cereal. Not today.

His mother glanced up from her mag. She sucked down a huge gulp of black coffee before giving him a smile that oozed sympathy. “Morning, kiddo. First period, right?” She paused for his nod. “At least the torture will be over and done with first up.”

“Yeah.” Provided he didn’t disgrace himself and end up being the butt of the entire school. At least when he’d been a jock-god, the fallout from the last embarrassing incident had died down pretty quickly. If he succumbed again, this time the fallout would be real bad.

“Gotta go or I’ll miss the bus.”

“Don’t forget your lunch.” His mom jerked her chin at the brown paper bags sitting on the kitchen counter. “And you really should eat something, sweetie. Breakfast is—”

“I know, I know. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” He kissed his mom’s cheek, grabbed the bag with the T scrawled on it, and snagged an apple from the fruit bowl. “Happy, now?” he managed around a mouthful of apple.

“Ecstatic.” His mother rolled her eyes ceiling-ward in eerie imitation of her daughter. Tyler shuddered. Definitely genetic.

“I know better than to say, ‘Have a good day’,” she said. “Just try to get through it without a trip to the nurse, okay?”

“Thanks for reminding me,” he muttered, reaching for the door handle.

“Oh, almost forgot,” his mom said, raising her voice as he slid through the doorway. “I’ve got to finish up a proposal for the boss so I’ll be late. Probably around half-six. Does your team have practice tonight?”

“No, Mom. Caro’s squad practices Mondays, Wednesdays
and
Fridays, because Bettina’s a total slave-driver.
My
team practices on Tuesdays. Remember?”

“Oh. Right. I knew that. And don’t forget it’s your turn to cook dinner.”

“I know!” he yelled as the door slammed shut behind him. Outstanding. He’d have the house to himself for a bit. Might even have a chance to get the song fermenting inside his head down on paper.

He sauntered down the driveway, pretending to be oblivious to the annoying yarping of their elderly neighbor’s fleabag dog. Ah, to hell with it. He halted and turned on his heel to confront Fifi, or Fufu, or whatever the mangy little beast was called, and hit it with his fiercest scowl. “Grrrr!”

Fufu yawned, and then squatted to pee on the grass.

Tyler groaned. Pathetic. If he couldn’t even face down an upholstered rat of a dog, what chance did he have?

The coughing of an ancient engine caught his attention. The bus? Crap! He ditched his apple core and sprinted down the street, skidding to a halt just as the bus doors jerked to a close behind the lone student who’d been waiting at the stop.

“Hey!” He whacked a door with the flat of his hand.

The driver favored him with a sneer that spread all over his fat face.

Crap. Looked like he’d be walking to school. Again. And he’d be late. Again.

“Hold the bus,” someone yelled.

Tyler recognized one of his former teammates. “Yeah. Would if I could, dude.” He spread his arms palms outward to indicate helplessness in the face of bus drivers who had it in for him.

The guy rushed up to the bus, and as he pushed past to smack both hands on the doors, his pack swung and clouted Tyler in the face. Nice.

“Hey! Open up!” the guy yelled at the driver.

The doors hissed reluctantly open.

“Thanks, dude,” Tyler said, rubbing his cheek.

The guy ignored him and boarded the bus.

Huh. Why was he even surprised to be so thoroughly ignored? It was just more of the same old, same old.

Tyler clambered aboard. “Thanks for stopping to let me on, sir,” he said to the driver, his voice throbbing with over-the-top politeness, just to really rub it in.

The driver muttered something uncomplimentary and his piggy little eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. Tyler knew the man was watching his progress, waiting ’til he was just about to take his seat.

Tyler was wise to his nasty-ass tricks. Hell, he was an old hand at this now. It’d taken a humiliating face-plant in a girl’s lap, and a butt-sprawl on the bus floor that had scattered the contents of his bag all over the place, but he’d learned. So when the driver shoved the bus in gear and floored the accelerator, he swung into the nearest empty seat and plunked his butt safely down.

