An: In memory of Robert
Chapter 3
Madison steeled herself as she crossed the threshold into the foulest, dankest pit in all of Winslow: the cafeteria. Between the poisonous food and cramming the entire student body into a single room, there was no place more dangerous in the whole school. The usual aura of angst, bloodlust, and body odor that normally radiated from teens was amplified by the tight confines of the cafeteria, transforming it all into a raging maelstrom of hormones.
Weaving her way through the minefield of students always sent a shiver of dread and anticipation down Madison's spine. You had to know which tables were controlled by which gang, a problem which had grown exponentially with the eighty-four new gangs that had sprung up in the past few weeks. A minor slip-up of wearing the wrong color clothes could lead to death or, far worse, people thinking you were a dork. Madison had been forced to wear beige to avoid declaring allegiance to any gang, and she looked awful in beige! It was terrifying, awful, and yet she'd never felt more alive.
The way time seemed to slow, her heart slamming against her chest, the crawling of her skin — Madison was addicted. Every day she found herself taking greater and greater risks, stepping a little close to a table, making fleeting eye contact. She couldn't stop herself; the overwhelming urge to chase the high that only the fear of death could bring was intoxicating. Maybe tomorrow, she would dare to even wear something with real color.
Madison always felt relieved and disappointed when she reached the no-man's land where the other outcasts and losers huddled together for protection. Her high school social life was turning out to be a social disaster. She had gone from being one of the cool kids in middle school to being a nobody loser.
If Madison wanted to turn her reputation around and gain mucho cred among the student body, she would have to join a gang, and there was only one gang for her: The Switchblade Sisters. But she had no idea how one went about joining a gang. Farson Middle hadn't prepared her for life on the streets, and the teachers here weren't any better, which showed that the public education system was once again failing its students.
Looking up, Madison stared longingly across the cafeteria at the two coolest girls in the school, Cyclops and Pulverizer. They took names, kicked ass, and never said sorry to anybody. Cyclops was currently eating pencils for lunch. Who did that? Hardcore people, that's who.
Madison would give anything to be part of the Switchblade Sisters.
Unfortunately, she couldn't go around asking other students how to join a gang without looking, like, super lame. Also she would probably get stabbed. No, she needed to come up with a plan of attack on her own. But after a week of attempted brainstorming sessions, she couldn't come up with a single cool idea. She obviously couldn't just approach them; if she blew her one shot at being cool, Madison didn't know how she would ever live with herself.
But… she couldn't just sit here indecisively doing nothing either! If she stayed at this table, she would end up going down as 'most likely to be a loser' in the yearbook. She needed to be strong, like a kick from Pulverizer, and take a gamble. Madison jerked to her feet and made her way to the Switchblade Sisters. She was doing this. This was happening. Putting on her best bitch face, Madison approached the deadly pair and said, "Can I join your crew?"
Cyclops stopped chewing on her food. Then, she practically started bouncing in her seat. "Finally! I've been beating people up for weeks, but nobody has signed up with us yet! It's ridiculous! Does nobody here understand how things are supposed to work!?"
"Did you ever let anyone know you wanted them to join?" asked Pulverizer.
"Don't be ridiculous! I'm not going to go around asking people to join our gang, do you know how lame that would look?"
"So, I'm in!?" Madison hated herself how her voice cracked slightly as she asked the question.
Cyclops paused in her tirade, her eye roaming Madison up and down, judging. "Pulverizer, you're the head of H.R., what do you think?"
Pulverizer pushed up her glasses and replied, "It seems to me like it would behoove us to increase our ranks, Emma. After all, if we want to solidify our iron grip over the school, we'll need troops on the floor. While you are amazing, you can't be everywhere."
"Sure, but we can't just let anybody in. We need to have standards. We can only allow the most hardcore of thugs to join our ranks!" Cyclops declared, her eye aglow with passion. "Also, I keep telling you that you have to use my street name when we're in public. I have a reputation to maintain!"
Madison chose that moment to butt in like a hardcore thug. "I've got what it takes, ma'am!"
