by Lin Oliver
After waiting a few more minutes, I decided that Principal Pfeiffer wasn’t coming, so I got up and headed for the door. Just as I stepped into the hall, I saw Spencer walking out of the counselor’s office. Oh no, I thought. Please don’t look this way. I really truly deeply did not want him to see me waiting in the principal’s office. I ducked quickly back into the waiting room, but it was too late. He had spotted me.
“Hey, you,” he said, sticking his face inside the open door. “I was just thinking about you. Is everything okay?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t it be okay?”
“Um, because you’re in the principal’s office?”
“Oh, yeah, that. I don’t know what he wants. Probably just to talk to me about tennis. He’s got a little kid who’s learning to play.”
“Well, he picked the right person to talk to,” Spencer said.
The clock on the wall ticked again. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and I thought I heard Principal Pfeiffer’s voice.
“Listen, Spencer, you better go before he gets here,” I said. “I don’t know if Principal Pfeiffer wants everyone to know about his son.”
“What? That he plays tennis?”
“Well, he’s got a really weak backhand. It’s embarrassing, even for a five-year-old.”
I pushed him out the door and closed it. Poor Spencer, he looked confused. But I didn’t care. I just needed him gone. Two seconds later, the door burst open and Principal Pfeiffer entered, charging in at full speed. Lagging a few feet behind him was a man in a straw hat. I didn’t recognize him.
“Sorry I’m late,” Principal Pfeiffer said. Then, turning to the man in the straw hat, he said, “Is that the girl, Luz?”
The man in the straw hat looked at me carefully. I realized it was one of the school gardeners. Could it be the one who was outside the building that day, trimming the hedges? I saw him, but I didn’t think he had seen me. He didn’t look up, at least not that I saw.
“I think so, Señor Pfeiffer,” he said. “She was wearing tennis clothes.”
“Wait here please, Luz,” the principal said, pointing to the chairs in his waiting room. “And you,” he said, looking at me, “please come with me.”
I followed him into his office and watched as he closed the door behind him. I didn’t like that. If he just wanted to congratulate me on my tennis, there would be no need to close the door.
“Sit down,” he commanded, taking a seat behind his big oak desk. “We have a serious matter to discuss.”
My heart was in my throat. I knew what was coming. I hated myself for what I had done, for having it come to this horrible moment.
“Luz came to me and said he saw someone matching your description in the teachers’ lounge last Friday,” he began. “I’m sure you understand we have to investigate a serious claim such as this. Students have no business in the teachers’ lounge.”
I couldn’t look at him. I focused my eyes on a palm tree out the window. I would have paid a million dollars to disappear right then and there.
“I’ve spoken to your teachers to see if they noticed anything unusual going on with you, Charlie,” he went on. “Most had nothing to report, but Mr. Newhart did point out that you did unusually well on your history midterm. Your best grade ever, by far, he said.”
“I studied hard for that test,” I said quietly.
“Did you, Charlie?”
There was a knock on the closed door to his office. I couldn’t see who it was through the frosted glass, but from the size, I could tell it was a kid. At least it wasn’t my dad. Principal Pfeiffer got up and opened the door. It was Sammie, looking confused and worried.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Luz had stood up and was staring at her like he’d seen a ghost.
“Maybe that’s the one I saw,” he said to Principal Pfeiffer. “These girls, they look so much alike.”
Sammie looked at me with panic in her eyes. She didn’t have a clue why she was there.
“Were you wearing tennis clothes during sixth period last Friday?” Principal Pfeiffer barked at her.
“I don’t know.”
“You’d best know, young lady,” he said, giving her an icy stare.
“Friday . . . Friday . . . yes . . . Charlie and I played in the exhibition match that day. We changed at lunch. But what difference does that make? What’s going on here?”
“That will be all, Luz,” Principal Pfeiffer said to him. “You may go. And thank you for your honesty. You did the right thing.”
Sammie looked really terrified now. She searched my eyes to get some sign of what this was all about. Principal Pfeiffer didn’t give her much time to wonder.
“It appears that one of you snuck into the teachers’ lounge last Friday,” he said. “And it appears that one of you may have removed a test. A test, I might add, that your sister seemed to do unusually well on.”
“You think I stole a test?” Sammie said. She was yelling. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
“Is it, Sammie? I don’t think so. Mr. Newhart has pointed out that he keeps the test copies in a file cabinet in the teachers’ lounge. The one where Luz believes he saw you.”
Sammie jumped to her feet like she was going to haul off and slug him.
“Let me tell you something, Principal Pfeiffer. We don’t steal. You can ask my sister. She’ll tell you.”
They both turned to look at me. I opened my mouth to talk but nothing came out. Just a raspy whisper that sounded like I was choking. I was choking. I was choking on the truth.
“There is a great writer named William Shakespeare,” Principal Pfeiffer said. “Have you ever heard of him, Sammie?”
“Of course I have. I’m not stupid.”
“Well, Shakespeare once wrote a play called Hamlet, and in it he wrote, ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sammie snarled.
