Chapter 4 – Refuge – Holly Hayfield

Things ended with Naomi in one-sided frustration. She couldn’t conceive of why I possibly wouldn’t want to join her group. The idea was just so beyond her that she was visibly upset with me for continually denying her, no matter how many times she asked. It was true that I’d be gaining quite a lot by joining her group. Namely, I’d be getting protection from Black Brittney. Her declaration to protect me from Val was dubious. Naomi’s group was powerful, but they steered clear of Val just like everyone else. Security wise, joining Naomi’s group might’ve been the prudent thing to do.

In my eyes the reasons against joining her group outweighed the reasons for joining. They were destructive. They vandalized. They stole. I came to this school to atone for all that I’d done. I wanted to recover and someday rejoin society. This place was a necessary stop along my journey. If I joined up with Naomi then I risked wandering down another road, a darker road. By maintaining my independence I could stay the course.

Aside from that, I didn’t see myself fit for their group’s culture. They were touchy, that was obvious. I could get past that eventually. The troubling thing about that though was Naomi herself. The way she stared at me, the way she touched me. I could sense that she wanted me in more ways than one. Naomi having a thing for me scared me just as much as Val having a thing for me.

In the end Naomi told me to make a final decision by lunch. Naomi was amazing in that sense. I had said ‘no’ politely several times and yet she just couldn’t get it. To her ‘no’ was more like ‘I need more time to think about it’. She was losing her patience in a situation where an answer had already been given. She just wouldn’t take no as an answer.

She probably wasn’t used to people denying her. Her groupies treated her like a mafia boss. She wanted me on a personal level and this made my refusal to join her even more aggravating. She told me to wait for Casper at lunch so that she could ‘escort’ me back to their hideout. ‘Escort’ was such a nice way of putting it after I had already said no.

So lunch had finally come and I was faced with my original problem. Where could I eat my lunch without being disturbed? Now I had new complications. The most immediate problem was Black Brittney and her cronies. It was likely they weren’t finished with me yesterday. Brittney probably would want to take their anger towards Val out on me. After all, it was me Val was after. Why not punish the object of Val’s interest.

My next problem was Val herself. She said she wanted me to be in the same place, at the same time. Was an appointment like that really worth honoring? It wasn’t like I agreed to it. What was she planning to do to me there, hit me? Or maybe she wanted to kiss me again? The final problem was Naomi. She was uninterested in hitting me. She only wanted to kiss me.

With all this on my mind I made an effort to get out of class early. I got permission from my teacher to go to the restroom near the end of class. Instead, I went to the cafeteria. By the time the lunch bell rang I already had my food and was heading to my new potential refuge. I had a good place in mind. It was a place unlike the poor hiding spot I had before.

My new hiding spot was the library. In hindsight the library should’ve been my first hiding spot. It was hard to imagine Black Brittney and Candace stepping into a library at any point in their lives. For idiots like them stepping into a library was much like a witch stepping onto holy ground. They’d probably catch fire the moment they entered. The thought of that made me laugh.

The library was uniquely average. This was the pinnacle of average, generic design. I wasn’t sure what to expect, given the exterior and the rest of the interior. I definitely wasn’t expecting something so normal. Perhaps that was for the best given the extremes between the exterior and interior. The library was mostly empty, as to be expected in an alternative school for troubled girls.

The only other person in the library was one girl eating her lunch. She had a small petite build, short black hair, and dark brown eyes. She looked more like a middle school student than a high school student. She was cute, and had a mysterious charm. She was eating alone at one of the library tables with a book laid out in front of her. Could I be blamed for taking the seat across from her?

“Hey. My name’s Holly Hayfield. This is my first year at this school. It’s kinda crazy here, huh?” I asked.

My goofy self-introduction was met with no reaction. She didn’t look up from the book she was reading as she ate. I wondered if she even heard me. She was so immersed in her book it was possible she paid me no attention.

“Hey. My name’s…”

“Holly Hayfield, I heard you the first time.”

“What’s your name?”

“Why?”

“I’m interested.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get to know you.”

She finally looked up from her book. Her expression was something between anger and aggravation. She was really into that book. It didn’t help that even her angry face was adorable. She looked like a doll. It was probably shameful of me to keep smiling at her so casually but it was hard to take her angry face seriously.

