by Sarah Cross
The teacher slams a tray with a dead worm pinned to it onto our table.
Harsh. She treats everyone else’s worms with more respect, setting the trays down like they’re harboring a formaldehyde-infused scientific treasure.
“Shut up or I’ll make you a sandwich out of that,” I murmur back.
I think I see the corner of Catherine’s mouth turn up in a smirk. “Yeah, right.”
Darla’s voice carries over to our side of the room, high-pitched and quavering: “I work best alone, actually.” I glance to see who her partner is.
It’s one of the Burnouts. Not too dangerous, but skeezy enough to have Darla freaked out. He’s leaning close to her, leering, his greasy hair hanging in his face.
Uh, did he just stroke her shoulder? That’s a mistake.
“This is a team effort,” the teacher says. “Working together is part of functioning properly in society.”
“Five bucks says he eats it to get high off the formaldehyde,” Catherine says quietly.
“That’s so sick. No way he does that. You’re on.”
“Remember to use the tools,” the teacher says. “There will be no pinching, biting, or squeezing the worms. You are to find and identify every item on the work sheet . . .”
Ugh. This is so disgusting. I try to remind myself that, technically, this is more educational than the rest of the crap I’ve done today—but I can’t bring myself to cut into the worm. I don’t even want to look at it, let alone identify its anus and genital pores.
There’s another knock at the door and the teacher excuses herself. “Keep working!” she says. As soon as the door slams shut, this massive dude sitting diagonally in front of us swivels around in his seat. He’s wearing a blue football jersey that says Big Dawg across the back, and his legs are packed into cargo shorts like two pasty sausages. He looks like he’s been mainlining bovine growth hormone since he was born.
“Hey, Catherine.” He grins. “What happened? Your drunk dad forget to drive you to school again?”
“Shut up, dumb-ass.”
It takes a second before I realize that’s my voice.
Every head turns to look at me—this is way more exciting than worm theater. The Burnouts’ eyes are wide and wobbly. Even the Thugs think I’m insane.
“Kill him, Big Dawg!”
“Rip his head off!”
Big Dawg’s nostrils flare. He stands up slowly, like a stout Godzilla savoring the moment before he crushes Tokyo.
I start to shove my chair back, but Catherine puts her hand on my arm to stop me.
Big Dawg cracks his knuckles. Krrrk. Crunch. “What’s your name, new kid?”
So I tell him.
“Pirzwick, you’re the dumbest new kid I’ve ever met. I’m gonna break your bones in so many places, you’ll be begging to be put on house arrest so I don’t paralyze you.”
Nice. I have to bite my tongue (literally) to keep from telling him where he can stick that threat. Followed by: My bones don’t break that easily. I could hurl your ass to the next county if I wanted to.
But of course I can’t say that.
I grit my teeth and prepare to get punched in the face.
Catherine tilts her chin up to lock eyes with Big Dawg. “You know why I got kicked out of my old school? Some bigmouthed jock pissed me off—so I cut his eye out.”
She draws her fingernail down the length of our worm, slits it fully open so that the guts are revealed.
“And you know what’s sooo funny?” She grins at him. “He was making fun of my family, too. That’ll be such a coincidence.”
“Whatever, bitch,” Big Dawg snorts. “You’re crazy.”
“No shit,” she says. “Glad you figured that out.”
Big Dawg scratches his crotch and retreats, grumbling about how Catherine’s a “crazy bitch” all the way back to his seat.
One of the Mary Janes flings a worm at her patent-leather-shoe-wearing rival, then starts screaming that she’s a boyfriend-stealing skank. Hair pulling and jumper tearing ensue, and the focus shifts away from us.
Catherine jabs a few pins into the worm to hold the flaps of its flesh open. She scans the work sheet, looking angry all of a sudden, not cool and collected like she was a moment ago.
“So we’re back to this, I guess.”
“I guess,” she snaps.
I wait a few seconds before I ask her what I’ve been wondering. Swallow hard. “You didn’t really . . . ?”
She glares at me. “You really think I’d cut someone’s eye out?”
“Yeah, I figured . . . sorry.”
