One Kid's Trash

by Jamie Sumner

  C H A N C E

  That’s not even the worst one.

  Twelve-down: The class 6-across is currently failing.

  E N G L I S H

  Eight-down: The book 6-across couldn’t spell.

  T H E B O O K T H I E F

  I groan out loud. I thought I was so clever, connecting the two answers with the E in “English.”

  Four-across: The most important (but ineffectual) prescription drug in our bball player’s life.

  D E O D O R A N T

  When I found out Drysol was a prescription deodorant, it seemed too good to be true. But now I’m looking at twenty-four clues, and every single answer is either about how Chance can’t read or spell or smells or is huge because he’s actually been held back three times (not true, that I know of). This is so much worse than him switching out my gym clothes or even making fun of Dad. So. Much. Worse. I lift my head just enough to peek across the cafeteria. There he is, sitting with all the basketball guys as usual. But no one’s talking to him. He’s hunched over his tray, not eating. His is the only table without a Paw Print.

  I try to remember all the things he’s said to me over the last few months: calling me “tiny” and “little guy” and “shorty”; and all the things he’s done: hitting Micah with the snowball, throwing Em’s newsletter in the trash, nailing me in the face with a dodgeball; and even more than that, what he said about Dad. It was all terrible, right? And I’m the Garbologist! I can finally use my power to right the wrongs! I crumple the puzzle and push it away along with my lunch. So why do I feel smaller than ever?

  I don’t even make it out of the cafeteria before I get called over the intercom to report to Principal Myer’s office. They call Chance, too. As I’m leaving, a team of teachers comes in with trash bags. They march up and down the aisles, collecting the newsletters. When the Crow sweeps a pile into the recycle bin by the exit, I see Em wince and it hollows me out.

  Chance gets to the office one step ahead of me. The secretary informs us that both our parents have been called and asks us to take a seat. There are four gray chairs outside Principal Myer’s office. Chance takes the one farthest from me. When the phone rings and the secretary turns away to answer it, I whisper, “Chance,” and swallow my fear.

  He pulls out his phone and starts texting.

  “Chance,” I say a little louder. “I’m really sorry.” If he hears me, he never looks up. I don’t even know if it matters. “I’m sorry” can’t erase all the other terrible words I used on him. I sink down in my seat and wish I could disappear.

  Our parents arrive at almost the exact same time, Mom marching at full speed and Dad hobbling behind her on his crutches. Chance’s dad looks just like him, hulking and meaty. His mom is tiny, though, swallowed up in a white puffer coat that goes all the way to her ankles. “Is this the kid who did it?” Chance’s dad barks as we wait for the secretary to bring in extra chairs to Principal Myer’s office.

  “Marshall,” Principal Myer begins, “I called you here to discuss the incident. Why don’t you let me lead?”

  “I just don’t understand,” Chance’s mom jumps in, her voice nasally like her son’s. She glances over at me. “How did this boy even gain access to the newsletter?”

  “Well, as I said in our phone call, it is student-run,” Principal Myer says.

  “What, you don’t have some sponsor, a teacher in charge? These kids”—Mr. Sullivan gestures at me—“are doing whatever they feel like and bullying my son for no other reason than because they can?”

  I’ve heard the word a million times, but it’s never been about me. Is that what I am now? A bully? I rub my face and then keep my hands on my head.

  “The students did have a supervisor. And since our discovery of the inappropriate material in the newsletter, I have spoken with her as well as some of the other teachers whom your son and Hugo share. I’ve also spoken to several students to try to piece together the full picture of what we’re dealing with here. And I must say…” She pauses, folding her wrinkled hands over each other. “… that I have heard some interesting things—on both ends.”

  With a sense of doom like clouds rolling in, I realize that everything that’s gone on between me and Chance is about to come spilling out.

  “What does that mean?” Mom asks.

  “It means that Chance seems to have been bullying Hugo as well for some time now in regards to…” (Long pause in which I want to hide under my chair.) “… his size.”

  “How did we not know about this?” Dad says, shifting his crutches against his leg.

