Narc

by Crissa-Jean Chappell

  Brent ripped a page from his notebook. He was always working on some dumbass rap lyric, spitting out rhymes about hustling and hos. If he didn’t make it to the major leagues, he was going to play out his beef in freestyle battles. “It’s good to have a backup plan,” I once overheard him say.

  “Your boobs are popping through your shirt,” he told Morgan, holding up her drawing. “You can see the nipples and everything. Were you smoking when you drew this?”

  My ears perked up at what might be my first lead.

  “I refuse to answer that question,” she muttered. An answer in itself.

  I’d never seen Morgan Baskin at the Tombstone, this spot on the edge of campus where the smokers hung out with their pipes and rolling papers. The Tombstone was just a stupid block of fake marble bombed with bird poop. It had a bunch of rich people’s names carved into it, including some kid who died back when I was a freshman.

  I didn’t really know the dead guy. He was a few years ahead of me. Someone said that his girlfriend had just dumped him. All I could remember was the bandanna he wore all the time. On the day of his memorial, his locker was plastered with cards. The school put his picture on a music stand in the auditorium. A couple people stood and mumbled into the microphone. His girlfriend talked about how much he loved Egg McMuffins. When I’m dead, I hope that somebody remembers more than just my favorite fast food.

  They said the guy had a big heart. They didn’t talk about his bad grades. They didn’t mention the car crash, the six pack of beer, or fight with his ex. Maybe dying isn’t so bad, if people remember who they want you to be rather than what you were.

  The Tombstone wasn’t Morgan’s scene. We were at opposite ends of the social scale, so that made sense. But that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t interested in weed. Now was the time to make a move. Only one problem: I had no idea what to do or say around this girl.

  “So. Skully’s house party. Are we going or not?” she asked Brent.

  Skully’s parties were the stuff of legend. Of course, I had never actually been to any of them.

  “I’m going,” I said, taking a seat at their table.

  Brent thumped my arm. “Who are you?”

  Morgan grinned. “God. You sound like a Nazi. That’s Aaron Foster.” She leaned forward and her shirt dipped open, flashing a glimpse of “the puppies,” as Collin used to call them. I tried to focus on a strip of masking tape on the carpet.

  “You know my name?”

  “Of course. You’re the enemy,” she said, keeping her gaze locked on mine. Was she onto me? What the hell was that supposed to mean? At that moment, I imagined her mind scanning me, trying to fit me into the right slot. I was the “quiet kid,” so quiet that teachers skipped over my name while taking attendance. In other words, I was human wallpaper.

  Brent meanwhile was going off about Photoshop, how digital cameras had “replaced drawing as an art form.” Did he really think he was impressing her with his amazing intellect? Anyway, I was no expert on what girls wanted to hear.

  “Whatever, Brent,” Morgan said. “I’m still going to take Advanced Drawing next semester.”

  “My dad was a photographer for the Air Force,” I told her. “He used to take these really dramatic pictures of things like soldiers jogging in a sandstorm. You know. National Geographic stuff.”

  “Where is he now?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Oh.” Morgan stared at her fingernails. After a minute, she said, “You’re a military brat?”

  I told her my first lie. “I was born on a base in the Azores, these little islands off Portugal.” Actually, I’ve never been out of the country. I just looked at my dad’s photos. God. This whole lying thing was getting easier. That’s the part that freaked me out.

  “So that makes you an alien,” said Brent.

  Morgan tapped my arm, and I could feel my skin burning. “What was it like there?” she wanted to know.

  “Pretty weird. My parents used to play golf near this extinct volcano. The sand on the beaches was black.”

  “That’s so amazing,” she said, touching me again.

  At this point, Brent was about to explode. “Why are you flirting with this dude?” He scooted closer, as if to kiss her, but she moved. Instead, he licked her cheek.

  “Gross,” she said, pushing him away.

  He picked up Morgan’s sketchbook and flipped through it. “Why don’t you rip out these pages?” He tossed it across the table. “You should stick to taking crappy photos.”

  “Let me do it over,” she said, lunging for the sketchpad.

  He yanked it away. “You only draw skulls and shit. That’s the problem. Get a magic marker and make the neckline thicker. Make the shading a little more … you know. What the hell were you thinking?”

  I studied the drawing. Maybe it was supposed to be a self-portrait. It looked nothing like her blunt little face. The proportions were all wrong. Obviously, the girl was a fan of anime. The only thing she got right was the hair, which looked like a Cleopatra wig, dark and angular.

  Morgan made a big deal about gathering her pencils. On her way out she slammed the door so hard, it rattled.

  The librarian didn’t seem to care. He was already back at his desk, shuffling cards, rearranging hearts and spades as if the order of the universe depended on it. I wanted to tell him that it must be tough, working in a place where you’re considered the bad guy just for doing your job.

  That’s something I could relate to.

