Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol

by Jim Krieg

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HELEN NUTTING GUIDANCE COUNSELOR RAMPART MIDDLE SCHOOL

  Continuation of the RECORDED INTERVIEW with seventh grader Griffin Carver.

  GRIFF: I dropped the caulk gun. Every thought vanished from my head. There were no counterfeiters, there was no fight, no Volger. There was nothing in the world except the girl, falling through that cloud of sawdust, and my legs, the ones that were suddenly made of lead.

  Then I was looking up at the soles of Verity’s shoes. Girly but sensible. My hands flew up and then, amazingly, I felt her weight collect in my arms. More than her weight, really. That seventh grader was pulling some serious Gs with her. But by then my legs were under me, absorbing the shock.

  A moment passed before I became aware of the fact that I was still standing. I’d made it. I’d caught her. She was safe.

  “Uh, Carver?” I heard Verity’s cool voice say. “You can put me down now.”

  Why was I embarrassed? I caught her! She’s the one who should be embarrassed for falling in the first place. Maybe the moment lasted a moment longer than I thought. The world started to return to me. The last of them—Belton, I think (it was hard to tell with the sawdust unitards)—was running out of the room with Tommy hot on his heels. I did what anyone would do in my shoes.

  I dropped her. First of all, I had criminals to catch. Second, if anyone was watching, it would make it clear to them that I was only holding Verity in my arms in the line of duty. Finally, it was the only reasonable response to Verity’s teasing. Sure, it was physical, but you try going witticism to witticism with Verity sometime. Good luck.

  “Hey!” cried Verity, hitting the wood shop floor. She picked up the thing that had dropped out of her pocket. Now that I could see it, I realized that it was pink and covered with hearts. Verity picked up on my puzzled expression.

  “It’s my di—reporter’s notebook,” she sneered defensively at me. “Wanna make something out of it?”

  “C’mon!” I barked at her. I snatched up a heavy-duty measuring tape and raced out into the dark hallway after Tommy and the fleeing gang.

  In the shadows to my left I saw a figure vanishing into the darkness. From the echoing footsteps, I could tell it was Tommy. That meant no one was chasing the huge figure I could just make out racing off on my right.

  Holding it by the tape end, I hurled the tape measure at the legs of the retreating Rico. The tape housing arced past Rico’s legs before it ran out of slack and wrapped itself around the eighth grader’s shins like a Brazilian bola, bringing him crashing to the floor. But there were more footsteps in front of him. And certainly there were more forgers running the opposite way than Tommy could handle.

  They were slipping through our fingers and there was nothing I could do about it. Then, suddenly, the hall lights popped on behind me. As my eyes adjusted, I could see a lot of activity down there. Then, ahead of me, those fluorescent tubes flickered on as well and I saw the giant body of Jace plow into the chest of a kid who dwarfed him. He should’ve seen him—after all, Meat Montelongo was wearing a bright red reflective Patrol belt.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” a familiar voice asked Jace. It was Delane. He was with Zinardi and Reams. They were pretty impressive in force. Dugan and the rest of the boys were closing in from the opposite direction.

  One by one the panicking forgers were grabbed.

  Rico was trying to crawl away from one of the uniforms while untangling himself from the tape measure. There was no hope of escape, but, just to be helpful, I let go of my end of the metal band. It instantly ZIPPED through the air as it retracted into the dispenser. If you’ve ever played with one of these at home, you know that the farther it’s pulled out, the faster and wilder it retracts. If you’re not careful, it can give you a good whipping.

  “Oww!” cried Rico. Belton had managed to evade Dugan’s grasp with a simple soccer feint, but he had nowhere to go. Almost nowhere. He made a dash for the wood shop. But that was a dead end. There was nowhere to—

  “Griff!” Tommy shouted to me, reading my mind. “The air duct!” I sprinted after Belton, my mind suddenly grasping Tommy’s implication. If Belton made it into the vent, he might manage to lose us in the maze above our heads.

