There was even a fun article by Moore about how gullible people are. It told about this Web site that warned about the dangers of a compound called dihydrogen monoxide. This kid in California collected signatures for a petition to ban it. Only dihydrogen monoxide is actually just H20, water. Even so, the kid got hundreds of signatures, and no one bothered to check their facts, preferring to rely on word of mouth.
That made me realize, with some annoyance, the point Moore was trying to make about me and “Vanuatu.” He could tell me it meant whatever he wanted it to, lie through his teeth about it, unless I found out for myself.
Either that or he just liked yanking my chain.
And no, they didn’t publish the article about me and the building collapse. I didn’t mention it, since it seemed relatively unimportant.
When I finished, I noticed Moore, Drik, and Mason all tapping their feet, waiting. Thinking they wanted my opinion, I smiled and said, “This is great!”
Mason snapped her fingers a few times in rapid succession. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, any typos?”
“Way to take a compliment,” I said, handing her the pages. I’d found only one or two words I thought were misspelled, and I wasn’t sure about those.
“We’re all a little tense,” Moore said. As he reached for the Diet Pepsi, I noticed his hand was shaking.
“The sooner we’re out of here, the better,” Drik said.
I half laughed. “What are you afraid of now? The problem’s tomorrow morning when everyone reads this.”
Drik looked up and away. “Good point. My parents let me take a mental health day once a month. I’ve been saving a few . . .”
Moore turned to Mason. “Are we finished?”
She pressed a single key. “Yep. Just e-mailed it with our fake purchase order. By the time we get to the Regis Pronto Print, it may even be ready. Then we just leave it in the front hall and the janitors will distribute it around five A.M.”
“I’ll help with pickup, but tomorrow is mental health day,” Drik said. “Mental health week if I can manage it.”
“Fine. You and Mason get going. I’ll stay and post online,” Moore said.
“You sure?” Drik asked. “That could wait. You could do it from home.”
Moore shook his head. “We’ve been waiting long enough.”
Mason scooped up one of the humongous bottles of diet soda on her way out. “I’ll drink, you drive,” she said to Drik as they disappeared out the door.
Moore waited until he heard their car pull out, then clicked UPLOAD on his laptop and watched the bar indicator rise to 100 percent.
“And that is that,” he said. He blew some air between his pursed lips, leaned back in the squeaky desk chair he was in, and eyed me until I said, “What?”
“Thanks for helping,” he said. “I misjudged you.”
“Moore?”
“What?”
“The Rule of Won, you think it’s total garbage?”
He made a face. “I said I was okay with positive thinking. If you believe you can get something, your brain will be looking for ways to get it. Of course that’ll make it more likely you will. But that’s not magic, it’s just tricking yourself into doing a little extra work.”
I pressed him on the point. “But even you can’t say it never happens just the way the book says?”
He rolled his eyes and reached for the remaining soda bottle. “You mean is it possible some freaky mutant out there in the big bad cosmos has the ability to manifest his thoughts the way the superhero Frozone generates ice from moisture in the air?”
“If you put it that way, it sounds stupid, but yeah.”
He shrugged, drained the bottle, then smacked his lips. “Anything’s possible.” He slid out of his chair and stretched. “Man, do I have to piss.”
“Probably all that dihydrogen monoxide you’re consuming.”
He laughed. First time I had seen him actually laugh. He paused at the door.
“You’re not so bad, Dunne. Wait with my laptop a minute. I’ll walk you to the bus after I hit the head.”
He slipped out. I wanted to wildly exhale now that all the work was finished, but didn’t want to wind up inhaling too much mold. Instead, I amused myself by poking through the junk food bag and seeing if there was anything left worth chewing on.
Moore, it was turning out, wasn’t so bad either. Alden.
I’d just put my hands on a half-empty (or half-full if you want to think positive) bag of Pringles when I heard a cry from outside.
“Caleb!”
It was Moore’s voice. Maybe he was having trouble opening the door. It had gotten stuck on me the last time I’d gone out.
“What?” I shouted back. Nothing. There was a thud as something heavy pressed against the door. “Moore?”
I heard scuffling, a low moan, then a few rapid thuds.
“Moore?” I yelled, heading for the door. I pushed, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Caleb!” Moore screamed. Then came a few more thuds, which I realized sounded like someone getting punched. “Help!”
More thuds.
“Hey!” I shouted, shoving my shoulder against the door. “Hey!”
It gave an inch and I caught a glimpse of a black sweater on the other side. Someone was holding it shut.
“Caleb!” Moore said again, only this time it sounded more like a cry.
I rammed into the door as hard as I could. The metal frame bent as I slammed it, but whoever was on the other side was bigger and stronger than me or the door.
Moore moaned now, occasionally making a pained gasp or gurgling noise as the thuds and punches continued.
Shoulder stinging from smashing the door, I headed for one of the small trailer windows and shoved it open as far as it would go. Outside, in the yellow parking-lot lights, I could make out two large, dark figures hovering over a fallen Moore, punching and kicking him. A third was leaning into the trailer door.
