by Gurley, Jan
His shoulders got, if anything, bigger, like he was swelling. “Did you call me toots?” he said in disbelief.
“If you force me to get on the ground and crawl under your legs to get it, I will.”
No one was even pretending to read an assignment, not even the Fitz.
Drew lurched sideways, almost toppling the chair, grabbed the strap of my bag with one hand and swung it at me. I caught my bag in the chest with an “oof.”
That dented my good humor a bit and reminded me there was business to deal with. “Meet me at the door when the bell rings and I’ll show you where –“ I lifted the paper with his printed schedule, looked at the list of classes and blinked.
I tried not to smile, I really did.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll show you where Introduction to Pottery meets.”
The scufflings of the room got much louder and there were an unusual number of coughs as I wove my way to a new seat. Personally, I was feeling wonderful. My day had changed completely. There was still a teensy-tiny possibility the trees could be saved.
***
When I met him after Pottery period, Drew staggered out the door with spiky hair — a look I’d already come to recognize as a sign of severe frustration combined with fury. If he could bottle it, it’d make a great gel.
I could guess what tipped him over. I don’t know what it’s like in other places, but in Academy, pottery attracts a certain, well, type of politics. Superficially it might appear that you must be vegan and have hairy armpits. In actual fact, to truly be a Pottery Person, you must have both 1) a burning, unquenchable desire to convert other people to your causes, and 2) such a finely-tuned sense of injustice that slamming 20 pounds of clay around barely takes the edge off.
Pottery Politics are intense. And estrogen-soaked.
Drew wouldn’t make eye contact, but stood, taking up a large part of the hallway as he glared down the corridor into the space of the atrium, not reacting to the students who streamed past him like water around a giant boulder.
“We’ve got a ways to go for your next class, Psych.” My voice came out tour-guide perky, but he didn’t budge. I kept my eyes on the slip of paper in my hand, “I wonder — who picked your classes?” Maybe it wasn’t too late to change some of them.
He gave me a stab of a glance. “Why?’
Still not moving.
“Did you pick them?”
That earned me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding level stare.
“Fine,” I said and turned and headed back into the surging stream of students. Let him keep up if he could. I walked into Psych, grabbing a textbook from the shelf on the stand beside the door on the way, dropped my bag, gave it a sideways shove with my foot under my chair like I always did and flopped in my seat as the bell rang. I was surprised when the Dog slid into an empty chair to my right almost the exact same time I did. That’s probably what sports can do for you — good reaction time.
After psych (a nice change with fast-paced material and no Drew-drama — so much so that I almost forgot he was there) was brunch. Brunch is a pompous Legacy name for the fifteen minutes between third and fourth period where everyone gets to chew dry crackers into a pottery-quality paste and then wish you had time to make it through the line at the water-fountain before your next class.
I slid down the wall, opened my bag, and got out some cracker-cheese combos that I’d put together that morning. On a plate, they’d been stacked neat, crisp and appealing. Now they were jumbled — crackers soggy and cheese dry, mashed into the bottom of the thin plastic fold-over sandwich baggy.
The Dog stood above me, staring off into the distance.
One by one the Greenbacks appeared. No one spoke because no one could say what they really wanted to say — “Where’s Tio?! Where’s Alex and Robin?! What happened with the camera hunt?!!!”
Finally, almost too late to even chew crackers, the three showed. Tio slid into place next to me, knees up and backpack on the floor in front of him. I already knew what he was going to say from the way they’d walked, foot-dragging, shoulders slumped.
“Couldn’t find it.”
Helena, Phoebe and I gave each other significant looks across the hallway space. “There’s still the Deans,” Helena said.
“What?” the Dog barked from above, as if he realized the conversation might be about him, and really didn’t like it.
There was a heartbeat of silence and then Helena gave an overly bright smile and said, “The Deans, they probably made your schedule, right?”
“Dean Verona,” The Dog said the word like he hated her.