  I raced into the room. I could barely see through the sawdust fog. It was No-Man’s-Land times ten. Then my eyes adjusted and I could just make out Belton’s feet disappearing into the hole. Too late! I braced myself. The last thing I wanted to do in the world was climb back into that aluminum nightmare, but if that’s what I had to do, then—

  “Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” A bloodcurdling scream pierced the air before I had even finished climbing the stool Belton had left there.

  Belton burst from the vent, shrieking like he was on fire. I quickly saw why. There was an enormous rat clinging to his hair and shirt collar. He flailed around the room like a madman. “Get it off!” he screamed. “Get it off!”

  I suppose I should’ve leaped to his assistance, but the rat ended up leaping off of his own accord, vanishing into the particle cloud in a chorus of irritated squeaks.

  Moments later, I was escorting a shaken and skeeved Belton out of the room. I handed him off to Zinardi, who handled him none too gently, but I only heard this, I wasn’t watching.

  I was looking at Verity. It was the first thing that passed for a peaceful moment since she’d made her big entrance through the skylight. She smiled at me, very self-satisfied. I knew that smile. It was the smile of a girl waiting to be thanked.

  “That was a pretty stupid stunt you pulled back there,” I told her.

  “Tell me about it. I cracked my lens.”

  “You coulda cracked your skull open,” I observed.

  “Oh, I don’t think there was much chance of that, Griff. I’m a reporter. We’re too thickheaded.”

  “And stubborn,” I added.

  “And stubborn,” she agreed. She still had that look on her face. She was waiting.

  “I guess you think I owe you something now.”

  “Well, a thank-you would be nice, but I know better than to expect miracles. Oh, and now that I think of it, I owe you a little something.”

  Suddenly, without warning, Verity slugged me on the arm. Hard. She used the nuggie knuckle. Yeah, it hurt.

  “What was that for?”

  “That’s for making Tommy feed me that false story about the Industrial Arts renovation. As soon as I checked into it, I knew it was a plant. I put two and two together and had a hunch there might be a story in it for me.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said, not looking at her. It was as close to a thank-you as she was going to get. I immediately regretted it and tried to dilute it with a put-down. “Next time, you better check your facts before you run your scoop.”

  Verity just raised one eyebrow. “Maybe I did,” she said mysteriously.

  Okay, that confused me. Would she have run a story she knew was false? Why? To help us? But there was no time to figure it out.

  “What in the H-E double hockey sticks is going on out here!?” It was the last voice in the world I wanted to hear. But not the last one I expected. I looked over and there he was.

  Not that you would’ve recognized Principal Sprangue as the hopping, sawdust-covered figure before us. But his voice was the same. I was later told that the hurricane of wood specks had billowed through the air duct and exploded through the air vent in the auditorium like a dust tsunami. The Parent-Teacher Association were covered with dust, out of their seats, and into the hall before Sprangue could finish shouting, “Remain calm!” Obviously, Sprangue never got to finish his speech. The PTA owes me one.

  “Carver!!” the principal screamed. “I might’ve known you were behind all this! You are going to pay! I’m not just expelling you from school. I’m going to get you expelled from the school district! Expelled from the county! From the state! So help me, Griffin Carver, I’m going to get you expelled from America!!” I ignored his breath blasting into my face and his index finger
poking me in the sternum, although either could be considered physical abuse. Instead, I just stuck out my chin and pointed it at him.

  “Go ahead and try,” I crowed. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, but my adrenaline was pumping from the fight. I couldn’t help myself. I’d need something to snap me out of battle mode.

  “Oh, Griffin.” A forlorn voice sighed. From the utter despair in her voice, I knew it was her. I even turned around. It was easy to pick her out from the group of miserable, dust-covered parents, all of whom looked as if they’d been lightly breaded in preparation for frying. She was the one with the tear carving a path through the sawdust on her cheek.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. Now I knew what meeting she was going to. Guess I should read her notes more carefully.

  Sprangue was still in the Rage Zone, because he didn’t even register that he was standing five feet from the mom of the kid he was threatening, not that it would’ve made any difference. “Your permanent record is going to look like the phone book! There isn’t a school on earth that’ll even consider having you—”

  “Uh, Principal Sprangue?” Delane interrupted. “I think I should get you up to speed on the situation.”