We don’t talk much for the rest of the lab, other than a few mumbled remarks like, “I think I found the pharynx.” But I keep staring at her hands. I want to ask . . .
No. I can’t. What would I say? Girls scratch people all the time. She probably uses nail hardener, or has really strong keratin. Or better yet, dead worm skin is probably really fragile. Exactly! I can even test that.
The next time Catherine has her head bowed and is scribbling away at our lab work sheet, I jab my thumbnail into the pasty worm carcass, to see if I can chop its head off. But my nail is too short and blunt; I end up squishing it.
Ugh. I have to close my eyes and think of puppies to keep from throwing up.
“You done playing with that?” Catherine says.
“Heh . . . finished.”
“Good.” She gets up to turn in the worm and our work sheet, and I wipe my thumb on my jeans, totally ill and convinced that I smell like zombified worm flesh.
Out of the corner of my eye I sense a scuffle; I hear a girly yelp and then the air crackles, fills with the scent of burned grease and Robitussin. The Burnout next to Darla convulses before slumping down on his desk, face-first into the worm tray.
I hope I’m the only person who saw her stash that inhaler.
The teacher pulls her earphones out of her ears. “Did he just have a seizure?”
“He’s been asleep the whole time,” Darla says. Her face is flushed and she’s breathing heavily.
This girl is INSANE!
Not to mention a terrible liar.
But no one calls her on it. I am so, so grateful for that right now.
When Catherine comes back, she sniffs the air; makes a horrible face. Then: “Hey, he’s mouth-to-mouth with that worm. You owe me five bucks. That counts as eating it.”
What?! “No, it doesn’t!”
I don’t bother to check my wallet—I know for a fact that I don’t even have five bucks. My mom only gave me enough to buy a drink for lunch. And I am NOT drinking from the water fountain at this school.
“You never specified he had to swallow it,” Catherine says, smirking like she’s got me.
What, now she’s a rules lawyer? Two can play at that game.
“Our bet was whether he’d eat it to get high,” I say. “He’s face-first in that tray because Darla electrocuted him with her inhaler, not because he wanted—”
“Excuse me?” Catherine looks at me like I’m even more retarded than I was that night at Roast.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” I backtrack, not meaning to say that either. Then I laugh. “Hahaha, how would an inhaler electrocute someone? Heh . . . heh . . .” It gets less and less believable and more and more pathetic. But she’s totally not paying attention to me anymore.
Catherine’s eyes narrow to slits. Her nose twitches every few seconds like an angry rabbit’s. Darla must sense the heat of her stare, because she pulls the collar of her parka up to hide her face.
“Holy shit,” Catherine says as it suddenly clicks. “‘Darla’—is that my stalker?”
“Your stalker?”
“Yeah.” Catherine’s bristling—the hairs on her arms are perked right up. “She’s been coming to the coffee shop where I work for weeks. She’s always staring at me, or taking pictures of me with her cell phone . . . she’s obsessed. And it’s freaking annoying, but whatever, it’s a coffee shop, weird people come in so
metimes. I could even deal with her stupid questions about ‘my feelings’ and ‘do I feel different, like I don’t belong sometimes’—because at least I could ignore her. But now she’s at my school? What the hell??”
Her lips pull back over her teeth.
Oh, crap.
Darla, you do not want this girl to look at you the wrong way—let alone make you the target of her white-hot fury. I am so, so sorry for throwing you under the bus so I could save five dollars. It was an accident and I will try to make it up to you. I think all this in Darla’s direction, as a kind of silent apology in case Catherine rips her face off before I can calm her down.
“It’s probably just another girl named Darla. That’s a pretty common name. Nowadays.” I shrug. Smile.
Catherine grimaces. “Were you dropped on your head as a child?”
Distraction is my best defense right now. Like tanking in a MMORPG, taking all the damage so your weaker allies can do their thing without getting smashed. And maybe run away.
“Sooo . . . bread, huh?” I gesture to the package of Wonder Bread on our table. “Sliced bread—gotta love that. That’s why people are always saying stuff is ‘the best thing since sliced bread.’ Were you gonna make toast? Toast is awesome.”
