Campus Saga: Superpower Teen novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fountain
Kendra's note lures Wesley to the campus fountain, where Brock's crew strips and films him; he refuses to apologize, and an estate lawyer steps out of the crowd to tell him he owns Lowry Holdings.
The note was folded in the pocket of my dish-line apron when I came off my shift.
It was written in purple pen on a sorority notepad.
"Fountain, nine o'clock. I have something to tell you. Come alone. Kendra."
I read it four times standing next to the trash cans behind the dining hall.
Kendra Barnwell had never said a word to me in the year and a month I had been at Whitlock.
I had watched her walk across the quad every morning since freshman orientation.
I was nineteen, I had forty-one dollars in my account, and I believed a purple note meant something.
I went back to my room and took off the apron.
My roommate looked up from his circuit board. "Where are you going?"
"Kendra Barnwell wants to talk to me."
He took his headphones off. "Wes. That's a setup."
"Maybe she's nice."
"Nobody on that quad is nice."
I put on my one clean shirt anyway.
The Fall Fling was in full swing around the big stone fountain in the middle of campus.
A hundred students stood with plastic cups, music thumping out of a speaker on the steps.
The fountain had a bronze statue in the middle, a founder in a long coat holding a book.
Kendra stood on the fountain's rim in a short white dress, smiling at me.
My heart did something stupid.
"You came," she said.
"You asked."
She tilted her head. "I wanted to ask you something. In front of everyone, because it matters."
Nobody laughed yet.
Somewhere behind me, a phone clicked on.
"Will you go to Homecoming with me, Wesley?"
I heard myself say, "Yes."
Then the whole crowd laughed at once.
It was a loud, happy laugh, the sound of people who had been told what was coming.
Kendra hopped off the rim and walked away from me without a backward glance.
Two hands grabbed my arms.
Brock Merrick stepped out from behind the statue, six foot three in his lacrosse jacket, grinning wide.
"Dishwasher thinks he's got a date," he announced.
"Let me go," I said.
"Hold him," Brock told the guys.
A lineman I knew only by his neck wrenched my arms behind me.
Another one pulled my shirt over my head and the buttons popped across the stone.
Somebody yanked my jeans down to my ankles.
The cold hit me.
A bucket of fountain water came over my head, then a second one.
My glasses flew off and hit the ground.
Through the blur I saw the red lights of a dozen phones.
"Livestream's on, boys," someone called. "We're at four hundred."
They dragged me up the fountain steps in my wet boxers and tied my wrists to the statue's bronze book with a lanyard.
The crowd chanted my name.
Brock leaned down until his face was an inch from mine.
"Say it. Say you're sorry for stalking Kendra, and we cut you loose."
I had never spoken to her before tonight.
The whole school knew that.
"No," I said.
His grin flickered. "No?"
"I didn't do anything to her. You know that."
"You've got a phone full of pictures of her."
"I don't have a phone. Mine broke in August."
That got a laugh, but a smaller one.
Brock pushed the camera toward my face. "Say it, Gilligan."
Water ran off my nose into my mouth.
My hands were numb and my chest was shaking.
I looked straight into the lens.
"I'm going to remember every face here," I said. "Every one."
Brock slapped the side of my head, not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to make the crowd cheer.
"Cute," he said. "Nobody's going to remember you."
That was when a man in a gray suit pushed through the front of the crowd.
He was in his sixties, silver-haired, holding a leather briefcase against his chest.
He looked completely out of place among the plastic cups.
He looked at me, tied to the statue with fountain water dripping off my chin, and his face went pale.
"Cut him down," he said.
Nobody moved.
"I said cut him down."
Brock laughed. "Who the hell are you?"
The man took a penknife from his pocket and climbed the fountain steps in his good shoes without answering.
He cut the lanyard, and I fell forward into his arms.
He took off his suit jacket and put it around my shoulders.
"Wesley Gilligan?" he said quietly.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm Josiah Lowry's attorney. I've been looking for you since Tuesday."
I had never heard that name in my life.
"Mr. Lowry passed away three days ago," he said. "His will names you as his only heir."
Brock stopped laughing.
The lawyer turned to face the crowd, and every phone in the quad went quiet.
"Mr. Gilligan owns sixty-one percent of Lowry Holdings," he said. "That's roughly four point two billion dollars."
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