“Hey!” I screamed, as loudly as I could. “Help! Help!”
They stopped and turned toward me. “Help!” I shouted again. Moore was rolling on the ground in something wet. I couldn’t tell if it was a puddle or his blood.
I climbed half out the window into the cold night air, yelling, “Help!”
It was an old trick Joey had taught me, one you use only when you’re really desperate. Muggers and bullies don’t want attention, so if you scream as loudly as you can, sometimes it scares them off. Sometimes.
They hesitated, not sure whether to come for me or not. I let out a really loud “Help!” that echoed all the way across the parking lot and nearly destroyed my throat. All three hightailed it out of there.
I could’ve used the door now, but I was halfway out the window and worried about Moore, so I kept moving, dropped to the ground, and raced over.
“You all right?” I asked as I kneeled next to him.
“No,” he groaned. I put my hand down in the wetness that was around him and held it up into the haze from a streetlight. Cold, dirty water, not blood.
As he kept moaning, I pulled him out of the puddle, onto his back, and into the light for a better look. Mostly he seemed dazed, but a few gashes on his face were oozing lightly.
“Did you get a look at them?”
“No. See maks, just life Eevan inna bideo.”
It took me a second to realize he was saying, “Ski masks, just like Ethan in the video,” but he was having trouble speaking. That’s when I noticed his mouth was open and his jaw looked kind of funny. You could see his tongue sort of lolling around in there as little puffs of water vapor spewed out with each short breath. Gross. I didn’t know if his jaw had been broken or dislocated or what.
Afraid to move him any more, I slipped his cell phone out of his pocket.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” I told him.
“Rearry? Am I dat bag?” he said, still looking dazed but genuinely surprised.
“Dude, your tongue is swelling up, and your jaw isn’t moving ri
ght,” I said as I dialed. “I think that was Dylan and Mike. The Crave Gestapo. They were hanging around, trying to muscle me when I got out of school. Maybe they saw the newspaper on the Web already?”
“Banuatu,” Moore muttered, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. He looked like he was passing out.
“Crap, Moore! Why the hell can’t you just tell me what it means?”
His eyelids fluttered and he lapsed into unconsciousness.
He could be such a pain in the ass.
15
• I’ll never understand what’s wrong with some people. Are they really so petty and jealous that we’re doing well, that we found something to believe in, that we’re happy changing the world for the better, that they have to try to tear it down with a bunch of lies? Stooping to trying to blame Ethan for a car accident? Ethan? Please. And they won’t even name whoever supposedly saw him? Their minds are so small they have to come up with some tiny explanation that doesn’t rock their world. I say our next Crave should be devoted to making these pathetic people see some reality. —Colleen
• The rest of the paper was stupid, too. How do they really know this dihydrogen monoxide stuff isn’t a threat to people’s health? Who has the right to say I’m gullible just because I wonder about things like that? Maybe there should be a ban. There should be a ban on dihydrogen monoxide and hate speech like in that paper. —Mike
• I didn’t do it, but anyone who goes around making fun of people’s beliefs deserves a broken jaw. Screw Moore, he had it coming. We’ll be just fine. —Dylan
• It doesn’t seem right to me that my brother is thousands of miles away risking his life for freedom, fighting for the rights of idiots like Alden Moore who think they can just trash whatever someone else is trying to build. I don’t think Moore should have been beaten up, but I’m having a real hard time feeling bad about it. —Alex
• OMG, I can’t believe it. Jasper Trelawney talks all about stuff like this in The Rule! For centuries people have been working in secret conspiracies to suppress knowledge of The Rule, to keep people down, uninformed, enslaved. Now we’re seeing it firsthand! I’m not worried, because if each of us just imanifests a little bit each day, that embarrassing excuse for a newspaper and the people who made it will just vanish from the face of the earth! —Grace
• They don’t thank us when things go right, but they blame us if someone gets hurt! Get real! Just because some bozos beat up that guy doesn’t make us responsible! And Nicole, she gets this one tiny freaking nick on her iPhone that you can barely see unless you’ve got a high-powered lamp and a magnifying glass, and she blames me! Just because I happened to be standing near her precious device during art with a matte knife! We all had matte knives! It was art! —Sophia
• I was totally grounded after my parents found out about that get-well party, so I won’t make the Craves for a while. I’m not even supposed to be online, but I read that stinking newspaper and heard about the attack and I wanted you all to know I’m with you forever. My vision’s a little blurry lately, even when I’m sober! But, some blood tests are coming back next week. So how about a little imanifesting for my health? Keep a good thought, because, you know the rule, it’s the thought that counts! —Jane
• Mr. Eldridge, Erica Black, Alden Moore. It’s real eye-opening to see what happens to people who try to oppose The Rule. I know some kids are starting to think twice about the Crave, but I think it’s time to start realizing that you’re either on the side of the universe or against it. —Jacob
• I love you all so much, I really hate to see us attacked like this when all we’ve done is help. We’ve done such big things for this school, but if some of the kids are so ungrateful, maybe we should start thinking more about ourselves, and maybe imanifest, like, a winning lottery ticket for the Crave so we can all move away and live like one big family where no one will bother us. —Olivia
