Page 33 of The Wrong Side of Kai
“What can we expect to find in these files?” he questions Maddie. He sits back and stares her down, drumming his fingertips together like some fancy CEO of a billion-dollar company.
“For starters, we can find out whyyou’reeven at this school,” she says, taking up position by the row of metal filing cabinets that line the wall. She bends to the floor and opens a drawer at the bottom, silently searching through the stack of files for a moment before she stands, a paper-thin file in her hands. She smiles at Kai and flicks the file open. “Ah,” she says. “Expelled from Westerville Central for fighting. Doesn’t surprise me, given that you were involved in a brawl at my house at the weekend. And Mrs. Delaney herself has noted that you’re overly confident and charming.” She looks up from the page. “The overly confident part is true. Charming? I disagree.”
Kai stands from the chair and grabs the file from her, reading it for himself. “I’m an acquired taste,” he defends, skimming over the biography the school has put together about him.
While I stand by the door to keep watch, I realize I’m focused more on Kai again than I am on any possible witnesses. His dark eyebrows pull together as he reads, his lower lip caught between his teeth. He may be an acquired taste for some, but of all the different personalities in the world, his is my favorite right now.
“Vanessa, Mrs. Delaney thinks you might go off the rails,” Maddie says, stealing my attention away from Kai. My gaze flickers over to her, and she tosses a file across the room to me. I barely catch it. “And given that you’ve partnered up with Mr. Charming over here to ruin someone’s life, I think she’s right.”
I look down at my own file. It’s thicker than Kai’s, but he’s only been at this school for three days, whereas I’ve been here for four years. I open it and skim over the first page. General details about me, like my date of birth and my address. Copies of all my report cards. A record of all my grades in each of my classes. A list of the colleges I’ve applied to. And then personal notes from each of my counselors over the years.
Mr. Williams, the freshmen year counselor, wrote that I was excelling in all of my classes. That I was a well-mannered, polite, hard-working student who had transitioned seamlessly into high school.
Mrs. Sinclair, the sophomore year counselor, wrote that my mom passed away during first semester. She notes that I missed an entire month of classes, and that I was now falling behind. That I needed extra support during this time, which, to Westerville North’s credit, I did receive. By the end of the notes on my sophomore year, Mrs. Sinclair talks about how much happier I seemed to be.
Mr. Rogers, the junior year counselor, wrote that I was still falling behind in my classes, but that I was making no effort to catch up. I’d ended up in detention for the first time of many that year. Based on his notes, I was no longer a star student, but also not the worst either. I was somewhere in between, and not bad enough to be a cause for concern yet.
And asifMrs. Delaney, my current counselor, has a note that I focus more on the social aspect of school rather than the academic aspect. Like, how the hell wouldsheknow? Do the counselors hang out in the hallways and stalk our every move? Mrs. Delaney is apparently worried that I’m losing it like some wild child who doesn’t care anymore.
I grind my teeth and look at Maddie. “Are they seriously allowed to keep all this information?”
Maddie shrugs as she rummages through different drawers of the filing cabinet, presumably searching for Harrison’s folder. “A school’s got to know who its students are,” she says. “That’s how they keep tabs on who the potential psychos are. My bet is on Ryan Malone.”
Kai and I exchange a look. He throws his file down on Mrs. Delaney’s desk and sits up, demanding, “Just give us Harrison’s file.”
“Fine,” Maddie huffs. She slams the drawer shut and hands Kai the folder. “Here.”
The three of us huddle around the desk, Maddie and I leaning over Kai’s shoulder, silently reading over the first page in unison. The entire office block feels eerily silent, as schools so often do after hours without the buzz of noise from its students, and it puts me on high alert. My body is tensed up and I’m trying not to breathe too heavily against Kai.
Harrison has good grades in all his classes, just like I thought he did, and there’s lots of notes about his lifetime football stats, too. Kai flicks through the boring pages, desperate to get to the juicy stuff – and the juicy stuff is the personal stuff, the things only our counselors know about. Kai stops at a page of notes written by Mr. Rogers last semester.
Harrison cheated on his SATs back in the spring.
And the only reason Harrison wasn’t kicked off the football team was because Mr. Rogers decided, for Harrison’s sake, to keep things quiet because being caught cheatingandbeing kicked off the football team would instantly ruin his chance at a scholarship – though it’s not like his parents can’t afford to send him to college. If it had been anyone else who was caught cheating, I bet Mr. Rogers wouldn’t have hesitated to take the appropriate disciplinary actions, but it seems he didn’t want Harrison’s parents kicking up a fuss. So, all Harrison got was a month of detention.
Kai glances sideways at me, our mouths inches apart. He smiles. “Bingo.”
Maddie gathers up the files from the table, both Harrison’s and Kai’s, then also grabs mine out of my hands too. She walks back to the filing cabinet and begins returning the folders to where they belong. I’d wondered why she was so willing to help us, but I think I know why. She has her own grudge against Harrison Boyd.
“Maddie,” I say gently, but she doesn’t turn around, only shoves Harrison’s folder back into the “B” drawer. “Are you helping us because you hooked up with Harrison once?”
She stiffens at the filing cabinet. “What?”
“What?” Kai says, spinning around in Mrs. Delaney’s chair to stare bewildered at me.
I continue to focus on Maddie. She’s frozen in place, rigid and unmoving. Slowly, I move across the office toward her. “What happened?”
“He’s a jerk,” she mumbles, her voice cracking out of its usual high pitch. She speaks in a low murmur, blinking fast as though she’s fighting back sudden tears. “I thought he really liked me. At least he told me he did, but that he didn’t want anyone to know about us until we were official. And he said we weren’t official until we slept together. He totally manipulated me. I was stupid, okay?” Her head snaps up to look at me, the sharp movement causing a tear to break free and roll down her cheek. “I wasn’t even ready for that in the first place, and then he never spoke to me again after it. I tried to pretend it didn’t happen, and I don’t think he told anyone, because Iknowthat news would have spread through this school like wildfire if he had.” Her eyes narrow. “So how doyouknow?”
“I had a hunch,” I say, only because I think it’ll upset her even more if she finds out he has a record of their encounter in his phone. And that she’srated. I shake my head in disbelief. Harrison is worse than I thought. I feel stupid myself for actually believing he was a nice guy, but at least these new discoveries mean I can carry out my mission to ruin his life with zero guilt or remorse. “I’m sorry, Maddie. You’re right, heisa jerk. That’s why we’re doing this.”
As I look at her, I see something in Madison Romy that I’ve never seen before. I see. . .myself. I see a girl who’s insecure and acts out to gain positive attention so that her peers like her, accept her, the same wayIact out to gainanyattention because I lack it from my dad. We aren’t different at all – we are totally the same. We both just want someone to pay us attention. And, I realize, maybe that’s why I’ve never particularly liked Maddie. Maybe all this time I’ve been projecting my thoughts about my own behavior onto her.
Maddie wipes the tears from her cheeks and looks away again, storing my own file back into the unit. “Just make sure he doesn’t know I’ve helped, okay?” she sniffs, trying to get back some control. “I still like to be friends with him.”
“You don’t need to be friends with everyone,” I tell her softly. God, I feel like a damn counselor myself. How did I go from feeling so hostile toward Madison Romy’s needy personality to feeling sorry for a girl who’s clearly vulnerable? It’s almost like realizing I feel sorry formyself, because it’s such a shame we’re resorting to such desperate measures rather than just allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and open. “It’s better to be loved by a few than liked by many.”
“Wow, that was kind of deep, Nessie. Did you read that on Facebook?” Kai pipes up from the desk. I fire him a glare. Way to ruin the moment.
