Chapter 2

Once they were in the car and headed to her house, Marigold found it easy to become hypnotized by the dashed white lane dividers going past. Street lights were few and far between and traffic sparse. As focused as she was, Marigold could let the rest of the world recede into darkness. Despite the warmth of late spring, she shivered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thule reach for the heat control, his eyebrow raised in an obvious question. Marigold shook her head once in the negative.

Thule let his hand drop to the radio. With a click, raucous rock and roll filled the car. Another click changed it to something baroque and soothing. Thule turned the volume down low enough to make conversation easy, but neither of them spoke.

Instead, Thule concentrated on the road and Marigold concentrated on Thule. He seemed completely at ease, either unaware or supremely unconcerned by the revenge fantasies she was formulating. Marigold wanted to say something cutting or unsettling or maybe just scratch his eyes out, anything to break his maddening calm. Thule's composure seemed to mock her powerlessness.

Unable to do more, Marigold studied Thule with a critical eye. He was tall enough that his hair was crushed against the roof of the car. From there, it ran in a black cascade down his neck and shoulders and disappeared between his back and the seat. That much hair marked him as one of the dregs. He was social poison.

Worse, Marigold knew that he didn't have to be. Freshman year, he'd been on Mannsborough High's track team. Now that she was really looking at him, Marigold noticed that he had kept in shape since then, even bulked up some. He could easily fit in with Randy Vandevoort and the football team if he would just make a few changes.

The hair would have to go--and the clothes, of course. He was wearing some generic blue jeans that he'd probably owned for years and a flannel shirt worn open to show a t-shirt advertising some computer company Marigold had never heard of. She knew that Thule's family was not exactly well-off, but he should be able to afford to dress better than that.

Marigold imagined Thule with his hair cut and styled, appropriately dressed. The image made her smile, though she couldn't say why.

Thule pulled up in front of the wooded area next to Marigold's front yard. She looked at him questioningly.

"Fix your hair," he said.

Marigold pulled down the sun visor and frowned in the small mirror, "It's a little bit messy, but I'm just going to head upstairs and wash it."

Thule sighed, then said slowly, "If you go in looking like that, your parents are going to know you've been up to something. Fix it."

Marigold started to pout, but Thule did not look like he was going to budge. Searching through her purse for the appropriate implements, she made a few subtle changes until Thule nodded, apparently satified.

"If I pull up to your front door and let you out, will there be questions?" he asked.

"I doubt it," Marigold answered. "I get rides from other people at the newspaper sometimes. My parents don't stay up looking out the window when I stay late."

"Okay," he said and restarted the car, driving it the last hundred feet to the front of her walk.

"Thule?" Marigold asked. Thule looked up, expectantly.

"No," Marigold said, "nothing. I'm sorry." Then, because Thule didn't seem inclined to break the silence, she added quietly, "Thank you for the ride home."

Thule seemed to be considering several possible responses before he said, "Any time. I'm surprised you don't have your own car."

Marigold shrugged, "My stepfather doesn't think that it's safe for me to be driving around alone."

Thule raised an eyebrow, "But he lets you stay at the school until nine o'clock at night?"

Marigold laughed without much humor, "Not really. But the newspaper is an important extracurricular. It looks good on my transcript. We argue about it a lot."

She expected him to say something crude, but Thule just started the car, "I'll see you in school tomorrow."

"Yeah, okay." Marigold said, but made no move to get out. Thule watched her querulously.

With a start, Marigold realized that she was waiting for Thule to get out and open the door for her, like Elliot would have. Feeling foolish, she undid her seatbelt and let herself out.

Inside, Marigold's mother was watch TV in the living room. It was turned down low enough that all Marigold could hear was the laugh track. She looked up when Marigold passed in the hallway, "You're home. Good. Jonas has been waiting for you."

Marigold nodded, dropped her textbooks on the hall table, and walked down the hall to her stepfather's office. Jonas was peering hard at his computer screen and muttering to himself. After a few seconds of this, he seemed to become aware of Marigold's presence and looked up.

"Did you just get in?" he asked. Marigold nodded.

"This is very late," said Jonas. "We expected a call."

"I'm sorry, sir." said Marigold. "I got so wrapped up in getting the newspaper ready, I lost track of the time."

