by Jim Krieg
It looked to me like his face was actually turning red, but that didn’t stop him from bending over and picking up the straw wrapper before storming away.
“I’ll be watching you!” he called from down the hallway.
When he was gone, Tommy fell against a bank of lockers like he was stunned. “No, you didn’t!” he called. “You did not just nail Principal Sprangue for littering!”
“Nail him?” I asked innocently. “I politely requested he pick it up, that’s all.”
“I don’t know whether to be amazed or appalled,” Tommy said candidly.
The answer to that, evidently, was amazed, based on the fact that he wouldn’t shut up about it. He was sure that Sprangue would find some way to exact revenge upon me.
As if the constant stream of words wasn’t bad enough, Tommy made it worse by talking with a mouth full of peanut butter crunch Healthy Dude energy bar. I thought I’d be able to get him to eighty-six the chewing, against regulations and all that, but no such luck. He had special permission to eat on duty for medical reasons. “I’m hypoglycemic,” he said as he kept chewing and talking to me.
I would’ve asked him to put a sock in it (politely), but that would’ve been a distraction. I had new hunting grounds to memorize. I made a mental note of every stairwell and fire escape, noticed the locations of the poorly placed (and likely inoperative) security cameras, and got a feel for where the corridor traffic flowed and backed up. Important details, because they change at every school.
Unlike the students. The kids are always the same, instinctively splitting up into cliques of similar genetic information or social idiosyncrasies. In that giddy maelstrom between first and second period, we passed them all, locating their pods with a rapidity that defied normal human senses, banding together for that tantalizing illusion of safety in numbers. They were all there: the Jocks, the Straight A’s, the Gamers, the Hair Girls, the Self-Imposed Outcasts, and the Student Govies.
This last group was out in force. Elections were coming up, and the campaigning was in full swing. Kids were handing out buttons, campaign stickers (where were they planning to stick those?), and even stuff like yo-yos with their names stamped on them.
“Vote for Creelman,” someone mumbled at us as we walked by. Small voice for such a big girl. She held out a pamphlet. I couldn’t tell if she was making eye contact with us because of the major-league prescription of her glasses, but I doubted it. Tommy took the literature.
“‘Janet Creelman,’” Tommy read, “‘the candidate for consistency and reliability.’ That’s her slogan? She’s got to be kidding! Who’s Janet Creelman anyway?”
“She is,” I told him flatly, glancing at the girl handing out the campaign flyers. Her hair was like shoulder-length shag carpeting. I anticipated a long middle school experience for her.
“Oh,” he said to me. “Sorry,” he said to her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “But if you take the time to read the literature, you’ll see I’ve defined six areas of potential improvement for Rampart—”
Janet’s words were lost in a public roar of approval. Not for her, of course. There was another candidate kitty-corner from her. Despite being surrounded by a crowd, he was easy to spot. He was standing on a stepladder. At St. Finbar’s, I would’ve run him in for reckless climbing, but I wasn’t sure of the rules here, so I let it go.
“How long have you put up with this?” the boy on the chair asked. He answered himself, “Too long!”
It was the Student Govie I saw back at the Get-Involved Fest. I never heard of any middle school kid having their teeth professionally whitened, and I’m not saying this guy actually did it, but judging from those dazzling, sunglassinducing incisors, he just might’ve. He kept talking.
“They ask us to have school spirit, then give us homework on game nights! How are we supposed to support our teams and do hours of studying?! It’s impossible! As class president, I will be a tireless champion of homework-free game nights!” Tooth whitening and speech classes. As the students cheered, I wondered when he was going to promise them video games in every desk and a moped at every bike rack.
A giant in a letterman jacket approached. Clearly, he had a local following, since the crowd started chanting, “Ni-no! Ni-no! Ni-no!” as he approached the ladder.
“Quiet!” he shouted, like he was calling a football play. The noise settled down and the gorilla, Nino, I presumed, spoke, or rather growled at the assembly.
“Marcus is okay,” he said. “He supports the team and we support him. Vote for Volger.” He just said it, no smiling or anything. Maybe that was for the best. Volger smiled enough for four.
