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by John David Anderson

  She stood in the center as a crowd circled around her, huddled up with Deedee and Wolf. Kids were taking pictures of her, too. Rose Holland. The conqueror. Deedee was bubbling over, blabbing away like a little kid who’s just been to the movies, going on and on about how that was the greatest thing he’d ever seen, though he had only kept his eyes open for half of it. Wolf was speechless; he just held on to the bike like he was afraid it might take off without us.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Rose said as I pushed my way through the crowd.

  “Thanks for not wrecking it,” I said back. “And for, you know, making it to the bottom in one piece. That was . . .”

  I didn’t have the words to describe what it was. I usually had plenty of them, even if I seldom said them out loud, but this time I was at a loss.

  “It was freaking epic!” Deedee said.

  Wolf leaned up against her. “I still don’t believe you,” he said. “But it was pretty awesome.”

  We all basked for a moment in Rose’s glow, in the admiring looks of the other students, some of whom had probably been chanting Cameron’s name only minutes before. I couldn’t help but think of Bench and the catch, and how he must have felt being lifted up and carried out of the end zone by his teammates. To be surrounded by people who suddenly see something spectacular in you—something they might have overlooked before. Deedee wrapped both arms around Rose and squeezed until his face turned purple.

  I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but I knew it was big.

  The crowd around us slowly broke up, though Rose got an appreciative nod from Evan Smalls—for beating the Gauntlet, for beating Cameron, maybe for both. We walked around the base of the hill, Deedee pushing the bike now, as if he was her noble squire leading her steed, Wolf and Rose pressed so close together you could barely slip a sticky note between them. I walked a pace behind, glancing at everyone we passed, trying to read their expressions, figure out what they saw when they looked at us. Most of them were on their phones, probably texting about what had happened: Rose Holland runs the Gauntlet, crushes Cameron Cole. In five minutes the rest of the student body would know.

  I looked back once to see Cameron limping in the opposite direction with his friends. The crest of Hirohito Hill was nearly empty now, but I caught one familiar face looking down at us, standing all by himself.

  I put up a hand, more out of instinct than anything, and was happy to see Bench wave back.

  By the time we got to my house, my mother was already there.

  Even worse, she invited everyone for dinner.

  This was after she asked us where’d we been, assuming that four kids walking home long after school let out were probably up to something. The other three looked at me. It was my mom, so whatever I coughed up, they would go with it.

  “Study group,” I told her. “For science. We have a quiz coming up on the laws of motion.”

  I don’t know what possessed me to add the last part. Deedee sniggered, almost losing it completely. Rose just made it worse. “Newton’s third law: For every action there is a reaction of equal or greater force,” she added.

  Like, you try to stick my friend’s head in the toilet, I make you eat a tree and show you up in front of the whole school.

  Mom seemed to buy it, at least. “You should all stay and eat,” she said. “I can throw something together real quick.” She kept her eyes on Rose as she spoke, as if she still couldn’t believe there was an actual girl hanging out with us. For a second Rose looked like she was about to say yes, but both Wolf and Deedee had experienced my mother’s cooking before.

  “No, really, Mrs. Voss. I appreciate the offer,” Wolf said. “But I should be getting home.”

  “Me too,” Deedee seconded. Rose nodded along, looking disappointed.

  “At least let me give you all a ride, then.”

  We piled into the Civic, Rose, Deedee, and Wolf squeezing into the back, giving the smallest member of our posse the wedgie seat. I watched them pressed tight, thinking of those cans of snakes that pop out when you pull off the lid, imagining them bursting through the windows. “Aren’t we missing one?” Mom asked as she started the car. “Where’s Bench?”

  I couldn’t give her a good answer if I’d wanted to. I imagined him still standing at the top of Hirohito Hill looking down on us. I wondered who he’d been rooting for. I didn’t see him standing with Cameron and his friends. He hadn’t been standing by us either, though. Had it been me running the Gauntlet, I know he would have been there, front and center, cheering me on. At least I wanted to believe it. “He’s not in the same science class,” Deedee said, which wasn’t even the half of it.

