Alex
Alex did not like being called an “underdog.” The underdog was the heroine of a John Hughes movie. It was an annoying Hollywood stereotype that forced one to root for a loser, who in reality, was made to live in a perpetual hell, day after day after monotonous day. Bullied. Teased incessantly, at best. At worst, tortured. Shoved into lockers, Ugly rumors spread. Shit stolen or damaged. Once, in eighth grade, a boy had even cut her hair, sitting behind her in Social Studies. The teacher either didn’t notice or didn’t care and Alex kept quiet because, really, what was the point?
An underdog triumphed over their misfortune. At the end, they won out over the popular kids. Got the guy. The scholarship. Acceptance...whatever. It all turned out great and that was that. In reality, once a tormentor had a hold over you, they knew it. They used it. They had an intrinsic understanding of what you pretended didn’t bother you. Somehow, they dug down and they found it anyway, the stuff that would shake you to your core and then it became a weapon.
You learned to live with it. You learned, really quickly, how to keep your head down and to not look any of them in the eyes. Forget about a thick skin; you wore a coat of fucking armor. You had to. Or else, they’d take even more, they’d eat you alive. It wasn’t enough to sit and count the days until you could leave that hellhole...you had to survive.
Or else, you’d be consumed. She’d seen it happen.
The principal was useless. Teachers, even more so, though some of them feigned concern, at the very least. In her experience, all the “no tolerance” policies pertaining to bullying were a joke, put in place so that the school board stayed off their backs. Nothing was ever done and somewhere along the line, she’d stopped telling her parents anything. What good was another trip to speak to someone going to do? Her mother was brushed off, made promises that were never kept and it was all so futile. Her mom, god bless her, wasn’t the one who would show up and deal with it every day. So, she shut her mouth. “Walked away,” as Principal Hutchins had advised, “kept to herself.”
Alex Merrill was no underdog.
But perhaps, if everything went to plan, she would be an anti-hero.
The idea popped into her head one day at lunch. It was an ordinary Tuesday, only made the tiniest bit extraordinary because Finn had tuna fish, instead of her usual PB&J. She’d just found out a week ago that she was allergic, so the tuna fish was a recent development and an unwelcome one at that.
Across the cafeteria, the cheerleaders sat, giggling, picking at their salads, discussing something that Alex was fairly certain lie in the limited range of their combined IQ’s.
Her gaze narrowed in on Hope. Perfect Hope with her halo of blonde hair and dancer’s body, designer clothes. Every eye at the table was on her, rapt, and the sight made her vaguely nauseous.
Just that morning, Hope and her crew had walked by while she was getting her Calculus book out of her locker and she’d snickered loudly, commenting how nice it was that “homeless people” were apparently allowed to come to school, via a charity project.
“Fucking assholes,” Finn whispered, “she knows you’re not homeless.”
Alex lifted her worn Nine Inch Nails shirt on a finger, her dark eyes blazing from behind her thick frames. “You try explaining thrift stores to Hope Ballard. It’s a lost cause, forget it.”
She’d been dealing with Hopes most of her life. It came with the territory when you had interests that didn’t involve flirting and shopping and gossiping. Being the outcast wasn’t the problem; somebody had to be.
Harassment was different. Finn understood, to a degree. She had her fair share of being bullied. But she had something going for her that Alex did not; she was smart. Sure to be the valedictorian of their senior class, headed to Harvard or Yale. She got a break for that, getting teacher’s pets jokes or the ever popular virgin cracks from the football team. As far as being ganged up on, no one got it worse than Alex. If it wasn’t what she wore, it was her hair which was long and streaked with purple, the idea that she didn’t live in one of the nicer neighborhoods and drove a used Honda.
The group of them needed a victim to prey upon and long ago, they’d decided it would be her.
Hope was the ringleader. It could have been because Alex wouldn’t let her copy off her paper in English freshman year. Could have been that once upon a blue moon, she used to date Alex’s older brother who callously dumped her for a girl who attended their community college, could have been she simply hated her for no real reason. Whatever it was, Hope seemed to make it her personal mission to ensure her life was a literal nightmare.
Turning her attention back to her own table of misfits, she shifted her pasta around on her plate. It had grown cold and unappetizing, though she doubted it had ever been palatable in the first place.
Alex was somewhat of a movie buff. When other kids were off at the playground, messing around on the monkey bars, she was diving into film noir. Musicals, the classics, melodramas, anything and everything she could get her hands on. She would never be so cliche to say that movies became her friends, but they did serve to fill a certain void, the unavoidable loneliness that came as part of the package deal when you were an outcast.
She especially studied teen comedies. So much, she became a student of them. They were pretty formulaic, as a rule, particularly the ones where the main character went through some “ugly duckling” transformation at the end to snag the guy who finally realized she’d been beautiful all along. But the ones she loved best veered away from the pattern; Heathers and Mean Girls and Booksmart. Where the females leads were quirky and unapologetically intelligent and stood up for themselves.The popular girls were taken down a few pegs and nothing was as it seemed.
So, Alex, on a very unremarkable Tuesday afternoon, with Finn and Millie and Avery chatting around her, found her movie moment...the revelation.
Hope could go to hell.