“You’re not allowed to eat in the library.” She said.

“You’re eating in the library.”

“I’m the library assistant. I can eat here, you can’t.”

“Are you going to tell on me?” I asked sarcastically.

“Yes.” She said.

I wasn’t sure rather or not to take that seriously. Her unflinching face made this amusing.

“Oh? I asked Ms. Kinsley this morning and she said I could eat here.”

“Ms. Kinsley doesn’t run the library.”

“Do you?”

“As far as you’re concerned I do!” She shouted.

Now this was getting into awkward territory. I didn’t expect her to snap when I pulled her out of her shell. Provoking her wasn’t my intention. I only wanted to tease her a bit when the opportunity presented itself. Now I decided it was time to back pedal.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“If you really mean that then you should leave.”

“It’s just that I don’t really have anyone else to eat with. Ever since I started coming to this school nothing has really gone my way.”

“And…?”

“And I was hoping that maybe you’d like to be my friend?”

She looked at me very seriously for a moment. Then she looked back down at her book and sighed. She turned the next page as if she were just going to carry on reading.

“No.” She said flatly.

“Maybe it’s because of what I said earlier. Look, I…”

She closed her book and got up out of her chair. She pushed the chair in and relocated her cafeteria tray, book, and book bag to the neighboring table in front of me. She didn’t have a final word for me as she departed. Instead she left me with a disgusted glare before she went to sit at her new seat. Ouch. Was this what Naomi felt like after I rejected her invitation? No, this was worse than that. At least with Naomi I tried to let her down gently. This girl plunged a dagger through my heart and left me there to bleed.

Someone sat their cafeteria tray down beside mine on the table. Out of the corner of my eye I could see them sit down next to me. I was so focused on the girl that had just left that I was slow to greet this new person. My head slowly turned over to see her and I nearly fell out of my seat.

“Don’t bother trying to have lunch with Lilith. She’s mean to everyone, not just you.” Val said as she sat down beside me.

“V-Val… I…”

Val gave me a pat on the back.

“Come on, spit it out. What are you trying to say? Are you going to apologize for coming here instead of the place we were supposed to meet at?” She asked.

I shrank away from her. She put one arm around me and pulled me back.

“Come on, don’t be like that. Let’s at least have lunch together. I’m a much better lunch companion than Lilith anyways.” Val said.

Lilith got up from her new seat with her tray, closed her book and put it into her book bag. She then strapped her book bag on and pushed the chair in. She glared at me again, even though it was Val that said it, and left.

“It looks like it’s just us now. What do you say?” Val asked.

I sighed. Was my opinion even valid in this situation? How would she react if I got up and left like Lilith did? She wasn’t the type to take rejection well. She and Naomi could learn something about minding other people’s personal wishes and personal space.

“You’re not going to hit me, are you?”

She blinked and smiled innocently, like I was asking something out of left field.

“Why on earth would I?”

Because you’re a psychopath! I wanted to yell. She’d probably punch me just for saying that. There was no one in sight now that Lilith left. It looked like Lilith went into a library office room to finish eating alone. The librarian herself usually popped in and out at random. She didn’t seem to work regular school hours like everyone else.

“I don’t mind eating lunch with you as long as nothing weird happens.”

“That’s all that I’m asking for.” Val said.

She turned forward to her tray of food and picked up a flimsy french-fry. The cafeteria staff put no effort into the food whatsoever. That wasn’t even a rude opinion, just an observational fact. I had yet to see any members of the cooking staff. They typically left food out in heated containers like at all-you-can-eat style buffets. When one of the containers was empty a student cafeteria assistant would change the empty one out for a new one.

My theory that the kitchen staff was actually a well-oiled autonomous machine had yet to be disproven. This idea led me to strategically make a salad for lunch as I felt it would be the most edible. There was a salad bar in the cafeteria to accommodate that choice. Val had french-fries and something vaguely resembling chicken strips. Val aimed her undercooked french-fry in my direction.

“Come on, say ‘Ah’.” She said.

I obliged. Of all the forms of torment she had presented me with thus far this was incredibly tame. She continued to feed me fries until she pointed down at my fork.

