Drake was tucked into an aisle on the other side of the room, 100–199, philosophy and psychology. He was squatting down on his heels and reading through spines. As I waited for Ms. Edgar to scan my barcode, he approached the desk with one fat book wrapped in a shiny red-and-white dust jacket. The book Drake tossed onto the circulation desk was called Dream It! Do It! by Buddy Strong.
× × ×
My pink slip was delivered to Language Arts, providing me with directions to detention. Whenever these little pink wrist-slaps get delivered to class, kids make “oohing” sounds and turn to stare at the person getting one. When Sandy Firestone eyeballed me getting my pink slip, she said in a voice miraculously loud enough for every kid to hear yet inaudible to the teacher, “Detention just got weirder!” The laughter that rippled through the room made my blood thick.
× × ×
In fifth grade, all of our teachers said the same thing. “You kids are going to middle school next year. This kind of laziness isn’t going to fly in the sixth grade.” It was the same thing in grade eight. “You know, you kids aren’t going to get away with this kind of sloppy work in high school. Not in high school, you’re not.”
I worried about high school so much that when I was still in eighth grade, I bought a copy of the Hershey High yearbook to prepare. The name of the yearbook is—you guessed it—The Chocolatier. For a freshman entering high school, the yearbook is like a catalog of cliques. You can browse through the pages and imagine your life in a series of social groups. I tried to imagine myself with the theatre kids or the debate club, but I couldn’t picture it. Before I even entered high school, I felt doomed to be one of the kids confined to the posed photographs, never to be featured in a candid.
I got out my notebook and added a few more revenge ideas while Mr. Pearson rambled on about the challenges of writing in dialect.
FORM OF
REVENGE
PRO
CON
Pour itching powder down the back of her shirt in L.A.
Irritating and potentially painful
Need a major diversion to avoid getting noticed, and not truly humiliating
Slip melting chocolate bars into her coat pockets
Fantastically gross
Probably get caught and not embarrassing
The rest of morning classes fused into one another as the hours counted down to the last bell. In the hall on our way to lunch, Drake pretended to be onstage.
“Thank you so much for coming to hear me read tonight at Carnegie Hall,” Drake was saying in a mock falsetto. “My new book of poems is entitled Pink Slip and was inspired by my experiences at a repressive public school in rural Pennsylvania, where I was forced to join the local ruffians in a barbaric confinement called detention—”
“Drake!” said a voice so loud we both jumped. Mr. Scott, Hershey High’s basketball coach/gym teacher, approached us. “Drake,” he said again in the only volume sports coaches have: loud. “You thinking about next year? You stay on your jump shot, I think you could make varsity as a sophomore. Hey, Cindy, how ya doing?” he added, looking at me.
I looked back at him Darkly.
Coach Scott always watched part of the pickup games at lunch, so he had seen Drake play.
“Hey, Mr. Scott,” Drake said back, shrugging. “I’ll be back in New York next year. Maybe even next month.” Drake didn’t sound happy or positive when he said that.
“Well, if you end up staying longer, maybe we can still get you on the team this year,” the coach went on. “I might be losing some players.” He said that last part behind his hand, as if it was a secret, but he said it just as loudly as everything else. He patted Drake hard on both shoulders and strode off down the hall quickly before Drake could protest.
Drake shook his head at me and said, “Come on, Cindy,” and tugged me into Earth Science.
At the end of the day, I said good-bye to Drake and plodded fearfully to the detention hall.
The helpful walking map on my pink slip aided me in moping all the way to the right corridor. STUDY HALL/
DETENTION read the sign on the door. I took a deep breath and opened it.
× × ×
Inside, I found a normal classroom full of desks. A gray-haired man with a pointy chin sitting behind a wooden table took my pink slip and pointed me to a desk in the front row. There were two dejected-looking upperclassmen in the back of the room, slumped in their chairs, their long legs spreading out into the aisles. I sat down and crossed my legs, hoping to seem small and harmless.
A few seconds later, the door opened again, and if I had been chewing gum, I would have swallowed it. In walked Clock, his black trench coat billowing out behind him like a cape. He tossed his pink slip on the gray-haired man’s table without looking at him and slid into a desk right next to me as if we had planned on meeting there.
“What’s up, Weird? Get detention for macking on your boyfriend in the halls?” he asked with his mouth much too close to my face. His breath smelled like Fritos mixed with toothpaste.
“No way, Mr. Kloch,” said the gray-haired man, standing up. “Sunglasses off and seated at this desk.” He pointed to a seat two rows away from me.
Clock grabbed the desk he was sitting in with both hands and swung himself into the aisle with a flourish. Then he deposited himself in the appointed desk with the same dramatic flare.
The teacher with the pointy chin rolled his eyes. “Okay, thirty-minute detention starts now. No eating. No talking. No note passing. No cell phones. No gum. No leaving early. No questions. No laptops. No magazines. You may have two books and one notebook out on your desk. Begin.”