If it had been a movie, she might have risen from her seat, waving her hands excitedly. Millie would have asked her what was going on Maybe Avery would flash a quizzical look. Finn would glance around nervously and tell her to sit before everyone started to stare.
And she’d ignore them all. Tell them that she’d had the mother of all ideas and Hope, the wicked witch of Middlebough High was going down.
The lights would dim, the sounds of laughter and conversation would fade away. If it was a musical, this would be the eleven o’clock number; the turning point. Where she would sing a heartfelt solo about how good would triumph over evil.
“Hello, Alex, hello, hello earth to Alex.” Avery raised her voice ,poking her and snapping her fingers.
Alex jumped, blinking rapidly at the sudden intrusion.
“Hey, I asked you a question,” Avery sounded mildly annoyed, which wasn’t anything new, as it seemed to be her neutral state.
“Oh, sorry. I guess I zoned.”
“We were discussing the Fellini double feature down The Realto this weekend,” Millie cut in. The edge of her voice suggested she was eager to avoid conflict, even a minor one. She ran a nervous hand through wild red curls. “Avery was asking who was going.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Um, I’m in, I guess.”
“You guess?” Finn frowned, tossing her half eaten sandwich back into her lunch bag. “What is going on with you today, Al? You’re a million miles from earth.”
There was a second of hot internal debate; whether or not to tell her friends of the blossoming plan. It was difficult to know their level of approval. Finn would appreciate her commitment, but she’d probably beg off being involved because it would fuck up her college plans. Avery and MIllie most likely couldn’t grasp the why, especially Avery who used sarcasm as her weapon of choice. She’d argue that what Alex intended to do was crude and gross and wouldn’t enact any real change.
And it wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
Avery didn’t understand what it was like to suffer, to be publicly humiliated by the same group of small minded pricks since the 1st grade.
Yes, it was crude. It was humiliation at its most primal, plain and simple. What Hope deserved. To be sent tumbling off her throne while everyone watched.
“Just stressed about the trig test,” she shrugged nonchalantly, biting into an apple. “Heard it’s a killer.”
“Yeah, Maillo is insane,” Millie agreed with wide eyes. “We can study together if you want.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you.”
In reality, she knew she needed space to come up with a solid chain of events, to sit with her polka dotted notebook and draft up an agenda like she used to do in 6th grade English when the teacher asked them to make a story web.
Because allowing her emotions to take priority over a well executed ,mapped out, plan of attack would just be messy.
Anti-heroes covered all their tracks.
Mercifully, lunch ended and they split off; Finn and Avery to AP History and she and Millie down the hall to sit in Psych; a challenge to stay awake.
She managed to remain conscious by doodling in the margins, only tuning in to see if Mr. Langley would call on her and then going back to what she was doing.
At the end of the period, she was left with sharply drawn stick figures of Hope, sobbing, clutching her stomach in agony. The image was so vivid, she clamped down hard on her lip,
“Hey, you make another masterpiece?” Millie bent down to peer at the notebook as she stood. “Lemme see.”
Quickly, Alex shut the cover. “Nah, not today. Just random shit.”
If it were Avery, she would have arched an eyebrow, but Millie took things at face value and for that, Alex was eternally grateful.
“Oh, well, I have my driving lesson after last period, just shoot me a text or whatever if you wanna study for trig later.”
In the realm of the universe doing her small favors, Millie gathered up her books and headed off to go to English while she got to go to study hall and waste 40 minutes.
It was difficult not to stare. Hope sat a table in the back, AirPods in, silently tapping her pencil as she opened her book. She was absent; Alex recognized that look. Physically, she was there, twirling a golden blonde strand around her finger, eyes glued to the text. But her mind was on another planet.
Alex knew everything about her. Made it her mission to know what made her tick. Her dislikes and what she was fond off. Her very few weaknesses. It was useful. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that.
Sometimes, she thought she must know Hope better than anyone. Maybe better than she knew herself.
It should be slightly disturbing. After all, she has things she should be focusing on. A future. Maybe she should have been content with the reassurance that she would go on to college and grad school, have a career, while Hope’s highest accomplishment would be becoming a trophy wife and working the makeup counter at the mall Nordstroms. Lose her looks, live in the past, and deservedly so.
But there was something to be said about revenge. Just the thought was enough to give her a chill of pleasure, a little rush that filled the bottom part of her belly with trembling excitement.
If the mere suggestion of Hope suffering as she was watching her, pretty mouth knotted up, eyes glazed over, was enough to make her giddy and she had to squash down the smile that was threatening to take up her entire expression.
Hope glanced up.
Fuck.
She shot her a look, her features hardening and elbowed Savannah, who was sitting next to her in the ribs, who in turn, nudged Tiffany. The three of them began giggling quietly, heads bent in together.
She felt her cheeks go scarlet.
Savannah rose, pencil in hand, and on the way to the sharpener, dropped a folded square on the surface of Alex’s table, her perfume filling the air with the scent of roses as she walked by.
Swallowing hard, Alex unfolded the paper, seeing Hope’s neat cursive take up half the page.
You want to stare at something? Because we’ll gladly escort you to the bathroom so that you can see a freak show.
-H
Fuck them.
She felt the hot tears hit the back of her throat, grasping at the edge of the wood to hold it together. No, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Instead, she’d give them a show of her own.
It would just take time.
Luckily for her, Alex had all the time in the world.
