by Rachel Shane
I nodded eagerly. A good-girl reputation was like the kiss of death in social circles, but with administrators? Backstage pass.
Or it would have been, if the mess had still been there to clean up. When we got back to the crime scene, all that remained was the TV cart, guts removed, TV still perched on top. Someone either had a warped idea of what would be valuable on the black market or a sick sense of humor. Instead of the paper reams on the ground, chalk outlined where they used to be like a dead body at a crime scene.
Did Di and Dru carry this out for me on their own? It didn’t seem like them, but the thought made my heart swell. And if they didn’t, then why would someone stage the missing paper in such a showy display?
The answer came very clearly the next morning, as soon as I entered school. A large crowd was gathered around a set of lockers. Unless a cute boy was stripping for test answers, it didn’t seem worth it to hop up and down, trying to see over people’s shoulders. The curse of being less than five feet tall. Whispers were flying in a jumble of clipped phrases, nothing standing out to give me a clue.
I turned back the way I had come and decided to try for another hallway. Principal Dodgson ran past me, yelling into her walkie-talkie. “Analyze the handwriting! I don’t care if this isn’t CSI. It’s our best lead.” She stopped short when she saw me and dangled the walkie at her side, where it screeched with static. “Quick, tell me.” She pointed at me. “Did you have an accomplice?”
“What?” I glanced around for some clue as to what she was talking about. Truthfully, I’d been banking on her being too drunk to even remember our chat.
“The paper. Did anyone help you take it?”
“N—” The word tried to fly out of my lips in a desperate rush, but I caught myself and stared directly into her eyes, slowing my breathing so my voice came out steady. “No. Why?”
She tilted her head at me. “You don’t know why?” She pursed her lips at whatever she saw in my face. “Well, I know it wasn’t you, and whoever it was won’t be at this school much longer.”
My throat went dry. What had Di and Dru done?
Principal Dodgson waved me away just as the warning bell rang. I hiked my backpack farther up my shoulders. The hallways were so thick with students lining the walls, I could barely get through the crowd. I elbowed and pushed, using mosh-pit techniques to clear a path to my English classroom.
When I walked through the door, I stopped short, eyes wide. Every desk in the room had been decoupaged with white paper watermarked with the school seal; not a single surface of faux wood remained visible. A patchwork of shellacked white-and-black letterhead text covered every blue chair down to the floor. Even the items normally on the teacher’s desk now rested upon a thick coating of stolen paper. The room was blinding white, like a winter morning, only without school being canceled.
“I heard it was a prank against homework handouts,” Dru was saying to Quinn Hart, president of every club she could squeeze into her schedule. “Pretty brilliant, if you ask me.”
“Or me,” Di added.
Quinn flicked her long, red curls out of her face. “Do you know who did it?”
“Di, do we have any idea?” Dru asked.
“I might have some clue.” Di stuck her nose in the air and smiled.
I marched over to the powwow. “Quinn, can you give us a sec?”
“It’s cool. I’ve got some gossip to spread!” Quinn rushed off toward some girls a few desks away.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Dru grabbed my arm and tugged me into the corner of the room. Di followed, naturally. “You can thank me later,” Dru said.
“Yeah, we saved your butt. I can’t believe what you wrote on the desks!”
“What are you talking about?” I tried to peer over her shoulder at the nearest desk, but the whole not-being-tall-enough-to-ride-roller-coasters-at-the-amusement-park thing kind of prohibited that.
“Don’t play dumb, Alice.” Dru brushed her fingers through her straight hair. “You should have heard what kids were saying before we got involved.”
“Contrariwise.” Di leaned in and lowered her voice. “If they think it’s a prank against homework, maybe this will actually make you legendary and not the laughingstock of school.”
“I didn’t do this.”
“Then who did?” they said in unison. Awesome. Now they weren’t just tag-teaming me; they were becoming a backing chorus.
“Who else would care enough about environmentalism to do this?” Di raised her eyebrows at me.
