by Barbara Dee
“It’s not just philosophy. Or just about war. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, the world’s first strategy guide.”
“Oh, sure. You’re so pathetic, Tyler.”
Mackenzie shook her head impatiently. “Maybe Zoe’s right,” she said. “I mean, about Ezra. Because really, I don’t think Ezra even notices anyone else. Has he ever actually spoken to you, Leg?”
“No,” Leg admitted. “But who knows what he’s thinking in that twisted little brain.”
“But you haven’t been mean to him lately? Or teased him?”
Leg glared at Mackenzie. “No.”
“Are you sure?” Mackenzie continued. “Because sometimes, Leg, you can be slightly—”
“She’s never even looked at Ezra,” Paloma interrupted. “Mackenzie, you’re making it sound like this whole thing is Leg’s fault!”
“I’m not,” Mackenzie replied firmly. “I’m just saying that if Leg and Ezra never had anything to do with each other, then I don’t think Ezra’s writing these notes. He has no motive to, okay?”
“So who has one?” Jake demanded. “A motive, I mean.”
“Is anyone upset with you?” Mackenzie asked Leg, as if she were now conducting a police investigation.
Zoe glanced at Dara. For the briefest second Dara looked back.
“I don’t think so,” Leg said.
“Good morning, friends!” Owen’s voice boomed. He was walking toward them briskly. “Nowhere you have to be this fine September morning?”
“We’ll talk about this at lunch,” Mackenzie murmured.
Three and a half hours later Zoe was filling her tray in the cafeteria. She looked at her usual choices—the tuna fish sandwich, the bag of potato chips, the pint of chocolate milk—and she suddenly realized that she couldn’t bear to eat any of it. Not one bite. Not even if she were starving. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, she slipped the three familiar items back onto their familiar shelves. Then she helped herself to a large slice of veggie pizza and sat down next to Mackenzie.
Everyone from the morning was at the table, including Dara. Mackenzie was giving a speech about how the perpetrator—that was actually the word she used—had to be someone who had access to the locker area when no one else was around. And since so many kids stayed at school every afternoon and evening for things like play rehearsals and music groups, it probably had to be someone who got to school early in the morning.
“Not necessarily,” Jake interrupted. “It’s not like you need an hour to stick something into someone’s locker. You could do it on your way to a class. Or to the bathroom.”
“Then someone would see you,” Mackenzie argued.
“Unless the person was a total freak who was never around other people,” said Paloma, who obviously still thought it was Ezra.
Zoe picked the limp veggies off her pizza and lined them up carefully on her tray. “You know, it doesn’t have to be a sixth grader. Maybe it’s not even someone in Middle Division.”
“Possibly,” Mackenzie said skeptically. Suddenly she pointed at Zoe’s tray. “What’s that?”
“It’s called pizza. You’ve never seen pizza before?”
“I mean, what happened to your lunch?”
“The Zoe Special,” Jake said, grinning. “Tuna and Lay’s.”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I got sick of it.”
“Just like that?” Mackenzie demanded. “After what? Six years?”
Zoe glanced around the table. Dara was staring at her with a funny look on her face. So was Mackenzie, and so was Leg.
“I wanted something else,” Zoe said lightly. “That’s okay with you guys, right?”
Then she saw Leg lean over and whisper something into Dara’s ear.
Dara shook her head. But for the rest of lunch she didn’t look at Zoe once.
That afternoon Zoe stopped off at the pet store for crickets and bought some fresh greens at the corner grocery. All the lizards seemed grateful except for Iguana #3, who didn’t eat anything or drink any water, or seem to notice she was there, even though Zoe had sat quietly watching for twenty-five minutes.
Finally Zoe took down the chart and wrote:
Bobbed head twice and didn’t move off rock.
I’m not sure how to read this but it just
FEELS like something is wrong.
She thought about Isaac’s e-mail yesterday: He’d definitely be annoyed with her for writing about her “feelings.” Well, too bad. She wouldn’t erase what she’d just written. Because it was true.