"First, address me as Boss." Madison nodded eagerly to show that she understood. "Second, tell me: what would you bring to the team?" asked Cyclops skeptically. "Pulverizer is my trusted right hand that will fight with me through thick and thin."
"Well, I would be the cute one," offered Madison. It was what she had been doing her entire life, so she was reasonably confident she could pull it off.
"Please, have you seen Pulverizer? She's adorable!" asked Cyclops, waving towards her partner in crime.
"Didn't she once try to gouge out a man's eyes?" asked Madison.
"Like I said, adorable."
"Well… I bet I would make a pretty good lackey?" offered Madison, suddenly feeling a great deal less confident. The only other skill she had was being a yes-woman.
Cyclops looked unimpressed. "Prove it."
"I'll do whatever you want me to, Boss!"
"Hmph, flattery will get you everywhere," said Cyclops. "Alright then, let's put you to the test. You see that piece of shit over there?" Following Cyclops' pointing finger, Madison saw some guy wearing a yellow belt at a nearby table. "That son of bitch is mocking me with his depth perception and needs to pay for it. If I told you to make him cry like a little bitch, what would you do?"
Madison frowned in thought and tapped her finger on her chin. "I could pour juice on his chair."
"Hmm, the old juicy butt maneuver," said Cyclops thoughtfully. "Not a bad start, but that's small-time gang stuff." Oh no, that was Madison's best material! "The Switchblade Sisters are a group of black-hearted monsters without mercy for our foes! Right, Pulverizer?"
"Huh? Sorry, Emma, I wasn't listening. I was signing these." Pulverizer motioned to a stack of cards; on the front of them was emblazoned the words 'Get Well!' with a picture of a man with a cast around his hip.
Cyclops let out a exasperated sigh, bits of pencil flying everywhere, then turned her gaze back to Madison. "I'm waiting."
Madison tried not to panic. All she needed to do was come up with a bad enough deed that would impress the baddest, coolest girl in school. Oh no. She was doomed. "I would… I would…" Think Madison, think! "I would break into his house and, uh, kill his parents and turn them into skin suits. Then I would don the suits to disguise myself as both his parents.
Her voice picked up as inspiration struck. "From there, I would be in the perfect position to strike: there would be juice poured on every seat in his house. Nowhere would be safe, his paranoia preventing him from sitting down for even a moment, and he would never suspect me, his loving parents. Only when he is driven to the brink of madness, wondering if he will ever have a dry butt ever again, will I reveal it was me, his own two parents, that betrayed his trust, irrevocably pushing him over the precipice!" Madison was panting and out of breath by the time she was done explaining her plan.
"Wow," said Emma with a wide eye. "That was the most fucked up thing I've ever heard." Madison's heart sunk. She had blown it.
"You clearly have what it takes to be the crazy one in our group. You're in. I dub thee Lunatic."
This was the best day of Lunatic's life.
…
"Mrs. Hendriks, can I go to the bathroom?" asked Charlotte, voice filled with dread.
Shooting her a look of horrified concern, Mrs. Hendriks asked, "Are you sure you want to? Maybe it would be better to wait till after school."
Charlotte shook her head. "I would if I could."
"Well, try not to get stabbed too much. Poor Mr. Ash spent hours cleaning all the bloodstains in the bathrooms last weekend. Be considerate of his feelings."
Nodding, Charlotte made her way to the door with trepidation and looked around the corners to make sure nobody was about to jump her. The sudden rise in gangs was doing nothing to help her anxiety. A different gang had claimed every school hallway, and they were all aggressively protective of their territory. Fortunately, the school had started arming the hall monitors in response to better police the school; unfortunately, they were just as likely to mug you.
Determined to make it through life unshivved, Charlotte had drawn out a map of the safest routes through the school. Unfortunately, everything was constantly in flux: territories swapped hands, gangs rose and fell, and sometimes the poorly maintained roof would cave in. Well, the roof thing wasn't actually a new development, it had been happening for decades. Charlotte sometimes woke up in cold sweats from nightmares of the collapsing school crushing her to death.