“Who was coached by her parents for years?” Dru took the next line in the verse.
“Who begged her friends nonstop until they got so annoyed they gave in?” Di’s voice cracked. “We could have gotten expelled for what we did yesterday!”
Their words dug into my gut and twisted with the point of a knife. “Di, I—” My lower lip trembled. I swallowed. “And Dru. I’m really sorry that I almost got you in trouble, but I didn’t tell on you guys.” I grabbed Dru’s arm since she seemed to be the one I needed to get approval from, and when her eyes widened, I snapped my hand away. I tried to keep the hysteria out of my voice. “Please. You know this means so much more to me than being coached by my parents.”
“Alice . . . ” Di picked a piece of lint off Dru’s shirt. “I’ve heard it all before. And frankly, I don’t agree with you.”
“We only agree on this: the Going-Green crap is a bad idea.” Dru crossed her arms.
“If you want to finish what your parents started, you can do it without me.” Di took a step away from me.
“Or me,” Dru added, though that went without saying.
As the girls plopped down into their white thrones, the bell rang.
A lump swelled in my throat. I pulled out the chair gently, as if making even the slightest sound would set me off. The white paper felt scratchy beneath my elbows. My eyes shifted to read the message scrawled in black permanent marker on my desk.
How’s this for waste?
“I need everyone to take their seats.” Mr. Hargreaves, our teacher, clapped his hands to stop the jabbering. “School will continue as normal. And just think! If you forgot your notebook today, you’ll have plenty of paper to take notes with.” He snickered at himself. He was fresh out of college and still had that new-car smell.
A loud sound by the window made my classmates suddenly twist their heads. Cashing in my mob-mentality card, I joined them. My mouth dropped as Whitney Lapin shimmied through the window and into the classroom, knee-high boots first.
I was Going Green with envy. This girl had exactly what I needed: guts to be a bad girl where it counted. In public.
Whitney squatted on the radiator. Her long hair fell down her back in curly crinkles, and the fluorescent lights made it look bleached clean of any color. She wore a pleated miniskirt and a black hoodie, as if she couldn’t decide between grungy, trendy, or slutty, though the brief glimpse of her hot-pink underwear skewed the scale toward the latter. The pocket watch dangling from her neck swung in time with the swivel of her hips as she spun to face the class.
Mr. Hargreaves’s black Chuck Taylors squeaked as he headed toward her. “Was there something wrong with the doorway, Whitney? Should I call maintenance?” He chuckled, then caught himself and cleared his throat.
“You told me if I walked through the door late one more time, you’d give me detention.” Whitney wiped her palms together. “So I didn’t use the door.”
“You’re wearing a watch, and yet you’re still late.” He shook his head, smile still plastered on his face.
“Some mysteries just can’t be explained.” She hopped to the floor. “Like the new décor, I’m guessing?” She met my eyes and gave me a little smirk. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. She’d stolen the paper and decoupaged the entire school to get her message across. The girl best known for cutting class and shunning extracurricular activities spent her spare time . . . doing environmental activism?
The other st
udents laughed while Di tapped her pen against her notebook and Dru perfected her scowl. Whitney studied her pocket watch, as enraptured with it as I was with her chutzpah.
“Hang on.” Mr. Hargreaves held up a palm to Whitney when she took a step toward her desk. “You’ll get mud on—”
“You won’t find any mud out there.” Whitney dropped into the only open seat left. Directly behind me.
I glanced out the window at the faded, brown grass and barren dirt trench from the dried-up creek outlining it. Not exactly picturesque. I imagined the jerky motion of a time lapse–photography sequence capturing rosebuds popping out of the earth, like zombies breaking free of their graves.
“That may be true,” Mr. Hargreaves said. “But next time I’m going to lock the windows.”
I spun in my seat, wincing at my creaky chair. I’d been used to rebelling in silence. “I have a crowbar I can lend you,” I whispered so only Whitney could hear.