She tapped the glass to say good-bye to the small iguana, carefully replaced the chart on the clipboard, and then walked back home to her own apartment, worried.
15
On Friday morning everyone was crowded around Leg’s locker, waiting for the next note.
Leg arrived with Paloma just two minutes before the start of homeroom. Leg smiled grimly at everyone, and Zoe noticed that her delicate fingers trembled a little when she opened her locker.
“Nothing,” Leg announced, obviously relieved. “No note!”
“Are you sure?” Paloma said. She looked inside Leg’s locker, and even felt around the back, just in case the note had slipped behind some books. But finally she was convinced that Ezra-or-whoever had messed up this morning.
Then Paloma opened her own locker. “Omigod. Listen to this!” she shouted. She waited for everyone to gather around her, then read in an outraged voice:
There is no greater bane to friendship than adulation, fawning, and flattery.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero,
De Amicitia, XXV
“What is he, insane?” Leg demanded.
“Let me see that note,” Mackenzie said, taking it from Paloma. She studied it, frowning. “Same handwriting. Interesting that it’s not from The Art of War.”
“Who cares where it’s from, Mackenzie,” Paloma snapped. “It just matters who.”
“Also why,” Leg said. Paloma nodded.
Zoe noticed Dara quietly walk over to her own locker and open it. She saw Dara reach inside, pause, and then burst into tears.
Immediately Leg and Paloma swarmed her, but Zoe pushed through. “Dara, what’s wrong?” she cried. “Did something—”
“She got a note,” Paloma said.
“Dara, you have to let us see it,” Leg pleaded. “It could be the same as ours.”
“It’s not,” Dara said shakily.
She handed it to Leg, who read it aloud:
Nothing can be more disgraceful than to be at war with him with whom you have lived on terms of friendship.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero,
De Amicitia, XXI
P.S. The eye of the gecko never blinks.
As soon as Leg finished, Dara began to sniffle again. Zoe tried to hug her, but she could feel Dara’s body stiffen. So she took her arms back, letting them drop stupidly by her sides. Meanwhile her heart was banging in her chest. Eye of the gecko, she thought.
“Okay, now this is getting scary,” Mackenzie declared. “I think it’s definitely time to tell Owen!”
“No,” Dara said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“But we aren’t. How can we? We don’t even know who’s doing this!”
“Just forget about Owen. I’m serious, Mackenzie.”
Leg and Paloma exchanged disbelieving looks.
“Dara, this could be a real psycho!” Paloma said. “He’s not even quoting the Chinese guy anymore. ‘Eye of the gecko’—what’s up with that?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Paloma,” Dara said. She shut her locker.
“So what’s it doing there, then?” Mackenzie challenged her. “You think it’s like a code?”
“A code?” Zoe repeated. “What sort of code?”
“You know. Like if you scramble the letters, or read it backward—”
“Why would you do that?” Zoe asked quickly.
“I bet it’s
Zoe,” Leg suddenly announced.
Zoe gaped at her. “Are you crazy?”
“No, Zoe. Are you?”
Zoe turned to Dara. “You really don’t think I’d write something like that, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Dara replied. “I’m just incredibly…upset right now. I’ll talk to you later, Zoe, all right?”
“No.” She said it much too loudly, but so what. And she didn’t care that everyone was staring at them, as if they were performing onstage under a giant spotlight. “We should talk now, Dara. In private. Please.”
“I can’t,” Dara said, and then she hurried away.
For the rest of the morning no one talked to Zoe. No one looked at her either. It was the strangest feeling: She didn’t want anyone making stupid comments or asking stupid questions, but the fact that nobody was even willing to make eye contact in the hallway was horrible. Scary, even. It was as if some alarm had gone off, silent to Zoe, and now everyone at Hubbard had one single thought: Zoe Bennett? Anonymous note writer. Even to her best friend: How sick is that? Whatever you do, don’t look at her—it could be contagious!