  “There was also an incident during gym, something with a dodgeball?” Principal Myer says, turning to Chance, who finally lifts his head.

  “That’s how you hurt your nose?” Mom asks me.

  “That was an accident,” Chance protests.

  “And the name-calling?” Principal Myer prompts. When Chance doesn’t answer, she unfolds her hands and places them flat in front of her. “Regardless, none of it warrants Hugo’s crossword. Publishing personal information about a student in order to embarrass him is inexcusable. And class records, failing or otherwise, are sealed.”

  “You’re failing a class?!” Mr. Sullivan yells, and places a heavy hand on Chance’s neck. Chance winces. “I did not raise you to act like a fool,” he mutters in Chance’s ear—loud enough for all of us to hear. Suddenly, having to shove Dad off my bed for playing video games doesn’t seem so bad.

  “Yeah, but he broke into my locker,” Chance mumbles.

  “You what?!” Mom’s voice could cut glass.

  Chance points at me. “He digs through people’s trash. And I think he dug through my locker.”

  “It was an experiment in garbology,” I explain.

  “That’s not a thing,” Chance’s dad says.

  “It is too a thing! My mom told me!”

  All heads swivel to Mom, who sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “It’s a branch of sociology.” She turns to me. “However, this was not its intended use. We will talk about this when we get home.”

  Principal Myer crosses her arms and leans back. “It seems to me that there has been inappropriate behavior on both ends. I only wish,” she says, gazing at me and then Chance until we both hunch down in our seats, “that someone had come to me earlier, before the situation escalated. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and so here we are.”

  Mrs. Sullivan sniffs and pulls a Kleenex from her purse. Dad’s good knee bounces up and down.

  “As you know,” Principal Myer continues, “we have a no-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying, and since it seems both parties were in error, both Chance and Hugo will be suspended for two days.”

  “What? That’s idiotic!” Mr. Sullivan snarls.

  Principal Myer ignores him. “As Thanksgiving break begins tomorrow, the suspension will take place the Monday and Tuesday when we return. Now,” she says, holding up her hands before Mr. Sullivan can saying anything else, “I trust you boys will take this time to think about what you have done and consider how you might be better citizens of the school when you return.” She waits until both Chance and I meet her gaze. “The world is tough enough, gentlemen. We need you to be the good guys.”

  * * *

  We don’t talk in the car. Outside the window, the sky is a heavy gray blanket and the trees wave hello in the wind with their black branches. Mom takes my jacket from me when we get home and steers me toward the couch. Dad hobbles in on his crutches behind us. We sit in a small, sad circle.

  “I’m sorry!” I yelp before they can start.

  Mom rubs her eyes and leans forward with her elbows on her knees. “Why, Hugo? I just want to know why?”

  “Was it retaliation?” Dad asks. “For the bullying?”

  “No.” Mom holds up a hand before I can open my mouth. “Nothing is worth that.”

  “What I want to know is where was your gym coach when the dodgeball almost broke your nose?” Dad thumps his crutch on the floor f
or emphasis.

  “You should have talked to us if someone was tormenting you,” Mom adds, “instead of trying to handle it on your own.”

  “I wasn’t trying to handle it on my own. I was just—” I run my hands over my head, and I can feel my hair stand at attention like Dad’s. “I was upset, okay, about having to move and—” I look at Dad’s leg, one red fuzzy sock pulled over his foot below the knee brace. “Chance said something about Dad, and I just—” I’m not telling it right. “Dad, you’re the one who says to seize the day, right?”

  Mom gives him a look that says, See what you’ve done?

  But that’s not what I want to say either. I try again. “Mom, you’re always telling me to think about the ‘why,’ not the ‘what,’ right? When Vij and I looked though Chance’s locker, I was just trying to figure out why he was being the way he was, you know?” I don’t tell her Dad was a little right—I was also desperate for revenge.

  “You and Vij broke into his locker?”

  I forgot they didn’t know that part. Mom looks like her head is going to explode. She’ll call Aunt Soniah. I wrap my arms around my knees. Now Vij will have one more thing to hate me for.

