CHAPTER 1
VICTORIA and TIFFANY
Victoria Graham is a skank.
Victoria gazes at the lavender graffiti, scrawled huge across the dull grey panel that separates this toilet stall from the one beside it.
Since school began in September, the same hand has scrawled about twenty similar felt-pen messages in every cubicle of the half-dozen girls’ washrooms in Sunnydale High School. It’s been Grade 8 all over again for Victoria.
The mean words stab Victoria like knife thrusts, piercing her fragile inner self, just as all the previous graffiti has. She keeps hoping she’ll build up some scar tissue. If she gets enough scar tissue she’ll be stronger, maybe enough scar tissue will make words like skank just bounce off. Puffing out her chest, she feigns courage, even if the only person there in the girls’ washroom to impress is herself.
“That queen bee—bee as in bee-atch—will never quit,” she says quietly. Then more defiantly, she adds, “I’m no skank. But you really don’t care do you? ...You’re the skank.”
Victoria digs around in the bottom of her backpack and pulls out a black marker. She blots over the glaring, purple insult until a black smudge covers it all. Leaning back, she gives herself as much distance as she can in the tight cubicle to view her cover-up job. The black covers well. Her eyes scan upward to rest upon a similar black smudge.
She steps out of the cubicle and quickly checks the other toilet stall. Nothing there. Good... Tiffany must have been in a rush today.
Victoria faces the wall mirror above the sink, evaluating her ‘look.’
She hates being quite pretty—although it’s fairly well hidden beneath her punk makeup—and small for her age. She’d rather be a foot taller and tough looking. Maybe then her enemies would be hesitant about writing comments in the school’s washrooms. Or perhaps, if she were big and tough, she could do something about the insults.
Enough, she thinks, as she looks at her outfit and makeup. First, she checks her black nail polish. It’s perfect on her right hand, every nail long and shaped just so, but chipped and ragged on her left hand, mainly because she bites the nails on her left hand.
She likes the contrast of the hot-pink miniskirt to the black and white striped leggings. She loves her black combat boots, but isn’t real crazy about her ripped, dark green T-shirt—her two favorites are in the wash.
Never mind. She gazes with approval at her gold nostril ring and her black mascara-crusted eyelashes, then higher at her tall, jet-black Mohawk that goes from her forehead all the way to her neck. Except... the middle part of her ’hawk is suddenly drooping.
Huh? What the...?
She carelessly drops her backpack onto the tile floor. Several textbooks tumble out. Her Shakespeare for Grade 9 skitters all the way to the wall. She ignores it. Using both hands, she presses on each side of the drooping part of her ’hawk, pushing the foot-long strands of black hair so that they aim toward the ceiling.
“Stay up!” she pleads, but her hair droops again. Grunting in frustration, she pulls a tube of gel from her backpack and tries it full strength on the disobedient strands of hair. Seconds pass. Her eyes are squeezed shut while she pulls the hair taut with her hands.
More seconds... then her hands come away. One eye opens. Her hair stays rigid. A smile crosses her face.
She washes her hands, adjusts the giant gold ring in her left nostril, and grabs her backpack and textbooks from the floor. She pulls out her MP3 player and headphones, and a moment later cranked-up music fills her ears.
“Maybe this will be a good day... for a change,” Victoria murmurs to herself, as she rubs a bit of black lipstick from a tooth. Then she shakes her head. “...Not with Tiffany Beaumont around. Thinks she’s all that.”
Victoria puts a hand on her hip and affects a saucy pose before the mirror—
“Look at me. I’m perfect. I’m POP-U-LAR. I’m the leader of the Untouchables.”
After a pirouette, she leans on the counter with her left hip, crosses her arms, and focuses her eyes on her combat boots. She picks at her black fingernail polish and scowls at her reflection in the mirror.
“And me—UN-POP-U-LAR, the direct opposite of Spiffy-Tiffy,” she says, her voice full with envy.
She stares wistfully at the ceiling. I gotta get a life.
Victoria jams her books into her backpack and gazes at the mirror one last time to check her lipstick—everything has to be exactly right—when the washroom door opens.
She stops preening, sniffs the air. A familiar scent wafts in through the open door. Alarm bells ring in her head—That perfume... ‘Teen Angel.’ For the perfect girl. Only one girl at this school wears ‘Teen Angel,’ because it’s so darn expensive.
Victoria’s eyes widen as she slowly turns to the door and terror fills her face.
Standing in the doorway, blocking Victoria’s escape from the bathroom—Tiffany Beaumont and her gang of clones, Corrine, Meaghan, and Lindsay.
Victoria stands frozen by the sink, gaping at—
Tiffany. Then Tiffany’s clothes—all white. Designer shirt. Designer jeans. Shoes. The long, bleached blonde hair, and beauty queen makeup. The total package to give Tiffany the ‘perfect!’ look.
Tiffany playfully tugs at the gold necklace around her neck. Hanging from the necklace is a large, gold, capital letter U, an abbreviation for the name of her clique, the Untouchables.
Behind her the ‘triplets,’ all tall for their age, and slim, dressed in white clothes, each of them a shade of dyed blonde, each of them with her own gold necklace.
Victoria clutches her backpack and retreats to the corner.
Tiffany saunters into the bathroom, up to Victoria and finger-guns her—a BANG, you’re dead message.
One year ago was when Victoria’s life turned from normal to miserable.