The constant scribbled-in updates were making her map harder and harder to read. After half a minute of squinting, Charlotte thought she had found a safeish path. She would have to squeeze through one of the caved-in hallways, but it should let her avoid the Lazzer Sharks and the Triple Backflipping Roaches.
Closing her eyes and chanting "Don't think about it" to herself under her breath, she slowly and carefully wiggled her way through the rubble. Halfway through, she froze as the pile of debris started to make a groaning noise. "Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no!" Why had she thought this was a good idea?
Moving with haste, Charlotte managed to wriggle her way out of the collapsed area, then let out a shriek of terror as she came face to face with a monster. It towered over her with its mouth twisted into a nightmarish parody of a smile. It was gnashing its teeth in impotent fury, and its claw-like hands looked like they wanted to wrap around Charlotte's neck and squeeze.
Charlotte laid there, paralyzed in fear, before realizing it was a newly painted twenty-foot mural of Principal Blackwell. Words emblazoned on the plaque below read: "Scorn Icarus, Crawl Towards Mediocrity." Shakily, she climbed to her feet and tried to regain control of her breathing. She needed to calm down and keep moving.
"Dun dun dun!" suddenly blared a trumpet from behind her, making her spin around. To her horror, Charlotte saw what appeared to be a group of teens wearing marching band outfits. On closer inspection, the outfits looked extremely patchwork and poorly made. All of them except the trumpeter were holding wooden blocks and wooden sticks, which they drummed menacingly at her.
Letting out a squawk of surprise, she backed up against the nearest locker. "What-what do you want?"
"You have to pay tribute if you want to pass through the March's territory," growled one of the gangsters. Somewhere, a man in the Birdcage died a little inside.
"Please don't hurt me!" begged Charlotte.
"Look, we don't want to hurt you. We just want your money; we have to pay for the band budget somehow since the teaching staff keeps stealing from us," explained another one of the March.
"I stopped carrying money after I got mugged the first couple of times," explained Charlotte.
"Your purse, then."
"What purse?" asked Charlotte. "All three that I had have been snatched."
"We could kill and eat her," offered the guy with the trumpet.
"What the fuck, Jeff!?"
"What? It's a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Frankly, I don't know why any of you are surprised. They call me Cannibal Jeff after all."
"Nobody calls you that!"
Maybe if Charlotte curled up into a small enough ball, reality would fold into itself, and she could escape? It was worth a try.
"Besides, Skinny here looks like she wouldn't make a good meal," argued one of the blockheads.
"Yeah, I bet she would taste terrible," chimed in another.
Charlotte wasn't sure if she should've been insulted or relieved; she wasn't that skinny. These people were so judgy. For all they knew, she could have been delicious.
"Man, you guys never agree to any of my plans," complained Cannibal Jeff.
"Your plan doesn't even help with the budget problem!"
"Fine, we'll take uh… her shoes? We could probably sell them for twenty bucks."
Losing her shoes was vastly preferable to being eaten, so Charlotte quickly moved to get rid of them before they changed their minds. As she was taking off her first shoe, a different group of toughs a few lockers down called out, "Hey, leave a shoe for us!"
"No way! We got her first. Fuck off, theater kids!" yelled Cannibal Jeff.
"First of all, we're the Aristocrats, and second, what are we supposed to take when she walks by us?" complained her soon-to-be mugger.
"That sounds like your problem," one of the March said dismissively.
"You looking for a fight?"
"Don't be dumb. Who's just going to buy one shoe? You would have to sell them in a set. You can have her socks."
"Nobody is going to want her stanky-ass socks, and- hey, where do you think you're going!?"
Charlotte froze. She had been hoping she could slip away while the two groups were bickering.
"Halt! Unhand her, you foul miscreants!" cried out a voice. Charlotte almost fainted when she saw Pulverizer storm around the corner. Charlotte shrunk away from her gaze. She had heard that Pulverizer could kill with a look.
