Chapter Four: My Skin is My Sin

            Samantha ran away from Mike, sad that she had hurt him so. She hadn’t meant to make that remark, but she did and it cut through him like a knife. On the brink of tears, she wandered aimlessly until she found herself under a patio area connected to the pool hall. One of her hands wandered to her pocket where she kept her wallet. A dollar disappeared into a vending machine as she bought a soda, diet, of course. With a sob, she plopped into a bench underneath one of the open windows of the brick building. Over time, the soda slowly began to turn lukewarm as she hugged her knees to her chest and cried. Time crept by like a weighted beast, burdened with the chains of her aching heart. Stewart’s voice rang in her head, mocking her, answered by Tucker’s. It was infuriating, she hated them so much, but she hated herself more for breaking Mike’s spirit. The words themselves weren’t much, but she had stabbed him in the back, and she was his best friend. Suddenly, she snapped her head up and away from her knees. The voices weren’t in her head; they were, rather, over her head. Quite literally eavesdropping, she identified the pair’s voices pouring from the open window.

            “Listen, Stewart, I have to draw the line. I’m not going to do that.”

            “She deserves it! Come on, she’s going to cause us lots trouble soon enough.”

            “But she’s a little girl, dammit! How much damage can a little girl do?”

            “She was this close to getting us in deep shit today. A little more out of her and we wouldn’t have gotten away with it.”

            Samantha gasped. Were they talking about Lexis? Stewart was cold, for sure, but… would he backstab his own girlfriend for something she nearly did?

            “She could get seriously hurt of we did that.”

            “I need someone to get behind her, that’s all. You don’t have to do anything else.”

            “But she hasn’t really done anything!”

            “She is going to, don’t you get it? She’s going to do a lot of damage if we don’t find a way to shut her up!”

            “Listen to yourself!”

            “No, how about you listen to me? Listen to me tell the whole school about your little secret. You know how fast I can spread the word. I can tell everyone! You won’t ever live it down!”

            A silence. Samantha wondered what the two were planning that could hurt Lexis so much. Was it physical? Emotional? Psychological? What was Tucker hiding that was so bad? Why would he tell Stewart? Her thoughts were a jumble of semi-comprehensible fragments that swam around in a pool of murky darkness. Try as she could, she couldn’t straighten them out. The voices started up again.

            “I guess it’s like the song says, Stewart, ‘my skin is my sin.’”

            “Not quite, in your case, but it works. We go tomorrow night.”

            “How do you know she’ll be there tomorrow night?”

            “Ha! Believe me, I know this girl, Tucker. After what happened, I know she’ll spend the rest of today crying and considering, while giving Mike time to cool off. She did stick it to him pretty bad today. But undoubtedly, she’ll want to talk to him by tomorrow, if only to apologize.”

            “It seemed as though he took it ok.”

            “You weren’t paying attention. I saw it in his eyes, he was burning on the inside. It doesn’t matter, she’ll either want to talk to him tomorrow afternoon and leave at night, or talk to him late, right before he goes to sleep. In any case, we’ll see her.”

            “I still don’t feel good about this.”

            “You don’t have to. Hey, let’s go get something to eat, off campus. We’ve been here all day, waste of one of these precious class-free days. Come on.”

            “Alright, sure. Why not?” Tucker concluded, his voice bland.

            Sam slipped away as the two of them left the building, and then began walking quickly to the office. She didn’t have much time to execute her plan if she wanted to finish before the two boys got back. An hour and a half, two hours at most. Not much leeway, but it’ll do. It’ll do.

Sam took off at a jog towards the office, hoping to get there as Stewart was leaving campus. Her plan was a simple one: go down to the office, get Tucker’s room number, break into Tucker’s room, snoop around. She didn’t know exactly what it would accomplish, but she was hoping to find out what Tucker’s big secret was. If she could sweep Tucker out, Stewart couldn’t really attack anybody anymore and maybe they could find some redemption. She opened the glass door to the office and stepped in, feeling the air conditioning sweet across her warming body like a wave of cool water. She turned and approached the secretary’s desk. Mrs. Holt was an elderly lady who had worked at Leon High for as long as any student could remember. Her wide glasses seemed too big for her rather small head and frail body and her gray hair was a fluffy bush atop her head and around her shoulders.

            “Hello, Mrs. Holt?”

            “Yes?”

            “Um, I’d like to request a student’s room number.”

            Mrs. Holt scanned Samantha with critical eye for a long moment. Her gaze went from Sam’s face, down her body and back up until their stares locked for a moment. She squinted, as if considering her options, then replied.

            “We don’t give out student room numbers.”

            “You don’t?”

            “We never have. Too much potential for naughty kids to cause trouble.”

            Sam was silent. Technically, she was going to do even worse, but it was for a good cause. This presented a big problem for her. It was time to reconsider her plan.

            “Oh. Thank you very much! Have a nice day!” she called, leaving the office. Her mind wandered to different possibilities of getting the information as her feet wandered about the campus. Finally, she stopped as her stomach growled and pulled her out of her trace. She had placed herself in front of the school library where a couple was exiting. The girl was whining to her boyfriend, quite loudly.

            “Andy! I’m hungry… lets go out!”

