Taming My Bullies novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fountain
Rhys dumps Mindy's duffel and her mother's tin into the fountain; she wades in and bets all four boys will apologize before the Founders' Ball, then the lake boy she knew whispers her name.
The first thing I saw at Maple Elite Academy was four boys on the fountain steps, waiting for me.
Somebody had told them a scholarship transfer was coming on the noon bus.
I had one duffel bag, one biscuit tin, and a letter that said I was nineteen and on probation.
The Commons stood behind them, three stories of old brick, and its windows were full of faces.
"New girl," the tallest one said.
He had black hair swept back and grey eyes that had never once been told no.
His tie hung loose.
"Rhys Montgomery," a girl whispered behind me, in the voice people use for weather warnings.
"I'm Mindy," I said. "I'm looking for Birch Hall."
"Everyone is looking for something," Rhys said.
The boy next to him laughed.
That was Grayson, I learned later, a wall of shoulders with a nose broken once and a grin that wanted a fight.
On Rhys's other side stood a slim blond boy with a silver cuff on his ear, looking at my blazer.
"Thrift store," he said. "Look, Rhys. It still has somebody's name in the collar."
"It's my mother's," I said.
The blond boy's face did something small and quick, and then it was gone.
"Even better," Rhys said.
He took the duffel out of my hand.
He did it so smoothly that for one second I thought he was being polite.
Then he tossed it into the fountain.
The water slapped.
My tin went in with it, because I had tucked the tin inside the bag that morning.
Someone on the Commons steps clapped.
I looked at the bag sinking and I looked at the tin, red and dented, with its lid already floating loose.
My mother's marriage license was in that tin.
So were her last pay stubs, her recipe cards, and the only photograph of us at the lake.
"Welcome to Maple," Rhys said, bored. "Go home. Nobody here needs another charity case."
I stepped over the stone lip and walked into the fountain.
The water came up to my knees, freezing, and the hem of my mother's blazer dragged in it.
A gasp went through the crowd, because nobody walks into the fountain.
I picked up the tin first.
I wrung it out against my chest and checked the license through the gap in the lid.
The ink had run at one corner, but the names were still there.
Then I picked up the duffel, and I walked back out, and I stood on the step right in front of Rhys Montgomery, dripping on his shoes.
"Pick them up," I said.
"Excuse me?"
"The rest of my things. They're floating."
He laughed.
The whole Commons laughed with him, because that is what a crowd does when the right person laughs first.
I waited until it was over.
"Here's what's going to happen," I said, loud enough for the windows.
"By the Founders' Ball, six weeks from Saturday, each of you will apologize to my face, out loud, in front of everyone."
"All four of you."
Grayson whistled.
The blond boy stopped smiling.
Rhys tilted his head.
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll quit," I said. "I'll get on the noon bus tomorrow and you'll never hear my name again."
"Bold," he said.
"Specific," I said.
He came down one step, so that we were almost level, and his eyes went to my wet collar and back to my face.
"Done," he said softly. "And when you lose, you leave. In front of everyone, Kincaid. Same as the apology."
"Done."
We didn't shake on it.
He just stepped aside, and the crowd opened, and I started up the walk with my bag streaming water behind me.
I was nearly to the doors when I heard it.
"Mindy?"
It wasn't loud.
It came from the edge of the four, from a boy with curly light-brown hair and a navy cardigan, who had not laughed once.
He was broad now, and tall, and his face had lost its baby roundness.
But I knew the voice.
I knew it from a dock on Lake Tamarack, nine years ago, when it had been small and cracked and calling me to come swim.
"Sean?" I said.
He had stood there through all of it.
He had watched them throw my mother's tin in the water, and he had said nothing at all.
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