At lunch she sat next to Ezra, who nodded at her once and spent the rest of the period reading. Right after lunch was Math. As Zoe walked toward Anya’s room, she could see Jake and Mackenzie standing in front of the door, as if they were waiting.
Mackenzie was holding a legal pad and a pencil. “Oh, hello, Zoe,” she said somberly, in her police detective voice. “We’d like you to write ‘eye of the gecko’ on this sheet of paper. Ten different times, please.”
“Why should I?”
“So we can do a handwriting analysis,” Jake said, folding his arms.
“No, thanks.”
“You’re refusing?”
“You can’t,” said Mackenzie, horrified. “If you do, that proves you’re guilty!”
“It doesn’t prove anything, Mackenzie,” Zoe said through her teeth. “Now leave me alone.”
She pushed open Anya’s door and walked quickly to her seat. She was shaking; she couldn’t help it. A handwriting analysis? Whose idea was that? And why did she have to say something as dorky as No, thanks? Isadora would have stood up straight and bellowed some dramatic line like How dare you imply…? Well, at least she’d refused to take their stupid test. And it wasn’t like they could force her to, anyway.
She took her Math binder out of her backpack, and then grabbed a few Prismacolor pencils. Just for a few minutes, she promised herself. Until I can think straight.
She let her hair fall over her face to form a sort of curtain. And then she began doodling geckoes.
And eyes.
And gecko eyes.
Everyone is completely blind, she told herself. They spent all day staring at everybody, but they weren’t actually seeing anything. Even Dara couldn’t see the real Zoe right now, and how could she possibly fix that? Run up to her at dismissal and shout, It’s me, Zoe! Your best friend, remember? I haven’t changed one subatomic bit! But she knew it wouldn’t work; somehow in Dara’s eyes she just kept getting smaller and blurrier. Pretty soon Dara wouldn’t be able to see her at all.
And then there was Lucas. He saw some things just brilliantly, but he hallucinated the rest. If she tried talking to him, would he even listen? Or would he just call her a brain-damaged pigpen, and then laugh dementedly about her losing her best friend?
Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. “Zoe?” Anya was saying, frowning at Zoe’s drawing. “Did you hear what I was just saying to the class?”
“I guess not.”
“All right. I’ll repeat it, then. Clear everything from your desk. We’re having a self-assessment.”
“That means a test,” Jake called out.
“I don’t believe in tests,” Anya said patiently. “I just want to see your thought process.”
“So why can’t we just tell you our thought process without having to clear our desks?”
“Will you please relax, Jake? And everybody else: This is a self-assessment. That means you guys do the grading, not me.”
“It’s still being graded,” Jake complained.
“Can I hand out the self-assessments?” Paloma asked enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Paloma,” Anya said, “but I’ll pass them out myself.”
“Oh, come on, Anya. Please.”
Anya laughed. “You guys are so hyper today! Okay, Paloma, if you really need some exercise, why not.” She handed a stack of pale yellow sheets to Paloma, who smilingly went around the room slapping them facedown on everyone’s desk.
When she got to Zoe’s desk, she slapped down a white sheet.
“What’s this?” Zoe asked immediately.
“You heard. Self-assessment,” Paloma whispered back.
“If you have a sheet, just get started,” Anya called from her desk. “And show all work, please.”
Zoe turned over her white sheet.
Someone, obviously Paloma, had written:
16
Zoe crumpled the white sheet into a tight ball and threw it into the trash. Then she marched up to Anya’s desk.
“I need a new sheet,” she said.
“Already?” Anya asked, her blue eyes full of concern. “Zoe, I told you, I just want to see your thoughts. I don’t care about the computation. Just relax and have fun with it. And if you made a mistake—”
“But I didn’t,” Zoe replied firmly. “Someone else did. May I please just have a new sheet?”
Anya gave her one. She sat back down without looking at anybody, and completed all the problems with fierce concentration, pressing her pencil so hard that she made small indentations in the pale yellow paper.