Jonas sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, "Call next time. Marigold, you're staying late at school far too often. You've got to stop pushing yourself so hard. You've got your acceptance letter. It's important to take time for prayer and reflection, too."

Marigold frowned, "It's not unheard of for Harvard to withdraw invitations to enroll for students who don't keep up a high standard of academic excellence." She'd gotten her acceptance letter two weeks before, but this already felt like an old argument between them. Marigold didn't think she'd be able to take another round of it tonight and tried to think of some way to beg off.

Fortunately, Jonas didn't seem to be up for it either because he changed the subject. "Did you get a chance to read the verses I recommended?"

Marigold nodded, "Yes, sir. But, I haven't really had time to think about them."

Jonas nodded, smiled wearily, and tapped the Bible on his desk absentmindedly with a fingertip. "It requires some context to explain. I've got an early morning meeting tomorrow and I'm still trying to puzzle out these numbers. Why don't you go get ready for bed? You look tired."

Marigold nodded and went upstairs. She was grateful for the respite, but also regretted giving up the opportunity to spend time with her stepfather. Between work and church, he was always so busy that the half hour or more that they set aside for Bible study was often the only time Marigold got to see him.

Alone, Marigold stripped out of her clothes. Absentmindedly, she sat and rubbed her breasts to bring circulation back into them. Looking down at the sports bra lying crumpled and inside-out on the floor, she had to admit that it really had grown too small for her and left angry red marks all around her ribcage wherever it dug into her. She'd picked the bra because it made her look much more flat-chested than she really was. Three years and a cup size ago, Elliot had told her that her breasts made her look "cheap" and called them "udders."

She still couldn't bring herself to look at them in the mirror, but Thule had given her something to think about. Considering the position he had her in, Marigold couldn't imagine why he would go out of his way to compliment her. In fact, he could have been as cruel and mean-spirited as he wanted and Marigold still would have forced herself to comply.

Whenever she'd caught men staring at her chest, Marigold had always secretly feared that it was because they found her grotesque and were going to mock her later. Putting the fear into words made her chuckle, but she still couldn't entirely shake it.

In the shower, Marigold considered crying over the situation she'd been forced into, but no tears came. Instead, she took the time to reflect. Before today, she'd worked hard to believe that Thule was beneath her notice. If he weren't trailing her GPA by the tiniest amount, she really wouldn't have known he existed. She was taking one more advanced placement class than him now. Along with Thule's single A- sophomore year, this was the only difference in their grades. No matter how well Marigold had done, Thule had dogged her steps. More infuriatingly, he seemed to do it effortlessly. He didn't do any extra work, never volunteered for anything, showed little respect for the teachers, and with few exceptions, left school as soon as it was over. Marigold could count his extracurriculars on one hand. On several occasions, she had complained to teachers who cut him slack because he handed in an assignment late, citing "work" or some equally ludicrous excuse as the reason. Too many of them considered him some kind of wunderkind that would one day reflect well on the school.

Marigold had always refused to see their race for grades as a competition. Thule was not an adversary. He was an obstacle--socially invisible, always hanging out with misfits from the undesirable cliques. It hadn't always been that way. Freshman year, he'd been much more of a jock and a friend of both Randy Vandevoort's and Elliot's. He'd been dating Marigold's best friend, Maya. Even though Maya was a bit of a theater nerd, she'd also been on the JV cheerleading squad with Marigold and Brianne. Three quarters of the way into freshman year, the three of them had been the only ones with perfect GPAs. But Maya had moved away before the year was over. The first day of Sophomore year, Thule had come back with hair already below his collar, distanced himself from many of his old friends, and not even tried out for the track team.

As he'd sunk further and further off of the social radar, Thule's old friends had either disassociated themselves from him or fallen into less desirable cliques themselves. Marigold knew that, by all rights, she should now be a social pariah for having let him touch her, worse having put his cock in her mouth. She could still taste the bitterness. But, it had been late. No one had been there to see what happened. No one had seen her leave with him. It was as if tonight had happened in an entirely different world, where there were no consequences for who you let touch you or how.

Surreptitiously, Marigold turned the shower head to its most forceful setting and detached it from the wall. She'd been told often enough in religious training that touching herself was a sin. She considered this a loophole, since she never actually touched herself.