  They need to know I’m the only one to blame. And if they’re ever going to understand, I have to go back to the very beginning. I start with the Crow’s trash and Adra’s fruit erasers and Andrew, who just wanted to get on the basketball team, and how I became the Garbologist. It takes a long time. When I finish, it’s dark out.

  “But, Hugo,” Mom says finally, “I only told you about garbology to get you to take care of your things.”

  “I was trying to do something important before you take me away. Again.”

  “Son, harassing some kid about not being smart isn’t doing something important. It’s the opposite. It’s petty,” Dad says, shaking his head.

  I hug my knees harder. He’s right. The garbology was supposed to be about helping people. But then it made me cool and I forgot about that. And I ditched my friends and now I’ve got nobody and nothing and we’re moving and I can’t even call my cousin to complain about it all.

  Mom tries to put her hand on my back. I jerk away.

  “Hugo, honey—”

  I hop off the couch and retreat to my room. At the door to the basement, I hear Dad say, “Let him go, Marion.”

  Chapter Thirteen Home for the Holidays

  I stay in my room until I am forced out of hiding on Thanksgiving Day to make an appearance at my aunt and uncle’s house for the big holiday meal. I turned my phone off two days ago and left it that way so I don’t have to see how many people aren’t trying to contact me.

  Now I’m sitting next to Vij in a starched collared shirt while Uncle Dave saws through the turkey and Vij’s older sisters, who are home from college, sit across the table, typing on their phones and ignoring us all. Adra is next to Vij, her hair pinned up in a giant purple bow. She keeps touching it like she wants to yank it out. No one looks particularly happy. News of our move has not gone over well.

  I spin the turkey-shaped napkin ring. It clatters onto my empty plate. The sound is deafening in the unusual silence. We’ve never been a quiet family, until now. More than anything, I want to nudge Vij and make fun of Uncle Dave’s “Gobble Gobble” tie, and then together we’ll figure out a way to hide the cranberry sauce Mom burned under our candied yams, and then later we’ll go out in the backyard and pretend to play football, but really we’ll play Minecraft on our phones. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

  After an uncomfortable lunch that ends with Aunt Soniah offering with fake cheer to help Mom look up houses in Denver on Zillow, we are dismissed. Vij goes out the back door, and after a few seconds of hesitation, I follow. I find him sitting on the back steps, kicking a pile of slush with his loafers.

  “Your mom’s going to murder you if you scuff those,” I say, and force myself to laugh. It’s never been this hard to talk to him before. We’d fight, but we’d never get awkward.

  “Yeah, probably.”

  We sit in silence, the trees occasionally cracking from ice thawing on the branches. He stares at his hands without moving. I’ve never seen him so still for so long. I can’t take it anymore.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. My pulse hammers in my ears.

  He doesn’t say anything back. I deserve that. I close my eyes and keep talking.

  “I can’t believe I was such a selfish jerk to all of you.”

  “To all of… us,” he says. I open my eyes. He’s shaking his head.

  “To you, Vij. I’m so sorry I was such a jerk to you.”

  “You didn’t even call me after your dad got hurt. You group-texted me, man.”

  “I know! I know! And I ditched you to hang out with Peter and Andrew and those other guys because…” I wince. This next part’s the worst.

  “Because?”

  “Because I liked the attention. I’ve never been cool, and it feels like you and Mom and everybody else are always having to baby me because I’m so small. But with all the garbology stuff, I finally felt important, big in that way, at least. You know?” Saying it out loud hurts. But it’s a good hurt, like ripping off a Band-Aid, because at least it’s done.

  I glance over at Vij, who is shaking his head again.

  “Stop shaking your head at me, Vijay. I’m trying to apologize.”

  “Don’t call me Vijay. You sound like my mother,” he says. But he’s laughing, and I take the first deep breath I’ve taken in weeks. The cold air cleans out my lungs, and I feel like I could run a marathon.