"Back off, Pulverizer! She's ours! We're wearing cups, you have no power here!" declared Cannibal Jeff.
Pulverizer hesitated before her expression steeled. "I challenge you to a music off!" she declared before brandishing her flute like a knife.
Smirking, Cannibal Jeff raised his own trumpet, which Charlotte now noticed had 'Property of Arcadia High' embossed on the side. "You're on."
"On three, draw and play," declared Pulverizer.
"Your funeral," sneered the trumpeter as he rested his instrument at his hip.
"Three."
The two gangsters faced off against each other, blank-faced.
"Two."
Their fingers were at the holes of their instruments, their mouths were ready and waiting to blow into action.
"One!"
The tension in the room rose to the point that Charlotte felt like she would faint dead away when the first note cut through the air.
The pair violently blasted music in waves. They swung their heads and instruments around aggressively, circling each other face to face. It didn't take Charlotte long to realize that Pulverizer barely knew how to play Hot Cross Buns. What was more surprising was that Cannibal Jeff was actually not terrible, leading Charlotte to assume he learned to play somewhere that wasn't Winslow. 'I'm screwed.'
Pulverizer must have also realized she was losing, because suddenly her knee jerked up, slamming between Cannibal Jeff's legs. "Arrgh! She broke my cup! They do nothing!"
"Ah shit!" yelled one of the theater kids. "Run for it!" Both the Aristocrats and the March fled, a terrified look in their eyes.
Pulverizer turned towards Charlotte and smiled. "Everything copacetic?"
Charlotte had no idea what that meant. "What?"
"You know, copacetic? The word that everybody here in Brockton Bay uses?"
Not wanting to disagree with the terrifying hooligan, Charlotte nodded her head. "Of course, I thought you said uh…" Blanking on a word, Charlotte just trailed off awkwardly. "I don't have any money for you to take, by the way."
"I don't want your money," replied Pulverizer, sounding scandalized.
"Then why did you do… that?" asked Charlotte as she waved towards the prone weeping form of Cannibal Jeff.
"What kind of villain would I be if I didn't rush out to save the innocent from danger?" declared Pulverizer.
"Don't you mean hero?"
"Those are fighting words," Pulverizer said with eyes narrowed into slits.
Charlotte flinched. "Not the face!"
"Geez, I'm not going to hit you."
"Well well well," boomed an imperious voice. "What do we have here?" Oh, come on! Did every gang hang out in this hallway?! Why was nobody in class!?
"Oh hey, Em- Cyclops," Pulverizer said with a little wave.
"Pulverizer, who is this?" asked Cyclops as she glanced at Charlotte.
"She was the victim of a mugging, but I drove them off," explained Pulverizer proudly. "That makes this hallway ours, right?"
"The whole school is ours," corrected Cyclops. "Also I think we found the fourth member of our gang."
"What?" squeaked Charlotte. She didn't want to be part of a gang! What would grandpa and mom think? She should say something. Anything. Soon, when she worked up the courage. Which would be any moment now. Definitely.
"I don't know, Emma, she looks pretty scared. Probably isn't bad enough to roll with us."
"No no, see, we need a reluctant member who is a sniveling coward-" Hey… "-but pulls through for us in our grimmest moment. What's your name, newbie?"
"Charlotte…" she said hopelessly. Why was this happening to her?
"Hmmm, not a great street name. Let me think here," muttered Cyclops "Well, she is pretty boring looking, nothing remarkable at all, so we can't use her looks for her name. Maybe something to do with the name Charlotte… hmm. Charlotte's Web? We could call her Web, maybe? No, that won't do, I'm pretty sure there are three different Webs in this school already. Hmm, the spider lived in a barn, so… We'll be calling you Barnes."
"But isn't that your name?" protested Charlotte.
Glaring, Cyclops growled, "Are you saying that the name Barnes isn't. Good. Enough. For. You?"
"No no it's perfect!" replied Charlotte hurriedly.
"Great. Welcome to the team, Barnes!" declared Cyclops, slapping her across the back gleefully.
This was the worst day of Barnes's life.