Clock must have been a regular, because he was mouthing all the words along with the teacher, who either didn’t notice or didn’t care. The man sat down again at his table and resumed whatever work teachers do when they are forced to stay late at school. The two older boys in the back appeared to be in some state of half sleep or possible coma. They didn’t move to get out any books.
Clock started making hand signals at me. He was using two of his fingers to gesture, but I couldn’t tell if he was trying to get me to run out of the room with him or if he was indicating some lewd sexual act. Either way, I averted my eyes and tried to ignore him.
I got out my library book and my poetry notebook.
Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. Earthworms play a major role in converting large pieces of organic matter into rich humus, and thus improving soil fertility.
I tried to start with page one of my library book, but my mind kept wandering away from the earthworm kingdom. How could I have cursed Mandy out right in front of a teacher? I could practically hear Sandy and Mandy laughing and high-fiving each other for the way they landed me in detention. I let them win again. I was allowing my friendship with Drake to distract me from my purpose, my primary reason for showing up to school every day. I needed a plan, a finessed, precise outline for my revenge.
I took out my poetry notebook and continued brainstorming.
FORM OF
REVENGE
PRO
CON
Put blue hair color in her shampoo in gym
No lasting physical damage but very public
Might backfire & make her look cool
Spread a rumor that she is dating Clock
VERY embarrassing
Not very believable, probably wouldn’t catch on
I wanted my revenge to be full of poetic justice, to counteract what Sandy and Mandy did to me in eighth grade. I wanted the whole school to see Sandy as a pathetic social climber with nothing genuinely cool to offer, but the right plan wasn’t clicking. I ended up writing a poem instead.
HERSHEY HIGH AS BODY
The classroom bell like a slow heartbeat
pumps students through the hallways of your veins.
Your cafeteria growls and your doors close
like eyelids at night when you sleep.
Do you dream that you are a hospital,
keeping us alive with your textbook-heart monitors,
your basketball court, an emergency room?
When I fall down in the hallway,
my books spraying over the floor like vomit,
you wish you could pull your mortar arms
out of the earth and pick me up.
But you can’t help me. No one can.
CHAPTER
17
After detention I walked home alone. This is what it will be like again after Drake leaves, I thought. Alone. The house was empty when I opened my front door, and everything was soaked with a thick gravy of quiet. I did my homework, all of it but that essay on “We Real Cool” for Mr. Pearson. I already wrote a poem on the subject, and he should have accepted that. I put it off.
When I approached our walking to school meeting spot on Wednesday morning, I was shocked to find Drake already there, sitting on a swing with a book in his lap. His head was leaning against the metal chain, and his skateboard was sitting in the wood chips beside him.
“Hey,” I said, walking up to the swings.
His head jolted from its resting place. “Whoa,” he said, looking at me, “I guess I fell asleep.”
“Don’t you know coffee is the most important meal of the day?”
“Barely slept last night.” He started putting his book into his backpack. “Up late reading.” I noticed that the book he was holding was the one he checked out from the library, the one with the red-and-white cover.
Drake stood up and yawned, stretching his arms overhead. “My mom says I can’t walk to school with you anymore, now that you’re a hardened criminal.”
“Good thing she’s in another state so she never has to know,” I said back.
Despite being tired, Drake looked the happiest I had seen him since his trip to New York.
“Did you hear from Japhy yet?” I asked as we started toward school.
“He hasn’t returned two emails, five texts, and a phone call,” Drake answered, a dark shadow crossing his face. “But I’m feeling more optimistic,” he said cryptically. “Come over today?”
“Can’t. Mom’s day off. She says because she works so much, we need to hang out whenever she’s home on a weeknight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Tell you later.”
× × ×
That morning I sat behind Sandy in L.A. stabbing any of her blonde hairs that fell on my desk with a pen. I ignored Mr. Pearson’s lecture on responsible scholarship and continued brainstorming.
FORM OF
REVENGE
PRO
CON
Slip drugs into her locker through the vent and tell the principal she’s a dealer
Public
Where do you get drugs? Not exactly humiliating
Slip test answers into her notebook and accuse her of cheating
Sort of embarrassing & could get her in trouble
Forces me to be a snitch & where would I get test answers?
It wasn’t until the end of the day, when I was waiting for Drake at my locker to walk home, that the calm waters of my Wednesday turned choppy. Drake appeared in the hall with Sandy wrapped around his arm like a boa constrictor. I knew they had second-period Spanish together, but since I had witnessed her whispering to him the week before, I hadn’t seen them interact. They were walking slowly down the hall, their feet in sync with one another, their eyes locked.
The black hole started opening in my chest. My mouth tasted like I had just tongue-kissed a battery. I tore my eyes off of them and stared at the math book inside my locker.
“Hey, Hermione,” said Drake in a chipper voice. “Trying to decode another evil hex with your book knowledge?”