We exchanged glances again. That explained why the Dog and I were in four classes together — Legacy High School did block scheduling, and he’d gotten my block. It also explained some of the weirdness of the elective class choices. Dean Verona was passionate about “what makes Academy unique!” and she’d loaded his schedule with everything no one at University could take, ignoring the fact that most kids at University didn't want to take those classes and, in fact, would rather stick needles in their eyes.
Gonzo said, “Didn’t you ask for anything?” Gonzo is a human asparagus stalk, only not green. He’s got this poof of hair on top, his neck’s as wide as his jaw, and when he walks, it’s like he’s got joints between joints — his arms and legs are all rubbery. I was surprised and little shocked to see Gonzo gazing up at the Dog like Drew was a superior being.
The Dog stared down the hallway again. Finally he said, as if bestowing a gift on us by choosing to answer, “PE. No way am I turning into some wasted geek.” Gonzo blinked, a facial wince.
Viola started to say, “But we don’t have any PE…”
I clapped my hands and interrupted, my voice raised, “Hey, what am I thinking? It’s time I introduced everyone. That’s Gonzalo — we all call him Gonzo. Here’s Alex and Robin –“
“’S’up.”
“Hey, dude.”
The Dog, staring at their matching trucker outfits, didn’t seem to know how to answer, just stared.
“And you know Tio. He’s tutoring Bianca seventh period.” The Dog’s look could have ignited a Boy Scout pyramid of firewood without anyone needing to strike flint. Tio’s hand trembled just a bit as he held it out to shake. The Dog let the hand hang in the air between them, until Tio got the hint and dropped it.
We exchanged glances again as Tio got busy chewing a handful of nuts. He looked even smaller than usual next to the Dog, and much more vulnerable.
As if they could read my mind — that I was about to rip in and give a big piece of my mind to the Dog — Phoebe, Viola, and Helena took over the rest of the introductions between bites of cracker, while Alex and Robin walked across the atrium together to get in line for the bathrooms.
“Well, ‘bout time to go,” I said, putting my bag back together.
The Dog said, like he remembered something, “No shots?”
I stood, and the others did too. “What? What’d you say?”
He looked like he wished he could take the words back.
Suddenly understanding, Helena said, “No way. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The Dog said, “What?” belligerent.
Helena turned to us, “They’ve got baristas. I’ll bet you can buy shots of espresso, and lattes and cappuccinos at University brunch.”
“No!” “No way!” “That’s…that’s unbelievable!”
The bell rang and I got out the slip of paper as the Dog bobbed along behind me, immersed again in the current of students. It might have been my imagination, but his face looked a shade redder than usual. As we rounded the corner into the 400 wing, he struggled forward to blurt out a question. “Did those…did Alex and Robin — that’s their names, right? Did they both just go in the girls' bathroom?”
I smiled and said, “Yep,” and sped up.
***
Tio, Viola and I all have band together after brunch. Apparently, so did the Dog. The whole where-do-you-sit the first day if
you’re a new student problem is multiplied a thousandfold in band. First, you’ve got maybe a second or two to figure out where the instruments are clumped. Then, chairs are NOT based on availability, but, instead, on chair-testing. God help you if you accidentally bump someone down the chain of chairs.
And, of course, there are no free chairs anywhere, because we put away and get out new chairs and music stands constantly. Mr. Whitworth likes to rearrange us for a “better sound” and to “improve the instrumental interaction,” all the time — almost on a song-by-song basis.
The Dog was left standing in front of the class to the left of the music blackboard, as clunks from cases opening and closing, toodled treble notes, and the flapping sound of sheets of falling music filled the air. “People! People!” wailed Mr. Whitworth. No teacher has ever, in the history of the world, been more enthusiastic about his subject, and worse at controlling a class, than Mr. Whitworth. The band, as a group, pretty much decided when anything happened. Not Mr. Whitworth. And, weirdly, it sort of worked out — because if you were in the Academy band, you were probably almost as obsessed with music as Mr. Whitworth. We almost always settled down because we never had enough time to play.
