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by John David Anderson

  We also passed Evan Smalls, his right wrist wrapped tight, limping with every step. I thought about telling him he had a good run at least, except there was nothing I could say that would make him feel better about lip-smacking a tree trunk. I settled for a nod instead.

  I stepped into Mr. Sword’s class to find my seat taken. The one beside Wolf. The one I’d sat in since the first day of the year. Rose stood up as soon as she saw me.

  “I was keeping it warm for you,” she said as I came over. Wolf laughed and I wondered if this was some kind of joke at my expense. I looked around and saw a few other students watching us. Jason Baker had his tongue in his cheek, one eyebrow cocked—supervillain facial accompaniment to the phrase Well, well, what have we here? I just ignored him. I was sure I would hear about it later.

  As she passed me Rose whispered in my ear, “Try not to melt.”

  Try not to melt. Keeping it warm. Frosty the Snowman. I got it.

  I sat down slowly and watched Wolf watch Rose head back to her usual place by the door. Cameron Cole whispered something to Noah Kyle behind us. There was zero doubt in my mind that it was about me. I told myself I didn’t care.

  “We were just talking,” Wolf said.

  I nodded. My seat actually was warm. I was about to ask what, exactly, they’d been chatting about when Mr. Sword bustled in with a big stack of paperbacks and started passing them down the rows. The class immediately hushed, not because we were being polite or anything, but because the man was wearing a toga. You could see his usual sweater and pant combo on underneath, but it’s still the sort of thing that gets a class’s attention.

  “It’s Shakespeare time,” Mr. Sword said with way too much enthusiasm. The collective groan could probably be heard clear in the other wing of the school.

  The copy of Julius Caesar landed on my desk. The picture on the cover at least looked promising. Bloody daggers and a dead body. Still, I could think of about 147 other writers I’d rather spend the next two weeks with. Supposedly Mr. Sword taught Julius Caesar every year. Maybe it was mandated in the curriculum. Or maybe he just liked it that much. He did own his own toga. Deedee leaned over to Wolf and me. “Caesar dies,” he said.

  “Don’t need to read that now.” I slapped the book against my desk with mock irritation. The cover—and ancient history—kind of spoiled it before Deedee could.

  “I read the SparkNotes already,” Deedee continued. “They all conspire against him and stab him over and over again. But it’s all right because all the people who murder him end up killing themselves in the end.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “That makes it all better.”

  Wolf didn’t say anything. I had no idea what he was thinking or if he was even listening. He laughed, and I realized that he was reading something scrawled on a note that he’d hidden in his lap beneath his desk. Judging by the handwriting I guessed it was from Rose. Back at the front of the class, Mr. Sword started in on the history of Ancient Rome—necessary background for understanding what we were about to read. He put several names on the board. Julius Caesar. Marcus Brutus. Gaius Cassius Longinus.

  “Gayus Longinus? Seriously?” Cameron whispered.

  “I think it’s pronounced Guy-us, moron,” I heard Amanda Shockey say. That girl almost always had a book in her hand, though hardly ever the one Mr. Sword assigned. She also didn’t care much what anyone else thought. I was tempted to give her a high five. It was always nice when guys like Cameron were called out . . . not that it ever stopped them. To prove my point, Jason Baker put his hand up.

  “Yes, Jason?” Mr. Sword said.

  “Yeah. Weren’t the Romans . . . you know . . .” He made a wishy-washy hand gesture. “I mean, the guys at least, didn’t they prefer . . .”

  Over my shoulder I could see he was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Beside him Noah Kyle snorted, trying not to laugh. Mr. Sword gave them both a puzzled look. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Jason lowered his head and slumped in his chair. “It’s all right. Forget it.”

  Mr. Sword paused for a moment, jaw working back and forth, maybe deciding if he should press the issue. Instead he took a deep breath and continued with his lecture on the expansion of the Roman Empire and Caesar’s rise to power. I only paid half attention, trying to see what was written on the note Wolf was reading. That’s when I saw Jason lean over Wolf’s shoulder. Most days they were interchangeable, Jason and Noah and Cameron, at least as far as I was concerned. You figured one of them would give you a hard time, but couldn’t be sure who. But with Wolf it always seemed to be Jason.

