Bonfire of the Vanities: Strike

By Frye Martin

At Joan of Arc High, everyone is a part of a clique except Jill and when her brother dies in a car accident on the day before Thanksgiving, she ends up more alone than ever. Then, she sees one of the Vanities' elite with Johan Shelby, the hottest guy in school. At Arc, dating outside of one's crew is basically a crime, especially for the Vanities. Jill gets so thrown off that she doesn't even notice when a bus nearly hits her. Nikola pulls her back just in time but now he is trying to control her life.

Enter the Loners crew, AKA Shades. Her brother played basketball with the leader, Nikola; now he has recruited Jill to be one of them for reasons she suspects are no good. She knows more than she should, but not nearly enough. What do any of them really want with her and what will it take for her to find out?

Bonfire of the Vanities: Strike includes bonus material: full song lyrics, reader's guide and a bonus excerpt of Bonfire of the Vanities: Combust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freedom Dawn Press
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311776112

Frye Martin

Frye Martin writes YA and adult fiction and loves it.***********The heart,The pen,The why,The when,The nameThe place,The hidden face,The hope,The dream,The bursting seam,The story must be told.***********

Book preview

During the month that followed the death of my brother, I took up residency in the Joan of Arc High School bathrooms. The stalls became a new refuge for me and at any time, for any reason, I would go to the bathroom. I would stay there for a few minutes, for an hour, for however long I needed to convince myself that there was any reason to leave. When I managed to do that, I would drift out into the hallways like a ghost and hover until directly told to go to class. Sometimes, I went to class. Sometimes, I went back into the bathroom. All the time, however, I was thinking that I should have died and he should have lived. He certainly would not have cracked up over my death, as I have over his.

Gage was my hero. He was like a real-life man-of-steel. He did things no one else at Arc would even think of doing. At times, it occurs to me that he was just too brave to live in this world, so it took him.

Gage died in a car accident on the day before Thanksgiving and I haven’t been the same since.

^

I: The Fire

"You golden angel,

You braved heaven and hell

To watch over me."

--Brigitte

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

^

Chapter 1

Jill was huddled in a corner of the spacious bathroom that doubled as a dressing room in the north wing of the Joan of Arc High School. She liked this bathroom because the traffic was low, it was typically cleaner than the others and she could sit comfortably without camping out over a toilet. Separate from the bathroom stalls was a room with a wall of mirrors above a ledge, a sort of narrow counter, where Jill could easily fit her tiny frame. Sometimes, the bathroom even smelled like flowers, presumably after a night of performances. The other bathrooms usually smelled like old urine and bleach.

A few weeks earlier, Jill found already dead roses in the trash. She wasn’t sure who they’d been meant for or who had tossed them, but the attached note card said, Break your legs; sincerely, Guffy.

Jill knew of Guffy, although she had never talked to him, never stood face-to-face with him. Guffy was a theatre guy but not your average geeky one. Jill had heard girls laughing about how cute he was and how they’d be willing to join a theatre crew to get closer to him. She didn’t think his name was really Guffy or that he was as cute as she’d heard, but she knew that someone didn’t think much about him.

She found herself thinking about those flowers whenever she hid in the north wing bathroom as she did then, staring at the wall. She was trying to recall the names of all the girls she knew of who hailed from theatre-type crews. There was one that called itself Esprit de Corps. They all acted as if they lived in an alternate reality where they actually ran the school. Everyone ignored them. She didn’t know what crew Guffy claimed. She supposed that the object of the floral gift would have to be a part of the same crew. Jill didn’t know why she even wasted time thinking about it but it was better than the alternative.

Jill had just about convinced herself to go to class when the lights began flashing and a bell started ringing shortly thereafter. It took at least five seconds for her to recognize what was happening. It was the fire alarm. Jill rolled her eyes. Another fire drill? Another hour of standing outside with all of the faces that she didn’t want to see, all of the ones who would act as if it was so much fun to stand outside in the cold, waiting like a dog to be allowed back inside? She shook her head slowly and adjusted her backpack on her small shoulders. She walked to the door and inhaled deeply. Here I go, she thought, and threw open the door.