• I would no longer like the Xbox. What I would like now is the Xbox 360 Elite System, with a premium black finish and three powerful core processors capable of producing the best in HD entertainment (up to 1080p, like any Xbox 360), 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, HDMI output, and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right out of the box. —Landon
• It’s really important that we stick together. Those newspaper geeks are trying to get some kind of investigation going, and if the police do start asking questions, we have to sound like we know what we’re talking about. —Andrew
• So, somehow, in some way, we must have wanted this to happen, right? Does that mean only good will come of it, like it’ll lead us down an even truer path, or does it mean some of us are secretly negative, working against the Crave without realizing it? If they are, we’ve got to find out who they are and stop them. —Benjamin
• The judge let me off with some lame education course and community service. I was all jazzed about that when I heard about the paper and the accusations. Wow. Don’t know where to start. Maybe it’s like an ocean wave, after we all got washed in the abundance of the universe, the water is sucking itself back in for an even bigger wave. So it looks dry right now, but we’re about to be deluged in a major way. Hang on for an even better ride! —Jeff
• Now more than ever I think the original Cravers should be meeting separately so we can discuss what’s going on. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think my ex is stalking me and should be, like, arrested or something. The book says everything’s connected, so that must have something to do with this and maybe together we can work out how. —Kathleen
• Please everyone, try not to panic. This will pass, you’ll see. Old news in a few weeks. There’s so many better things we could focus our energy on, like helping biodiesel come to Screech Neck. —Beth
• I did a rough count, and it looks like most of the seniors and at least half the juniors are wearing pins these days. I bet the same is happening in high schools all over the country, so really, what’s going to stop us? —Tom
• Thanks for letting me back, guys, especially now that it seems like all my paranoia was on the mark. We know The Rule, we use it. Forces are lining up against us like crazy. I wouldn’t even trust the police. Maybe this is like the End Times that Nostradamus and the Bible talk about. We have to imanifest some major protection for ourselves. I’ll post if my dreams tell me anything else. —Lauren
• We were all terribly disappointed by the vicious and horrible lies some sadly misinformed students put out about Ethan and our Crave yesterday. As your student body president, I’ve scheduled an appointment with Dr. Wyatt to discuss it in detail. Ethan’s been talking with his father about filing a lawsuit. We already know the students were operating without an official adviser, and they may have broken some other rules as well. If you see copies of the paper in the school, feel free to toss them in the trash. Meanwhile, keep your cool, hold your head high. The Rule and this Crave rock! —Vicky
16
The interrogation room was tiny, just big enough for a table and two chairs. It may have been built to psychologically defeat a suspect, but that night I think it was the police who were defeated.
“You sure that’s all?” the grizzly Detective Somebody or other asked. I hadn’t caught his name and he hadn’t bothered repeating it. We were both tired, but he was tired the way only middle-aged people get. He had wrinkles under his eyes so thick you could wedge a dime in there and I bet it’d stay put. He also hadn’t shaved in a day or so.
When I didn’t answer right away, he raised his eyes a little. I imagined the dime plopping out.
Had to say something. Didn’t want to lie. I wanted to say, “Hell yeah, I recognized Ethan’s shoelaces in the security video and he’s a freaking psycho, so you should just drive over to his house and arrest him or at least shoot him.”
But Detective What’s-His-Name already hadn’t particularly believed me when I’d said it was Dylan and Mike who attacked Moore. I got a lot of, “You see their faces?
Can you swear to that in court?”
To which, of course, I had to say no.
At times, it was almost like he thought I’d attacked Moore. He knew about me and the gym collapse in January and didn’t have the benefit of Moore’s research. Far as he knew, Moore was the guy who turned me in, so why should I be trying to help him?
If I’d told the truth, he would have thought I was lying, so I lied.
“That’s all,” I said. “That’s all.”
He sighed one of those twenty-minute sighs adults seem so good at, like their lungs have a slow leak from having to deal with us delinquents. But really, I think he was relieved we’d both be able to go home now. “You remember anything else, you let us know.”
I never knew police detectives actually said that.
Mom and Joey were waiting in the hall. Mom was nearly in tears, saying mostly, “Oh my God” over and over and wiping my face with a wet handkerchief. Apparently I’d bruised my cheek on the way out the window, and in her panic, she thought she could rub the black and blue mark off. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was hurting me.
Joey played it silent, letting Mom go on and on about how bad that school was and so on and so forth. After she went to bed (had to get up at five for work, they were doing inventory), Joey and I were alone in the living room. I expected him to smack me for getting in trouble again, but he didn’t.
“You okay?” he asked in an unusual display of outright sympathy.
“Yeah.”
“The kids who beat up your friend, you get ’em?” He clenched his fists, to make sure I knew what “get ’em” meant.
“No,” I said. “There were three, and they were big and fast.”
“So use a piece of pipe. I’ll get you one at the shop.”
“Joey! No! Come on. Like that would be right?”
He shook his head and sighed like the detective. “Would’ve been in my day, but they keep changing the rules.”
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