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Chapter One: Addie
I lifted up my dragon roll and gave it an experimental sniff; since day-old sushi plus day-old Colorado sushi tended to equal several day-old sushi I had valid reasons to be wary. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers: if it wasn't for the fact that Rick—my boss at Enrico's—let me take home the leftovers every night I'd have nothing for lunch at all. I sniffed one more time. Not bad. It smelled slightly fishy, but then again, what did I expect? It was fish. And besides, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been eel. I took a bite.
“Hey Addie, where's your boyfriend?”
Speaking of eels, I thought. Two boys squeezed up next to me at the long cafeteria table, pressing up uncomfortably close against each one of my shoulders. I carefully swallowed the sushi that was still in my mouth, and, equally careful to direct the full force of my fish breath in a concentrated stream, turned to the one on my right.
“Fuck off,” I said mildly, and took another bite.
He reeled back a little—although whether it was from my words or my breath I couldn't tell—and said, “Come on Addie, we all know you had last period with Theo. Where is he?”
Ah, yes. Last period. I suppressed a shudder at the thought of my last period class: it had not gone well. Man, who would have thought that you could get kicked out of Home Ec? Not that I could really blame Mr. Martinez; after all, I had been responsible for setting off all of the fire alarms along the entire hall. Although, in my defense, I wasn't the one who had sprayed the fire extinguisher into the oven. Talk about overkill. I mean, honestly, the flames had all but died down by the time Zane had managed to get the extinguisher off of the wall and aimed it into the oven. Mostly.
I sighed. Well at least I had gotten the answer to my question, which had been: if a little bit of baking powder and vinegar reacted with cocoa to create the distinctive red hue of a Red Velvet cake, then what would a lot of it do? Unfortunately, the answer had been: create a chocolate volcano—one that would overflow the pan, drip down the rack, hit the oven floor, and, eventually, if you weren't paying enough attention, catch on fire.
I also got the answer to a question I hadn't meant to ask, which was: how mad would Mr. Martinez be about me creating a mess of such epic proportions?
The answer, unfortunately, was: very. Very, very mad.
As punishment I had been ordered to clean out the kitchen's grease trap, a square metal box underneath the dishwashing sink that caught—and preserved—any and all grease that went down the drain. Judging from the amount of grease and the rancid smell it was obviously a job that Mr. Martinez assigned to wayward students about once every ten years. For perhaps the first time ever I was glad that I had never been promoted from my job as dishwasher to server at Enrico's, because there was a chance that if I kept my hands immersed in hot water long enough tonight I could get the last bits of grease out from underneath my fingernails.
The boy on my left poked me in the arm—hard. “Hey. Space Cadet. Boyfriend. Where?” He spaced the words out like he was speaking to someone for whom English was not a first language.
I looked down at my now completely unappealing lunch, and spoke in the same tone, this time not so mildly. “Fuck off and die. Now.” I turned to glare at him. He raised one eyebrow at me mockingly, and so I continued. “ Up chuckie.” He narrowed his eyes then, drawing them back even further into his face. This had the net effect of making his large brow even more pronounced and making him look even more like a Cro-Magnum than he usually did. It was definitely not a good look for Charles Foster. Or, as he was more properly known, and as I had just reminded him, Upchuckie.
Usually I refrained from name-calling of this sort. For one thing I preferred to be a little more original in my insults, and for another I knew too well the pain that came from old—and unloved—sobriquets. For Charles Foster, though, I was willing to make an exception; he was a complete and total douche.
I could have turned and done the same to his sidekick, Fritz Schneider, but Fritz—Shitzi—actually preferred his nickname to his real one. He had received the name in sixth grade after he had eaten too many under-ripe blackberries and then suffered the logical gastric distress that usually followed such an action. However, whereas most people would have been embarrassed by such an incident, Shitzi was not. In fact, he was so proud of the fact that he had stood up in class, announced gleefully, “Hey, guess what? I just sharted ,” and then waddled up the aisle and down the hall to the nurse's office for a new pair of pants.
Upchuckie's nickname was different—at least to him. He had gotten his in kindergarten because of his habit of puking at the slightest provocation, a habit that, as everyone well knew, he had had never quite lost, which was why I hadn't turned my fish breath his way in the first place. I didn't need to smell even worse than I already did.