“Vol-ger! Vol-ger! Vol-ger!” the crowd started chanting, apparently spontaneously . . . but actually, I suspected, orchestrated by the Smile’s inner circle.
We’d passed by him by this time, and the rumble of approval was already drowning out Volger’s now continuing speech, which was fine by me.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” observed Tommy. I had no idea what he was talking about. My face must’ve told him so.
“I mean, that’s a campaign I can get behind,” he clarified.
I realized he was talking about the guy with the teeth. He was already off my radar. However, something else was on it. Footfalls. Fast and getting closer. Above the squeaks of runner’s shoes I could hear the labored breathing. Everything was in slow motion. A girl being nudged to the side. Notebooks hitting the linoleum. I interrupted the Camp Scout.
“Incoming,” I warned.
Tommy just looked at me blankly for a moment until the kid ran by. Then he got it. “NO RUNNING IN THE HALLS!!” he shouted. Uselessly.
My leg muscles tensed for action. Tommy just stood there. “Aren’t we going after him?” I asked.
“Can’t,” he explained. “Rampart has a zero tolerance policy against running in the halls.”
“Right. So let’s go stop him,” I suggested.
“Then we’d be running in the halls,” Tommy said.
I don’t shock easily. But lucky thing there were no flies in air at that moment, or one could’ve easily flown into my mouth, which hung open. Tommy got a little defensive trying to explain that he didn’t make the rules, just enforced them. Really? That’d be news to me.
It got worse. Tommy started explaining modern Safety Patrol theory to me. Evidently, today’s junior officer needs to be more than just an instrument of order. We have to be counselors, psychologists, friends, even, to the general student body. He pointed to a patch on his sash.
“This is a social dynamics badge,” he told me, adding, “they don’t just hand these babies out.” I couldn’t tell if that queasy feeling I was getting in the pit of my gut was Tommy or the hot chocolate I’d had an hour earlier.
“Hey! Slow down!”
This last item was shouted, by Tommy, at another hallway runner. By now, we’d made a circuit and looped around back to the main hall, where we started. Now, let’s give the runner the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was deaf . . . at least to the shrill notes of Tommy’s plaintive cry. I was climbing the walls inside my head.
“We really should do something about that,” I offered calmly, harnessing my questionable grasp of social dynamics.
“Oh, we do,” he told me. “If you recognize the student, you can give him an official warning later. After three official warnings, which he can protest, he’ll receive a yellow card, which—”
Another runner. I heard him early, my senses were so keyed up. As I felt the rush of air go past me, I didn’t even look up. My backpack was off my shoulder instantly. I pivoted my arm around in a perfect arc like a seasoned bowler and let fly.
The knapsack glided across those highly polished floors like a weightless air-hockey puck. Its obvious heft returned, however, the moment it collided with the runner’s ankle.
The crash was spectacular. He cartwheeled like a Hot Wheels Formula One across a deep-pile carpet, finally skidding on his f
lank into the Great Orator’s stepladder pulpit.
The ladder toppled for a moment, nearly capsizing the boy atop it before settling down again. Instantly the ladder kid slid down the rails and roughly pulled the fallen runner to his feet by his shirt. For a second, just a second, I thought the ladder kid was going to take the runner apart. Then he looked up at me and Tommy . . . and smiled.
“Easy there, kid,” said the smiling speech maker. “Perfect attendance isn’t worth breaking your neck over.” Somehow I doubted that was the runner’s motivating factor.
The sign fell. The one that was being hung from the ladder. Amazingly, it was caught by two sets of hands before it even touched the Smile’s admittedly awesome hair. MARCUS VOLGER FOR PRESIDENT.
Tommy finished filling out the official warning slip, ripped it off the pad, and handed it to the runner. “That’s strike one, Nichols,” he said unconvincingly. Nichols looked at the Smile like he was waiting for something, but all he got was, “Let’s watch the speed from now on.” It was a dismissal. “And vote for Volger!”
