"Ali, what are you doing?" Jeremiah called and began to drag him back.
Ali didn't realize how fast he was striding toward them; it was only when Jeremiah tried pulling him back. He stopped a bit but was fast enough to recover and slow his stride.
"Don't touch me, Jeremiah," he half yelled. Lyca, you told me your uncle was dying. Why the hell did you lie to me? I thought lying was against the rules here?"
Ali could see the shock on Lyca's face, but he didn't care. He hated being lied to; it pissed him off.
"I wasted good sympathy on you and you just stood there and received it," he raged. It was his turn to flare up now.
"Young Ali," Charlie interrupted his rage. "Please calm down, and let's settle this."
His fat chin gobbled as he motioned for Lyca, whose face was red with embarrassment, to come close.
"Did you tell Ali a lie, saying that your uncle was dying?" he asked.
"Yes I did, Charlie," Lyca replied, with her face to the ground.
"Why did you lie to him, Lyca? You know you're not supposed to do that, especially to any member of this club."
She was silent.
"Lyca, tell me why you lied to Ali," Charlie urged.
"Because Charlie," she began rudely, "Ali just came out of nowhere and suddenly he's a member of this club. He hasn't even stayed at this school for two weeks. Do you think I'm supposed to trust him and treat him right?"
"But I trust him and treat him right," Jeremiah jumped in unexpectedly. Ali didn't know he would do that.
"Then you're as stupid as Ali," Lyca insulted, causing Jeremiah to gasp. If the scene wasn't heated, Jeremiah's gasp would have been funny.
"Time-out!" Charlie shouted. There were more gasps this time from everyone, even Lyca. Ali wasn't sure why they all gasped in unison.
"No Charlie," Lyca wailed. "That's not fair, you can't give me a time-out from the club. Does that even go?"
"It goes because I say it does, Lyca," barked Charlie. "Your attitude today deserves a time-out. Now I wanted to make it a week with a nice apology to Ali, but for arguing, I'll make it two weeks with a nice apology to Ali. And after those two weeks, until you apologize to Ali, don't come back."
The meeting didn't take place again because of the scene. An even bigger scene was when Lyca left the room screaming at the top of her voice, and when she banged the door, a hinge fell off.
Ali hadn't seen anyone get so mad like that. Not even his father got that mad.
He was now a bit scared to leave the room. He didn't want to meet her outside the door, but he also couldn't stay back because then he would be the only one left.
"Come on, dude, we're the only two left," Jeremiah urged.
"Do I have to leave here?" Ali frowned. "Can't I leave in the morning when the coast is clear?"
"Unless your parents don't mind that you're out, you're free to stay back," Jeremiah said. But mind you, if anything goes missing in the school, you're to blame," he added to Ali's annoyance because if Jeremiah hadn't mentioned that last part about school, Ali wouldn't have left the room and he wouldn't have somehow caught up with Lyca.
Her face was red hot. Ali was sure his hands would sizzle if he touched it and her nose flared so much that he was sure if she wasn't human, she would be breathing fire.
"Congratulations," she said in a silent, deadly voice. "You keep making my last year of school a complete nightmare."
"I didn't do anything," Ali said unhappily. "You're the one that thinks I'm stupid, lied to me, and just won't treat me right. You know, I thought you were different."
"I'd rather be on time-out for the rest of my school days here than apologies to you, Warden," she sneered and stormed off.
Ali saw her get into the same car with heavily tinted windows and drive off.
"Let it go, Ali!" Jeremiah told him while he walked Ali to the bus stop.
'Hey, she called you stupid too. She has to apologize to the two of us,' Ali said thoughtfully.
"I don't care, Ali," disagreed Jeremiah. "If I cared what anyone called me in this school or anywhere at all, I wouldn't be here. So just let it go. She'll come back to her senses eventually. Don't give in to whatever she's doing."
"Is this why you warned me about her, Jeremiah?" Ali asked, remembering Jeremiah's asking why it had to be Lyca that he liked.
"Well, a bit," Jeremiah said, nodding. "You're sweet and she's not. I don't want her to say anything bad to you; your fragile heart won't take it. "
At home, Ali did a lot of thinking.
I don't have a fragile heart, Ali thought. Jeremiah was just being thoughtless.
If he had a fragile heart, how come he was dealing with his parent's divorce so well?
Or at least that's what he thought, as flashes of his mother leaving and rejecting him, and his night cries went through his mind.
He wasn't entirely sure if the way he was dealing with it was healthy.
The rest of the week went by super fast and was as suffocating as his whole life. Maybe it was because he knew he walked the same school hallway as his newly found enemy, Lyca.
She always glared at him whenever they came across each other. Following Jeremiah's advice, Ali did nothing.
His second Saturday was turning out worse than the first one. His father wasn't home, and the thought of crossing to the neighbor's yard nauseated him.
He even tried calling Jeremiah for some kind of hangout. He didn't mind joining Jeremiah in whatever he did on Saturdays, even if it meant smoking some hard stuff. His father always wanted him to be a handful anyway.
He was disappointed when Jeremiah told him he couldn't hang out because he had a "family thing."
When Jeremiah gave him a response like that, he didn't ask further questions. He thought it was best that way.
Not knowing what else to do, his room tidy, the house as tidy as it can be, Ali decided to rummage through his father's things.
His father didn't sleep in his room, which was in the dark part of the house. Ali sometimes woke up at night to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, and she found him snoozing on the sofa.
Ali wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for, but he knew he wasn't doing a bad thing since Jack barely used the room.
He saw pictures; old pictures of himself and his father, but none with the two of them in them.
There weren't any of his mother's; it was like she never existed to him. Jack was the first person Ali had never seen or heard of anyone taking a divorce this way.
He didn't care. He never cared.
Thinking of his father, Ali felt a familiar surge of anger building up inside of him. He felt almost like the kind he felt when he found out that Lyca had told him a lie.
His anger was increasing when he heard a strange noise coming from the curtained window. The noise sounded like metal hitting against another metal. It was a very strange noise to hear in the middle of the day.
Ali did what any sensible person should do.
He left what he was doing and made for the door.
It was what a sensible person who was home alone and at a place, he wasn't supposed to be would do if they heard such a noise.
He was already at the door when he heard a voice. A familiar female voice yelled in pain. He couldn't resist any longer. He went to the window and drew the closed curtains a tiny bit just so his eyes were the only thing that passed through.
He could see the side of his neighbors, Walter and Adeline's, house. The part he had no idea about was next to his father's room. It looked deserted like no one ever went there.
Peering up, he saw a metal ladder that led up to a tiny window. He wasn't sure how someone could climb out of the window or climb into the window because the metal ladder was far from the ground.
He searched for the cause of the noise with one eye still peeking out of the curtain, and what he found was gravely shocking.
He couldn't believe his one eye that saw her, that saw Lyca McCraigen from school. The same Lyca he was now enemies with was dusting the dirt out of the legs of her jeans outside his window.
What was she doing there? What was Lyca doing outside his window?