“Let me try your salad.” She said.

“Are you for real?”

“For real, I don’t think I’ve ever had someone feed me like this before.”

“Now I know you aren’t for real.”

“I’m for real! Come on, let me try.”

I picked up my fork and stabbed the salad until I had a reasonable amount to give her. I hoped she wouldn’t hit me for drowning the salad in ranch. Doing so was an attempt to cover up the taste of aged vegetables. I brought the fork to her mouth and she took the bite without complaint. The way I pulled the fork away from her mouth before she began chewing made me think about how well behaved she was being. It was incredibly suspicious and I felt like something was coming.

“Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about today.” She said.

Here it was. My suspicions were becoming reality.

“I’m running for student council president. I want you as my vice president.”

“What?” I asked.

“I’m running for student council president. I…”

“No, I heard you. It’s just that I don’t understand. You want me to be your vice president? You want to run as student council president? This school has a student council system?”

I didn’t even know where to begin.

“All you need to know is that right now you’re at the bottom of the food chain. Everyone likes to play with you because you’re an easy target.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“What if I told you it was possible to escape all that? You see, the student council gets their own room for handling student affairs. If you help me win the student council presidency then I’d be willing to share the room with you.”

“Oh that sounds great! We’d be sharing a room all alone together!” I said sarcastically.

“I wish that were the case. Unfortunately we’ll need other people. It’s a fortunate coincidence that you chose to eat in the library. I’d like to ask Lilith to join also.”

“Why didn’t you ask her when she was here?”

“She refuses to talk to me. For some reason Lilith is scared of me.”

“Oh gee, I wonder why.”

“I know. I do too.”

“Why would she be willing to join you then?”

“The student council room is here in this library. It’s a large office room in the back. I’m also pretty sure it’s the same room Lilith uses to skip class. If she joins us then she can go on skipping class there. If she refuses then I’ll reveal the fact she skips class there to the principal.”

“So you want to use blackmail and coercion to get her to join, got it. Is there anyone else you want to bully into joining?”

“I’ve got a few people in mind. You and Lilith were just the easiest ones.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when we’re working on speeches.”

“I’ll worry about that. For now, you just worry about getting Lilith to join.”

“Wait, what? I thought…”

“I’ve got other things to take care of. I need you to convince her to join with us. She’ll be the student council secretary, at least in name. After we win I’m willing to renegotiate positions.”

“I wish I could have some of your confidence. You saw how she dodged me earlier.”

“You’ll do fine. Just get her into a position where she can’t run away and it’ll be fine. Lilith doesn’t bite. She doesn’t bite hard, I mean. Just don’t get too close to her.”

“Has she bit you before?”

“Not as hard as I bit her back.”

“And you really don’t know why she’s afraid of you?”

“I don’t know. You’re afraid of me too, aren’t you? Maybe you have a lot in common.”

“Then the only thing we appear to share is a healthy amount of common sense.”

Val slapped me on the back hard and laughed.

“There’s the stale sense of humor that’ll win Lilith over! You two have more in common than you know.” She said.

“I guess we’ll see.”

We began eating together and Val elaborated a little more about the student council vote coming up. Apparently we had only about a month before the vote would take place. Each student council president candidate had to assemble their own student council group. The group consisted of a student council president, a vice president, a secretary, a treasurer, and a student relations officer. The students would be voting on groups as wholes rather than individual positions.

Since Val chose me and Lilith to be on her team, she needed a treasurer and student relations officer. From what I could tell Val seemed to be serious about this. She forced the position on me but I was willing to accept it. This at least meant she couldn’t put her hands on me while she was running for council president. Or at least I hoped that was what that meant.

“I have someone I can convince to be the treasurer. The position I’m unsure of is the student relations officer. I’ll leave that to you. You can choose someone for that role after you convince Lilith to join us.”

“Why’d you choose Lilith to be your secretary? There must be someone easier out there to convince.”

“Oh, you don’t know? Lilith is the last living relative of the school’s founder, Judith Meredith. Having Lilith Meredith on our team will give us a boost in both the eyes of the teachers and the students.”

“Wait, when you say that she is her last living relative, are you only talking about students? What about her parents?”

“Ah… I wouldn’t bring up her parents when you go talk to her.”