Lux: The New Girl Read online

  Lux stared at her but didn’t know what to say.

  “And then you lied to my face about it,” Noelle continued.

  Lux sat frozen. She couldn’t move.

  “Wow. Guess it’s good to know who you really are.”

  “I thought I’d hung up,” Lux said numbly. Dumbly.

  “Yeah, I did too,” she said slowly. “I went to the bathroom, but when I came back into my room, I heard voices. I thought my music had turned on at first, but then I realized it was my phone. I heard it all.”

  “I just wanted to be your friend,” Lux finally said.

  Noelle frowned. “Real friends don’t lie, do they?”

  Lux didn’t know what to say.

  “Bye, Lux,” Noelle said, and hung up.

  * * *

  * * *

  As soon as it sounded like everyone had gone to sleep, Lux packed a bag. She caught the train to her mom’s apartment and used her key to let herself in.

  “Mommy?” she said quietly, standing at her mother’s bedroom door.

  “Lux?” her mom answered sleepily. “What are you doing back here?”

  “Are you mad at me, too?”

  Her mother rubbed her eyes and frowned. “Yes, but we’ll deal with that in the morning.”

  Lux didn’t say anything else. She just crawled into bed with her mother. She cried and slept and tried not to dream about how much more trouble she’d be in with her father for leaving. And even though she was mad, Genevieve held her daughter tightly all night long.

  The whole next week, Lux’s parents were trying to work something out—a schedule where Lux would be able to see her mom more often, at least on the weekends—but Genevieve agreed to let Lux stay with her until the end of the week. She had to come straight home from school after doing her homework in the library, and she had to show her mom every assignment she finished. But she got to sleep in her own bed. So far, she hadn’t run into Bree or any of Simone’s other friends, but she’d been leaving for school early to avoid them and coming home late, too.

  Lux wasn’t sure what would happen with Simone. Her mother told her about the call from Mr. Harding, Simone’s father, and how he’d said they were “weighing their options.” She told Lux that she couldn’t afford a lawyer and so it would fall to Luke to hire one if it came to that. Lux told her mom about the bullying, about the way Simone’s friends had been tagging her online, and about the time they’d chased her, and her mom said, “That could help us if this goes any further. I wished you’d told me about that sooner.”

  School hadn’t been much better. The girls kept their distance from her. She’d gone to Micah’s rooftop with them nearly every week since that first time, but not anymore.

  And in the halls, Noelle, Tobyn, and Micah acted like Lux didn’t even exist. So Lux went back to playing that part—the invisible girl. Their friendship had been nice while it lasted, but she should have known it wouldn’t be forever.

  Of course Mr. Van Ness chose that week to press all of Lux’s buttons, so it didn’t surprise her that she got into it with him again. This time, their disagreement had to do with framing.

  “You can set up a good shot and wait for something interesting to walk into the frame. Sometimes you have to be patient. The shot can come to you,” he said.

  Lux raised her hand and asked, “But isn’t that a little fake? To set something up and wait? I thought photography is more about being in the right place at the right time?”

  “Yes, but photography is also an art. And art is often about patience, Luxana. It’s like fishing. You go to a spot with possibility, and you wait.”

  Nothing he said really upset Lux, other than his use of her full name. Up until that point, he’d only referred to her as Miss Lawson. But when he said Luxana, all she could think about was her father.

  “My name is Lux,” she said, not loudly, but definitely loud enough to be heard, even though Mr. Van Ness had already turned his back to her.

  “I’m sorry?” he asked, turning back around. “Did you say something?”

  “I said, ‘My name is Lux.’ Not Luxana. So I’d prefer you call me Lux. Please.”

  Mr. Van Ness walked back over to his desk and looked at something on the surface. “Looks like your name, according to this, is Luxana Lawson. So your name is actually Luxana.”

  “So you won’t mind me calling you Felix, then?” Lux said before she could stop herself. Around the classroom, kids laughed and covered their mouths. She’d been doing so well. But that landed her in detention.

  * * *

  Lux walked into the part of the school library where they held detention. It was her third day of being stuck there, and she didn’t expect to see a familiar face already seated at one of the tables.

  “What are you in for?” Lux whispered as she sat down next to Emmett. Someone immediately shushed her and reminded her of the No talking in the library rule.

  “You know, I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said the second the adviser stopped watching them.

  Lux smirked. “Because I’m a troublemaker?” she asked, and Emmett nodded.

  “Clearly.”

  “You’re one to talk,” she said, pointing to the table where they were sitting and then to the sign on the adviser’s desk that read DETENTION 2:30–3:30 P.M. in bold letters. “You’re in here with me, aren’t you?”

  “Touché,” Emmett said. “The strange thing is, I miss talking to you.”

  With things still being weird with the girls, and because she was already on very thin ice with her parents, Lux hadn’t been hanging around after school or even in between classes. It had been a while since they spoke. And he missed her. Lux looked at her notebook so he wouldn’t see her smile.

  “Did you hear that Ms. Reddy picked three of your photos from the art show to run in the paper this week?” Emmett asked the next time he had a chance to talk to Lux.

  “What?” Lux whispered back. She hadn’t been to the last staff meeting for the paper because she’d been stuck in detention, and she hadn’t asked Noelle about any of it for obvious reasons. She’d emailed her best photos to Ms. Reddy, but she hadn’t heard back from her.