  I heard Rose whispering to Wolf in the backseat. It made me antsy, sitting in front, wanting so badly to twist around and keep talking about what had happened and instead biting my tongue with my mother right next to me. But she knew more about what was happening at BMS than she let on.

  “So what’s this I hear about sticky notes at school?” she asked, taking her eyes off the road and putting them squarely on me. Those eyes were killer. The Eye of Sauron had nothing on my mother.

  “What about the what now?” I mumbled, trying to sound only vaguely interested.

  “Principal Wittingham sent out a recorded message this afternoon about a ban on sticky notes due to . . . how did he put it . . . a rash in hurtful and derogatory messages being spread around school. You all aren’t involved in any of that, I hope.”

  I shook my head, playing innocent. Involved? Us? Pfff. The backseat was quiet.

  My mother sighed with relief. “Good, because I work with Elizabeth Browner, and she said her daughter Caroline—you know Caroline?—apparently she came home yesterday absolutely beside herself, bawling over something somebody posted about her in the girls’ locker room.”

  Caroline Browner. I knew her. She was a seventh grader. Popular, pretty. In other words, Deedee probably had her locker number memorized. I’d always assumed she was untouchable, the kind of girl who was above teasing. “What did it say?”

  “Liz wouldn’t tell me, but she said it was terrible. I swear, sometimes kids can be so cruel.”

  “Can’t argue with you there, Mrs. Voss,” Rose said from between the seats. “But we can be sweet sometimes.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wolf lean his head against the window, watching the world pass by, a twitch of a smile on his face.

  “I just want to make sure you’re okay,” Mom said, glancing at me again. “That you’re all okay,” she added, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “We’re just fine,” Wolf said. He sounded like he meant it, too.

  We dropped him off first since he lived closest, and he and Rose whispered to each other again. I could see his parents through the bay window having a discussion—you could almost hear them through the glass. Wolf thanked my mother for the ride and said he’d see us all tomorrow, then he stood on his sidewalk for a moment, staring at the house, as if he didn’t quite recognize it. My mother frowned, and for a second I thought she was going to roll down the window and tell Wolf to get back in the car and just come home with us, but Wolf adjusted the straps of his backpack and trudged up the driveway. I wondered if he’d go straight to the piano and try to drown his parents out or maybe hide away in the garage and finish his battleship. My mother shook her head and backed out, saying something about Wolf being such a good kid.

  “Can’t argue that either,” Rose said.

  We dropped Deedee off next and I watched him give Rose another thank-you-for-saving-me-from-the-toilet hug. Mom turned to the backseat.

  “You’ll have to tell me how to get to your house, dear.”

  I still had no clue where Rose lived. I imagined an apartment complex, or one of those older, one-story houses across from the old bottling plant, judging by the secondhand clothes, the almost-empty lunch trays, and the things I’d heard people whisper about her in the halls about her parents, mostly how her mom didn’t work and how they moved here because they couldn�
�t afford Chicago anymore. Except as we turned down streets, following her directions, the houses only grew larger and the fences taller, till Rose told us we could stop and let her out. We sat at the end of a driveway leading up to a big wood-trimmed house with a white-columned porch and perfectly square-shaped hedges. You could just make out the cement lining of an in-ground pool in the backyard. Rose Holland’s house was enormous.

  “You sure you don’t want me to pull all the way up?” Mom asked, probably wanting a better look.

  “No, really. This is fine,” Rose said. “Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Voss. See you in school tomorrow, Snowman,” she said. The brightness of her voice had dimmed, the thrill of running the Gauntlet already starting to fade, I guess.

  Or maybe, like Wolf, she simply wasn’t all that happy to be home.

