Lux: The New Girl

  PENGUIN WORKSHOP

  An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

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  Text copyright © 2020 by Ashwin Writing LLC. Illustrations copyright © 2020 by Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Workshop, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. PENGUIN and PENGUIN WORKSHOP are trademarks of Penguin Books Ltd, and the W colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at www.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Cover illustration by Zharia Shinn

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593096017 (pbk)

  ISBN 9780593096024 (hc)

  ISBN 9780593096031 (ebook)

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Lux’s Journal: February 20

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Lux’s Journal: March 10

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Lux’s Journal: April 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Lux’s Journal: May 16

  About the Author

  Lux Ruby Lawson was not having it. Not today, of all days.

  But Simone Harding hadn’t gotten the message. She was trying Lux’s patience, the way she always did, and Lux didn’t know how much longer she could listen to Simone’s loud, whiny voice.

  “She thinks she’s so cute,” Lux heard Simone say. “Just because she’s the new girl. Well, I’ve been at this school and on this team since we were freshmen. I’ve paid my dues. And I’m not going to let some nobody who came out of nowhere try to take this away from me.”

  Simone was the speed jumper on their school’s double Dutch team—one of the most coveted positions. Lux had tried out for the team that day, along with about a dozen other girls, but she didn’t actually care what position she got. She just needed something that would keep her out of trouble. Something to do—besides cranking her music as loud as she could stand it. Or taking photos of random people on the street to keep from being so pissed off all the time. (Pissed had been her default setting ever since her dad left.)

  And after the last . . . incident, her mom had warned her. If she messed up again, she’d have to go live with the dad who’d walked out on her. Lux couldn’t let that happen.

  This was her final chance to make things right.

  But Simone kept talking crap about her—she’d been tormenting Lux since Lux started at this school last semester. To make matters worse, Lux’s dad had called that morning. He told her she had a new baby sister, Lillia Rose—a sibling she hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. A daughter he’d chosen to stay with when it seemed so easy for him to leave her. Lillia felt like Lux’s replacement, no matter what anyone said.

  And Simone still wouldn’t shut the hell up.

  Lux turned to look at the girl she had hated almost instantly.

  Simone was tall, thin, and brown-skinned, with waist-length braid extensions, and Lux had been wanting to yank the fake hair from her scalp for months. On Lux’s very first day, Simone had tried her—walking up to her in the hall and making fun of the shirt she had on. Lux resisted the urge to grab her then. She couldn’t start a fight on her first day. For most of the fall, Lux kept to herself and kept her distance, but now that winter had arrived, her patience was wearing thin.

  Though Lux had moved away from Simone and her friends in the gym so she wouldn’t hear whatever they were saying about her now, soon the coach called them all together again.

  “Okay,” the coach started. “I’d like to see Aisha, Penelope, Tamika, and Lux back here for practice tomorrow. Thanks to everyone else for coming out.”

  Simone glared. But Lux grinned. She couldn’t help it if she was good—better than Simone, even—and the coach saw her potential.

  But back in the locker room, things went wrong . . . fast.

  * * *

  * * *

  Simone stepped right into Lux’s face the second the coach left. “You think you’re such hot shit, don’t you?”

  Lux stayed calm at first. She shook her head and turned away from Simone, even as Simone’s friends egged her on. Everyone knew that Lux had transferred here because she’d gotten kicked out of her last school for fighting, and she’d heard that Simone and her friends were dying to see if she could live up to her reputation.

  Lux wouldn’t give them what they wanted. She opened her locker like Simone wasn’t even there. But then her phone chimed, and she saw another picture of Lillia. The newborn had the same rich dark skin as Lux, the same thick black hair. She looked soft and new and not yet ruined. And just as Lux hit the power button on her phone, Simone grabbed her wrist and spun Lux around to face her again. Lux’s phone hit the floor and the screen cracked.

  “I’m talking to you,” Simone snapped.

  And that was all Lux could take.

  The sound a fist makes when it’s hitting a nose is horrible.

  It sounds like . . . a wet kind of crunch.

  It reminded Lux of the sound her mouth made as she bit into one of her favorite snacks, Cool Ranch Doritos.

  But in that moment, as Lux’s closed fist slammed into Simone’s nose, Lux could only think about shutting Simone up.

  Simone’s body smacked the floor with more force than Lux’s phone had. And before Lux knew it, she’d climbed on top of her and began pounding her fists into the other girl’s face and chest and stomach.

  “Holy—!” someone shouted.

  Simone reached for Lux’s thick twists, grabbed a few of them, and pulled, yanking Lux’s head painfully forward. Lux thought, Oh no this girl didn’t. A second later she thought, I should have done that first. But she wasn’t worried. Like jumping double Dutch, fighting was something Lux did well.

