The Rule of Won

by Stefan Petrucha

  She was hunched over, scribbling in a spiral-bound notebook. No shock there. She was always writing—on the bus, at lunch, in the halls. Writing, writing, writing. Hell, I don’t do things I like that often.

  At least she was company, so I walked over.

  “What’s up, Erica?”

  “Just contemplating the darkness that is my soul,” she said.

  That’s how she talks.

  “Cool,” I shot back, being what they call “ironic.”

  I squinted at the page, expecting a poem about how much better darkness is than light, but it was all numbers.

  “Not polite to stare, Mr. Dunne,” she said.

  Don’t get me wrong, Erica Black was cute as hell. At first glance, you might think she’s Goth (SNH has three), but she’s not. She does have that Goth look. Wan. Glum. She also has this black curly hair, and I mean black like a night sky, but it’s short, and she keeps most of it covered with this old-style 1920s hat that looks like a lacy baseball cap. Her skin is smooth without a freckle or a drop of acne. It always shines a little, too, like a dinner plate.

  I looked at the top of her hat and stated the obvious: “That’s not a poem.”

  She answered, either annoyed or pretending to be: “No. It’s not. Did you want a poem? Fine. Here:

  Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;

  Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.

  Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give;

  Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

  “Dorothy Parker, 1926.”

  “Wow. Parker, eh? I thought it was yours for sure.”

  “Really? You thought I wrote a poem about suicidal depression? That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me!” She flashed this big fake smile that almost seemed to be making fun of Vicky’s button. “But the fact is, if I don’t pass my next algebra test, I will kill myself.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Get off it. Pigeons and gerbils can pass Blubaugh’s tests. They’re all multiple choice and she lets you retake them. Believe me, I know. I scored the lowest in the class the first time, but I passed. You’d have to be brain-dead.”

  She eyed me. “Then disconnect me from life support, because I failed three. As a reward, my parents had me moved into Mr. Eldridge’s class.”

  I gasped. “Ow. That’s like teaching someone to swim by tying lead weights to their feet.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Better teacher, tougher tests. The only math tests in the world with essay questions. It’s bringing down my whole average and ruining any chance I have of getting a scholarship.”

  The bell rang. She clapped the book shut and stood. “On the other hand, I hear getting really drunk and freezing to death can actually be pleasant, like falling asleep.”

  “You’d never do that,” I told her.

  “Why not?”

  “Because then you’d miss your own funeral.”

  I caught a real smile on her face as she went inside. “Good point.”

  Some people might be worried about the way she was talking about suicide, but really, it was her way of blowing off steam. Frankly, I didn’t know anyone who had Eldridge that didn’t contemplate offing themselves at some point. I had him for trig this year, and even though I was doing fine without much effort, I was having regular night terrors about the quadratic equation slipping into my bedroom and eating my brain.

  Vicky had already left me feeling pretty glum, but my mood dropped further when I walked into creative writing and saw an assignment on the board to write three “free-verse” poems, each about a different feeling. Mrs. Ditellano smiled at me. She has a friendly, plump face and wears these square glasses, like Mrs. Santa Claus, only creepy.

  “Are we floating today, Caleb?”

  I looked at my feet. “Don’t seem to be, Mrs. D.”

  “Keep working at it, dear. You’ll get there.”

  Honestly? I only signed up for creative writing because I wanted to write science fiction, with particle beams and warp engines and alien tentacles that reach through your nose into your respiratory system and lay eggs that burst your lungs. Instead, it turned out to be all this “floating.”

  I scribbled some nonsense about air and waves and my soul, then spent the rest of the class worrying about the Crave. As the day wore on I took a break from fretting to consider talking to All-den Moore. I hadn’t spoken to him since I’d gotten back, and rumor had it he was afraid I was going to beat the crap out of him. He’s a nervous kid to begin with. Since I didn’t really blame him for turning me in—he was just being honest, after all—I wanted him to know things were okay, but I didn’t see him in the halls or at lunch.