“You’re an idiot,” she says.
And then the bell rings. Saved! I gather up my books and proceed to drop them, trip, and sprawl out on the floor in front of Catherine—“Oops! Sorry, sorry!”—so that Darla has a chance to haul her scrawny butt out of danger.
Catherine regards me with so much scorn she could totally scorch toast with her eyes. “Uh, see you at lunch?” I call after her. She shoves past me and doesn’t bother to turn around.
The friend count stays firmly at one.
6
LUNCH USED TO BE the highlight of my day. I’d sit with my friends, chill, eat whatever nutritious meal my mom packed for me without worrying that someone slipped a razor blade into my sandwich, and I’d copy Henry’s math homework so I didn’t have to do my own. But now? It’s sad to say this, but I’d rather be in class.
It’s like anarchy central in the cafeteria. Here, the students are free to roam and attack whomever they want. Without a teacher to actively ignore, their focus is entirely on chaos and mayhem. Which, you know, I might enjoy if I were totally unhinged.
Did I mention that adult supervision is almost nonexistent in the cafeteria? The music teacher and the math teacher are standing next to the garbage can, making sure nobody misses and throws their trash on the floor, trading stories about the times they’ve knocked naughty students unconscious by clocking them with a yardstick. (Okay, so I’m making that part up. But I wouldn’t put it past them.)
Are they paying attention to us? Noooo, not really.
I unpack my lunch (turkey sandwich, Oreos, apple) and wave when I spot Darla. She bustles through the crowd, her huge backpack sagging behind her.
“Hi!” She grabs a seat next to me. “Looks like we both survived!”
“About that . . .” I cough. “You know Catherine? In our science class?”
“The, uh, your lab partner?”
Darla slurps extra hard on her juice box—a sure sign that she’s hiding something.
“Right. Well, she kind of thinks you’ve been stalking her. And she wants to eviscerate you.”
The extra-loud slurping has now turned to choking. I pound her on the back (lightly!) and she coughs it up.
“Don’t worry—I think we can call a truce. But I have to know what’s going on. Do you have a crush on her or something?”
“Ohmygodwhat?!” Darla squeezes her juice box and apple juice sprays into my eye.
Tingly. Ow.
“No, I don’t have a crush on her!”
I wipe my eye with the back of my hand. “Well, whatever’s at the root of your stalkerish behavior, it’s making her uncomfortable. I think we need to work on your social skills.”
“But—I’m not stalking her! I’m trying to get to know her better! So that we can, um . . .” She peers at me, almost meekly. “I’m not sure if I can tell you yet.”
“Yet?”
“We have to be friends first, so you don’t think I’m a freak.”
“Darla?” I give her a look. “You’re wearing an ‘R.I.P. Marie Curie’ shirt and size sixty-two jeans. Anything you tell me can only improve things.”
“Not necessarily,” she mumbles.
“All right, look: you think about it. I’ll be right back. If you want to tell me then, you can. If not . . . well, we’ll talk about something else.”
I get up to buy my drink, keeping alert as I approach the graffiti’d Coke machine: prime lunchroom real estate. The overprivileged Bonecrushers hold court there. I’ve already seen them slam one kid against the wall and steal his lunch money, but mostly they use this time to refuel.
Today they’re focused on their . . . uh, arts-and-crafts projects? I guess their history class had an assignment where they had to build models or something. One of them constructed the Colosseum out of Popsicle sticks. Big Dawg baked and frosted a cake shaped like the Sphinx (although it looks more like a dog). He keeps yelling at his friends not to eat it, knocking their hands away when they try to swipe some frosting.
How . . . educational.
I slip my money into the Coke machine, push the only button that isn’t broken, and wait for that satisfying clunkthump that means a frosty drink is on its way.
Nothing.
“Check out my diorama,” booms a proud voice behind me. It’s Butch, the ten-o’clock-shadow guy from my Remedial English class. He’s the biggest dumb-ass of all: at fifteen he’s like six-foot-two, two hundred pounds. Plus he’s already been arrested for driving drunk without a license, which is as good as being royalty in his crowd.