  “Yeah,” Emmett said. “I only know because she picked one of me and I had to give my permission for it to run. You’re good, you know.”

  “Oh, I know,” Lux said. But she felt herself blushing.

  “Of course you do,” Emmett agreed, his dark eyes shining. And Lux realized she liked where she was for the first time in a long time. She didn’t need her camera when she was with Emmett; she could look at him forever with both eyes wide open, instead of through a lens.

  Back in her glass prison, also known as her father’s apartment, Lux felt restless. Almost two weeks had passed since she’d left her mom’s, and she and her father weren’t speaking, which strangely made it easier for her to live with him. And so far, it seemed like Simone and her parents were all talk.

  When she wasn’t doing homework, Lux spent most of her time painting her nails, twisting her hair, or video-chatting with Emmett. She was still grounded, and the girls were still mad at her.

  The one thing Lux looked forward to at the end of each day, oddly, was Penny.

  “How was school?” Penny would ask when Lux pushed her way into the apartment each afternoon. Lux ignored her for days, until it became clear Penny wouldn’t stop bugging her until she talked back.

  “Fine,” was all she said at first. But Penny kept asking Lux questions until she opened up.

  Lux started helping Penny with Lillia, occasionally warming a bottle or grabbing the diaper cream, and though Lux still went quiet whenever her father was around, the afternoons before he got home from work—when it was just the three of them—became special.

  “I found out three of my photos are going to run in the paper,” Lux said one day, telling Penny somethin
g important for the first time without being asked first. Saying it out loud actually made her feel proud.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, honey,” Penny said back, and something in Lux’s chest went warm when Penny called her honey. And the more Lux spoke to her, the more the glass prison started to feel like a home.

  * * *

  “There’s a boy I think I like.”

  “Oh, really?” Genevieve asked. Lux had called her mom to tell her about Emmett because even though she and Penny were growing closer, she didn’t feel comfortable telling her things like this. And she didn’t have anyone else to talk to.

  “I have some news for you, but tell me about him first,” her mother said. So Lux did.

  Her father and Penny walked into her room a few minutes into her gushing about Emmett. “ . . . And he’s an artist. He draws. And one of my photos that got picked for the paper was of him and his sketches.”

  When Lux saw her father standing in the doorway, she let her voice trail off, still fully committed to keeping the silent treatment going.

  But he spoke first.

  “I just got off the phone with Simone Harding’s parents. They’ve decided not to move ahead with the assault charges because someone came forward and explained that Simone and her friends had been harassing you before and after the fight in the locker room.”

  “What?” Lux said, at the same time as Penny said, “I knew it.”

  “Wait, who came forward?” Lux said. She racked her brain, running through all the kids at her old school, and she couldn’t imagine anyone being on her side, let alone caring enough to risk the wrath of Simone.

  On the phone, her mother said, “I was going to tell you. It was a girl in your class. Daniella? Dayna?”

  “Danika?” Lux asked.

  “Yes. Her. She apparently told the school about how they’d been treating you and about things she’d seen online.”

  Her dad said, “The Hardings felt they had less of a case because of their daughter’s actions and actually apologized for letting things go as far as they did.”

  Lux nodded slowly.

  “This is good news, Luxana,” her father said. “I’m still disappointed you lost control the way you did, and I don’t ever want you to be involved with that kind of violence again. But I understand a little more now how and why things escalated. You’re still grounded, but only until the end of the week.”

  Lux knew this was as close to an apology as she could expect from Luke. She smiled at him and nodded more, thinking about Danika’s kindness. Lux hadn’t spoken to her since she left her old school—she hadn’t even replied to her messages—but Danika still had her back. Even after everything. She wrote Danika back then, thanking her for it all.

  And that kind of loyalty gave Lux an idea.

  LUX’S JOURNAL

  —May 16—

  I planned the whole prank myself.

  I didn’t know what Noelle, Tobyn, and Micah were planning to do for their junior-year prank because, of course, they hadn’t told me after the truth came out. But I thought if I did something big, something to show I was sorry AND worthy of being a Flyy Girl, then maybe, just maybe, they’d forgive me for lying.

  I was scared out of my mind that I’d get caught, but I thought that taking this risk could work in my favor, too. They’d see that I was willing to risk everything for their friendship . . . even going to military school.

  I snuck into the school early in the morning and filled a bunch of plastic cups with water and carefully lined them up on the stairs that led to the Yard. All the cups were red except the ones I used to spell out I’M SORRY I LIED. The cups completely blocked the way, and no one could step down without knocking them over and spilling water everywhere, so when the students arrived, they lined up, took pictures, and laughed until the principal demanded that every student help pick up the cups until the stairs were clear.

  So the girls would know that I did it, I also texted a selfie of me setting up the cups to all three of them with an apology:

  Keep this to yourself, or turn me in. Just know I’m sorry and I’ll never betray your trust again.

  —A Wannabe Flyy Girl

  Today, Noelle texted back.

  Your secret’s safe with us . . . so, wanna know what we’re doing next?

  Ashley Woodfolk has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and worked in book publishing for ten years. She wrote her first novel, The Beauty That Remains, from a sunny Brooklyn apartment where she lives with her cute husband, her cuter dog, and the cutest baby in the world: her son Niko. When You Were Everything is her second novel, and Flyy Girls is her first fiction series.

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