For an average-sized man, Miller seemed to have some incredible strength. He grabbed them both by the back of the shirt and pulled them apart. Within seconds, the two school security guards were on the scene and each took hold of one of the fighters. They walked them quickly out of the cafeteria, and the kids began to shuffle back to their seats.
“Wait,” Mr. Miller shouted to them. The mob turned. Some were smirking. Some looked kind of sheepish. “Would someone tell me who started this?” He wasn’t quite able to cover up how angry he was.
No one spoke a word. It would have been pretty obvious what the story was. But no one wanted to get involved. No one wanted to snitch. The old code of silence.
Mr. Miller looked angrier than ever. “Anyone?” he hollered.
Dead silence.
I wanted to stand up and tell Miller what he wanted to hear. But Emily touched my wrist and just shook her head. I glared at her, but I could see that she was concerned about me. I already had my issues. And I wasn’t sure Miller would even want to hear from me again, not even on this. So I sat there and kept my mouth shut.
The cafeteria went strangely quiet then.
I felt a little nauseous and a bit disgusted as to how things had changed at school. Weapons, fights. No one speaking up about anything. Maybe those nights in the Himalayas would be pretty cold, but I couldn’t help but think about being someplace far, far away from here.
Chapter Seven
The Himalayas were too far away, so when I got home that night I retreated to my sketchbook in my bedroom. Ever since I was a little kid, I’d been drawing things. I almost never showed anyone my sketches. I’d always sketch real things, usually animals, but put my own interpretation on them.
I more or less raised myself. So being alone with a sketchbook was my idea of…well, not exactly being alone, if you know what I mean. I had my characters, my friends—snakes, dinosaurs, dogs, wizards, crazy caricatures of my teachers. The people all had big noses or big chins or big guts and, of course, women with big breasts. My creatures and humans all had big eyes—sort of Manga style.
My parents both had demanding jobs—ten to twelve hours a day. They always made sure there was food in the house and that all the bills were paid, but by the time they came home, they were beat and didn’t have much time for me. They felt guilty about this, I know. But what the heck. It could have been a lot worse. Sometimes, when they were feeling like they’d truly ignored their kid, they’d buy me a new bike or something. At Christmas, I always made out big-time. Pretty much whatever I wanted. Truth is, I didn’t want that much.
So there I was, alone in my room again, drawing in one of my dozens of sketchbooks, and I found myself sketching this amazing, ferocious rat.
As in ratting. Wasn’t that the word that even Mr. Miller had used to describe me?
I created one rat and then another. Each more outrageous than the last. Until I hit on the one that seemed to just leap off the page. Big teeth, powerful body, large fierce eyes. But in those eyes was intelligence. The more I sketched in the details, the more he seemed to come alive. The more he seemed to mean something.
I was wondering why rats had such a bad rep. I wondered if they deserved it. I set the sketchbook upright on my desk and stared into those wild, dark, intelligent eyes.
It didn’t take long to google the info I was looking for.
Rats. Highly intelligent rodents. The have strong teeth and can chew through concrete, cinder blocks, glass and aluminum. If they can’t chew through something, they can squeeze themselves through a hole the size of a quarter. They can live pretty well anywhere on Earth because they are extremely adaptable and make good pets. They don’t live very long though. Usually just a year or a year and a half. An adult female rat can have thirty-five baby rats a year. This apparently is because rats have a lot of sex. Up to twenty times a day. No lie.
They sleep a lot. Up to twenty hours a day. But when they are awake, they are very busy. One website argued that we unfairly label rats as dirty and dangerous and that we should learn to be kind to all rats. Sure, they were involved in killing half of Europe with the bubonic plague and other diseases, but it can be argued it was the fleas on the rats, not the rats themselves. And, like it or not, wherever there are humans, there are rats. So let’s just figure out a way to cohabit with our hairy, horny, ambitious rats.
Above all, I kept reading that rats are survivors. Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, war, even nuclear bombs. The rats survived. And, apparently, we have underestimated how smart rats really are.
I looked back at my masterpiece rat admiringly. It was only nine o’clock, and I was feeling fidgety. Oh, yeah, craving for a smoke. Big-time.
I stared straight into the eyes of my Manga-like rat. “Don’t do it, dude,” he seemed to be saying. “Stay focused.”
Right.
So I took out a simple white T-shirt, the kind that my mom likes to buy me. I opened a drawer of my desk and took out the set of one hundred colored permanent markers she had given me for Christmas. I looked at my T-shirt, and I looked at my rat. “Do it, dude,” he seemed to say.
Chapter Eight
I started wearing my rat T-shirt to school. I wore it under my shirt so no one actually saw it. I don’t know why, but I felt better when I had it on. Stronger. So I made a few more. Different characters, different rats. All with the large intelligent eyes and big sharp teeth. All variations of rats. All variations of me, I told myself.