“Dude, you already showed us.”
It’s midafternoon, so by now Butch is rocking a partial beard. He strokes it like some wise guru as he says, “Miss Watson’s gonna love it. Look at the tiny elephants.”
“Get it off the table—put it on the floor by Big Dawg’s cake.”
I press the button again, wait for my drink. Still nothing.
So I try the coin-return button. Wait for the reassuring jingle of my money being returned.
Nope.
Press it again.
There’s a line of kids behind me. One of the Thugs is getting antsy. “Are you almost done, holmes?”
This stupid machine ate my money.
I don’t have another dollar-fifty. My mom only gives me exactly what I need, and my allowance is ancient history, confiscated for the next eight hundred years to pay for the damages to Henry’s parents’ car.
“In a minute,” I say. I’m getting agitated now—I hate when vending machines steal my money. And to top it off, some of the girls behind me, for whom a Diet Coke is, like, their sole sustenance, are threatening to cut me. So I’m in a hurry; I grab the machine by either side and start shaking it. I mean, everyone does that. It’s totally expected.
And then I look down. And see that, um, the Coke machine?
Is no longer touching the floor.
I panic and drop it, jump back like it burned me, but the machine hits at an awkward angle, tips to one side, and BOOM! Slams onto the floor with a rumble, snap, SMOOSH! Cake frosting squirts out the side, and the Sphinx’s ass is sticking out like the Wicked Witch’s ruby slippers. The rest of it?
Demolished.
It took down the Popsicle-stick Colosseum, the Hannibalcrossing-the-Alps thingie—the whole row of Bonecrusher history projects, lined up on the floor next to their table.
“MY DIORAMA!!” Butch bashes his seat to the ground. “I’m gonna kill you, Pirzwick!”
He lurches toward me like a drunken Frankenstein. His man-boobs are trembling beneath his Budweiser T-shirt, his ruddy face is burning, and I can smell his breath from here. Sausage, my death—nice combo.
“Uh, sorry guys,” I say, moving to put some distance between the Bonecrushers
and me. “That thing just fell. I don’t know what happened.”
“You just signed your own death warrant!” Big Dawg says. “It’s onnnnn, Pirzwick! It’s ON! My mom spent all day baking that Sphinx!”
“To be fair,” I say, climbing over a table backward and stumbling over a chair and a tuna sandwich and almost falling on my ass, “this isn’t fifth grade. You’re supposed to do your own homework. So maybe this is—”
“You’re gonna get cut!” some girl says, flipping a switchblade out of her purse. “You broke the Coke machine, bitch!”
“—justice,” I finish. Crap. How am I supposed to get out of this?
I look around for Darla, like: yo, Taser girl, a little help here? But she’s not the one who comes to my rescue. No, it’s Mr. Nerdly, the math teacher—armed with a yardstick—who grabs me by my collar and drags me out of the fray.
“Calm down, people!” he shouts, in his nasal tough-guy voice. “This is a cafeteria, not a cage match. Get back to your seats!” He’s still holding my collar. Thanks, but I can stand upright by myself. I wriggle away and he shoots me a dirty look, menaces me with a shake of the yardstick.
Back at my seat, I manage to squeeze some juice out of my apple. Okay, actually, I obliterate it by crushing it with my fist.
“Are you okay?” Darla says.
Yeah—I’m gonna pretend she didn’t notice. I’m sure her friends destroy fruit all the time. “Fine,” I say, wiping up the pieces with my lunch bag.
My heart’s racing. I don’t want to get into a fight here. I don’t want to lose my cool and snap, then pay for it later—with 120 years of incarceration.
When the bell rings, I try to make a swift exit, but Butch and his bonecrushing posse are waiting for me by the door.
“We’ll finish this after school,” Butch says. “And if you punk out and don’t show . . .” He crunches his knuckles in his fist. “You’ll regret it.”
He doesn’t even wait until the teachers are out of earshot to threaten me. Mr. Nerdly’s right there by the door, busy chewing on his thumbnail, then pulling his hand back to examine it, like magic marshmallows are growing out of it instead of fungus. What is this guy’s purpose? Seriously?