  I did see Dr. Wyatt. He’s a little guy in a suit, kind of like Quark from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but without the personality. When he saw me, he pointed at me and practically shouted, “I’m watching you, Dunne!”

  Maybe, but he wasn’t watching the door opening in front of him, and wham! He slammed right into it, nose first.

  I hightailed it out of there, figuring he’d blame that on me, too.

  After all, I was responsible for accidents, right?

  2

  Most things are easier said than done, but for a slacker, that’s true of everything. Picture your normal nervousness going to a club the first time, with people you mostly don’t know, who probably hate you, to discuss a book you haven’t read that you’d probably hate if you did. Triple it—that’s how I felt about that first Crave.

  Even before the building collapse I wasn’t a public kind of guy. Plus, for someone who prided himself on wanting nothing, a meeting about getting what you wanted was a trip into the lion’s den. Creative writing, with the floating, was bad enough.

  Most of all, though, I dreaded the possibility of a group hug. You get into a circle with a lot of people like that and you never really know who you’re hugging, or who’s hugging you. Ach.

  So, even though I usually leaped giddily from my seat at the end of the day, instead I slogged along like a slug. Eventually exiting from SNH’s rear end, I entered a truly ugly asphalt plain. Once a parking lot, it was now home to a series of rickety trailers euphemistically called “temporary” classrooms. Just to see them brings to mind what GP Joey calls Screech Neck’s unofficial town motto: Doing the worst with what little we have.

  They were plopped down by some government relief agency after the school wing collapsed. They’ve been here longer than I have, and will probably still be here after I’ve gone. So, as far as SNH is concerned, I’m more temporary than they are.

  It’s in the trailers that most after-school clubs meet, except for the Weekly Screech, the school paper that comes out maybe once a year, if at all. They have an actual office with lots of room. I heard All-den was the new editor, lucky guy. As for the rest of us, Dr. Wyatt figures if we trash these old wrecks, no one will notice or care.

  I approached trailer B, thudded up the three metal steps, sighed for my forgotten dignity, and went in. Before I even saw anything, I was blasted with the thick smell of mold so ancient it’d probably developed intelligence and was planning to start its own club.

  Adding to that smell were ten, maybe fifteen kids. Huge crowd for one of our clubs. When they saw me, everyone inhaled. It was like one of those Westerns where the bad guy walks into the saloon.

  I figured that was my cue to bag this scene, but Vicky and her button were sitting in a corner, both smiling in a come-hither way, so I gritted my teeth, pulled up a chair, and sat next to her. Sensing my distress, she gently scratched the back of my neck with those long painted fingernails of hers, making my brain melt. I closed my eyes, almost forgetting where I was until I opened them again and saw everyone ogling at me.

  “Hey, I’m not selling tickets,” I said.

  Erica Black was there, too—the only one not focused on me. I didn’t notice her at first because she was behind this huge Goth guy complete with black lipstick and vampire contact lenses. I tried waving, but she was too busy w
riting in her journal. Vicky, who never pays attention to me when I want her to, noticed me trying to wave to a cute girl. Instead of the gentle stroking, she grabbed a tuft of brown hair at the back of my head and yanked.

  “Ow!”

  Before I could explain we were just friends, a voice boomed through the trailer. It was deep but calm, suave, and authoritative, like James Bond just before he shoots you or Darth Vader asking you to join his plan to overthrow the empire and rule the universe together as father and son.

  “Welcome to our first Crave,” it said.

  Still holding the back of my head, I looked up at the source of the voice—this guy who was what I’d call a little “too.” He stood just a little too straight. His clothes, though just a T-shirt and jeans, were a little too clean. His shoelaces were a little too bright, like he bleached and ironed them every night. Even his demeanor was a little too self-assured, like he was a teacher, only he was a kid, like us.