  “Oh my God!” someone else said. Girls from every part of the locker room had shoved into the aisle where Lux and Simone were rolling around on the floor.

  Lux grabbed Simone’s hair right back, ignoring the sting of her own screaming scalp. She punched Simone again, so hard her knuckles cracked.

  “Jesus!” said another voice. Then, “Luxy, no!”

  That voice Lux recognized. It belonged to Danika, the only girl who had been kind to her when she came to this school at the start of fall semester. The two grew closer after Lux had protected Danika from a group of bullies back in November—Lux told the girls who were tormenting Danika that if they kept it up, they’d have to deal with her. And when Danika found Lux crying in the bathroom right after she’d found out her dad’s new wife was pregnant, she’d stayed with her and handed her fistfuls of crumpled toilet tissue until she’d calmed down.

  But none of that mattered now.

  Lux looked up at Danika, intent on telling her not to worry about coming to her rescue, but in that one distracted second, Simone shoved Lux so hard, she fell backward. Her head hit the row o
f lockers behind them.

  That’s when Lux noticed the phones. Almost every girl in the locker room had been taking photos of her, videos of them. And Lux knew that they would be shared again and again for hundreds of other eyes to see. Normally, Lux loved cameras—they were one of her most favorite things. But she hated everything about this. Simone scrambled up and away from her.

  “You’re a psychopath!” Simone shouted. Her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. Droplets of blood were falling onto her shirt. One of Simone’s friends grabbed her arm to hold her back.

  “She’s not worth it, S,” the friend said, then she hissed in Lux’s direction, “This isn’t over.” Lux felt pretty sure this girl, Bree, only made empty threats—Lux had seen her acting like Simone’s bodyguard more than once. But the look in Bree’s eyes still gave Lux goose bumps. She could imagine Simone, Bree, and the rest of them cornering her. But Lux knew they didn’t have the nerve to do anything else now, not with so many people watching.

  The coach ran in, but by then everything had ended. Bree was still holding Simone back, and Lux still sat on the concrete floor, but they were both refusing to speak.

  “Luxy,” Danika said again, softly, from somewhere behind her. Lux felt Danika touch her shoulder, but she pushed her sort-of friend’s hand away.

  “Just leave me alone,” Lux said to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a friendship that felt anywhere close to real.

  “Get changed and get to class,” Coach said to all the other girls. And this is how Lux knew Danika didn’t really care: She seemed to hesitate for a second, but she left with everyone else.

  Lux picked up her ruined phone and saw that her nail polish was chipped, too. She glared at Simone and smoothed down her hair.

  “You two,” Coach continued, pointing to Lux and Simone, “come with me.”

  “Expelled,” Principal Bower said.

  The word rang through Lux’s brain like an alarm she couldn’t shut off.

  “Expelled,” her mother repeated, and it sounded like acceptance more than shock. After all, this had already happened to Lux twice in the year since her dad had packed up, left, and started his new family. She’d always had a short temper, but in the last ten months it had gotten so much worse.

  Principal Bower nodded. “We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to fighting,” he said. He slid a thin blue booklet across the table, flipped it open, and pointed to something he’d highlighted about halfway down the page. “It’s outlined clearly in our student handbook, and all students are required to sign the last page upon enrollment.” He flipped to the back and pointed to Lux’s signature—two loopy Ls with a scribble between them. She’d barely read the booklet before signing it on her third day at this school just a few months ago. Principal Bower looked sternly over his glasses at Lux and then her mother.

  “You could say it’s our version of a contract,” he said. “And I’ve seen enough of the altercation on the phones of various students, as well as speaking with a few of the kids who were in the locker room. Lux threw the first punch.”

  Genevieve Lawson sighed. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “Again, Lux?” When Lux just kept staring at her chipped manicure, Genevieve grabbed her daughter’s chin and turned her head hard to face her. “I’m done, okay? I told you that you had one more chance, and you blew it.”

  Lux flared her nostrils and crossed her arms. Then she uncrossed them when her mother gave her the look. “Yeah,” Lux said. “I know.” Her mother dropped her hand from Lux’s face, and Lux stared through the dirty window behind Principal Bower’s head at the busy Brooklyn sidewalk. The two adults kept talking, and Lux wished she could go outside with her camera.

  “Let’s go,” Genevieve said, and by the sound of her voice, Lux knew she’d be getting an earful in the car. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Bower.”

  As they stood to leave, Lux’s phone chimed. Another text from her father.

  So when do you want to come visit your new baby sister?

  Little did he know she’d soon be coming to stay.

  Luke Lawson II lived in a doorman building with his new family. It was only a few subway stops from the tiny Brooklyn walk-up where he’d lived with Lux and her mom for sixteen years, but it seemed worlds away. A few days after her expulsion, Lux stood staring up at the building. It was modern and made mostly of glass. She could see Hispanic families making dinner and young white couples watching TV. The building hid nothing, but it made her want to hide.