She hadn’t fully exhaled when she felt herself making contact with something. Her eyes flashed open. Had her eyes been closed?

Oh, sorry, she said automatically upon seeing that she had bumped into a person.

There were two people, hand-in-hand, walking away from the boy’s bathroom. Jill wrinkled her nose. She could see that the two were a guy and a girl but their faces were turned away from her.

Sure thing, the guy said and then looked right at her.

Jill’s breath stopped. She looked up at the guy with wide-eyed surprise. It was Johan. Johan Shelby. This was, she knew, the closest she had ever stood to him and the first time she had ever seen his whole face without the image being degraded by others walking through her line of vision. He even had a small smile on his face. Of course, that would have been for the dark-haired girl clutching his hand, not Jill, as she would have liked to think. Johan was turning away from her to her great disappointment and tugging on the girl’s arm. The mystery girl flipped her glossy, long hair in a blurred movement and Jill saw the face of none other than Contessah Diego. If she was surprised before, she was utterly floored at this sight. Johan with Contessah Diego was sacrilege.

Contessah paused, looking at Jill. She smiled slowly and wickedly. Jill’s heart sank. Johan pulled again on the girl and she brought her finger to her pursed lips. Your secret is safe with me, Jill thought, fighting the urge to send mental daggers after the raven-haired beauty.

In the back of her mind, she tingled with the thought that she had finally seen him, really seen him. Jill exited the school building in a daze without seeing the two again. Not together anyway.

^

Chapter 2

Outside, it was as she had known it would be. It was cold but not frigid and the sun gave off extra warmth, which she had not expected. More importantly, she was surrounded by a sea of gangs, posses, and bands of high school students who all thought they were something and wanted to be more. She saw Guffy standing with a hybrid group that she thought was called Virtuous or Virtuoso or something. Various arts were represented within that group, which formed a sort of umbrella over smaller crews like Esprit de Corps. So, the girl who had received the roses could have been any one of at least twenty. One of the girls standing near him called him Henry. Well, that was one mystery solved at least. The thought of mystery recalled Johan and Contessah to her mind.

Jill looked around for the most obvious places to find them, which was with their respective crews. The fact that Contessah had shushed Jill meant that she wasn’t planning any cross-crew coming out parties. She wouldn’t parade her secret in front of everyone. Jill didn’t have to look far to find Johan’s crew. She looked a few feet away from her to find that the loud talking and laughing that had been nagging her intellect had come from some of the guys that he hung with. She knew the name of one of them, a senior named Nikola. All of them wore red-rimmed sunglasses. Johan, however, was not with them.

Jill spent another fifteen minutes scanning the vast concrete desert that was also called the parking lot for Contessah and her friends but finally gave up. Not surprisingly, they were either invisible or gone. That kind of privilege wilts among the common folk, Jill thought, imagining them whisking away in one of the sports cars they drove, leaving with much less fanfare than that with which they arrived everywhere. That was how things were for them--the Vanities. They were the hardest to miss and yet no teacher would notice their absence.

Then suddenly, Jill’s mind was on her brother, Gage, and how he had managed to somehow rise above it all. Gage had never needed the crews--the crutches--to compensate for his weaknesses. He had never aligned himself with anyone for popularity, and yet, he’d had an impressive array of friends. He hadn’t needed the political pull of a team working in his corner, yet he’d sat on the student council, played basketball and basically did whatever he wanted with the blessing and admiration of almost everyone. He had come in free and he had left free of the chains that came with attending Joan of Arc. Unfortunately for Jill, the secrets of his success had passed away with him.

Gage had been the color of a Twix bar with skin that looked smoother than it was. Jill could remember talking with him in his room one day and telling him how smooth his face looked. He had cut his eyes at her and asked if she would rather have smooth skin or skin that just looked smooth. She thought for a second. Jill had been blessed with skin that both looked and felt smooth--she was a girl, after all--and considering that fact, she recognized that there was at least one more option available. Nevertheless, she cut her eyes back at him and said, Skin that looks smooth, of course.