            “Uh… I don’t know…”

            “Andy, come on! Please? Let’s go!” she tugged at his arm, applying the female tactic of “ask so cutely that the male cannot refuse.”

            “Well… ok. Let’s go get burgers.”

            Their voices faded into the distance as they turned a corner into another corridor. An idea stuck Sam, suddenly, but it wasn’t a nice one. It was a tad revolting, and it went against her morals but… it was for a good cause. She sucked it up and opened the door, slipping into the library.

            Bradley Vernon was your typical teenage male. Well, your typical teenage nerd, at the very least. He got into Leon high unspectacularly by breezing past the math and logic part of the exam, but failing the spelling and grammar. He spent so much of his time on the Internet typing quickly but poorly and writing code or programs on templates that he never bothered to remember how to spell words longer than five letters. Physically, he liked sports, so long as he was playing them on a television. His interests included girls, computers, girls, Japanese animation (anime), girls, video games and more girls. That and his volunteer work at the library. He was a generally happy guy, but had one problem: he was ugly. Acne had done its work on Bradley’s face, making it resemble acid burns on a side of raw beef. The natural ugliness was further added to by his lack of general hygiene and his hatred of grooming. Frankly, he smelled really bad. His friends were few and also rather “geeky”, because the vast majority of the school’s population thought that being near him would result in catching whatever plague he was infected with. Girls actually spent extra hours trying to find their way about the library’s vast and confusing database rather than ask him for help. But, most people would say that was because of another quirk he had.

            Bradley was a prime example of “the anime fan everybody hates.” Besides his constant jabber about the subject, he had also inherited the (normally) overrated perversity that anime loving males were rumored to have*. He was a jerk who openly stared, gawked, ogled and drooled at women, then was surprised and, at times, insulted when he found they didn’t like it. Not that it stopped him. For these reasons he was a perfect target for Sam’s feminine wiles.

            Sam had scoped him out for several minutes now, but wasn’t yet sure how to proceed. While she was aware that she was female and he was easily persuadable, she had little idea how to proceed with the actual persuading. It was definitely not something she relied on often, but it seemed to be the best course of action in this case. Bradley wouldn’t just give her the information, he never gave anything readily that he could bargain with. It was just another one of his little annoying traits. So it had to be this way, seeing as she had little else to bargain with that would be as effective. Sam didn’t have time to haggle at this point. So Sam sucked up her disgust, looked around to make sure the library was abandoned, save them two, and began to work her charms.

            “Oh… Bradley, is that your name?” she asked innocently. She was trying to look as innocent and school-girly as possible, because, from her little knowledge of the matter, anime girls tended to be both to an extreme degree. It was a small wonder that all the guys were perverts. Well, not all the guys, Mike was known to read his share of anime, but he wasn’t your regular guy in any case. He was most certainly different from any category you could think to file him in. “I’m Samantha Martin, I uh… need something from you,” she said, smoothing her skirt. Bradley’s eyes opened a tad bit wider. She had his full attention now.

            “What is it?”

            “Perhaps you could… um… tell me something?” Sam said slowly, putting a finger to her lip as if unsure how to phrase the question. She sat up on the counter he was sitting behind, letting her skirt ride a bit and flashing just enough leg to begin numbing his mind. She was a breath away from throwing up at this point, but she forged on, staying loyal to her cause.

            “Depends what it is.”

            “I need a room number of a friend. I just want to leave a little surprise for him.”

            “I don’t know, I’m not allowed to…”

            “Please?” Sam begged, trailing a finger down his cheek. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

            “Well… I guess it’s ok, since you’re not going to do anything bad. Are you?”

            “Do I look like I could be a naughty girl?” she cooed, trying to remember her good cause. This was by far the most demeaning and embarrassing thing she’d ever done, but at least it was working. She continued, “His name is Tucker. You know him? The big jock guy with blond hair that’s friends with Stewart?”

            “Oh, right. Him. Yeah, I can get you his room number.”

            “Thanks!” She giggled. Sam was glad this little event was over. She was running out of cutesy things to do. Suddenly, a thought struck her. Since she had momentum already… “You know what else would help? If you could let me borrow one of those master room keys…”

            “Samantha! I could get suspended for taking one of those!”

            “So you can get them!”

            “Well, ok, yeah, I can, but I’m not going to.”

            “Oh but please? I only need to borrow it for an hour and a half, maybe two. Not long at all. I can make it worth your while.”

            “Oh… oh… ok, fine. Come back, same time, tomorrow, you can borrow it. I’ll have his room number, too,” Bradley gave in. Sam had been batting her lashes at him with the last sentence. The offer was too tempting. Not that Bradley had any idea what she meant, but still, it had to be worth it.

            “Thank you so much! I’ll see you tomorrow then!” Sam called, slipping off the counter and landing with a slight giggle, “Bye!” She had to keep this act up until she got out the door so he wouldn’t turn back on his offer. When Sam saw daylight again, she sighed and slumped her way back to her bedroom, disgusted. Any other time, any other day, she wouldn’t have gotten near that disgusting pervert, but today, her reasons were good enough.

*: We, the male anime fans, are not all really perverted. Anime, which is the common term for Japanese comics and animated TV shows, is a very fine art and many men appreciate it for the amazing plot and beautiful artwork. The fact that every female anime character is proportioned beyond humanly possible is just an extra bonus.