  “When in Rome,” he whispered. “Am I right, Morgan?”

  Wolf just kept reading, but I saw his face turn red. He folded the note in half and tucked it away.

  “Knock it off,” I snapped. Jason leaned back in his chair, grinning. Mr. Sword was eyeing us so I faced forward again, glancing sideways at Wolf to make sure he was okay. He stared at the front of the room, fists in his lap.

  Mr. Sword held up his copy of the play and asked us, “So are you all ready to get bloody?” Judging by the lukewarm response, the murmuring, and the yawns of first-period English, the answer was “not really.”

  But it didn’t matter whether we were ready or not. This was Shakespeare.

  Getting bloody was in the script.

  Over the next three periods, multiple sticky note sightings confirmed Deedee’s suspicion: we really had started something. Not on purpose, of course, but the ripple effect was undeniable. The yellow notes sprouted like weeds.

  It wasn’t completely out in the open yet, though. Most of the notes were still passed under desks, or palmed and transferred via high five. Some were left on backpacks or attached to shoulders in passing. I saw two traded in English. Another four in social studies under Mr. Hostler’s nearsighted eyes. Saw quite a few more posted in the hallways. Most of them were innocent—smiley faces and questions about weekend plans. This wasn’t the start of the war so much as the buildup of arms.

  I did spot one “PLANT FOOT HERE” with an arrow pointing buttward, attached to the back of Winston Ferman, a kid perpetually teased for being two grades ahead in math. I was going to tell him what was sticking to him, but by the time I’d made up my mind he’d already turned the corner. The note would probably fall off on its own before anybody followed its instructions anyway.

  Not surprising, there was a note on my locker as I went to drop my books off before lunch. It had Deedee written all over it.

  ¡Viva la revolución!

  I tucked the sticky note in my copy of Julius Caesar, figuring it would make for a fitting bookmark, then met up with Bench on the way to lunch.

  “Did you see?”

  “See what?” he asked.

  “All the sticky notes. They’re showing up everywhere.”

  “I saw some.” Bench’s tone was clipped, preoccupied.

  “Deedee thinks we started something,” I pressed.

  “Deedee believes in UFOs and government mind control,” Bench reminded me. In other words, you couldn’t always believe everything Deedee wanted you to. We walked down B Hall and I searched for a single sticky note to point out to Bench, but of course by the time you get around to showing somebody something, it’s always gone.

  We got to the cafeteria and I started in but stopped when I realized Bench wasn’t right behind me. He was standing in the entrance, as immovable as Francis B. Stockridge.

  “Get in there, you big furry oaf, I don’t care what you smell,” I coaxed. You can never go wrong with Wookiee humor, but Bench shrugged me off. He actually brushed my hand off his shoulder.

  “It’s all right. You go on. I’m not hungry,” he said, his voice flat.

  I turned up my hands—universal gesture for what gives. This was Bench. The same kid who once bet me he could eat fifteen dollars’ worth of Taco Bell in one sitting, costing me two weeks of allowance and him a record number of trips to the bathroom. He was always hungry. I looked back
over my shoulder, finding our table by the wall.

  Three seats were already filled. I’m no Winston Ferman, but I could do this math.

  “Seriously? You’re not coming to lunch because of her?” I kept my voice low. Suddenly this had become one of those conversations. The kind you don’t want other people to hear. Bench shook his head and whispered back.

  “I told you. I’m not hungry. I think I’ll just get a pass to the computer lab or something.”

  “Dude—it’s twenty minutes. You have to eat. Besides,” I added tentatively, “she’s not that bad.”

  It was as far as I was willing to go, at least with Bench. I wasn’t about to defend Rose’s honor or anything. I wasn’t anybody’s champion. I just wanted him to come sit with us, like he always did. But he was having none of it. He pulled me aside, out of the doorway, out of view. “You don’t get it,” he said. “The other guys . . .” The other guys again. Maybe the ones on the team, the ones he warmed seats for. “They call her ‘Moose.’”

