And that was just in time for Leonard’s big stage debut. Lucy couldn’t have been prouder. Dork Baloney was visiting the Freaks, and Leonard was playing Bobby. Because the Freaks had notoriously dyed their hair with blue toilet cleaner pucks, Leonard wore a giant papier-mâché urinal like a mascot would. His face barely poked out of a face hole. The urinal even had blue liquid by the drain. To Lucy’s surprise, Leonard had a shockingly strong stage voice. He hammed it up as Bobby. He was a natural. Everyone cheered his performance. Everyone, except for the real Bobby.
Bobby stood up in the crowd. “I’ll kill you, Geeks! All of you! You know that!”
The audience booed Bobby. Zachary never broke character, neither did Leonard. They never acknowledged Bobby at all, and it only made the crowd love it more. When Zachary’s character moved on to the gym and Leonard exited the stage, Bobby’s big moment was over. The more he protested, the more the crowd turned against him, until his fellow Freaks had to pull him down into his seat.
A Geek girl walked out onstage swinging her purse in a circle and smacking her jaw open and shut like she was chewing gum. She wore a blonde wig and a white dress and when she started telling boys in the front row that a blow job would cost them a sandwich, Lucy couldn’t control herself. She knew who it was.
“Hooker Hilary!” Lucy said, way too loud.
Bart cringed with a laugh. “Oh, boy. We got a live one.”
Lucy cackled. She knew it might lead to trouble, leading the crowd on this one, but Hilary deserved it. Sam had gotten his comeuppance for what he’d done, but somehow, so far, Hilary had managed to get off, unscathed. A laugh at her expense was the least Lucy could do.
Hilary stood up in a huff, like Bobby did. She was in the front row with a bunch of Pretty Ones. She was livid.
“I refuse to sit through this trash!” she shrieked.
“Then get the hell out!” Lucy shouted at her, and others in the crowd echoed her.
Hilary glared at Lucy with pure hatred. Lucy was unbothered.
“What are you looking at?” Lucy said, leaning forward in her seat.
Hilary sneered at Lucy, then widened her gaze to all the kids shouting at her. She looked uncharictaristically rattled. Lucy wasn’t sure she had seen her blush before. She started pushing through her row in a huff. A string of Pretty Ones trailed her. As they reached the aisle and hurried for the exit, people whistled at them and shouted catcalls. They looked miserable, but Lucy didn’t feel an ounce of compassion for the other girls. This was the life they’d chosen. If they didn’t like what it had amounted to, then too bad.
“You’re a wild one,” Bart said with a grin.
Lucy fixed Bart with a charged stare.
“What?” he said.
Nobody had ever said that to her before. And she liked it. She planted a heavy kiss on him.
“Yee-ha!” somebody shouted from a few rows back. She had a pretty good idea who it was. Raunch. “Get it on, girl!”
Lucy laughed through her tongue dance with Bart. Her whole gang must have been watching her now, maybe others too. It was a rush. She pushed Bart down in his seat, then hopped over the armrest into his lap, facing him. She straddled him like he was a horse and looked over to her gang. She threw up a fist.
“WHOO!” Lucy shouted back. They threw up fists and cheered for her while the play continued on stage.
Lucy leaned down and kissed Bart more. He couldn’t have been happier. They made out for the rest of the play. It felt crazy just putting on a show for everybody around, but she was tired of being the prude all the time. Besides, Will seemed to be having a PDA marathon all over the school, so why should she hold herself back?
When the play ended and the lights came on, people got up from their seats and started to mill about the auditorium. Lucy and Bart didn’t move. They were in their own little world. She wanted to stay close to him. There, on his lap. He couldn’t look away from her. The stage lights sparkled in his eyes. He smiled his perfect smile. She wanted him. It was decided in a moment. Naturally. Just like Violent had said it would be. Bart was the one. He’d be her first.
Someone whispered in her ear.
“Make him wait.”
Lucy turned and looked over to see Violent. Already moving on. She couldn’t see Violent’s face. It made her anxious. She didn’t understand.
“What do you want to do now?” Bart said.
Lucy looked back at Bart. He had a mellow grin.
“Uh…”
28
WILL WOKE UP WITH ANOTHER CRUEL HEADACHE. He felt like someone had spent the night standing over him and beating his face with a rake. It probably wasn’t the best idea to mix booze with his medication, but he wasn’t dead yet. It had been three weeks of this, something like that, partying day in and day out. In the mornings, it felt like it had been three years. Each night, once the alcohol hit his system, he felt ready to do it all over again. By then, the morning misery was long forgotten. Being bros with Gates was a full-time job.
With bleary eyes, Will lifted his head and charted his surroundings. He was on his back, on the floor in front of Gates’s school bus. All around him was a terrible mess. It wasn’t just the wrecked bus stuck in the wall, or the rubble around it, it was the week’s worth of party waste that littered the floor. Food was spilled everywhere. Twinkies with footprints in them. Cold cuts that had been thrown on the wall and had stuck there. A huge puddle of milk that someone had poured over a pile of cigarette butts. Dirty dishes covered in a brown crust of microwaved burrito filling. A soda-soaked pair of boxer shorts. Crushed beer cans and plastic party cups were everywhere. A knocked-over television played a porno, and there were two gaming chairs in front of it, but no one there watching. A series of croquet wickets were duct-taped to the floor, with mallets and balls strewn around. Gates had designated one corner of the room the “smashing corner,” and it was where they threw glass bottles when they were done with them. Breaking bottles had bored Gates pretty quickly and he’d encouraged the gang to start destroying other things. In addition to the piled-up broken glass, the smashing corner had an eviscerated beanbag chair, bent lacrosse sticks, a bashed-up bicycle with slashed tires, and a pinball machine that had been set on fire.
Will didn’t know how he’d ended up on the floor. The last thing he could remember was blending up mudslides with Gates and some Freak girls. He had a vague flash of hooking up with one of the girls in the supply closet across the room, but then things got fuzzy. That was pretty standard these days.
“There you are.”
Will sat up and saw Lark walking toward him from the hall of containment cells.
“I have to talk to you,” she said. She looked too serious for Will to handle right now. His head was murdering him.
Poor Lark. She was cute and clever and she liked Will. A lot. It wasn’t hard to tell.
“What’s up?” Will said to her.
Lark sat down in front of him and took his hands.
“I’m here for you,” she said.
“Okay…”
“And it’s not even that bad. Really, it’s for the best. It’s high time you moved on.”
Will felt a twinge of panic. “What are you trying to tell me?
Lark sighed, “I know how hung up on you are on that girl, Lucy. And I saw her last night at the Geek show. And I don’t know, I just feel like you can do better. ’Cause, you know, sometimes it’s easy to make too much, like way too much, about the past, when the future is literally wide open. Right in front of you—”
“Lark. What are you talking about? You said you saw Lucy.”
“Yeah. At the Geek show. I think she’s got a new boyfriend.”