Notes died down, people got twitchy. The clarinets shushed people. We needed to get started — now — or we wouldn’t get our music fix for the day. We all knew we couldn’t trust Mr. Whitworth to stay on task.
In the tense, waiting, near-quiet, Mr. Whitworth’s voice sounded louder than usual. “What do you mean, you don’t play? Nothing? You don’t play anything at all?”
The Dog stood, arms crossed, head tilted forward like a bull about to charge. From the back, you could see the silent groans that ran through the room. Shoulders slumped, instruments were laid down across knees, people snippily (and unnecessarily) re-arranged music sheets on their stands.
Mr. Whitworth kept staring at the slip of schedule paper, like it would somehow change if he glared at it hard enough.
Viola’s humming harmonics over in the flute section stopped and her voice rang out.
“Anyone can play the triangle,” she said.
***
At the end of Band, the Dog stood with hands on his hips, watching me pack my trombone. “Let’s go,” he said again.
Romeo, another trombonist (unfortunately named), said, “Here, I’ll put yours in your instrument cubby,” and picked up my case.
“Settle down,” I said to the Dog, “the bell doesn’t even ring for another couple of minutes.” Mr. Whitworth had finished early, like he was too exhausted from shouting, “No! Andrew, you hit it with the beat! Let’s start at the beginning, ah-one, ah-two…”
Everyone was grumpy. There was a disapprovingly large amount of space around me and the Dog.
“It’s PE,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I didn’t have the heart to look at him. I grabbed my bag and, as we headed out the door a minute before the bell, said, “You know, Academy isn’t really known for its sports.”
He gave a “well, duh,” snort behind me.
“I’m just saying, you might want to…”
He said, “Don’t tell me you’re going to give me advice about sports. Get me to PE. I’ll take it from there.”
Okey-dokey. Far be it from me to butt in. “Fine by me,” I said, and took off down the hall. I got him into the dusty side-gym before any of the other students arrived, and then left. Quickly.
The next period — the start of lunch — was beyond awkward. None of us Greenbacks knew where to stand or what to do. We certainly didn’t want the Dog trailing behind us to the fairy circle. Greenbacks and the Dog and I stood at the edge of the Academy pod’s cavernous lunch space, being jostled from either side. The Dog glowered off into space again, so much more furiously than before that Phoebe said, “What’s up with him?”
I said, out the side of my mouth to her, “P.E.”
“Oh.”
Gonzo said, raising his voice to be heard over the echoing din of conversation around us, “Didn’t he know it’s H-I-P-Y?”
H-I-P-Y is short for Health promotion, Inner peace (meditation, actually), Pilates and Yoga.
The Dog, having heard Gonzo’s question, said, “What is wrong with you people? Don’t you do any sports? Anything?”
“Hey,” I said, “Yoga’s a sport.” Long silence from our group, “Well, sort of.”
The Dog leaned closer to me, vibrating with anger. “It’s a state requirement.” He said it like he was threatening all of us with a prison term.
Which, to my mind, being forced to do organized P.E. is: a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Helena said, “Anyone who’s got any sense gets an exemption.”
“Exemption?!?” His volume, if anything, went up.
He glared around the circle at each of us. Finally I said, “Hayfever.”
Gonzo, looking at his feet, “Eczema.”
Viola, with a proud smile, “Anxiety disorder.”
Tio started to say “Flat feet,” when the Dog said, this time in that scary quiet voice, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Unfortunately, that’s when Alex and Robin walked up, and Robin said, “Guys, don’t go anywhere. We’ve got to do a pit stop.”
Drew’s eyes followed them, every step, all the way to the bathrooms. He turned to me, his hands on his hips. “This is a joke, right?”
Okay, now I was getting angry. Pick on my friends and you’re asking for it. I tucked my hair behind my ear and stepped toward him. He didn’t back up. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“They both just went in the boys' bathroom.”