  I craned my neck around the door and looked across the filling tables at Rose Holland, at least three inches taller than Wolf. Shoulders you could park a car on. And that face. Those eyes, large and luminescent. If faces were states, she’d be Montana and those eyes would be full bright moons.

  Moose. I didn’t want to, but I could see it.

  “I never said it,” Bench explained. “I mean, it’s not like I got anything against her really, it’s just, you know. When people talk like that . . .”

  I could hear it in his voice. It wasn’t just Moose. They said other stuff. Worse stuff. Bench didn’t want to tell me, and I didn’t want to ask. Or part of me did, but I knew I would just feel worse for knowing. Other kids brushed past us, squeezing through the door into the cafeteria. Bench gave me a pat on the back. Or maybe it was a shove. “I’ll catch up with you later.” And before I could argue with him any more, he turned and started back down the hall.

  I waited in line by myself.

  “Where’s Bench?” Deedee asked when I finally took the seat next to him. I suspected they saw us at the doorway, and I wondered if they registered Bench’s hesitation, the traded whispers, his unexpected retreat.

  “He said he wasn’t feeling well,” I lied. “I think he might go to the nurse’s office.” I looked at Wolf. He was studying me, trying to unpack all the stuff I wasn’t saying, so I examined my grilled cheese instead, the waxy orange oozing between two pieces of soggy bread. Suddenly I wasn’t that hungry either. Everything felt out of place. Mismatched. Like when you accidentally put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. We were a square again, but with the wrong corners.

  I could tell they sensed it too. Even Rose. Awkward. But more than that—it felt like a betrayal, being here without him. I pushed my oily sandwich away. “I can’t eat this,” I said.

  “That’s why I pack my lunch,” Deedee said, peeling the skin from his tangerine.

  Rose waited a moment, then slid her package of pecan swirls across the table, along with a crooked, hopeful smile.

  I looked around to see if anyone was watching. A few faces looked away quickly, though I could have been imagining it. “Do these stick to the roof of your mouth?” I asked.

  “If you chew them long enough they do,” she answered.

  I took one of the pecan swirls and nodded. My way of saying thanks without having to say it. Then Rose turned and asked Deedee for his lucky die.

  I shot Deedee a look. He told her. When did he tell her?

  “What for?” Deedee asked, anxious. He hardly ever took the ten-sider out of his pocket at school. Only when a major decision called for it, and even then he rolled it in secret, under his desk into the palm of his hand, or in the corner when nobody was watching. He had enough to contend with without also being “that dweeb with the dice.”

  “What do you think?” Rose asked. “We’re going to play a game. That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?”

  “He also uses it for getting dressed in the morning,” Wolf said. “Judging by that awful sweater, I’d say today he rolled a two.”

  “For your information, my mom picked this out for me,” Deedee said before realizing that was even worse. He reluctantly fished out his ten-sided dragon die and stealthily slid it across the table. “Fine. Here. Just . . . you know . . . be careful.”

  Rose nodded. “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said. She started whispering so that I had to lean across the table to hear her. “All right. So here’s the deal. I’m gonna roll. If it comes up evens, I’ll tell you something you didn’t know about me. Like a kind of a secret thing. But if it comes up odds, then I get to pick one of you—any one of you I want—and you have to do the same.”

  Immediately I thought of Bench and how he would never go for this. He’d call it childish or stupid just to get out of playing it. Maybe that’s why she was doing it now. Because he wasn’t here to say no.

  “This is just Truth or Dare,” Deedee said. “With a die. With my die.”

  “And without the dare,” Wolf said.

  “In that case, I dare you to play,” Rose said.

  I’d never played Truth or Dare before. I assumed it was the kind of game you played at parties, and I never went to parties. I did play spin the bottle once, on vacation in North Carolina with my second cousin and two of her friends. It ended regrettably with an unexpected and ill-timed burp, made worse by half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. I spent the rest of spring break avoiding my second cousin. “Wait. What happens if we don’t tell you something?” I asked.

  “Come on, guys,” Rose prodded. “Remember what Shakespeare said? ‘Screw your courage to the sticking place’?”