Upchuckie opened his mouth to say something else—almost certainly another variation of the “Addie's boyfriend” theme—when the bell rang and the cafeteria was suddenly flooded with chattering students filling the seats all around us. Soon we were surrounded by a dozen different versions of lunch, and Upchuckie sniffed with interest, trying to decide who else's lunch he was going to ruin today. I glanced around as well, struck as usual by the telling differences between the lunches that people pulled from their bags. At Solanan High everyone brought their own lunch, because even though it was called a cafeteria there was no actual food service here, just a bank of microwaves where you could heat up your food. Or, in the case of me and my sushi, not.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of food being brought out all around me. If necessary I could have identified who was sitting where just from the noise: poor kids were the ones pulling sandwiches and chips out of rustling paper bags while rich ones were the ones popping open their take-out containers full of Field Greens Tossed with a Lemony Vinaigrette and Pork Medallions in Cranberry Chutney (or whatever they picked up at the fantastically gourmet—and expensive—market on their way to school). And the middle class kids? There were none. In Solanan, Colorado, just as in the Middle Ages, there were only two kinds of people: rich and poor. Peasants and Masters. Addies and . . .
Theos.
The chair across from me scraped as Theo Frank pulled it out and sat down. I didn't have to open my eyes to know that it was him; his scent—turpentine and Ivory soap—washed over me so quickly I had to stop myself from inhaling it into my lungs greedily. I opened my eyes then, but didn't look up until I saw his elegantly tapered fingers, stained a hundred different colors from the oil paints he used, set a white-frosted miniature cake down on the table in front of me, and then I glanced at him quickly before I could help myself. His eyes caught mine and held them for a moment before I abruptly broke the contact and looked back down at the table, trying to compose myself. That's when I realized what he had set down. Of course. The Red Velvet cake. We were supposed to frost it with a mascarpone cream cheese frosting when it was done.
“Here, Addie. I brought this for you. Since you didn't get to try it in class.”
Theo's soft, melodious voice had the same effect on me that both his scent and his gaze had had. I felt my heart start to beat wildly and sternly told it to knock it off. You'd think that after nine months—nine months in which I had hated Theo Frank more then I'd ever hated anyone in my life—I wouldn't have had to remind myself not to be absolutely thrilled whenever he deigned to notice me. I looked up at him now, not trusting myself to speak as I felt myself drawn once more into the depths of his unusual eyes—eyes that seemed to change colors with his moods. Right now they were the soft gray of a stormy morning. I tried to remind myself of the mocking way he had looked at me as I had been on my knees under the sink, forced to scoop the grease out with my bare hands because the trap had been placed so awkwardly that no utensil would fit in the opening. Obviously, I had thought as I struggled, this was a kitchen that had been designed by somebody who had never had to work in one. Probably a hobby project for one of the wealthy students' bored mothers. Like Theo's.
That thought—the thought of Theo's haughty mother—had been enough to help me ignore his taunting looks at the time. Just like the thought of Gabrielle Frank now was enough to help me shape my expression into a sneer as I looked away from Theo and back down at the cake. I was trying to think of something suitably cutting to say about his perfect creation—it looked like it could have been featured on the cover of a magazine—when Upchuckie reached over in front of me and grabbed it with both hands.
“Hey Theo, you brought me lunch. Thanks.” He opened his mouth hugely and prepared to take an enormous bite. Out of habit my eyes automatically sought out Theo's again, and saw that he was looking at me so intently it was as if I could read his mind. Move , he seemed to be saying. Now .
Six years of friendship trumped nine months of enmity, so I didn't question it; I just moved. Then Upchuckie bit down into the cake and the smell of it hit me like a bad memory. Grease . The “cake” was made out of the congealed grease I had just scooped out of the grease trap, probably pressed into a cake pan and then turned out and frosted. Immediately after coming into contact with the putrid fat Upchuckie's legendary vomit reflex kicked in and he spewed across the table. Theo and I, who had already been moving backwards at top speed, were spared the brunt of the flow, but Shitzi, having had no warning, was not.
“Dude!” he shouted, as the vomit splashed up and off the table and into his face. “That is so lame!”
I looked down at the remains of my lunch—day old sushi now covered in grease-flavored vomit—and fought the urge to be sick myself. I probably would have been sick, actually, if I had been the one to bite into the “cake.” Realizing that—and realizing that that had been Theo's intent all along—I looked up at him and glared. His eyes were the color of slate.
“Fuck. You.” I said, my voice only catching a little. Before I could start to cry I turned on my heel and marched away, heading for the exit, my head held high