“So?”
“Sooo…” the Dog spluttered “so what the hell are they? Boys? Girls?”
We glanced at each other, then away.
“No!” The Dog’s reaction was a depth charge of sound, attracting the attention of people nearby. “Tell me you’re joking. You don’t even know, do you?”
Tio shifted from foot to foot, Gonzo rubbed the flat of his hand up the back of his neck, Helena twirled a strand of hair around her finger, not making eye contact. Phoebe bunched her hands at her side into fists. It had taken most of a year for Alex and Robin to stop being openly harassed. Sure, there were still hideous graffiti images that appeared on their lockers, and random shoves and muttered comments from hallway crowds. But that was better than it was before. They’d disappeared under the social radar by hanging with us. But the Dog shouting like this was painting a giant new arrow pointed straight at the two of them. The noise around us got louder and harsher, like the rest of the school was one slumbering, scary beast — smelling blood and waking up.
Right when I thought everything was going to blow, Viola said, her voice sharper than I’d ever heard it, “Isn’t that kind of a personal thing to ask? Details about someone’s…you know…privates?”
In the stunned silence, the Dog said, “You people are freaks,” and stalked off through the lunch tables.
“So,” said Alex when they both returned, “what’d we miss?”
“Nothing,” I said, “Nothing at all. Let’s get to the trees before we run out of time.”
We drifted into the fairy circle like soldiers dragging home after a defeat.
“Good news first, or bad news first,” Tio asked.
“Please,” I said, “right now I can barely take good news.”
At that, Phoebe gave me a little shove toward the middle. “There, go flop on the stump.”
Even though we each avoided taking the stump because sitting on it in front of everyone else made you look like you thought you were in charge, or something, today I didn’t argue. I dropped my bag on the ground and curled on my side, arm under my head. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them a minute or two later, I was calmer and everyone sat eating.
Phoebe was pulling a second week of lunch-duty because she’d snuck an extra bunch of food-purchases past her mom last week and didn’t want any of it to go to waste. Or, worse, be foun
d. Today was a five-pound bag of apples and a chunk of cheddar cheese.
“Okay,” I said, “hit me with it.”
“No camera in the storage closet. And I looked pretty thoroughly.”
Alex blushed.
Helena said, “But doesn’t that mean that it’s in the Dean’s office, safe?”
“Safe for now, you mean,” Phoebe said.
“Unfortunately, no.” Tio dropped his sticky-with-apple and clumps of cheese hands in his lap. “We heard in class that the Deans posted a reward for the camera. It’s missing all right.”
My stomach knotted and I understood why Tio had stopped eating. I put my half-apple on the stump beside me, balanced on its peel, rocking gently.
Tio reluctantly looked up at me and said, “And there’s more. I heard Celia’s asked for a transfer to yearbook the rest of the year.”
Gonzo looked like someone ought to Heimlich him. The words seemed stuck in his throat, and he struggled, face contorting with fury. “That’s! That’s…my seventh period class!”
Helena looked at me, like she was afraid to put the obvious into words, but that someone had to. “Go ahead,” I said to Helena, “say it.”
“The only reason Celia would do something that crazy is to — a) keep an eye on the Dog, and possibly Bianca, while they’re in Academy, or b) look for the camera herself.”
“Which means,” I said, “c) the camera’s still out there, waiting for someone to find those photos.” I flopped back onto the stump.
As we picked up our bags and collected apple cores, I noticed Tio was standing, staring at the top of the trees with a panicky look in his eyes. Poor guy. I would never forgive myself if he got expelled because of me. I walked to where he stood and said, under my breath so no one else could hear, “Tio, I swear I’ll find that camera. It’ll be okay.”
He turned, confused, “What?”
I felt suddenly awkward, “The camera? Isn’t that what’s bugging you?” I didn’t want to say making you look like you’re going to pee your pants. It just didn’t seem respectful.