  “To heck with that,” Deedee remarked, but Rose had already rolled the die on a napkin to muffle the sound, keeping it quiet and close.

  She rolled an eight. Spotlight on her. She looked at the number and shrugged. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear whatever Rose was about to tell me. Not that I would share it. Not that it would get out. Just that sometimes it was better if you kept your secrets to yourself.

  “All right. Are you ready for this?” she said in her husky whisper. “My real name isn’t Rose . . . it’s Rosalind.”

  “Rosalind?” Deedee repeated. “Like the bakery?”

  “That’s Rosalyn,” Wolf said. “Rosa-lind with a D.” He turned to Rose. “And that’s not much of a secret.”

  “Nobody around here knows it,” she scoffed. “That makes it a secret.”

  “I pooped four times yesterday,” Deedee said. “Nobody knew that either. Doesn’t make it a secret.”

  “I wish you’d kept it one,” I said.

  Rose smirked. “I was named after my great-grandmother. But Rosalind sounds so eighty-year-old-woman, don’t you think? So I shortened it.”

  “Yeah. Rose doesn’t sound old-womanly at all,” Wolf joked.

  “Nobody asked you.” She slapped him on the shoulder and he didn’t even flinch, which was odd because Wolf wasn’t fond of being touched. Maybe she didn’t know that about him yet. The thought gave me a strange feeling of satisfaction—all the things I knew about Wolf that she didn’t. Rose pinched the die and gave it another spin. I feigned disinterest, taking another bite but watching out of the corner of my eye.

  Three.

  Her eyes circled the table, stopping on me. I stopped chewing, a glob of pecan roll melting to mush and sticking to the roof of my mouth like she promised. Then she snapped her head to the right. “Deedee.”

  “Me?”

  Rose nodded. “You have to tell us something,” she said. “Something nobody at the table knows. And not having anything to do with your bodily functions.”

  I figured that was going to be pretty tough—the nobody-knowing part. Deedee and Wolf had been friends for years. I couldn’t imagine there were too many secrets left between them.

  “All right. Something you don’t know. Okay. I’ve got one.” His voice went to a whisper. “I actually like tapioca pudding.” He said it lik
e it was top-secret CIA intelligence.

  Wolf shrugged. “All nerds like tapioca pudding.”

  “That’s not true,” Deedee spluttered. Wolf looked at me.

  “It’s true,” I confirmed. “Of course I can’t stand the stuff myself.”

  “Because you’re not a nerd,” Wolf said. Deedee gave us both a dirty look, but then he shook his head and smiled. I glanced back toward the door, thinking I might catch Bench peering through the glass, spying on us, but he wasn’t there.

  “Ignore them,” Rose said to Deedee. “You eat whatever your nerdy little heart desires. But I’m afraid your answer doesn’t qualify. We need something juicier. Something we can use against you when you run for mayor later in life.”

  I laughed, picturing Deedee as mayor, passing laws with a roll of his dice—It’s a seven. No public school this year. Deedee thought it over, then a pained look passed over his face. “All right. But you have to promise not to tell anyone. If my parents find out . . .”

  We promised. Deedee’s parents were the nicest of our lot. His dad was like an Indian version of Santa Claus, thick silver beard, jelly-belly and all, and his mom knitted potholders for every teacher in the building every year for the holidays. If there was something Deedee was afraid to tell them, it had to be good.

  “I cut the whiskers off of my cat once,” he mumbled.

  Wolf sprayed a little milk on his tray. “You did what?”

  “I was six,” Deedee confessed. “And I had just read in Discovery Kids or something how cats use their whiskers to help them sense what was around them, so I wanted to test it. You know. Like an experiment.”

  “You dewhiskered your cat?”

  “Only on one side,” Deedee explained.

  “That’s horrible,” Rose said.

  “And hilarious,” I said. Then I saw the look on Rose’s face. “But also so, so horrible.”

  “What happened to the cat?” Wolf asked.

  “Well, he ran into things for a while. But eventually the whiskers grew back and he was fine.”

  “That’s cat abuse,” Rose said.