  I rolled down my window to wave. “Hey. If you need help, you know, thinking of something for that writing assignment tomorrow, just let me know.” I winked at her to make sure she got the message. She rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll think of something. Bye, Mrs. Voss. And thanks again for the bread the other day. It was delicious.”

  “I like that girl,” Mom told me, still plenty loud enough for Rose to hear.

  We waited until she’d disappeared up the winding driveway, then my mother seemed to inch her way along, marveling at the size of the houses we passed. “What do Rose’s parents do again?”

  “Her father works long hours,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

  But I knew a lot more than that. I also knew now that Rose Holland could afford brand-name clothes if she wanted. She could wear something besides tattered combat boots and that same old ratty jacket. She could probably carry a purse studded with real sapphires, and host parties on the weekend for people who actually went to parties. She could be a lot more popular, probably, if she wanted to. Could get people to pretend to like her, at least.

  Instead she spent last Saturday saving us from a horde of zombies.

  My mother sighed as she wound her way through Rose’s neighborhood. “We used to have a house like this,” she said.

  That night, after a late dinner of leftover spaghetti that could stick to the roof of anything, I went to my room and prowled the feeds and walls and chat rooms, looking for a picture from the afternoon, hoping to catch one last glimpse of Cameron’s bloody nose posted on some other kid’s timeline, but I couldn’t find anything. This was the Gauntlet, after all. You had to be careful about what you put online in case parents watched over your shoulder.

  It was all right, though. Cameron Cole’s punishment was far from over. He’d made the bet and he’d lost. I lay in bed wondering what Rose had in mind. Something horrible, I hoped. Something that would make him melt from embarrassment, wicked-witch-in-the-rain style. Something that would make him feel the way Deedee felt, watching his die roll across the filthy bathroom floor, scrabbling on his hands and knees after it.

  Wolf was wrong when he said it wouldn’t change anything. It had to change things. I could feel it already. Tomorrow the whole school would see what total losers Cameron and his friends were, and I, for one, couldn’t wait.

  Eventually I managed to fall asleep, dreaming of the possibilities, a paper phoenix under my pillow. No doubt a lean and hungry look on my face.

  I woke up the next morning with a Christmasy feeling in my gut, eager to get to school.

  Post-it notes were officially banned at BMS, of course, but a deal was a deal. If Rose had lost we’d all be sporting swirly wet mops of hair, our shirt collars damp with toilet water. But she didn’t. Cameron smacked wood three-quarters of the way down Hirohito Hill and it was payback time.

  He promised to wear it the whole day—Rose’s note saying absolutely anything she wanted. So many delicious possibilities. On the bus ride in—sitting by myself—I wrote down some ideas, just in case she’d had a case of writer’s block.

  Beaten by a ninja sorcerer princess

  Teachers, please don’t make me sit, I just got my butt kicked

  I’m docking punny becaud a twee bwoke my node

  Or a big fat capital L. Just like the one that someone—maybe even Cameron—had left on my own locker a few days ago. I had a dozen suggestions by the time the bus pulled into school, ranging from clever pun to demoralizing put-down. I was a poet, after all. I had a way with words.

  Turns out, she didn’t need my help.

  That’s when I realized the true brilliance of Rose Holland.

  The butter-yellow note was already stuck to Cameron’s chest as he moped through the hall before first period, attached with a safety pin to make sure that it wouldn’t “accidentally” fall off. I read what she’d written and shook my head in admiration.

  It was perfect. Had it been anything else, it wouldn’t have worked. Maybe Cameron would have refused to wear it. Or he would have worn it proudly, knowing the first teacher or administrator he saw would tell him to throw it away. Anything derogatory or insulting would have drawn too much attention, or the wrong kind of attention. But this was different—masterful in its simplicity. Maybe it wasn’t an aphorism, but it spoke to a basic truth. And it was awesome.

