October. The gathering of rejects p.1

As the weeks wore on, it looked like the Club was out of danger. No one had tried to join, and Dick was completely happy.

The daring plan had settled into a known routine. He and Gar finished the school day and went to the tiny clubroom, which now sported a video game console with a monitor that doubled as a TV that only got air channels, and a mini fridge tucked under the shelves. Dick had brought some random papers from Bruce's discarded work as decoy Club Stuff; they sat in boxes in the corner and shelves, in case Blood ever came to check.

One day, Dick sat in the clubroom, idly browsing on his phone, savoring the last few moments of quiet before Gar arrived. The door opened, and instead of Gar, in came a girl all dressed in black. She didn't look at Dick as she crossed the room, settled on a chair on the furthest wall, next to the window, dropped her bag on the floor and pulled out a book.

Dick knew who Raven Roch was. So did a lot of people. She was a freshman, and already she had a reputation.

Legend had it that on the first day of class, Chemistry teacher Zatanna Zatara had singled her out during roll call. When she'd gotten to Raven's name, she had glared at the girl. Some kids had turned to see what she was doing, but Raven had been sitting still. The class was shushed into silence. Some kids knew Miss Zatara from her being a judge in middle school Science Fairs, and they knew her to be kind and fair; they had never seen her be mean to a student.

Miss Zatara had said, "We hope you'll be on your best behavior, Miss Roch. We've been warned about you. We all know about you back at the office."

Raven's reaction was noticeable in that there had been none. She'd glared back at the teacher and hadn't said a word. She'd just sat there, looking… well, kind of evil.

No one knew what to make of the exchange; rumors quickly rose to supplant facts. Raven was fresh out of Juvie. Raven had a murder charge and had been let off on a technicality. Raven was supposed to be in a psychiatric hospital and the government was forcing Murakami to take her as part of a nation-wide experiment. Raven only posed as a high school girl but was part of a cult that had killed Miss Zatara's father. Etc., etc.

The rumor mill could have faded there—students might have moved on to the next thing. Except the next week, Miss Zatara stopped coming to school. A few days later, they had a new Chemistry teacher. Raven's infamy solidified: right now the lore was that those who crossed her didn't last long in school.

Dick hadn't been on that class that day, and even when Raven had been pointed out to him in the hallway, he'd been skeptic that this small, quiet girl was as striking as some said. He bet she wasn't scary at all. He bet she was just blunt. People weren't kind to girls who didn't care what people thought of them.

But now, alone in the room with her, he could kind of see it. As she calmly read her book, like she'd already forgotten Dick was there, he found he couldn't bring himself to say a word.

The spell was broken when the door opened again, admitting Gar.

"Hey, dude-!" was all Gar got out before Dick pushed him back out the door. "Was that Raven Roch in there?" Gar asked, as Dick closed the door behind them.

"Yes, it was."

"Is she part of the club now?" Gar smiled.

He looked not against the idea at all, which strengthened the suspicions Dick was already harboring.

"Well, she just came in and started reading. It's as if she knows exactly what this club really is."

"How'd she find out?"

"That's what I'd like to know," said Dick, looking pointedly at Gar.

Gar gaped when he got Dick's meaning. "Me?"

"Yes, you!"

"Why me?"

"Look, did you tell her or not?"

"Of course not!"

"Did you let it slip to someone else?"

"Why are you suspecting me?" Gar demanded.

"There's just me and you in this club."

"Well why couldn't it be you?"

"Because it wasn't! Now think! Did you tell anyone, at all?"

"No."

"Not your parents?"

Gar back-tracked. "Oh, well, I told my mom I was in a Club."

"And does she have ties to Raven? To the school?"

Gar shifted his weight. "I mean," he started. Then he sighed heavily. "She is married to the gym teacher."

Dick paused. "Whoa. Wait. Coach Dayton is your dad? The guy you say is always yelling at you and grounds you and ungrounds you twice a day? That was the Coach?"

"Adoptive dad," Gar muttered.

"How did I not know this?"

"Because he wants to keep some distance while in school," Gar explained. "Not like it's gonna stay on the down low forever."

"Well, there's the connection."

"Hold up. I just told Rita I was in a club. I didn't tell her it was a front. Besides, Steve doesn't give a shit what I do at school. Even if she told him, I bet he tuned her out. And how would Raven find something out from the boys' coach?"

Dick considered. "Okay. Whatever. It doesn't matter how, she's here. How do we get her to leave?"

"Do we have to? What's the problem with her being here?"

"This was a two-person ploy, remember? The more people know about this, the worse our chances are of keeping the club!"

Gar grimaced and didn't look at Dick in the eye. Dick could see plain as day that he wanted her to stay. Even if Dick wasn't good at reading expressions and body language –which he was-, Gar's face was transparent. Evidently, he didn't care that Raven was scary. A girl in the club was still a girl in the club.

With the same clarity, Dick saw Gar's face brighten up to mark the moment he came up with a way out.

"Okay, well, what d'you say we do? Are you gonna tell her she has to leave?"

Dick opened his mouth and closed it again, remembering the odd trepidation he'd fallen on in Raven's presence. But he was too proud to back down when Gar was clearly wagering on his cowardice. He swallowed, summoned all the courage he didn't feel, and said, "Yes. Yes I will."

Raven Roch didn't stir even when the two boys were directly in front of her.

"Hey," said Dick, intelligently.

Raven looked up, annoyed. She had short black hair, middle-parted, falling pin-straight around her small olive-toned face. Big dark blue eyes nested under strong long eyebrows and glared at Dick. On her forehead sat a diamond-shaped red stone.

"If you want to join the club, there are requirements."