She hesitated a moment, studying me. The corners of her lips turned up in an almost-smile. “Don’t worry, time is the easiest thing to steal.”
What the hell? When I turned back around, Di was staring at me with squinty eyes. Add superhearing to her list of talents that were a total waste for saving Planet Earth but excellent for spreading gossip. At least Dru seemed preoccupied with a note she was writing.
“What was that?” Di asked, eyes darting between my desk and Whitney’s.
“Is something wrong, Dinah?” our teacher asked. Dru’s head snapped up. Some people had selective hearing for their own name, but it seemed Di and Dru had radar set up for the other’s name as well.
“Yeah, uh . . . ” Di’s face turned a shade closer to the white scarves every other girl seemed to don lately. “I don’t understand why it’s okay for her to climb through windows.”
“That’s not fair to the rest of us who actually come in on time,” Dru finished. “No how.” She twirled in her seat to meet Quinn’s eyes.
Di, however, stared at me, probably waiting for my support. I sank lower in my seat and activated my invisibility shield, hoping Whitney wouldn’t remember I used to be a tattletale like my friends.
“I have to agree with Whitney on this one,” Mr. Hargreaves said. “She found a creative solution to her predicament.”
Creative solution. My idea for recycling was predictable and therefore forgettable. No one could ignore what Whitney had done.
She shot Di a triumphant smile, and I felt caught in an imaginary game of tug-o-war: Di and Dru each clutching one of my hands while Whitney yanked on my feet. Through the rest of class, Di and Dru took notes, becoming student robots instead of the kind of student Mr. Hargreaves wanted. I defied expectations by plotting something more important than how to get an A on next week’s test. When the bell rang, instead of waiting for my friends like normal, I headed Whitney off at the door.
That thing holding me upright was my spine.
“What?” She tried to move around me.
“I was wondering—” I stopped talking when she lifted her watch to her face. Only soon as I did, she spun on her heels. “Wait! Did you—”
“I’m late.” She pushed past me and out the door before I could say another word.
Di and Dru swooped in on me. “What happened in there?” Di asked.
“Why were you talking to her?” Dru added. We weaved through the crowded hallway, grunting in annoyance at the slow walkers rubbernecking at the white-covered lockers. How had Whitney managed to accomplish this overnight by herself?
“No reason.” I shrugged it off as if it meant nothing instead of everything.
CHAPTER 3
After dinner, I headed to the Garden Center, a place I’d avoided since my parents died. It always reminded me too much of them, but today after the decoupaged environmental message, that was what I wanted. I hoped it might strengthen my resolve.
I marched up and down the aisles as conflicting scents of roses and pine warred in my nostrils. I sniffed a couple of flowers in a desperate attempt to forget the B.O. of the kid who’d sat next to me last period.
“You have to be kidding me,” a girl’s voice yelled.
I spun around, thinking someone from school had seen me here. Only the dateless hung out with plants instead of friends. Whitney Lapin stood at the end of the aisle, huddled with a boy, his back to me. The green strings tied around his waist and looped around his neck resembled those of the aprons the Garden Center employees wore.
I jerked in surprise, knocking a bag of seeds off the shelf with my elbow. It tumbled to the floor with a loud plop, and Whitney and Garden Center Boy turned in my direction. Whitney’s icy-blue eyes pierced mine. She pushed the boy backward until the shadow of a column hid them both.
I heaved the seed bag off the floor and placed it on the shelf, pretending to be a good little shopper rather than Whitney’s super-nosy classmate and inventor of the stalkerLite brand of loser. Once I was sure they’d forgotten about me, I inched down the aisle to where they were hidden. Their movements projected jittery shadow puppets on the wall that grew larger and larger, signaling their approach. I ducked behind a large potted plant until fern fronds camouflaged me. There were some advantages to your body’s being candy-sized.
“Whitney, come on. I don’t feel right about this,” the boy said.
“Oh, but you’re fine and dandy with the”—she lowered her voice to subliminal-message volume, and I had to hold my breath to make out the word—“ecotage?”