“It means that sometimes the person who objects the loudest is actually the person who’s guilty of the crime.”
Every part of my body wanted to jump up and tell him to lay off Sammie. She was innocent. She had nothing to do with this. But it was as if some kind of paralysis had come over me. My feet and arms were heavy. My head was throbbing. My mouth was dry. All I could do, and I mean this, was sit there and stare at the palm tree out the window. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “frozen with fear.” That’s what I was. Literally frozen with fear.
Principal Pfeiffer reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He put it on the edge of his desk.
“Does this look familiar to either of you?” he asked.
It was the note written in green ink that the General had passed to me just before I left Mr. Newhart’s class. The one that said, You’re next. with an arrow at the top.
I could feel all the blood literally drain from my face.
“I’ve never seen it before in my life,” Sammie said.
“It was found in Mr. Newhart’s file drawer. He doesn’t recognize it as being his handwriting.”
Principal Pfeiffer looked over at me. I shook my head. There was no way I could confess to knowing what it was. Then the General would be involved. I couldn’t do that. I had promised not to tell. Even GoGo had said that a promise between friends was a sacred promise. Principal Pfeiffer sighed.
“I’m going to dismiss you two girls and give you some time to consider the accusation,” Principal Pfeiffer told us. “I’m going to call a special meeting of the Honor Board for tomorrow morning. I’ll expect you both in the counseling conference room at eight thirty. You’ll have a chance to explain yourselves to your fellow students. The ultimate decision will be theirs.”
“Fine,” Sammie said. “They’ll have nothing to say, be
cause we’re innocent.”
Without even glancing at me, she got up and stomped out. Principal Pfeiffer looked at me long and hard.
“A lie weaves a tangled web,” he said, his eyes practically boring a hole in me. “I strongly suggest you girls untangle yourselves and tell the truth.”
With that, he picked up the General’s crumpled note, put it back in his pocket, and marched out, leaving me alone in the office, staring at that same stupid palm tree.
Chapter 10
“We have to talk,” Sammie said. “Immediately.”
She was waiting for me in the hall as I staggered out of Principal Pfeiffer’s office. She was crying but without tears, the kind of crying you do when you’re too mad to actually weep.
“We can’t talk here,” I told her. “We have to find someplace private.”
“Fine. How about if we go into the teachers’ lounge? You seem to know how to get in there.”
“Sammie, you have to give me a chance to explain.”
“Oh, just like Principal Pfeiffer gave me a chance to explain? I was guilty before I even opened my mouth. How could you put me in that position?”
Ms. King stuck her head out of the counselor’s office and held her finger up to her lips.
“Shhhh, girls. Can you please keep it down out here? We’re administering some tests inside and it’s very distracting.”
“We have to get out of here. Let’s go outside on the grass,” I suggested.
“Great. And let’s be sure to say hello to the gardener while we’re out there. Maybe you can point out to him that I’m not you, that we’re two different people. For one, I weigh twenty pounds more than you. Oh, sorry, fifteen, I lost five pounds. And what’s the other thing? Oh yeah, I don’t take things that don’t belong to me and then lie about it.”
She didn’t shut up all the way down the stairs. She just kept hammering me about what a lousy, rotten, horrible person I am. At that moment, I couldn’t have agreed with her more. It wasn’t until we reached the patch of grass outside the main building that she shut up. I plopped down in a pathetic heap and just held my head in my hands. Sammie grew quiet, but her silence was worse than the talking.
“I assume it was you who walked off with the test,” she said at last, “because I know it wasn’t me. Why did you do it? Was getting an A so important?”
“I didn’t cheat on the test, Sammie. I swear to you.”
“But you stole it from the teachers’ lounge, right? It was really you the gardener saw.”
I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. My face said it all.
“Charlie, I don’t understand. If you didn’t do it for a grade, then why? Why’d you take it? For fun?”
I shook my head. Suddenly, Sammie’s confused expression changed, and I saw the realization hit her—that I hadn’t done it for me, but for someone else. She threw her backpack on the ground and sat down next to me.
“You gave it to Lauren,” she said, her voice boiling over with anger. “You did it for her, didn’t you?”
Again I didn’t answer, but she had come to the truth on her own.
“I can’t believe it,” she yelled at me. “What kind of friend asks another friend to do something like that? To steal and cheat for them?”
“Lauren didn’t ask me to.”
“Then who did?”
“I can’t say.”
I could see Sammie biting her lower lip furiously. She had that look on her face, the one she gets when she’s frowning really hard. Her forehead squinches up in big worry lines and the freckle above her eyebrow drops down closer to her nose. I do the same thing, but my freckle is over my left eyebrow, and hers is over the right one. GoGo always says that when we were babies, it was the only way she could tell us apart.
“Any one of them could have put you up to this,” she muttered. “Or all of them. Those Sporty Forty kids stick together like glue.”
“They’re my friends, Sammie. You’d do the same for your friends. You’d help them if they were in trouble.”