Thule might be revolting and unacceptable, but he'd made her body feel so good. Marigold tried to duplicate that feeling, but even with one hand on her breast and the other directing the pulse of water between her legs, she couldn't. Frustrated, she slammed the shower head back into place, adjusted it back to its lowest setting, and turned it off.

In her room, dressing for bed, Marigold decided that there was nothing to be done about her situation tonight. Standing in the middle of the room dressed in a long t-shirt, she decided to lock her door and wear nothing else. Curled up under her comforter, she fell asleep--one hand pressed between her thighs, not there for self-abuse but just there, the other on her chest, still trying to figure out what Thule had done to make her feel so good.

Marigold and Thule had the same classes all morning. He seemed to take no notice of her, focusing on the work and talking with his usual circle of unacceptable friends. It wasn't until Marigold asked a question in fourth period AP computer programming that he acknowledged her existence. The question was a particularly tricky one and the teacher stared blankly at her when she asked it.

"I can help her with that, Mr. Shaw," Thule offered.

The teacher, who was in way over his head, nodded his grateful assent, "Thank you, Bart."

Thule pulled up a chair next to Marigold. The few socially aware types in the class turned to watch, but when he started actually explaining what she'd just asked, they turned away.

Thule interrupted himself mid-thought, "Come and sit with me today at lunch."

Marigold turned abruptly to face him, "What?"

"You heard me," Thule said.

"I will not," Marigold hissed indignantly.

Thule shrugged, "It's your choice. What you need to remember is that arrays are stored in contiguous memory, so you can..."

"What do you mean my choice?" Marigold asked. "I can just say no."

Thule looked Marigold in the face so that she could see the seriousness in his eyes, "You can always say no and live with the consequences."

Marigold looked around rapidly to make sure no one was eavesdropping, "You're trying to ruin me." she sputtered. "Haven't you done enough already?"

Thule's shrug was more expansive this time, but there was iron in his voice. "Sit with me at lunch," he said, "Or don't. As I said, it's your choice."

Marigold almost didn't do it. In many ways, it had been easier to strip for him, even easier to take his cock in her mouth than it was to walk across that cafeteria to where he sat, eating alone, reading a computer magazine. At least he hadn't sat at the table with all of the computer geeks. When Marigold sat down, he didn't even look up immediately, but went right on reading. Marigold felt like he was the only one in the whole cafeteria ignoring her. She started to flush crimson and almost fled before he looked up.

"That's a very pretty skirt you're wearing," he said. "You should wear them more often."

If the skirt had been anything other than calf-length and loose fitting, it would have come out as lewd. As it was, it just left her puzzled.

"All right," she said, "I'm here. What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Thule's eyes flashed dangerously. "I want to have lunch with my friend." He raised his voice on the last word, just enough for the nearest eavesdroppers to hear it and start whispering at this new development.

Stubbornly, Marigold ignored the statement and started eating. Thule went back to his magazine.

"You can't just sit there and ignore me," she said desperately. "Otherwise, why am I sitting here? Talk to me."

Thule looked up at her, holding her gaze for a long moment, like he would refuse. Then, he closed the magazine and put it aside, "OK, dear. What would you like to talk about?"

Marigold searched desperately for something to say, "You sure seem to know a lot about computers. Where did you learn it all?"

To her surprise, Thule smiled, "I've had computers at home since I was in grade school."

"How did you afford that?" Marigold asked. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Thule just stared at her, apparently enjoying her obvious discomfort. Finally, he said, "The first one came out of a dumpster behind the IBM building in Tuxedo. For the second one, my father sold enough blood until we could buy it second-hand from the government. I financed my most recent one by letting dirty old men take pictures of me in my underwear."

Marigold's face fell as a wave of sympathy washed over her, "Thule, that's terrible. I..." The grin on Thule's face made her realize he'd been joking. Marigold scowled at him, "You're awful."

Thule's grin widened. "The first machine was a Christmas present from my father. It was more of a toy than a real computer. I spent years making it do what it shouldn't have been able to do. The second, I paid for by mowing lawns and shoveling sidewalks. The third, my father wanted to give me money to get a better car. I spent it on a new computer instead. Since then, they've paid for themselves. Why are you taking AP programming?"