  “I was shaking my head because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He kicks my foot, definitely scuffing his church shoes. “We’ve always had fun, haven’t we, man?”

  “Yeah,” I admit.

  “It was never about being cool or uncool.”

  “I know.”

  “And now you’re seriously going to have to apologize to Em and everybody else, because you tanked the newsletter.”

  “I know,” I groan.

  “Dude, you made your filthy, trash-covered bed, and now you’re gonna have to lie in it.”

  I punch him in the shoulder. He punches me back. The marathon feeling is still there. Vij and I are friends again.

  He rubs his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re really moving.”

  I look out toward the yard, because it’s too much to think about.

  “I know.”

  * * *

  It’s strangely warm out on December 2, the first day back to school after my suspension. The snow is turning to slushy puddles in the bright sun when Mom drops me off out in front of school half an hour early. I told her I needed time to get all my stuff together, but really I wanted to have a minute to prepare before facing everyone again. This way I can sit against the lockers with my feet stuck out and act like my being back is no big deal.

  The halls are empty, just like I’d hoped. But all the way at the end, a door is propped open. Of the millions of apologies I owe, one of them belongs to the person in that room. I take a long, deep breath. It does nothing to calm me.

  “Knock, knock,” I say, and then regret it, because I hate when people say “knock, knock” when they could just… well, knock.

  But Mrs. Jacobsen says kindly, “Come in, Hugo.”

  I hurry to her desk and then can’t find the words to start. She watches me from behind her red glasses, and I can’t tell if her smile is real.

  “Take a seat.” She motions to the chair she keeps by her desk for one-on-one conferences. I sit.

  “Mrs. Jacobsen, I uh, wanted to say I’m really sorry for what I put in the Paw Print and I know you trusted me and I’m sorry I let you down. And, uh—” I should have planned this out better. “And if you let me back on the newsletter, I’ll do a real crossword puzzle this time. A good one. I promise.” I want to say more, but that took forever to get out, so I shut my mouth and hope it’s enough.

  “Oh, Hugo. I appreciate your apology. I reall
y do,” she says, and smiles, and it is a real one for sure. “We all make mistakes. It’s what we do after those mistakes that makes the difference, right?”

  I nod eleven times so she knows we are in full agreement.

  “But I’m afraid Principal Myer decided it was in everyone’s best interest to cancel the Paw Print.”

  “What? No! You can’t! I…” I trail off. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. I’ve apologized to Vij and Micah and Jack and Gray and everybody else in the universe except Em. And now I’m supposed to make everything right so that when I see her for the first time after my tragic and deeply regrettable behavior, I can promise to make it up to her. But now I can’t even do that. No newsletter, no redos, no nothing. She’ll never forgive me.

  “Hugo, it was not my decision to make. I think what Emilia and you all started was truly remarkable. And maybe it will be again, but now is not the time.” She gives me a look. It’s the “this is not a debate” look.

  This is all my fault. The normal before-school sounds are starting up in the hallway. But I can’t go back out there now. I can’t act casual when I’m the one who single-handedly sunk the school’s first-ever newsletter. I retreat to my seat instead. As class groans on, gravity sinks me lower and lower until I’m eye level with the desk and I wish I could stay that way until the end of time.

  I watch the clock all through English and Spanish and then algebra, which makes it easier to ignore the Crow’s glare and Chance two seats away. I owe him a better apology than the one I threw at him outside Principal Myer’s office. It’s going to be painful and awkward and a sludgy dose of misery to get through. But I have to find Em first—the worst casualty in all this. Except when I race to lunch and scan our table, we’re one short.

  “Where’s Em?” I ask.

  Vij shrugs. And Gray shakes his head.

  “I saw her walking toward the gym after class,” Micah says, unwrapping string cheese and biting into it like beef jerky.

  I leave the cafeteria even though we’re not supposed to. Em is not in the hall or the gym or by her locker. I’m about to give up when I look out the back doors by the cafeteria and spot someone in a bright blue Cougars sweatshirt sitting outside on the track with their back against the fence. I run through the doors and onto the track like I’m in a race.