  Or, like us if we’d been born on Krypton.

  It was Ethan Skinson, the kid who had called the meeting. I had heard (well, really over heard, since no one talks to me) that he and his sister used to attend private school before their lawyer dad lost his high-paying job, their adjustable mortgage rate shot up, and their big-ass house went into foreclosure. Now they’re Duppies (downwardly mobile), slumming in Screech Neck. This isn’t to say Screech Neck is the poorest place in the world but, well, we’re all a bit impressed when people show up with new loose-leaf paper.

  He held a thick book, which he raised with both hands. With a flourish, he set it down on the cracked surface of a folding desk-chair, so the title, set in large type against a background showing an open hand and some ancient writing, faced us. There was also a glowing symbol on the cover, a “1” inside a diamond.

  “We’re here to put into practice the ideas in this book, The Rule of Won by Jasper Trelawney. To put it simply, the book explains that if you can completely imagine you’ve already achieved some goal in your life, you will win it.”

  I can barely say two words in front of a group without swallowing my tongue, but he was chugging along.

  “Think about that,” he said. “Anything you want. Money, fame, friends. The universe has everything in it and enough of everything for everybody. Like the book says, the difference between where you are and where you want to be is inside you.”

  “Right,” I was thinking. “If the universe is really just a huge Wal-Mart and you’ve got unlimited credit, why doesn’t everyone already have whatever they want?”

  I didn’t expect him to hear me, since I was thinking and not talking, but he said, “You’re probably wondering: If it’s that simple, then why doesn’t everyone already have whatever they want?”

  Now I added “a little too freaky” to the list.

  “It’s because we hold ourselves back, set up our own failures. Because of bad experiences, bad teaching, or just bad expectations, most of us expect the worst from life, so that’s what most of us get. The universe only gives you what you ask for, so if you think about getting sick long enough, you’ll get sick. If you imagine someone beating you up often enough, someone will beat you up. But . . . imagine getting a new car long enough and that’ll happen, too. Imagine losing weight or gaining muscle, and you will.”

  Yeah? Funny, but I didn’t remember asking for the freaking school to cave in, or for All-den to be there to rat me out, or for everyone to hate me. I didn’t want any of that.

  “Our every single thought does not become instantly real. It takes time and effort. Plant the thought, tend the thought, and the event will grow. Our thoughts are either our servants or our masters.”

  Ethan picked up the book and shook it at us, like the words in it were water and he could shower us with them. “You don’t have to wonder or guess about any of this. We’re going to prove it all here, ourselves, by using our mesmories to imanifest our craves.”

  Even if I didn’t believe him, I was at least half following him until he started speaking in gibberish. Now I was like, “Do the who with what to where?”

  “Let me give you an example.”

  Please.

  “On the back of the door to my room there’s a framed print of the Proverbs of Hell by William Blake. He’s this eighteenth-century poet I couldn’t care less about, but my mother left it to me when she died. When I wake up, it’s the first thing I see; the last when I fall asleep. I see it so often that wherever I am I can close my eyes and picture it just as clearly as if it were in front of me.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Right now I can see the tear in the corner, a splinter sticking out the side of the frame, even the exact shape of a little apple juice stain above the ‘P’ in ‘Proverbs.’ This is called a ‘mesmory,’ a sense memory, something you can remember just as clearly as you can see. When you can picture your heart’s desire as clearly as I can that poster, it’s sure to be yours. Got it?”

  Got it. Maybe.

  He wrote quickly on the blackboard in neat block letters. “I’ve set up a private message board. Sign in with this password, real names only, and please don’t share it with anyone outside the Crave. I want everyone who’s interested to post Craves—things you want, but true things, maybe even things you think aren’t even possible. Anything, really. Sky’s the limit. Next meeting, I’ll pick one out and we’ll work on it together.”