“No one was in trouble, Charlotte.”
“Lauren was, Samantha.”
“Oh really? Why? Because she wasn’t going to get to go to some party? Because she’d have to stay in and study for a change? Because for the first time in her spoiled little life her daddy wasn’t going to give her everything she wanted? I can’t believe you fell for that. I didn’t think you were that stupid.”
I burst into tears. It was as if the full realization of what I’d done flew up and hit me in the face. I didn’t know what to do next. My one true best friend, my sister, was losing respect for me by the minute. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
“Lauren is not your friend,” Sammie said to me in a kinder voice. “She’s two-faced. She uses you to get what she wants—to get close to Ryan or to get something else she wants, like that test. Then she talks about you behind your back.”
“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind us. “But if we are talking about being two-faced, I’d say that’s what you’re being right now, Miss Sammie I’m-Better-Than-Everyone Diamond.”
We both looked up to see Lauren standing there with her hands on her hips. In the midst of all the emotion, neither of us had realized the bell had rung and students were starting to leave class and circulate on the school grounds.
Sammie stiffened as Lauren took a seat next to us.
“Charlie,” she said, offering me one of her strawberry-scented tissues. “I am so sorry. I went to the principal’s office as soon as science was over. I figured out what happened, and I want you to know I’m here for you.”
Sammie rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t have asked her to do it in the first place.”
“I didn’t. And as for you, Sammie, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Charlie is my friend. She is one of us. I am not two-faced, and in the future, I’d prefer it if you didn’t talk behind my back.”
“In the future, I’d prefer it if you didn’t use my sister as your doormat.”
“Cut it out, Sammie,” I said. “This isn’t helping.”
What was also not helping was the crowd of students piling out of the building and making their way to their classes. I felt totally conspicuous, all teary-eyed and miserable-looking. I’m sure everyone was staring at me, wondering what awful thing had happened to me.
“Hey, you guys,” Alicia yelled from across the lawn.
“Can’t you keep her away?” Lauren said to Sammie. “We have personal business to discuss here.”
But Alicia was already halfway across the lawn, running up to where we were sitting.
“Where’ve you been, Sam-I-Am?” she said cheerfully. “Somebody said you had to go see the principal. What’s up with that?”
When Sammie didn’t answer, Alicia looked over at my tear-streaked face and red-rimmed eyes and running nose and immediately took in the situation.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Looks like I’ve arrived at a bad time.”
“Actually, Alicia, you got here just at the right time,” Sammie told her. “Charlie has gotten herself into a little trouble, but luckily Lauren is here for her. Aren’t you, Lauren?”
“I’m sure Charlie and I can fix this,” Lauren said. “And yes, I am here for her.”
“The bell’s going to ring,” Sammie said, standing up and throwing her backpack over her shoulder. “I have to go. Alicia, I’ll see you after school at the Truth Tellers meeting. I could use a little shot of truth.”
“Look, I don’t know what’s happening here,” Alicia said to Sammie, “but I’m sure it’s fine if you skip the meeting today. I’ll tell Ms. Carew you’re busy with family matters.”
“You can go to your little drama-wama group,” Lauren said. “Charlie and I have the situation totally under control.”
&nb
sp; To my surprise, Sammie headed off with Alicia. The only thing she said to me as she left was, “You’ve got to do the right thing, Charles. Just do the right thing.”
I felt sick to my stomach. Lauren watched them go, then stood up and helped me up, too.
“We’re supposed to go to cheerleading practice after school,” she said, “but maybe we should skip it. We can go to Starbucks and talk this out. It’s amazing what a good Frappuccino can fix.”
“I don’t want to go to Starbucks, Lauren.”
“Right, too many people there. Okay, then let’s get some water now. Water will help, and I don’t care if I’m late to class. I would do anything for you.”
We walked down the gravel path to the water fountain by the art building. It was off the main drag and not many kids were there, just one or two who were unloading the ceramics kiln. I noticed that one of them was Will Lee, the little sixth-grader who’d been trailing around after Alicia and Sammie. He waved, much too enthusiastically as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t wave back. I stuck my face in the fountain and let water splash all over it. Then I took the longest drink in the history of the world. After I had downed probably fifty buckets of water, I felt well enough to tell Lauren what had happened in Principal Pfeiffer’s office, every horrible detail.
“This isn’t as bad as you think,” she said when I had poured out the whole story. “My dad’s a lawyer, and the one thing he always says is that you have to have evidence to convict someone. And they don’t have any evidence that you or Sammie took the test or took anything for that matter.”
I leaned against the brick wall of the art building. Will Lee waved again, and I ignored him again.
“But what about the gardener?” I asked. “He says he saw me.”
“You just said he couldn’t even say if it was you or Sammie he saw, so how much is his opinion worth, anyway? It could have been any girl on the tennis team. You all mostly look alike. I say you just deny everything. They can’t prove a thing. Besides, it’s not a crime to go into the teachers’ lounge. Tons of people go in there without swiping a test.”