I thought things were cooling down at school. It was back to being dull routine as far as I could tell. So, like a good rat, I just stayed low to the ground and tried not to be noticed.
But then Emily told me that Amanda had transferred to another school. Marissa was thinking of doing the same. “They’re both a mess,” Emily said. “It wasn’t just the photos. It’s what people wrote as comments about them. A whole lot of lies posted by creeps who can remain anonymous. There’s a hell of a lot of people out there who just want to hurt. And it’s not just a few creepy guys. I don’t get it.”
Emily looked really concerned, really worried, but I had a feeling there was more to this.
“This stuff will just follow them both to wherever they go.”
“I know. And once it’s out there, it just gets reposted all over the place.”
Now she looked even more worried.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
She looked at me and then down at the floor. “Craig’s doing it to me now,” she said in a weak little voice that was not her style at all.
“Doing what exactly?”
“Asking for ‘special favors’ or he and Liam will give me the same treatment.”
I was furious. I had lost my focus, been drifting along thinking things would improve, believing the problems would fade and go away. “They can’t do that,” I said.
“You’ve seen what they already got away with,” she said. “And they’ll get away with this too.” And then, more sheepishly, she added, “But maybe I can talk them out of it.”
“Yeah,” I said, getting even more steamed. “If you agree to whatever those assholes want you to do.”
She didn’t say anything, and it suddenly began to dawn on me just how scared she was. Possibly even willing to go along with them in order to make it stop.
I shook my head. “No way, Emily. You’re my friend. We’ve known each other for a long time. Let’s stick it to them. Go with me to Miller’s office. If he plays dumb again, let’s go to the cops.”
She had her head down again. “I can’t do it, Colin.”
“Why?”
“Because that would be ratting.”
“So?” I was getting really pissed.
“You know what will happen. Liam and Craig will find a way to use that against me. To get people to turn against me. We’ve both seen this before.”
“Your friends won’t turn against you. Your real friends will support you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said.
I had to keep my mouth shut just then. If I said the wrong thing (and I was the king of saying the wrong thing), she’d shut me down. Shut me off. I’ve had a long, unhappy career of speaking my mind, speaking the truth, to people who I considered friends only to have them shut me down for good.
“Emily,” I said, in a low, controlled voice, “somebody has to do something. The code of silence is the code of bullshit.”
She nodded. Her head was still down, and she couldn’t look at me. She was sniffling, and I think a couple of tears fell from her eyes. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “Just don’t do anything right now, please. Let me handle this.”
Chapter Nine
Emily worked hard at avoiding me after that. She didn’t answer my calls or my texts. I knew that if I went back to Miller’s office to talk to him, she’d feel betrayed. I knew it was time to think outside the box.
Jerome was playing it up like he was my new best friend and still asking if I needed any help or any “tools,” as he called it. But I just smiled and told him everything was cool. I didn’t want anything to do with whatever business he had going on. But then he caught me off guard as I was walking home from school through the park. He caught up with me and said he’d had “some good luck,” that he’d scored some great weed. He offered me a little Baggie with several joints. “I got lots,” he said. “This one’s on the house.”
I was tempted, but I turned him down. I knew it might make things go away for a while, but I also knew that those things would still be there later. I was worried about Emily. And I felt that I hadn’t solved the dilemma of Liam and Craig. It looked like they could just float through life wreaking whatever damage they wanted and not be held accountable. What would they be like once they left the lowly confines of high school and moved out into the big world?
By the time I got home, I knew what I needed to do.
Not being the most social animal (unlike the rat on my T-shirt), it took a dozen or so emails to kids I knew to gather even more email addresses until I had at least a hundred contacts from school. Some were kids I knew well, others were a bit more distant. But all were people I thought would be “sensitive” to the issue at hand.
I didn’t mention Emily. And I didn’t even mention Amanda and Marissa by name, but I did spill the beans on exactly what Craig and Liam were doing to girls at school. It was a straightforward statement of fact. And I signed my name to it. I even put a little signature image of one of my Manga rats by my name. An anonymous email would not work. And I asked all one hundred or so to pass it on.
I hesitated and then pressed Send. I guess I could have sent a group email, but I wanted to send them one by one so everyone would understand it was a personal message from me.
Colin. The snitch. The whistle-blower. The stool pigeon. The tattletale. The informer. The rat.
I was still at the keyboard sending out the news when messages started to come back at me. There were a couple of good ones cheering me on. But there were some really nasty ones telling me to mind my own business—in much less polite terms.
Around eleven that night, I even got a phone call from Emily, even though she hadn’t even been on my mail-out list. Somebody had forwarded my email to her. “Colin, you’ve got to send another email saying you were lying. Tell them it was a hoax. Do it now.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You have to.”
“I think it’s too late,” I said. “What’s done is done.”
Emily sounded exasperated. “The girl who emailed this to me—I think she was targeted by Liam before. She’s afraid her story will get out. They never posted any pictures, but they threatened to.”