  “What situation?” Sprangue barked. “I know everything that goes on in my school, and I don’t need some punk kid . . .” His voice trailed off as he noticed the rent-a-cops and the eighth graders in their custody. Now he looked more confused than usual. Delane took that as a green light.

  “Carver and Rodriguez here have broken up a ring of student counterfeiters. They were illegally using the wood shop to create fake hall passes that they’d sell to the student body, encouraging truancy and, if I may say, weakening the moral fiber of Rampart. All the proof you need is right in there,” explained Delane, nodding toward the wood shop.

  He wasn’t about to go further, about how the fake hall passes were just poker chips in a pitiless game of power brokering. It would be amazing if even this much registered.

  Stunned, Sprangue stepped up to Belton, just being dragged off to police headquarters. “Is this true?” he asked. Seemed to me that he wasn’t so much demanding a confession as begging for a denial. Evidently, Belton didn’t understand what Sprangue was looking for, because he nodded, admitting his guilt. Sprangue’s face went from confusion to despair. If the principal were a bike tire, I’d say he suddenly lost about thirty pounds per square inch.

  But Belton’s nod wasn’t enough, near enough, for me.

  “Tell ’em the rest,” I growled as I joined them. “Tell ’em who you work for!” I saw blind panic enter Belton’s eyes. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jace violently shaking his head, desperately signaling Belton to keep quiet.

  “Say it!” I shouted at Rico, then at Jace. “Say the name! Tell them who’s behind every dirty, rotten endeavor at this school!”

  I was desperate. It felt like I was just a hair’s breadth away from vindication. And then I heard it.

  “Yes, tell us.”

  The voice was like a novelty joy buzzer going off in my spine. But with even less “joy.” I turned, hoping that I’d just imagined the voice. But there he was. And there was the smile.

  Marcus Volger. Like he just stepped off his campaign poster.

  “Please, if there’s some secret criminal mastermind behind every supposed transgression at Rampart Middle, we deserve to know about it.” I don’t know how he does it, but everything he says drips with innocence and sincerity. Smug sincerity.

  My legs felt like melting ice as some part of my mind became aware that the landscape was shifting. I got in Morgan’s face. Everyone was watching. The name had to come from one of them or it meant nothing.

  “Your boss is right here,” I growled low, glancing toward Volger. “All you’ve got to do is say his name.”

  Morgan shook his big red moss-covered head. “I’ve never seen that kid before in my life.”

  I honestly don’t know what I was about to do. Shove him? Scream? Just totally flip out? We’ll never know. Delane stepped in before I could make things worse.

  “Griff,” Delane told me, “Marcus is the guy who tipped us off. We’re only here because he called us.”

  “What?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t make any sense. I locked eyes with Verity. “But I thought you—”

  She read my mind. “It wasn’t me, Griff. Soon as I knew something was up, I grabbed my camera and headed for the fire escape.” She looked as baffled as I felt.

  “You see, during my campaign, I’ve been doing a lot of talking,” Volger joked. The mostly sawdust-covered crowd chuckled appreciatively. He really was good at this, the lying viper. “But I’ve also done a lot of listening. And when I heard rumors that some sort of nefarious goings-on would be happening here tonight, I of course did my civic duty and alerted the proper authorities. Right, Delane?”

  “Yeah,” Delane said. I prepared myself. Delane loved that transcript of his. It would be easy pickings to blow his own horn here, leaving Tommy and me out hanging in the breeze. Slowly, deliberately, he turned to Principal Sprangue. “But it was really HP Rodriguez and concerned student Carver here who spearheaded their own investigation and tracked the culprits here to the scene of the crime.” He turned to me. “And I trust they’ve collected ample evidence?”

  I nodded and shrugged toward the wood shop door. “Plenty. In there.”

  Amazingly, Delane turned toward the fluffy, woodchippy PTA and played to them. I wouldn’t be surprised if he runs for office in high school. “I think we all, parents, faculty, and students alike, owe a big debt of thanks to Tommy and Griff.”