Marigold put down her sandwich, "The same reason I'm taking all of my AP classes. An A in an AP class counts as 4.3 towards your GPA as opposed to a 4.1 in a Regent's class. If I'd known you weren't taking AP Spanish this year, I could have skipped it."

"It really chaps your ass that I'm Salutatorian, doesn't it?" Thule asked.

"Of course not," Marigold snapped.

"Marigold," he said, stretching out the syllables of her name like he was talking to a small child, "do you really think it's a secret?"

Marigold shrugged, "Are you going to be Salutatorian? I know there are a few people close to my GPA, but I don't really pay attention to class rankings."

"You are so full of shit," Thule said. Marigold grinned broadly at him, letting him know, he'd been had.

"Oh, my God," he said, "You have a sense of humor."

Sensing a lightening of the mood, Marigold leaned in to speak lower, "Why are you making me do this?"

"You're not enjoying our conversation?" Thule asked, one eyebrow raised.

"I would enjoy it more if it were more private," Marigold said, running a hand through her hair.

Thule's face clouded, "If you're ashamed of your new friend, I guess we can meet again in the newspaper office after school." Before Marigold could interrupt him, he picked up his magazine and waved her away, "Go sit with your other friends. I have reading to do."

Dismissed, Marigold almost fled the table. Standing in the middle of the cafeteria floor with her tray in her hands, she began to feel panic rising in her chest. She didn't want to deal with Brianne, who would invariably take the opportunity to needle her for sitting with Thule, however briefly. She could sit with the "Christian clique," but she'd stopped sitting there more than a year ago and never looked back. They would forgive her of course, but they would enjoy forgiving her the same way Brianne enjoyed needling her. Marigold was about ready to throw the rest of her lunch away and go hide in the library when she spotted her way out.

Sitting at the table with the JV cheerleaders was Dawn, the closest thing Marigold had on the squad to a personal friend. Marigold had dropped out of cheerleading sophomore year to focus on her studies, the same year Dawn had joined.

What had enamored Marigold to Dawn was her complete lack of interest in any kind of social climbing. She seemed blissfully unaware of the fact that she hovered on the outer fringe of popularity and never went out of her way to knock others down in order to raise her own status.

Of course, that meant that Dawn would never be head cheerleader, even though she was much more capable than either Brianne or her hand-picked successor, June Kane. It also meant that Brianne often used Dawn as her whipping girl whenever it amused her to do so. Apparently, Dawn had been exiled from the varsity table today, but didn't seem phased by it in the slightest. Instead, she was chatting away happily with the freshman and sophomore girls at the jayvee table. When Marigold tenatively approached the table, Dawn waved her over enthusiastically.

With a sigh of relief, Marigold sat down. No sooner had her tray hit the table than Dawn said, "I saw you sitting with Thule. I had no idea you two were friends."

Marigold almost shot back an angry retort before she realized that Dawn hadn't meant anything by the statement and was just gossiping. Instead, she stammered out, "We're not. Well, not exactly." She winced as her imagination presented several possible scenarios that might play out if Thule caught her actively denying their friendship and finished weakly, "I guess we are, but it's a recent development."

Dawn wrinkled her nose, a move that highlighted the spray of freckles that dotted her face, "That's cool."

Marigold was stunned. Being friends with Thule Roemer was the antithesis of cool. Looking at the way many of the jayvees seemed to eat up Dawn's every word, Marigold had a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach that many of them would realize the truth only when they found themselves spurned by association.

Several times during the day, Marigold tried to approach Thule, maybe to apologize, maybe to try to make an excuse not to be there that night. But, he managed to avoid being anywhere that she could talk to him privately. With a sigh of resignation, she headed down to the newspaper office to await their next meeting.

When she got there, Thule was nowhere to be seen, but a few staffers were. The newspaper wasn't really more than announcements of upcoming events and awards won, so most of the time in the office was spent socializing.

As soon as Marigold sat at her desk, Brianne detached herself from the conversation she was having and marched over, malice clear in her eyes.

"So," Brianne said too casually, "I missed you at lunch today. What did you and the nerd king have to talk about?"