“And that probably means they got her to do what they wanted.”
“Maybe. But now she’s afraid everyone will know if the full story gets out about Liam and Craig.”
“I feel bad for her,” I said defiantly, “but these guys need a wake-up call. Tonight was the night.”
“Colin, sometimes you are so pigheaded,” she said angrily.
“Sorry” was all I could bring myself to say, and she hung up.
As I sat there in the silence of my room, I suddenly wondered if I had been irrational and stupid. It wouldn’t have been the first time I acted out what I was certain was the right thing to do, only to have it come back and bite me in my ass. I wondered if Emily would write me off for good now. Even though I was trying to help her, Amanda and Marissa—and whoever else had been victimized.
And, at that point, I grew really tired. The fight was all out of me. I turned off my computer so I couldn’t read any more incoming mail. I turned off my cell phone too. I opened up a brand-new sketchbook and drew an eagle soaring high over some mountains.
Chapter Ten
The next morning, I was expecting to get nailed in one way or another by Liam and Craig. When I got to school, I sat down on the wall outside, seeing if they would spot me. I figured it beat the hell out of waiting for them to sneak up on me. As I sat there, I sketched in my little pocket drawing pad. For too long, I had stopped carrying it around, knowing other kids thought it was weird, but now I didn’t care. I had my latest rat T-shirt on under my hoodie, and that felt good, even though it wouldn’t help with what was coming.
Oddly enough, it was Jerome who was the first to say anything. “Good work, Colin. Nailed their balls to the wall.”
Getting praise from Jerome should have clued me in that the shit was about to hit the fan, but I appreciated the support. “It was all I could think to do. Those guys were out of control.”
“Understood. I appreciate what it took. But watch your back, bro. And remember, I’m around if you need support. Maybe we could clean this shithole up by weeding out some of the whackers and inbreds.”
I nodded but could see that Jerome’s idea of school improvement was a bit different from mine.
Kids were pouring into the school now. Most were just ignoring me as usual. But as I scanned the faces, I recognized some of my classmates who had received my little newsflash. I got a couple of thumbs-up but a lot more dirty looks. Emily and a couple of other girls walked on by. Emily didn’t even look at me, but her friends, Rachel and Ashley, looked at me like I’d committed some crime against humanity. Kyle, a friend of Liam’s, was the first one to come up to me and speak his mind, what little of it there was. “You freakin’ stupid or what? You can’t go ratting on your own. It’s just not done.” I could hear the threat in his voice.
“Just telling it the way it is. Just speaking the truth.”
He put his face up close to me. I could see the weird glint of anger in his eyes. I didn’t flinch. “No such thing as truth, man,” he said. “It’s all bullshit, and all we can do is hang together.”
I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? The crowd was thinning, but I was still watching the faces. Dirty looks. Not everyone. But enough. It was out now. Colin, the rat. Guess I’d have to wear that one until I graduated.
Liam and Craig were conveniently absent from school that day. I tried to savor the kind words from a handful of girls who talked to me through the day. These were friends of Amanda and Marissa. It was Stephanie who said, “That was brave, Colin. A little out there. But brave. Some of us get it. You stuck your neck out when no one else would.”
“Thanks,” I said, realizing this was the first time Stephanie had ever given me the time of day. Maybe this would turn out all right after all.
“Anyway, Marissa followed Amanda’s lead. She’s transferred too. So everything’s good now.”
I wanted to say that everything wasn’t good, but I didn’t. It looked like the rat had at least one admirer and that look she gave me was nothing short of sweet. She touched my sleeve as she walked away. Very sweet.
After a bit, I got used to all those looks—those silent opinions. Mostly negative. To hell with it. What’s done is done. After third period, I went looking for Emily on her usual route from Engli
sh to math.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “It was a dumb thing to do.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was the right thing to do.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Amanda and Marissa have transferred. So it’s over.”
“Yeah, but what about you?”
“I could have handled it.”
“You’re mad at me?”
Emily looked confused. “Not exactly mad. It’s just that being seen with you makes people think I was part of it.”
This really wasn’t like the old Emily. The vegan student activist Emily. She usually didn’t care what opinions people had of her. This was different.
“Meet me at the Brown Bean after school, okay?” I said. “We need to talk.”
She shook her head. “No. Let’s let it all cool off for a bit.” And she walked off clutching her textbooks to her chest.
I was left feeling abandoned. What the hell was this? My one good friend was more worried about what kids would think than about me.
Later in the day, when my path crossed Stephanie’s again, she smiled so sweetly that I stopped to speak to her. She seemed a little nervous, probably because of the way other kids were watching us. “Could I buy you a coffee at the Brown Bean after classes?” I asked.
She looked surprised and a bit awkward. She didn’t have to say it. The answer was no. Maybe she didn’t want to be seen with the rat either.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Maybe another time.
She nodded and walked off. So much for my attempt at romance.
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