We then took a right and my heart began hammering harder. The stadium loomed in the distance. “Adam?” I said as we pulled into the parking lot, the brick and mortar of Hollow Pines High sprouting out of the ground in front of us. “Just act normal.”
We unclicked our seat belts. Car doors slammed. I ducked my head into the backseat. “Are you coming?”
“I am coming. Wait for me.” Adam didn’t notice when the top of his head rammed against the roof of the car. Each large foot clomped into the gravel and, once standing, he dwarfed me.
“This,” Owen gestured, “is Hollow Pines High.” Adam grunted and backed up against Bert. Owen thumped him on the back. “I agree, buddy. It’s frightening. But you get used to it. Shall we give you the tour?”
The school was crawling with its morning bustle. Hollow Pines High School was a biosphere in which all species were forced to mix. A pickup truck sped past us, kicking up gravel and dust. We paused to cough and swat it away. Adam stuck close to my side.
“Those kids,” said Owen, looking over to where the pickup was squeezing itself in among a line of other gas-guzzlers, “are called the Wranglers.”
“As in the jeans,” I explained.
“You thought that Wrangler jeans went out of style in the 1980s and you’d be right,” Owen continued. “But the Wranglers believe it’s their God-given duty to wear starched denim twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five. Check out the ironed-in creases on those babies.” We shuffled past three guys sitting in the bed of a pickup, sharing dip from a tin can of Skoal tobacco. They passed around a Styrofoam cup and took turns spitting into it. I shuddered and looked away. “Rumor has it, they even sleep in them.”
Adam’s face cracked open with what I believed was supposed to be a smile. He raised his hand in the air and waved furiously. “Hello, Wranglers,” he shouted.
The kids in the truck glanced up and shook their heads before stuffing in another wad of chewing tobacco.
I grabbed Adam’s arm and forced it to his side, shuffling him off past the line of trucks. My face flushed with heat. I made a quick wave and muttered an apology to the confused wannabe cowboys.
“Aren’t those your friends, Victoria?” He pointed back to the Wranglers.
“Definitely not. Come on. We’re headed that way.” I gestured toward the mouth of the main building, where a stream of students was already pouring in. Owen and I had the worst parking spots. It was a hike.
“On your left, you’ll see that we’re entering the Bible Belt.” A collection of kids wearing matching shirts busied themselves unloading posters from the trunk of a car. “They’re harmless mostly, but if you so much as hint that you’re having a less-than-perfect day, they will pray for you. You’ve been warned.” I laughed when Adam sidestepped farther from them. “Over there, those are the Billys.” Owen directed our attention to five husky guys tossing around a ball. “Redneck football players. They have a shocking amount of dudes named Bill. That’s Billy. Then there’s Billy Ray, and William. Those fine fellows”—we paused to watch Billy Ray crush a can between his palms, then use it to peg William in the backside—“those are God’s gift to Hollow Pines.”
“As you can see, God’s fondness for Hollow Pines is questionable,” I said.
Maybe it was seeing guys that looked like him or maybe it was the whooshing excitement of the football, but Adam began gravitating toward the Billys like they were the actual center of the class solar system. “Uh-uh.” I snagged Adam by the elbow. “No way. We steer clear of them.” I had thought Owen and my speech made that clear. “They’re popular. And mean. That, my friend, is a bad combination.”
We picked our way through the rest of the factions—Tea-Sippers, Kickers, and the Angels Camp Posse—and onto the school’s crumbly lawn.
At the top of the walkway, a card table, manned by a bevy of Oilerettes, blocked the entrance. “Calendars! Only ten dollars! Show your Oiler spirit!” Paisley Wheelwright waved a glossy wall calendar overhead.
“That’s the drill team, the Oilerettes,” Owen mumbled to Adam. “Tor affectionately calls them the ‘Whore Core.’”
“Can we please keep that between us?” I shot Owen a dirty look. But seriously, the school’s cheerleaders were selling calendars of themselves. The campus of Hollow Pines High was basically where feminism came to die.
Nearby, I heard a gruff yell. “Ready, set, hike!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Billy Ray cock his arm back like a trigger and fire off a football.
“Incoming,” Owen called out.