The Fourth Horseman, Excerpt 4

In which Suzanne goes to a pep rally.  A pep rally!

Previous excerpts are here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3

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Chapter Three

In retrospect, I should have hounded Merri more, pushed him look harder at his vision, or at least more often. But as the pain in my chest faded, so did my desire to face the bad news we might find, and my reluctance was shared by the Beryls. Anastase was trying to graduate high school, Spencer was trying to survive it, and Gabriel and I were wrapped in our own little bubble of love, a bubble barely dented by Merri’s warning. Even Merri himself was distracted by his after school activities, his friends, his college applications. Our everyday lives seemed more urgent than a vague vision of something maybe happening in the future that might be bad. As Merri often said, the future wasn’t set, so it was easy to ignore this warning and hope it came to nothing.

But even if we had taken the vision seriously, even if I had hounded Merri to look, would we have been able to change what happened? I don’t know. I want to say yes, but I think that’s just because no one wants to admit they’re powerless in the hands of fate.

So life went on, and by Friday, we had mostly forgotten about the warning, distracted by the impending Homecoming Game and associated ceremonies, including the pep rally. In my opinion, pep rallies were dumb excuses to get out of real classes that could actually teach things, a rare instance when I was in favor of class, but Benowa took its school spirit seriously. As I walked into the field house toward the bleachers, the crowd around me hummed with excitement, wondering who would be on Homecoming Court. It was pretty ridiculous.

But since attendance was mandatory, I scanned the large open area for Spencer. As a member of the football team, Gabriel would sit in the rows of folding chairs lined up at the edge of the basketball court, and Student Activities Chair Merri would be announcing the Court, so Spencer was my only companion for this interminable ceremony of high school life.

I saw him come through the doors on the other side of the field house. He wasn’t as tall as Anastase and Gabriel, yet, but he was taller than most of his classmates, and his blond hair glimmered in the fluorescent light.

“Spencer!” I waved.

He didn’t hear me. A clump of kids passed him, three or four boys, and as they did, he flinched away from them. I stopped waving. Spencer lifted his eyes to follow their progress as they moved ahead of him, and when he did, he noticed me and smiled. I smiled back, but I didn’t like what I’d just seen.

“What was that?” I asked when he got close enough to speak to without shouting.

“What?” Spencer hooked his thumbs into the straps of his backpack and shifted it on his shoulders.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “What did they say to you?”

“Who?” Spencer said. “Come on, let’s get seats.”

I followed him up the bleacher stairs. We climbed to the top row and sat down against the wall. Spencer took off his backpack before we sat down and put it on the bench, so no one could sit next to him.

“Stop avoiding the question,” I said. “You know who. Those boys who went by you.”

He shook his head, smiling like I was crazy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Did they say something to you?” I asked. “Are they bullying you?”

Spencer laughed. “Yeah, right. Like they could.”

He wasn’t wrong. Spencer was the most powerful of all of us, able to control air and electricity and read people’s minds. He had been the first one Gabriel and I turned to when I was in trouble last spring. But there was a big difference between fighting someone with magic and dealing with the day-to-day crap of high school. Spencer couldn’t shock other kids with lightning bolts if they hurt him. “Spencer, you can tell me if—”

He glared at me. “There’s nothing to tell, okay?”

“Okay.” I held up my hands in surrender. “But you could tell me if there were.”

He rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe we have to come to this,” he said. Subject: changed.

“Right?” I said. “At my old school we would always cut pep rallies.”

“Weren’t you afraid you’d get caught?” he asked, eyes big. Spencer loved the tales of my minor excursions into juvenile delinquency.

“Not really,” I said. “Besides, oh no, we cut a pep rally, oooh. It wasn’t like we skipped an actual class. Viva got caught once, when she was coming to meet us, and all she got was two days of detention.”

“Two days?” Spencer asked. “Not even a week?”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s a pep rally.”

At that moment, as if I had summoned the pep with my words, cheerleaders burst through the doors, waving pom poms and signs in time with an awful pop song blaring over the loud speakers. Two of them carried a giant paper banner that read “GO BEAVERS” on it in red and white, the school colors.

“Go Beavers,” I muttered in Spencer’s ear. He grinned.