The only way she had ever been able to really compliment him was indirectly. Otherwise, she was simply stating the obvious. He was tall, certainly compared to her 5 foot 2 inch frame, standing at 5 feet and 9 inches. Gage wasn’t basketball tall but he played the game anyway and he was good. There had even been universities offering him scholarships. In fact, their marketing materials and letters still came to the house where he had once lived, although there was no longer anyone who was ecstatic to open them.

Jill remembered, more than anything, her brother’s laugh. When he laughed, laughed uproariously, the sound could be heard for miles, it seemed. He sounded like a donkey, with all the snorting and braying that anyone could stand. Gage’s laugh was so impressively asinine that no one could listen to him without joining in. Maybe that laugh had been his secret. Maybe it had the power to disarm and entrust all at the same time. His eyes literally sparkled when he laughed, his dark brown eyes.

Jill focused her eyes again. She had been staring blindly in the direction of Nikola and his crew, the one that most people called Shades. As her vision sharpened, she thought that he had been looking at her, despite the fact that his eyes were covered by his dark glasses. She reflexively turned around to look behind her and saw that several teachers were huddled together.

She looked down at her watch, which had been on her brother’s wrist only weeks ago. It was too big for her but she looked down at it to confirm that they’d wasted as much time outside as she’d thought. As it turned out, they had been waiting even longer than her forty minute estimate. Approximately fifty-five minutes had passed since she’d stepped out of the building. When she turned around to face forward, Nikola had his back to her and a girl was now standing with their group. It was the same girl as always. Jill looked around her, feeling like a deserted island.

Ten or so minutes more passed before the teachers began walking around and the sea of students began to break up and disperse. Apparently, the fire truck had long since shown up and there was an actual fire. For whatever reason, it was going to take hours before anyone would be cleared to go back inside the school so the kids were free to go. It was only about an hour earlier than Jill’s typical time to go home, but it was one less hour of agony. She waited for a teacher to tell her the news. She wanted to ask about the bus schedule given the circumstances.

They should already be waiting, a teacher told her dismissively. He was an older man who never looked at any student while speaking. He walked away without ever actually acknowledging her.

Jill paused, giving a group of aimless kids a chance to cross her path. As the long procession all but oozed along, she saw Johan with his Shades crew. He had reappeared out of nowhere. Jill stared at him and thought she’d caught his eye. He was the only one in the group without eyewear. She was sure his glance had fallen in her direction momentarily as he laughed about something with his friends. She sighed three times before she had walked far enough to lose sight of him out of the corner of her eye.

Johan was almost unfailingly considered to be the hottest guy in school. That actually was saying something since there was an unusual amount of competition. Every guy that was ranked with the Vanities was essentially handsome and classic, like young, miniature George Clooneys. They wore all the designer clothes and drove luxury cars and, though few of them were sporty, there was no doubt but that they were quite fine in the body department. The same could be said of other crews, especially the athletic ones. Then again, Johan had serious competition with guys in his own crew but he just stood apart.

He was something like 6’2 with a long and leanly muscular frame. His skin might have been olive-colored but he always had just enough of a tan to be a warm light brown. His hair was jet black and long enough to be wavy, although he had shown up at school once or twice with stubble on his head and it had been almost as if an equally beautiful cousin had appeared. His face was made for magazines. With his broad forehead, square jaw and full lips, in combination with his sun-kissed coloring, he really seemed otherworldly, like the son of a Greek god. His eyes, though, made him look as if he himself were a god. They were an unexpected shade of green that had to be seen. Jill had heard people claim to have green eyes but she had never been able to tell. Even on one glance, the green popped out, grabbed a girl and held her attention. They were like the first sprigs of color in the trees after winter. His eyes alone were enough to make a girl light-headed.

Jill had heard girls whispering that Johan knew nothing of his ethnic heritage. There was something about him that looked totally middle-eastern, but then he had those eyes and his name was Johan, which always caused confusion, even though a name is not necessarily related to ethnicity. She had heard it said that Johan was supposedly a mutt with ancestors from every continent, which left open the possibility that one of them was Zeus.