Ecotage? My parents had often used that word. Sabotage as a means to save the environment.
Bingo. My lips curled into a smile. All along I’d been trying to get my friends to help when I should have been searching for other environmentalists like me out there.
The boy shoved his fingers into his pockets. His dark hair flopped into his eyes, a few tufts curling behind his ears as if he hadn’t bothered to get a haircut in a while. “I’ve already given you—”
“Do you want my help or not?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Okay then.” She put her hands on her hips and waited.
He stepped forward, glancing around the store, his brow sweaty. I recognized him, but mostly because the gossip swirling at the beginning of the school year had kept the students buzzing for weeks. Chester Katz. He used to go to district schools but had spent the last three years at a posh boarding school somewhere in the northeast. Rumors about why he got kicked out stretched from the obvious—cheating—to the extravagant: student-teacher affair, drugs, hazing gone wrong, bomb threats. It didn’t matter which one was true because they all said the same thing: he was not the kind of guy you’d parade in front of your mother. Or sister/guardian, in my case.
He pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it into Whitney’s open palm. A flash of gold glinted in the light. A key.
She closed her fingers around it. “Thanks. But really you should be saying that to me.” Her heels clicked as she sashayed toward the back of the store, the hood of her sweatshirt bouncing.
Chester raked his hands through his hair, then disappeared into the opposite room. I had a choice: follow one of them. My feet and brain were in sync as they carried me in Whitney’s direction. I had to talk to her about what had happened yesterday, and from her quick escape after class I figured it was the kind of conversation that needed to take place away from the peerparazzi at school. When I reached the next room, I squashed myself into the shadow of a tree as she approached a staff door. She looked both ways again before inserting the key and slipping inside. A few moments later, she came back out, zipping her backpack.
What did she take?
And how could I get in on it?
I expected Whitney to head my way and give Chester back his key, but instead she exited through a back door into the night air. I hurried after her in time to see her ducking through a small hole in the forest surrounding the Garden Center.
Curiouser and curiouser. Without another thought, I charged for the s
ame opening between the trees.
Branches scraped against my shoulders. I battled against them, freeing first one arm, then the other. I shimmied through until my butt cleared the hole. Brushing my hands to remove dirt, I bent under the next branch. A few steps later, my toe snagged on something that sent me stumbling. I glanced back to see a hardcover book propped open on the ground, with a cup and saucer lying next to it. Okay, that was weird. Either someone was really embarrassed about his reading habits or I had to add “litter problem” to Wonderland’s growing list of environmental violations.
When I pushed through the next set of maple trees, I paused in a small clearing, surrounded by large oak trees draped with Spanish moss. I tried to stop panting so I could hear Whitney’s footsteps. Silence. I sagged, staring down at the scratches along my arms.
A branch snapped and I whipped my head to the left. The footsteps started up again. “Wait!” I yelled, abandoning stealth. A cool breeze blew my hair all over my face as I rushed in the direction of the sound.
I burst through a set of trees and emerged onto a deserted street. A dilapidated building took shape on the opposite side of the road, so old it probably didn’t even remember its better days. Whitney crossed the yellow line to walk in front of it. I shivered, realizing we were in the part of town girls like me usually detoured around.
Usually.
A spark of color came into view, standing out among the dreary blackness of night. Exotic flowers spilled over the exterior of an abandoned warehouse. Tiger lilies poked out of the broken windows. A cluster of impatiens covered a backdrop of graffiti. Leafy potted plants guarded the broken doorway, as if a garden had sprung up in the middle of the projects to bring them back to life. Growing in a place where everything else died.
I hung back, my mouth parted in awe. Ecotage?
“Hey, K!” Whitney said, pausing in front of a beat-up truck and knocking on its window. She glanced back in my direction, squinting into the distance. The trees swayed in the background like her backup dancers. A figure covered in mud emerged from the jungle of flowers closer to the warehouse. The person shifted an empty pot from arm to arm.