  He turned back and gave us a smile like the one on Vicky’s button. “I don’t expect you to post your deepest secret desires. We don’t know each other that well. But if you want results, take it seriously, and keep it real. Questions?”

  I had a dozen, starting with, “How old are you, really—forty?”

  But nobody else said anything so I kept my mouth shut. I did notice Vicky was looking at him with this funky sort of hungry expression.

  “Wednesday we’ll meet again and start imanifesting. Until then, thanks for coming!”

  That was it. We stood up like it was the end of a class and moved for the door. No one hung back to talk to Ethan. Like I said, he had this “teacher” vibe, and no one hung back to talk to teachers unless they were failing.

  Knowing how the whole not-being-talked-to thing felt, I gave him a nod. My nods are quick, jerky things. You have to be watching to catch them. He caught it and nodded back, this little smile frozen on his face as he smoothly moved his chin up and down. It was, like, a little too-perfect nod.

  I didn’t know whether I wanted to be his friend or drive a stake through his heart.

  Thankfully, no one bothered glaring at me as we left. I guess they were all thinking about Ethan. Vicky kept looking over her shoulder at him, like he was a UFO, so I turned back once or twice myself. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or excited with how the meeting had gone. Just like I didn’t know if going to this stupid meeting about this stupid book had helped me with Vicky or not.

  As we walked, I tried to say hello to Erica again, but she was still too busy writing in her spiral-bound. I wondered if she took showers with that thing. This was an interesting thought, so I started imagining her taking showers, she and her journal all covered in suds.

  Vicky, breaking my concentration, gave me a bubbly smile and said, “So? What’d you think of the meeting?”

  I opted to grunt.

  She shook her head, reached into her backpack, and pulled out a brightly gift-wrapped present.

  “Here,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said. “Thanks!”

  I love presents. They’re, like, not only free, they also mean someone likes you enough to give you something. I was pretty happy for a second there, until I realized what it was. The giveaway was a little bronze pin on top of the ribbon, diamond shaped with a “1” in the center—the symbol of The Rule of Won.

  “Oh.”

  The symbol was also on the cover of the paperback inside the wrapping. Joy.

  “You couldn’t spring for the DVD?” I asked, half joking.

  She leaned over and
put the pin on the collar of my over-shirt. It’s an old green service station shirt, complete with some oil stains. Joey gave it to me. I usually wear it over a T-shirt. With the pin on it, it suddenly felt totally goofy.

  “Vicky, I’m not sure about any of this.”

  Actually, I was pretty sure I didn’t want anything to do with this Crave crap, but I didn’t want to tell her that. “How about you give me a campaign button instead?”

  Her lips curled. “Uh . . . not so sure that would help my campaign, you know? My opponent’s already making a big deal about how you and I used to date.”

  “Used to? Wait a minute . . . did we stop?”

  She pushed the book flat against my chest, like she’d get it inside me one way or another. “Read it,” she said. “It’s not long, and there are lots of pictures. Let it change you.”

  “Vicky . . .”

  She poked a long nail into the “1” pin on my shirt. “And take your Crave seriously.”

  “Vicky—”

  “Just for two weeks, okay? If it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t help you, then quit. Okay? But please? Two weeks? Next meeting is Wednesday.”

  “Fine,” I said. Ignoring her whole “used to” comment, I asked, “Want to walk to Java Jive and grab some—”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, Caleb. I’ve got lots of homework and a campaign speech to polish.”

  Before she turned, she flashed a big grin. “Maybe you should make being alone with me again your Crave!”

  Yeah, right. Like I was going to post on a message board about how my girlfriend didn’t want to go out with me. What wonders that would do for my self-esteem. And hell, after listening to Ethan, I was wondering if I had made the freaking gym fall down. Maybe because I was secretly feeling guilty about being a slacker. Right.

  But, disbelief aside, I gotta confess, I kind of liked the basic idea. As a slacker, the notion that my life could change without me actually doing anything other than thinking about it sounded good.