“Griff,” Tommy said, “this is Marcus Volger, the coolest kid in school.” Volger flashed that smile again as he laughed self-effacingly. “Hardly!” he demurred. Mr. Humble.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but your campaign staff sure is working hard to make it look that way.” I indicated the team of volunteers behind him, plastering Vote for Volger posters, handing out baked goods and bumper stickers that would never go on bumpers. Team Volger was mostly made up of normal-looking kids, if there is such a thing, but my eye went to two stocky boys who seemed to be doing a lot less work than the others. One was small eyed and large mouthed and definitely wasn’t going to be handed a BE A TEEN MODEL! flyer at the mall. The other dude was like a huge slab of freckled meat ending in a shock of moss-like hair . . . if moss were red.
I wondered if my snarky comment got under his skin. I hoped so, but we were interrupted before I ever found out.
I smelled her before I saw her. Sugar and icing and everything nice. “Cupcake?” I heard a chirpy voice ask. It was one of Volger’s acolytes, this one in a plaid skirt and anime T-shirt. She was offering me a mushroom-shaped explosion of milk chocolate with the words Vote for Volger written in frosting. Noticing my hesitation she added, “It’s free.”
Nice kid. “Nothing this sweet is ever free, cupcake,” I told her. Somebody had to break the bad news to her, but I don’t think she got it. She faded back into the crowd of zealots.
“Marcus was class treasurer last year,” Tommy yapped on. “The zero tolerance policy on hallway running was his proposal.”
“Nice rule,” I lied, “except that we’re prevented from enforcing the rule by the rule.”
“You didn’t seem to have any trouble enforcing it . . .” Volger observed. “. . . Griff, was it?”
I didn’t smile or anything. I’m not that easy.
“Well, welcome to Rampart Middle,” Volger said. There was that smile again. “And vote Volger!” You could still tell he was smiling even when he was walking away from us. Like his high beams were on.
“What’s up with you?” Tommy asked as we continued down the hall. “Every kid in school likes Volger, Griff.”
“Every dog in the world likes to drink antifreeze, too,” I extrapolated. “Too bad it’s poison.”
“Really . . . ?” I heard. A girl’s voice. A purr, really. And dripping with sarcasm. “Someone who isn’t going to ‘vote Volger.’ And I thought it was going to be a slow news day.” Clearly, I was right about the sarcasm. Good thing. I was beginning to think Rampart Middle had a zero tolerance policy for that as well.
There she was, standing in the doorway. I didn’t have to read the name on the glass to know what room it was; I could tell from the smirk on her face. Tommy volunteered the information anyway. “Griff, meet the editor of the school rag—”
“Verity King, Junior Journalist of the Year,” I finished. She arched an eyebrow. Pretty, but probably unaware of it. Not like I care, just a fact. I’d say the same thing to a police sketch artist. “We have the Internet back at St. Finbar’s, too,” I said by way of explanation.
She didn’t like being in the dark. I could tell by the way she pushed her hair over her left ear. “Griff Carver,” she said, just to see if there was a matching file in her head. “Seems to me I’ve heard that name before. Aren’t you some kind of hero?”
“A hero’s just a sandwich the cafeteria served us every Wednesday,” I explained. “It was mostly baloney.”
She exhaled to stifle her laugh. She liked sass, this one. Better go easy on the sass. I walked off. Tommy followed.
“Sweet!” Tommy yapped. “I’ve never seen anyone get the last word with Verity before.” Bad enough he was talking. Then he had to keep talking. “She’s actually kind of cute, really. You like her, Griff? You know, like her, like her?”
Tommy’s body slammed into the lockers. Hard. But not too hard. I just wanted his attention, not a trip to the nurse’s office. “Check it, Merit Badge,” I explained, “we’re not friends; we’re not buddies; we’re not partners. Delane said I had to patrol with you. He didn’t say anything about talking to you!”
For a second, I thought he was going to explain to me the importance of an easy camaraderie between co-workers on a high-stress detail like hall monitoring. If he was, he never got the chance. Just then, the first-period bell rang.
The usual chaos of the hallway sped up like someone hit the FF button on their TiVo remote. As the kids scurried into their homerooms like cockroaches, I used the silence to let Rodriguez know how it was going to be.