Tyler: one. Assholes: nil.

He leaned his cheek against the window and closed his eyes. The song lurking inside him broke free and his fingers tapped out the notes on his denim-clad thigh.

“Freak!” someone in the seat across from him said, setting off a spate of taunts and insults from a sheep-like bunch of other kids.

Epic fail on the originality of the insults. Was that the best they could come up with? Yawn.

Tyler absorbed their insults and used them, braiding them into lyrics, lancing the spite of their original intent and twisting them into something powerful of his own making. He cranked the volume in his headspace to the max and nodded his head, now wholly oblivious to the snickers and cat-calls. Oh yeah. This one was going to be good—real good. The music crashed through him, spiriting him away from the shithole that was his life… at least until the bus ground to a lurching halt, forcing him to open his eyes to reality again.

He couldn’t face elbowing his way through the horde of kids, but he made the mistake of hanging back so long he was the last one to scramble from his seat. The driver drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and fixed him with a black scowl. Dude sure got pissed when he didn’t get to snigger over someone’s misfortune.

Tyler heeded the warning signs and launched himself from the top step before the driver could close the doors and take a chunk out of his heels. The man graunched the gears as he drove off, and Tyler pictured him grinding his teeth in frustration.

Tyler, two. Assholes, nil. His day was looking up. But as he wandered through the front gates of Greenfield High, his high spirits oozed from his pores and plopped onto the cracked pavement.

He had no clue why the school was called
Greenfield
High when the town was called Snapperton, after its founder. And it wasn’t like the school had been built in some lushly grassed field, and then finished off with landscaped grounds and a bunch of twittering birds. The school was a concrete jungle. Oh, except for the trampled, yellowing stretch of grass either side of the path, and a few scraggly, tired-looking trees planted by some poor deluded soul in the fond hopes they’d eventually provide some shade for the kids.

He glowered at the uninspiring three-level building and its dull gray entranceway. Pity his other talent leaned toward portraiture and not architecture. How hard could it be to design something better than
this
heap?

Tyler was halfway through his junior year, and though an end to this torture was in sight, it couldn’t come quickly enough. The actual education part of school was semi-bearable but the rest royally sucked. He longed to leave it all behind him—start afresh in a place where no one knew him. Reinvent himself.

Chances of that happening any time soon? Sub-zero. He was stuck here until he graduated. He’d foolishly believed things might get better this year but he couldn’t have been more wrong. He had no choice but to suck it up and make the best of it.

He trudged through the entrance, steeling himself for another day of torment.

As he neared the office, he slowed. Whoa. Hot-chick alert. He mentally compared the girl waiting by the admin desk to Vanessa, the first girl he’d ever been serious about—and who, despite all that’d gone down, still topped his private scale of female hotness.

At least, up until about five seconds ago she had.

Vanessa was your ultimate cheerleader chick, polished to perfection and ultra-conscious of her status.
This
chick was Vanessa’s opposite in every way. She was slender—all legs, and hardly any curves. And her mane of dark hair looked like she’d just crawled out of bed—a real statement in a school where ultra-straightened blonde reigned supreme. She wore faded and worn jeans, a black midriff baring t-shirt, and sneakers that were more holes than sneaker. The vibes she gave off screamed that she didn’t much care what she threw on so long as they were clothes. And she sure made the “I couldn’t care less what you think of me” look work for her.

His fingers itched to sketch her, to try and capture on paper what he could only describe as her
presence
, some indefinable thing that made her stand out from the other girls he knew.

She glanced his way, paused, and full-on eyeballed him from head to toe.

His stomach flip-flopped. Vanessa’s carefully selected blue contacts had nothing on this girl’s eyes. They were the most shockingly intense shade of blue he’d ever seen. They weren’t just blue, they were deepest sapphire. Or maybe azure. No, cobalt. Or—