I turned around. Standing inside the sacred two-foot perimeter around my locker was Drake, locked at the elbow with the sheep-clad wolf herself, Sandy. I couldn’t summon my Darkness fast enough. I just stared.
“So, I can’t walk home with you today because I have to work on a Spanish project with Sandy,” Drake said casually. He dropped his arm to put his hand in one pocket, and Sandy unthreaded her arm from his, looking reluctant.
“Hi, Celia,” she said, grinning.
“Whatever, Drake,” I said, ignoring Sandy. “It’s not like you have to report to me.”
Drake’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Finally, he said, “Oh, yeah. I just wanted . . . you to know. Well, I’ll see you later.”
They started walking back up the hall in the direction of the front entrance. “Bye, Celia,” Sandy called, without turning her head back toward me.
I looked into my locker, praying I had enough Darkness to keep me from crying at school. Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to slow my heart. I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Is it cool if I call you later?” Drake asked. “There’s something I really want to talk to you about.” I turned just enough to see him standing there alone. Sandy was waiting down the hall. He had come back to talk to me.
I shrugged. “Whatever.” I did not cry. I kept staring at my math book.
So Drake said, “Okay, I’ll call you later,” and he ran off down the hall.
CHAPTER
18
When I got home, I waved as I swept past Mom, who was talking on the phone, and went to my room. My heart was threatening to run away from my chest. Sandy was scheming to turn Drake against me, to take away the one thing I had going for me, that part was obvious. But what about Drake?
Was he naïve about the whole thing, innocently agreeing to partner with her in Spanish? People don’t generally lock arms with their Spanish partners. Drake would probably only be here a month, but maybe he still wanted cooler friends. Or, maybe now that things were over with Japhy, Drake was thinking about staying and finding a more promising social group. What if he was somewhere with her right now, telling her all about Japhy, coming out to her, bonding with her?
I paced back and forth in the only clean part of my room available for pacing. Three steps and turn, three steps and turn. I grabbed my backpack and snatched my notebook out of it, flopping down on my bed to write. I started scribbling down more forms of revenge, ignoring the pro and con columns.
FORM OF
REVENGE
Laxatives in her lunch
Dead cats in her locker
Bucket of paint on her head at the prom
“Celia?” Mom’s voice rang down the hall.
“Yeah?” I yelled back.
“Come and help me with dinner.”
“I’m busy right now,” I yelled.
“You’re going to help eat, so you need to help cook.”
I slammed my notebook shut and stalked out to the kitchen.
“Stir this gravy while I go turn the sprinkler off in the backyard. I forgot and left it on last night,” she said, holding the end of a wooden spoon over a saucepan.
“Big surprise,” I mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
I took the spoon and stirred fast, tight circles through the thin gravy, splashing some onto the burner, which sizzled. A minute after my mom slid back the screen door and went into the backyard, the phone in the dining room rang. I jumped to get it, leaving the spoon to float in the gravy pan.
“Drake?”
“Um, Hello. Is . . . Gina there?” The voice sounded confused. It was the same man who called before. Simon.
I glanced through the window into the backyard and saw my mom turning off the spigot attached to the garden hose. Then I dropped the receiver right back onto the hook. Nice try, Simon. I carefully removed the phone again to make sure I was getting a dial tone and then I rested it on one side of its cradle, so it would register as busy. I didn’t feel like hearing from Simon, or Drake for that matter. I
f he likes Sandy Firestone so much, he can keep her, I thought Darkly.
I closed the door to the dining room and rescued the gravy just as it started to burn. When my mom came back in through the screen door, I was stirring vigorously.
“Ground’s a little soggy, but we avoided a flood,” she said, pushing the hair away from her face with the back of her hands. “Did I hear the phone ring?”
“Yeah,” stir, stir, stir, “it was,” concoct a lie, “. . . my friend, Drake.”
“The new friend who’s a boy. Should I know more?”
“He’s a friend. It’s no big deal.”
My mom looked at me as she washed her hands in the kitchen sink. “I think friends are always a big deal,” she said. Since my mom started seeing her therapist in July, she says lots of dorky things like that.
× × ×
After dinner, I told my mom I had homework and went to my room to check email. She must have found the phone off the hook, because I heard her talking in the dining room. I hoped it wasn’t Simon telling her I hung up on him. There was nothing new in my in-box, so I was forced to distract myself with math. For over an hour, I lay on my bed with my mind shifting between math homework and revenge.
Had Sandy successfully won over Drake? What is the Pythagorean theorem? Was she ever going to get tired of trying to ruin my life? Draw an isosceles triangle. Would I ever come up with a good plan to ruin hers? How do you determine the diameter of a circle? Finally, I put my head down on my comforter and lost consciousness. I was lying there, still in my clothes on top of my bed, when a tap on my window startled me awake.
The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door Page 7