"Class enrolment, perfect grades… I've seen the list. I'm good," said Raven, returning the glare Dick was giving her.

Gar looked back and forth between them. She seemed as determined to stay as Dick was to kick her out. He had no idea whose will would prevail.

Dick started again, "You need to fill a form. Copy of your birth certificate. Your last semester's…"

Raven took a bunch of papers from her bag and slapped them on Dick's chest.

Dick flipped through them, and in the meantime she went back to reading. Dick seemingly couldn't find anything wrong in her papers, because he returned to glaring at her in frustration.

"There's an initiation," said Dick.

Raven looked up. Gar thought he saw the stone on her forehead glisten.

"Gar and I did it," added Dick.

Gar protested lowly, "Duude." But Dick elbowed him to shut him up.

Raven stood up.

She was a small human—probably one of the shorter girls in their year. But they were fifteen, the awkward age where girls looked like women and boys still looked like toddlers. She was the same height as Dick, and she decidedly towered over Gar. And just then, Dick felt the same trepidation he'd gotten when he was first alone with her.

"No, I don't," she said. Dick's skin prickled under her glare. "Because you didn't."

Moments later, Dick and Gar were back in the hallway.

"Clearly she has an informant," said Dick.

"I definitely didn't tell Rita we didn't have an initiation."

Dick suddenly hit his head with his palm. "I should have told her we didn't allow girls!"

Gar made a face. "That'd earn you a discrimination sanction from the school. Plus I don't think I'd wanna be in that club."

"Then don't be. Leave me and her, we just need one person to keep it going."

"Hey, I helped make the club. Maybe I'll kick you out, and keep my buddy Raven. And welcome all the other girls."

"Seriously now. What do we do?"

Gar looked at the closed door, at the austere black-and-white 'Project Club' sign printed in Times New Roman, 12-point. "Hey Dick. Call me crazy. But I have the feeling she wouldn't enjoy having a lot of people in a club either. Like out of all the people that could possibly storm the club, she's like the least disruptive presence I can imagine."

Dick sighed. "Yeah, I see your point. It's probably way more effort to kick her out then just let her be." His voice hardened. "But that's it. Three people. It's a three people ploy."

The next day, Victor Stone walked into the clubroom.

He let himself into the clubroom and slapped a bunch of papers in the table in front of Dick and Gar. "Hey. I wanna join this thing."

Dick put on an expressionless face and took the papers. "Great. Let me see."

While Dick went through the papers, Gar fully gaped at the newcomer. He'd never seen Victor up close before.

The boys knew of Victor Stone—of course they did. Last year he'd been simply benignly popular as the star of the JV football team. But it was the car accident in the last weeks of the school year that had shot him to celebrity status. People said he'd only survived because his dad, an important scientist, had pulled all the strings to get Victor experimental surgery and prosthetics. It was easy to believe, because Gar had never seen anything like him before.

Most of his body was metal: white and blue metal pieces clashing against his rich brown skin. All four limbs were prosthetic, and some people said what was left of his torso was protected by a metal plaque as well. Even half of his head sported a plaque, complete with a bionic eye that flashed red.

Gar stared until Victor finally shot him a glare. Gar started and quickly looked away.

Victor paid a curious look to Raven reading quietly in the corner, seemingly having just noticed her, and then turned back to the boys.

By then, Dick had found a problem in Victor's form. "I'm sorry to say this, you don't have the grades to join us," he said, trying to keep the glee out of his voice.

"Ah, yeah, I heard about your crazy requirements," said Victor, his good eye laughing at them. "It's bullshit. You can't ask for a perfect GPA. I know because I was the football team captain in middle school. I've read the rules."

"This isn't the football team," Dick fired back. "This is a prestigious academic-minded…-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Victor cut him off. "Listen, I've seen most of the clubs in this damn school and they are swarmed. You guys are the ones with the lowest member count, I don't even know how you got it approved, but that's exactly what I want. Something quiet, something chill, just an easy college credit."

Gar leaned over to whisper to Dick. "His head is in the right place."

Dick elbowed Gar back into place. "This isn't chill. This is high stakes. We have outreach hours, and academic competitions, and we meet six times a week…-"

"Right, the seven-hour meetings," Victor cut him off. "That's against the rules too. Who was your advisor? Blood? You tell me that if I went to him he'd tell me he's approved all this?"

Dick kept his face impassive as he inwardly seethed. Just his luck he got a smart football player, who'd had club leader experience to boot. It kind of felt like being struck by lightning in the middle of an earthquake.

Victor leaned into Dick's face. "I know this club is a front. Just let me in, man. You need people, and I need me some college credits. You know, since a sports scholarship isn't an option anymore." The bitterness in his tone hit them like acid.

Dick recovered and said, "We don't need people. Not really."

"Oh? Fine," Victor spat. "How's this? You let me in and I don't tell everyone this club is a sham."

Dick looked at Gar. "Hallway."

"I mean," Gar said when they were outside, "having someone popular will probably protect us or something."

"He's not popular anymore, Gar, wake up," replied Dick. "Or he's soon to not be. You think his jock friends are gonna keep him around if he can't play sports?"

"Well, maybe having him won't help us. But if we don't take him, he's definitely gonna snitch on us."

Dick nodded reluctantly as Gar told him what he already knew. "Alright, fine. We have four people now. But no more, you hear me? Not. One. More."

When they re-entered, they saw Victor had taken a seat and started a video game, clearly of the mind that his membership was a foregone conclusion.

Dick looked around and sighed. "We're gonna need to bring in another chair."

You know who's coming in the next chapter, right?

Um, I changed my mind, when chapters end up short (like this one) I'm gonna try to upload biweekly, (i.e. Sunday and Thursday). Review to earn my eternal love!