The football players were next, breaking through the banner and running onto the basketball court, before milling around trying to figure out how to sit down without disturbing the rows of folding chairs. Gabriel was in the middle of the pack, wearing a football jersey like all of the rest of them, but I recognized him by his hair, floppy and loose in his eyes, and by the fact that among football players was the only time Gabriel seemed small. He took a seat in the second row, and when he glanced up at the bleachers, Spencer and I waved. He smiled, but didn’t wave back. They weren’t supposed to.

After a routine by the cheerleaders, the principal gave a speech about how important school spirit was for our student athletes, and one of the coaches talked about how we were definitely going to win against our rival New Berlin, and then it was time for the announcement of the Homecoming Court, which was really all most of the other kids cared about.

Merri came out from the front row of the bleachers. He had on his Benowa High School Golf Team jacket, which was the right sartorial choice, of course, but also made Spencer and I snicker behind our hands. Merri was all about school spirit.

“Hi everyone,” he said, smiling. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Meriwether Beryl.”

“We know, Merri!” Someone in front shouted affectionately. The crowd chuckled.

“He looks good,” I whispered to Spencer, who nodded. Merri was a school nerd, and he seemed at home behind the podium addressing twelve hundred students and teachers, smooth and polished and not nervous at all. Public speaking wasn’t a particular fear of mine, but still, I was impressed.

Merri continued. “As Chair of the Student Council Activities Committee, it’s my pleasure to announce the members of the Homecoming Court.”

He ran through the girls first, a list of the usual suspects. By the time he finished the names, there were three cheerleaders (including Angela, Gabriel’s ex-girlfriend), the Student Council president, and two girl jocks in an awkward line to his left.

Gabriel was third on the list of guys, introduced as “my little brother” which made the crowd chuckle again. At 5’9”, Merri was shorter than me, the only one of his family to take after their petite mother. When Gabriel passed Merri, he paused to sling an arm around Merri’s shoulders and grin at the crowd’s laughter.

“How does it feel dating high school royalty?” Spencer murmured.

“Weird,” I admitted. I was a little surprised. Gabriel had been popular the whole time I’d known him, but seeing him in line with the fricken Homecoming Court alongside cheerleaders and jocks poked at a tender spot inside of me. That guy down there was my boyfriend. In six short months, who had I become?

Merri finished his speech with a flourish—“ladies and gentlemen, your Homecoming Court,” he said, swooping his index card dramatically—and the crowd went wild with whistles and claps and excitement, like the kids down there were actual princes and princesses, instead of people you could see in the hallway or class or the bathroom every day.

The principal stepped in to remind everyone there was still another hour left in the school day and she expected everyone to be in class in fifteen minutes, and then it was, mercifully, over. Spencer headed to class, but I waited until most of the kids cleared out, then picked my way down the stairs to Gabriel.

He stood near the podium with some of the other members of the newly-minted Court, hands in his pockets, chatting with Angela.

“Congratulations.” I patted him on the arm and tried my best to sound like I meant it and wasn’t making fun of him. “And you, too, Angela. Congratulations.”

She smiled, a fake but polite smile. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m super excited.” She touched Gabriel’s sleeve. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “See ya.”

“See ya, Angela!” I called after her. To her credit, she did wave back.

“I’m not talking to her later,” Gabriel said. “Just so you know.”

“Promise?” I socked him in the arm. “You know I’m not jealous of her, right?”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Really? Not even a little? She’s very pretty.”

“You’re very annoying.” I grabbed his hand, tugging him in the general direction of the cafeteria. “Buy me a soda before class.”

“You only like me for my money,” he said.

“It’s more your super sweet ass, but your money will do. Come on.”

The truth was I wasn’t jealous of Angela at all. Envious of her beautiful hair that fell in a silky ponytail, for sure—my hair was too curly to ever be so smooth—but not jealous. If anything, I felt a little sorry for her. She had stumbled onto Gabriel’s secret without understanding what it was, and had broken up with him because of it. Her second thoughts about dumping someone as sweet and hot as Gabriel didn’t bother me; they made sense. And she had tried to warn me about how strange he was when I was new and had no one to watch out for me. As far as I was concerned, Angela and I were good.

Walking down the hall, hand-in-hand with my attractive and devoted boyfriend, I realized that my whole life was good. School was okay, I was getting along with my parents, I had Gabriel.  It wasn’t perfect — I felt bad for Jason and whatever was going on with Spencer worried me a little — but it was good, and for a moment I thought that all the trouble and danger of the spring was behind me and it would be smooth sailing from now until graduation.

Honestly, I should have known better.  

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