  There’s a collective consciousness in any crowd, a hive mind, and it’s a mind that loves a cue. And Delane, bless him, had just given the crowd a cue . . . and Tommy and me a gift. The adults started clapping. There were even a few hoots and boo-yahs. All eyes turned to Sprangue. The PTA clapping was his cue, of course. He did not look happy.

  “Rodriguez, Carver,” he said through his unmoving smile, “you appear to be a real credit to this school. Please accept our gratitude.” I thought he was about to spontaneously combust from frustration. But the grown-ups couldn’t tell. They were cheering and applauding. I could feel the Old Lady’s eyes on my back. I tried to not look. But, finally, I couldn’t help myself. I craned my neck looking back at her. She was clapping too. And she had a big, dumb proud mom smile glued on her face. I smiled too. A little.

  Even Volger was clapping. At least he was making a big show of moving his hands back and forth. I doubt he was actually making any noise. But his hateful stare at me said plenty.

  Tommy shot me a look. He wasn’t done. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Principal?” he asked innocently, but with a meaningful glance.

  Verity, very professional, nodded at Tommy. Good job.

  I saw the last bit of breath escape Sprangue. He threw in the towel. “Griffin Carver,” he said in a monotone, “I hereby reinstate you to the Safety Patrol service, effective immediately.”

  Verity looked right at me and smiled like I was the yearbook photographer. I think I saw all of her teeth.

  As you know, I’m not the kind of guy who gets all emotional. If you’re not careful, that sappy stuff will trip you up. But I’ve got to admit . . . I felt pretty good. Real good.

  The feeling wasn’t even ruined when Sprangue pinched the back of my neck, leaned in, and whispered out of the corner of his fake smile, “But I’ll be watching you, Carver. Oh, yeah. I’ll be watching . . .”

  Big deal. I’ll be watching too, I thought as I stared at Volger disappearing down the hallway. I’ll be watching too.

  A few minutes later everyone was making their way out of the building. The PTA was too itchy and anxious for hot showers to listen to any more of Sprangue’s speechifying, not that they were that excited about it in the first place.

  As we headed for the minivan, I felt the Old Lady grab my hand and swing it, like when I was a kid. Feeling particularly magnanimous, I le
t her do it.

  “By the way, Mom,” I said, because it was eventually unavoidable, “I’m not really in the marching band.”

  “I know,” she answered flatly. “I figured that out four days ago when I asked the band teacher how you were coming along.” But she was still holding my hand and swinging our arms. “You should know two things. One, that I’m very proud of you, Griff. And two, that you are in serious trouble, young man. You never lie to me. Ever. You do the crime, you serve the time. Understand?”

  “Ma.” I half smiled up at her. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HELEN NUTTING GUIDANCE COUNSELOR RAMPART MIDDLE SCHOOL

  Continuation of the RECORDED INTERVIEW with seventh grader Griffin Carver.

  GRIFF: It was almost like thunder. Almost. But not quite. It was too rhythmic. Too regular. Da-dum. Da-dum. But like a storm over the lake, it rolled closer and closer. Sure, you could hear it, even if you couldn’t quite make it out. But you felt it. It shook the floor. The closer it came, the stronger it shook.

  ThQey rounded the corner into the main hallway, a mass of hysterical joy. You could make out the words then. You couldn’t help it. No, not words. Word. Just one.

  “MAR-CUS! MAR-CUS! MAR-CUS!”

  As more of the crowd surged into the hall, he appeared as well. Above them. The new class president was riding on their shoulders. I wondered if that was their idea. Or his. His acolytes were throwing ripped-up notebook paper into the air like confetti.

  It was a landslide, of course. Who wouldn’t vote for a guy who took time out from his campaign to help bring down a gang of bad kids in his school? Janet Creelman couldn’t compete with that. Heck, I would’ve voted for him. If I didn’t know. But I knew.

  I could feel Verity and Tommy look at me, but I didn’t move. I just kept leaning against my locker like I could care less. I guess they took a cue from me because, by the time Volger’s victory parade came marching by us, Tommy and Verity were in pointedly unimpressed poses as well. It’s pretty tricky to pull off, looking as if a hundred chanting revelers don’t make any impression on you. But they were pretty convincing.