It was inevitable that Jill’s mind would drift back to the images of Contessah Diego’s Cheshire cat grin in the hallway and her hand in Johan’s. That would make at least forty times that Jill had thought of it.

Contessah was one of the Vanities--one of the Gang of Six, to be exact. She was supposedly seeing one of them, not the leader, Emory, or the one that Jill saw all of the time, Silvyn. It must have been Miles Henderson. But it would seem that was all just a rumor anyway, unless she was cheating and doing a poor job of keeping it under wraps. Anyone could have caught them together in the boy’s bathroom. She had to practically be daring someone to catch them. Jill knew that some cross-crew dating went on--not to do so would eventually rise to the level of incest--but a high-powered one of the Vanities with anyone else did not add up.

Jill glanced to her side, breaking free from her musings suddenly. She saw Johan’s friend, the Shades guy, Nikola, on her left. She didn’t bother to wonder why he was in the bus depot when she was almost certain that he drove a car. She was already imagining Contessah being stripped of her position after the truth came out. Jill didn’t think the other G-6 girls would care much since chances were that they would be jealous, but what would the guys think? What would Miles think?

Without warning, Jill felt a hand gripping her arm. Hard. Then, she felt the whoosh of a passing vehicle--a bus. Jill’s mouth fell open. She had been about to step off of the curb and into the path of that bus. Her heart pounded and the reverberations in her chest resembled a ringing gong. When she realized that the hand on her arm had stopped her, she looked over to her left. It was Nikola and his mouth was moving, but she didn’t hear anything he said. She ripped her arm away from his hand and shakily crossed the same street where she might have been road-kill as she headed toward her bus.

^

Chapter 3

Hey, Nikola shouted at her with surprise in his voice, hey, you’re just going to walk away?

Jill didn’t turn around but kept moving. Seconds passed before Nikola was walking next to her.

Don’t you know what almost happened back there?

His insinuation that she was a complete idiot stopped her from walking further. She looked up at him. She had to look way up. She guessed that he was a few inches taller than her brother.

What do you want? she asked, not with attitude, but he bristled.

How about a thank you or something? I just saved your life!

She rolled her eyes as if he was exaggerating but she couldn’t actually say that since she wasn’t altogether certain that he was.

You want a medal?

She turned away again, looking at her watch.

You’re such a smart aleck, she heard him say.

She faced him angrily.

You don’t know anything about me.

Nikola smirked at her across the fifteen foot distance between them. I know more about you than you think, he said. His smile faded as his eyes dropped. I, uh, I knew your brother. I’m sorry he’s gone.

The adrenaline that had resulted from coming close to death, the embarrassment of being called on bad behavior and the abrupt reminder of her brother’s death sparked a fury in Jill’s heart. Her words exited her mouth through clenched teeth.

Liar! You didn’t know my brother!

Nikola’s face didn’t register surprise or anything. He just looked at Jill with increased intensity.

Yes, I did. We played basketball together. We were friends.

He never talked about you, Jill shouted back.

Most of the students were gone but she didn’t care if anyone saw them. As angry as she became, Nikola appeared to relax more.

Shaking his head, he replied, Gage never talked about anyone.

Although she held the use of her brother’s name against him, he was right about Gage. He’d had an uncanny ability to talk about both everything and nothing but he was never one to discuss people. He didn’t talk about his friends without good reason and he never talked to Jill about girls. He always seemed focused on the moment with whomever he was with and made that person feel important. Of course Nikola knew Gage. Of course they had played basketball together. Now that she thought of it, she could think of many times that she had seen them together. That didn’t make them friends, nor did it mean that he could act as if he knew her.

You saved my life, she said solemnly. Thank you. Now, please get lost.

You’re in my debt for the rest of your life now.

Those were the words that drifted behind her.

She climbed onto her bus and sat in an empty seat where she put her face to the window. As if the bus had been waiting for her, it pulled away just after she found her seat.

Across the aisle from Jill, a girl started singing to the boy sitting in the seat in front of her. She sang the song called "Golden Angel," made popular by the singer Brigitte. The guy looked mesmerized, like he couldn’t believe that she would sing to him in front of everyone but the girl was always singing. She was part of a music