  Cameron walked through the school with his head down most of the day, sitting quietly in his classes in the corner. To my surprise, and probably everyone else’s, including Rose, he kept his word. Literally. He never once took the note off. He didn’t touch it, as if he were afraid the paper itself might burn him or something.

  The teachers didn’t say anything either, despite the fact they had a mandate to confiscate any note they found. But this one, they let slide. Maybe they had heard what had happened, or, if not, they made an educated guess. They couldn’t see the bruises on Cameron’s legs, but there was no mistaking the purple hue of his nose, like a squashed eggplant set between two bloodshot eyes. Maybe, they thought, the message was worth sharing, no matter who it was pinned to, after everything that had happened, after all the things they’d read. Whatever the reason, they let him wear it. And I relished every moment I passed him in the halls.

  Until I saw him heading straight for Deedee’s locker after the final bell. I tensed and looked for Rose but couldn’t find her. Wolf was gone, too. Probably they were somewhere together. It was just Deedee and me all over again. I crossed the hall quickly, standing by his side. “Cameron,” I whispered in Deedee’s ear, nodding. Deedee’s eyes exploded from his skull. Desperate, I even looked around for Bench. Instead all I found was Mr. Parker, one of the science teachers. At the very least I knew he would intervene if things got physical again—if Cameron tried to push us into the boys’ restroom for the swirlies he felt he owed us.

  The boy with the note on his chest stopped less than two feet from us and Deedee stepped even closer to me, his backpack held in front of him like a shield. The purple nose and painful-looking raspberries on his arms made Cameron look even more dangerous than usual. The day was over. All bets were off. Rose’s note had humiliated him and now he was going to take it out on us.

  He brought his hand up and Deedee flinched, expecting a shove at least, but Cameron was just reaching for the note. He ripped it free of its pin and stuck it to Deedee’s locker.

  He didn’t say a word. His face was wooden, no smiles, no grimaces, no leers. He just turned and walked away, leaving Rose’s half-torn note hanging lopsided by one sticky corner for everyone in the hall to see.

  Deedee peeled the note off and held it between us. His whole body shook with relief. “Looks like we won,” he said.

  I took Rose’s note from him, rubbing my thumb over the words. “Yeah,” I said. “Looks like it.”

  The war was over. I was sure of it. Deedee was sure of it.

  But we were both wrong.

  There was still one last message to be posted.

  Whoever left it broke the rules, scrapping sticky notes for something stronger. There was no paper to peel off. Nothing that could be easily erased. This message was written in perm
anent marker, thick black lines that couldn’t be missed.

  There had been thousands of notes over the last week, so many you kind of grew numb to them. So many snide remarks. So many loaded looks. But this one was different—and it wasn’t just the fact that it was scrawled in marker, filling half of the locker door. It was what was written underneath. It was a kind of code, but the meaning was absolutely clear.

  I turned the corner the morning after the apology, and saw Wolf standing in front of his locker, an invisible barrier between him and the cluster of students surrounding him, watched him reach out and trace the black letters with one finger. He set his backpack slowly on the ground and took two steps back, his body rigid. He looked down the hall, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing as he spotted something. Or someone. I reached out to stop him, to say something, but he brushed past me, storming down the hall until he was face-to-face with the person he’d locked onto.

  He grabbed Bench by his jacket and shoved him against the row of noteless lockers.

  Bench hit with a hollow metallic thud. He didn’t push back. If he’d wanted to, he could have put Wolf on the ground, arms pinned behind him. He was always the strongest of the four of us, but he didn’t even try to pull Wolf’s hands off.

  “It wasn’t me, Morgan. I swear,” he said.

  Morgan.

  The sound of his own name—his real name—coming from Bench seemed to take Wolf by surprise.

  “I don’t even believe you,” he said.

  Bench looked over Wolf’s shoulder to me. He was looking for help, I knew, but before I could do anything, Wolf let go and took off, bolting down the hall and out the back door of the school, leaving his backpack beside his locker, with its parting shot written in all caps for everyone to see.