When Math was over, she headed straight downstairs to the Girl’s Locker Room, where Leg, Paloma, and Dara were getting into their shorts and Ts for Rec Arts.
“You think I have no feelings?” Zoe demanded. “Is that what you think, Dara?”
Dara’s cheeks turned bright pink. “I never said that, Zoe.”
“Paloma wrote it, but it’s what you think, right?”
“You’re yelling. I don’t think you want to do this here, do you?” Dara darted her eyes meaningfully in the direction of Leg and Paloma.
“I don’t care! And I don’t care who hears me! If they want to eavesdrop, let them!” Zoe’s legs were shaking; she sat down on a bench. “Listen, Dara. Just because I don’t wave my arms around, or dance around onstage, or say every little thing that pops into my head, or show my thoughts, doesn’t mean that I’m not feeling anything. Or thinking anything. Don’t assume you have me all figured out like some dumb little math equation, because you don’t.”
“I never said—”
“You think I wrote those notes, don’t you? Well, I didn’t. I’d never do something like that. To you or anyone. I can’t believe you don’t know that about me by now. Or that you won’t even talk about it.”
“Why should she?” Leg said calmly. “When it’s so obvious you’re lying.”
“But I’m not! And I wasn’t even speaking to you, Leg. This is actually none of your business.”
“Oh, it’s definitely my business. I got two notes, Zoe, remember?”
“Well, not from me!”
“From who, then? Your boyfriend?” Paloma said.
“What?”
“Ezra Blecker. You’ve been eating lunch with him, right?”
“Stop picking on—”
“No, Paloma, I really think it’s Zoe,” Leg said as she tied her sneakers. “She’s the one who’s so angry at everybody.”
“I’m only angry because you’re accusing me,” Zoe said. “And you should also stop accusing other people.”
Paloma smirked. “Let’s get this straight, Zoe. We shouldn’t accuse you, but we shouldn’t accuse anyone else. Who should we accuse, then?”
“I don’t know!” Zoe snapped. “Don’t ask me to blame other people for you, okay? All I’m saying is, it wasn’t me.”
; “What about the gecko eyes?” Dara asked softly.
Leg gave Dara a questioning look, but Dara was staring at Zoe.
“You’re still doing that after-school job, Zoe, right?” Dara asked.
“Well, yes,” Zoe admitted. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“What job?” Paloma asked.
“Babysitting lizards,” Dara said.
Paloma made a throw-up face.
“Listen,” Zoe said to Dara. “I didn’t write—”
“You can say whatever you want,” Leg interrupted. “But everybody sees the truth, Zoe. Everybody knows that you can’t deal with the fact that Dara isn’t your clone anymore. And she got a big starring part and you can’t even be happy for her. So why don’t you just go off somewhere with Ezra and your disgusting lizards and draw your funny little pictures and leave us alone?”
Zoe turned to Dara, but her best friend was standing there very quietly. Dara didn’t even return her look; she just kept chewing on her thumbnail, watching everyone with the same unhappy, slightly out-of-focus expression. What did it mean? What was actually going on in Dara’s mind right now? It was impossible to tell; Zoe could suddenly read Dara no better than she could read Lucas’s crazy notebook.
Without another word, Zoe got up from the bench and walked over to her own gym locker. She was cold and numb, but her legs were still working. She’d get into her shorts and her T-shirt, and then she’d go into the gym and shoot baskets, or something. And after Rec Arts was Ancient Civs, and then Zoe could escape to Isaac’s. And be able to breathe, or cry, or scream, or whatever she wanted.
Her gym locker was in the middle of the locker room. As she walked toward it, she could see that there was a yellow sheet of paper taped to someone’s door. Her door. She was positive it was hers. Her heart began to race as she got closer.
In bold red letters someone had written: Open Me.
She ripped the paper off the door and let it flutter to the floor. Then she opened her gym locker.
On the bottom shelf was a little white strip of paper, no bigger than a fortune. Hello, Zoe, it said. We know it’s you.