Thirteen-year-old Meaghan Newman, already copying Tiffany Beaumont’s mode of dress, stood in the hallway of Bronson Elementary School with Corrine and Lindsay.
“That’s when Victoria sent Clayton a text,” Meaghan said, “inviting him over to her house after school. A party, you know, just for two.”
At her locker nearby, Victoria—clad in what would be considered normal, if somewhat worn, clothing for a thirteen-year-old, with long dark hair and only a bit of make-up, which subtly highlighted her prettiness—overheard Meaghan. Fuming, she marched up to the group.
“You’re lying. I never did.”
Meaghan flipped her hand in the air and walked away, nose up with her friends. “Tiffany told me. Gotta be true.”
Victoria slumped, aghast with disbelief as the group walked away. “I didn’t...”
Lindsay and Corrine looked back and snickered—
“Who’d wanna hang with her?” Lindsay said.
They kept looking back.
Corrine added in a snotty tone, “You don’t steal someone’s boyfriend.” She made an L shape with her finger and thumb, placed it against her forehead, and whispered to Meaghan and the other girl. “And what’s with those rags?”
They laughed in unison as they pranced down the hall and out of earshot.
Victoria’s life has only gotten worse, from that day until now, this Monday morning, here in the second-floor girl’s bathroom of Sunnydale High, facing the Untouchables and wishing she were somewhere else.
Nevertheless, Victoria bravely steps toward the door, but she gets shoved back hard—
“Hey!”
Meaghan, smirking, steps in to help block Victoria’s way, and for Victoria the hallway beyond the door seems as unreachable as a glimmering star—
Tiffany, smiling, says in friendly tone that’s as false as her smile, “Hello, Victoria...” She touches Victoria’s new nostril ring. “OMG! Aren’t we cool?”
The gang giggles.
Victoria blushes and looks at her feet.
Smirking, and thinking this is perfect, Tiffany grabs Victoria’s stiff Mohawk and drags her to the sink. There, Tiffany rips the skank’s headphones off and chucks the MP3 player across the floor.
Victoria twists to see where her MP3 went.
Lindsay and Meaghan grab Victoria’s arms to keep her from moving.
Tiffany glances at Corrine. Okay, now. She gave Corrine instructions before they entered the washroom—Grab the backpack and find Victoria’s cellphone.
Corrine picks up the backpack, sets it on the counter, and rifles through it.
Tiffany, her voice hard, says, “I told you to cut this mess off or I’d do it! But I guess you like playin’ with fire.”
“No,” Victoria pleads. Then she gasps when she hears scissors clicking. Her wide eyes search for the source of the sound. The scissors appear, clicking closer and closer—
“NO! Not my ’hawk.”
The door opens—two fourteen-year-old girls legitimately needing to use the washroom.
Victoria twists toward the door— “Help!”
At the same time, Tiffany spins around in a fury— “GET OUT!” she screams.
The girls scramble out of the bathroom.
Victoria’s crying. Her mascara running down her cheeks makes her look hideous. “Pleeeeaaaase.”
All Tiffany does is smirk, as she moves in, almost nose to nose, bringing the scissors closer. CLICKING.
Using Victoria’s cellphone, Corrine takes a photo of Victoria, hunched like a beggar beneath Tiffany, pleading for mercy.
After the flash of the camera, Tiffany sees Corrine quickly send the photo to her own cellphone, and to Tiffany’s and the other gang-members’ cells.
Tiffany smirks. Corrine really does have good tech skills. She takes her eyes off Victoria for a moment to make sure Corrine keeps doing what they’d planned.
Corrine scans the apps on Victoria’s phone, finds Victoria’s phone number, e-mail account, Facebook information and sends that to her own phone, too. She readies to take another photo, this time of the actual shearing—
As the front of Victoria’s hair is about to be clipped, the bathroom door slams open.
Tiffany spins and screams again, “I TOLD YOU TO GET OUT OF—”
A massive silhouette fills the doorframe, hands on hips. Mrs. Patty Dean, tall, middle-aged, part-time math teacher—but what’s more important right now, full-time principal.
Her voice booms, “Out of where, Miss Beaumont?”
Tiffany lets go of Victoria’s hair. Lindsay and Meaghan release Victoria’s arms.
Victoria collapses to the floor—
The scissors hit the floor and skid across the tiles.
Corrine sneakily clears the cellphone’s history, and then drops the cell into Victoria’s backpack, which lies open on the floor beside her.
Victoria struggles to her feet, but instead of facing Mrs. Dean like the others, she stares at the tiled floor.
Mrs. Dean walks into the room, picks up the scissors, and holds them up to Tiffany Beaumont, while Tiffany’s Untouchable gang slip like ghosts out of the bathroom.
“Is there a problem here, Tiffany?”
Tiffany quickly nods no, and then she says in a voice like honey, “No, Mrs. Dean. We were just foolin’ around.”
Mrs. Dean turns to Victoria.
Tiffany glances at Victoria with a glare meant to kill—
“N-n-no problem, Mrs. Dean,” Victoria says.
Tiffany smiles, cocking an eyebrow.
Mrs. Dean scowls at Tiffany. “Get to class, Tiffany. Now.”
As she saunters out, Tiffany glares evilly at Victoria.
Mrs. Dean leans over, so she’s eye to eye with much-smaller Victoria— “Anything you need to tell me?”
Victoria shakes her head, no, all the while staring at the floor.
Mrs. Dean smiles kindly at Victoria. “Clean up, young lady. Then come to the office. I’ll give you a late slip.”