  Lux’s dad had been furious when her mom called him to explain their daughter’s latest fight—so mad, in fact, that he didn’t want to speak to Lux at all. Lux overheard her mother’s half of the conversation from her bedroom, though, her ear pressed to the wall.

  “I’m just as pissed as you are, Luke,” Genevieve said. “But she’s clearly out of control . . . No. We are not sending our daughter to military school. Absolutely not . . . My friend is the vice principal at an arts school over in Harlem. I can try to pull some strings . . . What she needs is a fresh start, and a firmer hand than mine . . . I know you just had a baby. But your other daughter needs you, too.”

  Now, Lux nodded to the uniformed man holding open the door, hating everything about where she’d ended up. And after she gave her name at the front desk, before she’d even made it into the elevator, she knew she’d hate living in this snooty place, too.

  “Are you new to the building?” a narrow-shouldered white woman asked Lux, her high-heeled boots clicking as she walked over. She looked at Lux’s sneakers, her beaded twists, her pin-covered backpack, and her beat-up suitcase as if nothing about her belonged there.

  Lux tossed her hair over her shoulder and pulled her headphones from her ears, settling them around her neck. “Yeah,” Lux said, and left it at that. She didn’t owe this woman anything. After stepping into the elevator, she punched the button for her dad’s floor and texted him, I’m on my way up.

  “Well, I’ve never seen you here before,” the woman said, tucking her red hair behind her ears.

  Lux looked at her and blinked. “So?” Lux replied.

  “Which apartment do you live in?” the woman continued, and Lux shook her head, getting more and more pissed by the minute. She couldn’t stop the heat spreading across her chest and rising up the back of her neck. Why did people insist on trying her at the worst possible moments?

  “Look, lady. Chill out. I’m not gonna screw up your day. How about you don’t screw with mine?”

  The woman stretched her blue eyes wide. And when the elevator arrived on the seventh floor, Lux stepped into the hall without looking back.

  * * *

  Newborn babies are loud.

  Lux could hear the kid before her father even opened his front door. Once he did, and Lux stepped inside, she immediately slipped her headphones firmly back in place, hoping they’d cancel out some of the noise.

  “Luxana,” her father said, calling her by the full name she despised. She hadn’t seen him in nearly four months and she’d forgotten about his salt-and-pepper goatee, his broad shoulders and thick eyebrows. Something inside her softened the tiniest bit. He smiled crookedly for only a second as he reached out and pulled her into a half hug with one of his arms.

  “Take those headphones off,” he said, and slowly, Lux did. He took her suitcase and told her she should take off her shoes before stepping farther inside. “Lillia and Penny are in the baby’s room. She’s trying to get her to go down for a nap.”

  Missed you, too, Dad, Lux thought but didn’t say.

  She followed him down the hall, and he turned into a small room. When he first moved away, he told her he got a place with three bedrooms so she could have her own space if she wanted to come stay for the weekend or longer. But this was the first time Lux had stepped foot inside the apartment. For all their visits so far, she’d just asked him to meet her at a park or
a store, or he’d taken her out to dinner and given her money for a taxi home at the end of the night. Once Penny started the last trimester of her pregnancy, he felt anxious about leaving her, so Lux hadn’t seen him at all.

  The room had three bare white walls and a twin-size bed covered with purple sheets. A floor-to-ceiling glass window made up the fourth wall. Lux felt exposed inside the room and somehow trapped at the same time. She flopped down on the bed and tossed her backpack onto the floor. She turned away from her dad to look through the window.

  “Hang that on the hook in the closet,” Luke said instantly. “I know how things were at your mom’s, but you’re not going to just do whatever you want to here.”

  Her father couldn’t have been more wrong. Lux’s mom hadn’t changed—she ruled their home with the same iron fist she always had. The only difference now was that he was gone.

  Lux couldn’t stop reimagining the day he left. The way he’d barely looked at her the night before; the way she’d woken up to find him and all his things gone without warning. He disappeared, like a coward, and now she finally knew why. He’d decided this random woman, this Penny, was much more important to him than his actual family.

  Lux picked up her bag. She hung it on the hook he pointed out. And in that moment she realized her life here would be a lot more difficult.

  “Hang up your jacket, too, and then come into the baby’s room to say hello to Penny. Dinner’s at eighteen hundred hours. Your mother made some calls, pulled some strings. You have an interview at Augusta Savage School of the Arts in the morning. Be ready by oh seven hundred.”

  Military time. Lux had forgotten her dad’s old habit from his time as a marine. He left the room then, and Lux felt her eyes start to sting—a sure sign of tears. But she wouldn’t let herself cry again today.

  “Ugh,” she whispered, taking in her harsh new reality.