Page 22 of The Wrong Side of Kai
I watch Kai out of the corner of my eye as he reads my message on his own screen, then types back a reply, his fingertips moving fast.
Stay back at the end of class and we’ll talk once everyone leaves. I’ve got an idea for what to do to Harrison next.
“Hey, anyone got a camera in here?” a voice booms across the room, and when I look up, Noah is strolling into class. “Just in case someone wants to start stripping and give us a show?” His eyes flash over to meet mine, and he grins, crooked and sadistic as the class cackles with hushed laughter. He walks to his desk at the back of the room, shaking his head at the empty spot next to it. “C’mon, Vanessa, get back to your usual seat. Maybe we can have some fun when Miss Anderson isn’t looking. Look, I’ll even make it easy for you.” He undoes the button of his jeans, then bursts into laughter when some of the other guys from the team corral around him, fist bumping and high-fiving. The entire room is in fits of laughter. Laughter atmyexpense. I used to find Noah attractive because of his class clown personality, but being the one used for his punchlines isn’t so funny.
My cheeks burn with rage, a hot fire that starts in the tip of my toes and spreads throughout my body. I turn to the screen at the front of the room again and try to tune it all out, but I’m so tensed up, my jaw so tightly clenched that I fear I might explode any second. With what emotion, I don’t know. If I open my mouth, I’m not sure if I’ll burst into tears or if I’ll pummel someone. I think of all the nasty remarks I could throw back at Noah, but I clamp my mouth shut.
Kai is looking at me now. Our eyes lock and I realize he’s watching me with concern, chewing his lower lip as he contemplates whether or not to comfort me. And then he does the most bizarre thing – he doesn’t comfort me at all, hedefendsme instead. He twists in his chair and looks back at Noah, coolly telling him, “I don’t think she wants to catch your crabs.”
Noah’s laughter falters and the room falls silent with him. He’s sitting on the edge of his desk, nostrils flaring as he sets his sharp glare on Kai. “And who the fuck are you?”
“The line runner on the team that beat your ass last weekend,” Kai says with a challenging smile, and I can see the realization dawning on our classmates that Kai is from Westerville Central. They’re most likely wondering the same as I am – what’s a Central kid doing here in a Westerville North classroom?
“You don’t need to act tough to impress her, you know,” Noah says gruffly, slumping into his chair. He looks at me with hatred in his eyes. “Just ask her. She’ll ride anything with a pulse.”
“Silence, please!” Miss Anderson says, clapping her hands together as she whirls into the room. We all do as we’re told, everyone going quiet as she jumps straight into where we left off on Friday.
Everything was different on Friday. I was back at my desk, musing to Noah about Maddie Romy’s upcoming party, daydreaming of the drinks I would enjoy and the music I would sing along to and the kisses I would share with Harrison Boyd. If only I had known how that party would mark the beginning of the end of Vanessa Murphy.
I try to catch Kai’s eye throughout the class, but he pretends to be engrossed in Miss Anderson’s teachings, chewing on his pen the same way he did last night at the library. Unlike him, I can’t focus, too paralyzed in fear that Noah will find an opportunity to crack more jokes to the room. But he doesn’t, thankfully, and when class ends, I remain rooted in my chair while everyone makes a beeline for the door. Kai is deliberately slow to pack up his books, both of us waiting for the room to empty before we engage in conversation.
Noah makes his presence known again by walking through the middle of mine and Kai’s desks. He bumps his shoulder into Kai’s, stares him down, then smiles at me. “You did this to yourself,” he says with a sneer, then walks out.
I stare after Noah. My late-night thoughts from yesterday set in again. The guilt, the blame. If I hadn’t gone to that party. . . If I hadn’t been with Harrison. . . If I hadn’t been too buzzed and carefree to tell him to put his phone away. . . If I hadn’tlivedmy life, then none of this would have happened. But I was doing exactly that. I was living my life the way I wanted to. Do I deserve to be shamed for all of eternity because I had fun with a guy I was attracted to? Everyone seems to think I do.
Once everyone has left the room, including Miss Anderson, I turn to Kai, both of us standing up from our desks. My expression is blank. “Why did you do that?”
“Well,youweren’t gonna say anything,” he says. He takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair, then sets the snapback back on. Still backward. “And I couldn’t resist making a dig at a North player.”
“In case you forgot, you’re a North guy yourself now.”
“Central blood, Nessie. Central blood,” he says with great passion, holding up a clenched fist, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opens them again, he smiles and lowers his voice as he says, “I hope you’re free after school, because we’re staying back. We have locker rooms to sneak into, and a phone to steal. Bring your A-game. None of this apologetic crap. You’re really gonna let that team of douchebags do this to you? Fight back, Vanessa.”
I stare at him, my real name sounding foreign on his tongue. “Vanessa?”
“I’m not talking to you as a partner anymore,” Kai says. He leans forward and delicately places his thumb under my chin, tilting my head up. The movement is so careful, and my breath catches in my throat as I look up at him. “I’m talking to you as a friend now. And I’m telling you to keep your head up and keep moving forward.” He gives me a nod of reassurance, like he really believes I have the strength to ignore all of the torment being thrown my way, and then he tucks his books under his arm and walks away.
I swallow hard, then run my fingers over my skin where traces of his touch remain.
8
I lock myself inside a bathroom stall at the end of the day until everyone has left the building. It takes twenty minutes after the final bell has rung, constant commotion in the hallways as everyone dumps books in their lockers and catches up with friends. When I haven’t heard any noise from outside the bathroom for a while, I kick open the stall door and stick my head out into the hallway. My head swivels back and forth, like a cartoon secret agent, checking that the coast is clear before continuing with my mission.
There’s a janitor mopping the floor at the end of the hall, so I stroll out of the bathroom and head for my locker. When I reach it, Kai is already there. A Sharpie in hand, adding to the words scrawled all over my vandalized locker door.
“Is this your attempt to convince everyone we’renotfriends even though you admitted earlier that we are? By writing abuse on my locker?” I ask as I approach, folding my arms across my chest. I don’t really care what anyone writes, so my expression is neutral, more curious than anything else.
Kai starts at the sound of my voice echoing down the empty hallway. He looks over, pen hovering in the air. “Actually, I was fixing it.”
I stop next to him and look at my locker. The hashtag from before – #SmileForTheCamera – has been totally scribbled over by Kai’s permanent marker to look like an ocean, and peering out of the ocean is. . .
“The Loch Ness Monster?”
Kai grins, proud of his crappy art skills. “Nessie. Clever, isn’t it? Hiding your secret code name in plain sight.”
“Not really,” I say, squinting closer at my locker. Kai’s interpretation of the Loch Ness Monster is pretty terrible – an awful-looking reptile with one huge, googly eye. “Everyone is going to assume someone is calling me a snake.”
Kai looks at his drawing again. “Shit,” he says, and scribbles over Nessie too, leaving my locker door a total inky mess as though a three-year-old was given free rein with a black pen. It’s not as bad as that hashtag, though. And I guess it’s kind of cute that he was trying to make my locker look a little better. “Okay, let’s focus on the mission at hand. The locker rooms. How do we get to them?”
