“Nice bike!” Celia called over her shoulder, flipping her bleached hair out of the way. Her two friends stifled laughs. “Where’d you get it?”
“Egypt,” I said, trying to figure out if she was serious.
Celia laughed. “Remind me never to go to Egypt.”
I ignored her and continued past the football players. I didn’t get far; all 230 pounds of Cliff Ackerley fell into step beside me. “Hey, you’re the new girl, right?”
“Yes.” His closeness sent shivers crawling up my spine. I veered away to put some distance between us.
He planted himself in front of me, pointed at my hair, and yelled, “HILLPARK FAN!”
A thunderous, rolling BOO instantly rose from the crowd. Most of them probably had no clue I’d actually gone to Hillpark, but brandishing any kind of red around here was asking for trouble.
I tried to move around Cliff, but he stuck his foot on Erwin’s front tire and pushed. “What the hell?” I stumbled backward to keep Erwin upright.
“What the hell?” one of the other guys mocked in a high falsetto, a million times more sinister than when Tucker had done it at work the night before. The rest of Cliff’s friends circled around me. I squeezed tighter against Erwin. Either these guys were all drunk or they were all douche bags. If they were drunk, they were less likely to see reason but also less likely to catch me if I ran for it. But I couldn’t run with Erwin. Maybe I could use him as a shield. That meant leaving him behind, and the last thing I wanted to do was leave Erwin behind. No matter how I played this situation, Outlook not so good.
“Why don’t you stop being a dick and get out of my way?”
“Ooh, harsh words.” Cliff grinned. “Here’s the deal— I’ll let you by if you agree to let us dye your hair green.”
“My hair isn’t dyed; it’s naturally this red. And no.”
“Fine, then we’ll shave it off. Jones has a razor in his car, don’t you, Jones?”
I backed away, tugging on a lock of hair. I’d seen documentaries about stuff like this. Bullying, student brutality. They wouldn’t really shave my head, would they? But there were so many people, all watching, waiting. The men in suits on the roof weren’t doing a thing—so much for school security.
The ring of people drew in tighter. There was no . . . I wouldn’t be able to get out . . . Maybe I could kick Ackerley in the balls and call it a day . . . .
Then everyone went quiet. Cliff’s gaze roamed to a spot above my shoulder.
Miles stood there, staring Cliff down. The Light triplets at his side.
Cliff scoffed. “Need something, Richter?”
“Not at all.” Miles shrugged. “Please, continue.”
Cliff narrowed his eyes and took a step back, looking me over. He leaned to the side and peered around me.
“Problem?” I asked.
Cliff scoffed again and stepped out of my way, his lips curling in distaste. Miles and the triplets moved to flank me, helping clear a path through the party. There were no more boos, no jeering, no search for razors. But when I looked back, Cliff and his friends had their heads together, and past them, Celia glared daggers at me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Didn’t do it for you.” Miles stopped beside a rusty sky-blue pickup on the far edge of the parking lot. He yanked the driver’s door open and tossed his bag in. “I really hate that guy.”
“Don’t listen to anything Cliff says,” Theo chimed in, pulling the pencils from her bun and shaking her hair out. “He’s a moron—he thinks we planned to have you do something to make him look stupid. That’s why he left you alone. Besides, I don’t think he’d know how to use a razor if he had one.”
“I’m pretty sure his mother shaves his facial hair,” said Evan.
“I’m pretty sure a monkey shaves his facial hair,” said Ian. “Did you see his face last track season? I thought he’d need a blood donation.”
“Disregarding his faults in personal hygiene,” Miles interrupted, “I still think he needs his head shoved into a wood chipper.”
I took a long step away from Miles. “Right. Well, I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
The Light triplets said good-bye. Maybe they weren’t so bad after all, even if Evan and Ian did look like the exact same person. I hopped on Erwin and rode out of the parking lot, trying to forget about Cliff, Celia, that weird-ass scoreboard, and everything else.
I marked Miles’s parking spot so I could find his truck again tomorrow morning.
I wouldn’t let East Shoal and its psychotic inhabitants get the best of me.
Chapter Eight
My delusions became more frequent in the dark. More than once when I was little, I heard voices coming from beneath my bed, claws reaching up around the mattress to get me. Riding home, the sunlight fading, an enormous red bird with long tail feathers sailed over me. I stopped to take a picture of it. On the camera screen, its feathers glowed like fire. Freaking phoenixes. I’d had an obsession with phoenixes when I was ten, and this one followed me home every night. The Phoenix of Hannibal’s Rest.
Hannibal’s Rest. Home.
Here’s the thing about Hannibal’s Rest, Indiana: It is astoundingly small. So small I’m sure it wouldn’t show up on a GPS. You’d pass right through without realizing you were anywhere different. It’s just like the rest of central Indiana: hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and the only way to know the weather other times of the year is to walk outside. You drive west to get to Hillpark and east to get to East Shoal, but nobody from either school can tell you the name of a single person who goes to the other, and they all hate one another.
My parents didn’t grow up here or anything. They chose to live in this nowhere town. Why? Because it was named after Hannibal of Carthage. Their basic train of thought was this: Hannibal’s Rest? And we’re naming our child after Alexander the Great? MARVELOUS. Ah, the history, it tickles.
Sometimes I wanted to beat my parents over the head with a frying pan.
If you could say one thing about them, it was that they loved history. Literally, both of them were in love with history. Sure, they were in love with each other, but history was like the be-all, end-all of intellectual stimulation to them. They were married to each other and to history.
So, naturally, they weren’t going to give their kids any old normal names.
I was the lucky one. Alexander to Alexandra wasn’t a huge leap. Charlie, on the other hand, got the entire blunt force of the namesake sledgehammer: Charlemagne. So from the day she was born, I called her Charlie.