“Come on,” I told him, “we’ve got a job to do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HELEN NUTTING GUIDANCE COUNSELOR RAMPART MIDDLE SCHOOL
Continuation of the RECORDED INTERVIEW with seventh grader Griffin Carver.
GRIFF: Things got a lot more quiet after that. Big surprise, huh? But not just Tommy. With all the kids in class, the halls take on a cold, creepy feel, like you’re the last guy on earth after an instantaneous worldwide pandemic.
Silence is one of the perks of hall duty. Giving up study hall three days a week and school assembly on Fridays is a small price to pay for walking a beat.
It’s a lonely feeling and one I like. It’s just you and the occasional kid en route to the can. You can tell they’re aware of the creepy feeling too because they never talk to you. They see your belt, then just show you their hall pass and go on their way.
Slow day. We had three, maybe four kids on bathroom break. No one was sent to Principal Sprague’s office. Finally, Tommy couldn’t take that awesome silence anymore. He had to talk.
“Can’t believe Delane assigned us hall duty,” he complained. “At least at the bike racks we mighta seen some action! This is worse than being in class.”
I almost felt sorry for him. I decided to throw him some Hall Monitor wisdom just to keep him from imploding from the lack of easygoing chitchat.
“Stay caffeinated, Rodriguez. Easy duty is twice as hard. The minute you get comfortable is when everything goes south.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, Griff, I really do,” said Tommy, “but it’s been over eighteen months since we’ve caught anyone AWOHP in the corridor. That’s—”
“Absent without hall pass, I know,” I assured him. “So, Rampart is officially crime free, huh?” I asked dubiously.
“Well, we have an occasional incident,” he countered a bit defensively. “Like those BMX bikes this morning. I’ve found wet toilet paper wads on the ceiling of the boys’ bathroom. And we’ve had a spate of false fire alarms this year.”
“A regular reign of terror.” I sighed. “Hall pass.” That last part was not said to him. It was to another bathroom break kid. He handed me the pass.
Every school has different passes, even different philosophies behind the passes. They are all designed to be cumbersome and embarrassing enough to guarantee their safe return. My old, old school, where the
re were some security issues, handed out the actual bathroom key on a bent coat hanger, like a less reputable gas station. I’d also seen nice, colorful store-bought passes, laminated and with a decorative tassel. The Rampart Middle hall pass was an oversize hunk of engraved wood, like those paddles they have at fraternity houses (which, by the way, if they’re actually used for spanking pretty much proves that people do not get smarter as they get older).
“S’up,” he said. It wasn’t really a question. He was simultaneously too friendly and too standoffish.
His pass was in my hand. But I wasn’t looking at it. Reading a hall pass is boring. They’re all the same. I was reading him. Stiff, staring straight ahead, pulling at the shoulder strap of his book bag.
I handed the pass back to Rodriguez without moving my eyes. “What’s your name, kid?” I asked.
“I just want to go to the boys’ room,” he said. He hadn’t answered my question. I took a closer look at him. He had straight dirty blond hair in the traditional bowl cut. I couldn’t tell if this had been done by a cut-rate hair-stylist or a cheap mom, but it was a little jagged, so I suspected the mom. He had dirty fingernails and the look of a kid who sharpens his pencil too long just to be annoying. But most noticeably, he had some kind of rash. Red skin poked up from under his collar, spreading onto his neck. Probably a long-term problem since he was used to covering it up. His long-sleeved shirt covered a lot of skin, but it was a warm day. Not hot, but fine for short sleeves.
“Name’s Dover Belton,” Tommy volunteered, proving his statement about remembering faces.
“Really?” I asked Tommy, but didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I asked Belton, “You always bring your backpack to the boys’ room?”
Belton smiled weakly and shrugged. Keeping my eyes on the kid, I asked Tommy over my shoulder, “What do you make of his hall pass, Rodriguez?”
Belton’s expression didn’t change. He kept looking straight ahead, like he was bored.
“White oak,” Tommy announced, turning the paddle in his hands, “right kind of varnish, proper heft. Looks good to me.”