  I grabbed my stuff, making sure to fetch Morgan’s drawing from the trash on the way out.

  Class had ended hours ago, but I didn’t feel like going home yet. I kept drifting around the campus. Palm Hammock is one of those “al fresco” schools where the classrooms are spaced between sunny breezeways. I was halfway down the steps when I decided to turn back to Pitstick’s classroom.

  I jiggled the handle, but it didn’t budge. The lock, however, looked ancient. After a quick scan of the hall, making sure it was clear, I plucked a safety pin off my messenger bag. All it took was one twist. The door swung on its hinges, and I snuck inside.

  Mr. Pitstick had swept everything off his desk, including his coffee cup, which left a trail of stains, little tree-ring circles in the upper right corner. Weird. The drawer didn’t have a lock. I slid it open and found Skully’s rhinestone-studded cell phone on top of a pile of dry-erase markers.

  I flipped the cell open. The battery was near death, but I quickly scrolled through the list of names and numbers, trying to make sense of them.

  Ace, Bubba, Charro, JJ, Skye, YoYo

  Skully’s so-called friends. Did she even know their last names? I gave up and threw the cell in my bag.

  As I hustled out of the classroom, I was moving so fast I didn’t even notice Skully lurking in the hall. In fact, I almost tripped over her.

  “Watch where you’re going,” she said, pushing me away. Her eyes flashed over me. “I’ve seen you around. What’s your name again?”

  “Aaron.”

  “With two a’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the worst kind,” she said. “Don’t worry, though. I won’t judge you.”

  From my bag, the cell phone rang. Her cell phone.

  Skully blinked.

  I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants and dug out Skully’s phone. “I believe this is yours,” I said, handing it to her.

  “Holy shit,” she said, snatching it away. “You did not steal that back for me.”

  “Okay. I didn’t.”

  As if on cue, the cell phone rang again. We both cracked up. Skully’s smile faded as soon as she answered it.

  “That’s insane,” she muttered into the phone. “You can’t use it now. Throw it in the trash.” She hung up and said, “He lef
t his insulin bottle in the closet. I told him to put it in the fridge, but he keeps forgetting on purpose.”

  “That sucks,” I said.

  Skully pulled out a carton of slim brown Indian cigarettes. “Ever smoke bidis? I get them from this crazy health food store in the Grove.” She snapped her lighter, but it wouldn’t spark. “Damn it. You wouldn’t happen to have a light? I mean, you kind of look like a smoker.”

  “What’s a smoker look like?” I asked, a little offended.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. That wasn’t an insult, by the way.”

  I grabbed a box of matches from my bag. When I opened it, I pretended to act all irritated. “Why do I always put the used ones back?”

  “I do that, too,” Skully said. Actually, I had colored the burnt-looking tips with black marker. Her eyes almost popped out of her head when I struck the “used” match and it ignited. Just like magic.

  “You got special powers or something?” she asked.

  If only. Then I could’ve zapped away all the guilt I felt about faking this whole conversation.

  Skully put two bidis in her mouth and lit them at the same time. When she handed mine over, it was still damp. We were outside, but smoking was still off limits on school grounds. Not that I cared.

  “They say these are really bad for you. Like, worse than regular tobacco.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I don’t smoke cigarettes.”

  “Then what do you smoke?” I asked. She just giggled.

  As we walked down the breezeway, I tried to think of something else to say. “So how long you been stuck at Palm Hammock?”

  “It’s a life sentence,” she said. The bidi dangled from her lips, bobbing with the rhythm of her words. “I’ve been here since my paste-eating days. You have no idea how much it sucks. I mean, if I switched schools, I could totally reinvent myself.”

  I blew out a stream of smoke. “You know a lot of people at Palm Hammock?”

  “Who told you that?” she asked.

  “Nobody. I just figured. Since you’ve been here so long.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Skully smiled. Although it was, like, a hundred degrees outside, she was wearing these checkered arm warmers, which she rolled up and down.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” said Mr. Pitstick, hustling around the lockers. You could spot him from twenty feet away. He wore a bike helmet clamped over his head like a Day-Glo walnut. I turned around and he smirked. “I mean lady and gentleman.”

  Just then Skully’s cell phone went off again. It was so damn loud, there was no question where it came from.

  Mr. Pitstick stared at us. I waited for him to mention the phone. Instead, he said, “No smoking on campus.”

  My bidi had burned to ashes anyway, so I just tossed it in the bushes.

  He wagged a finger at Skully. “Put it out, Ms. Torres.”

  She flicked her bidi on the ground and smushed it with her Godzilla-sized boots. “God. He must be deaf or something. What’s wrong with him?” she said as he walked away. “Besides his love affair with booze. I bet you’ve already heard about his brush with death last Christmas. He crashed his car into a telephone pole, lost his license and everything.”

  Geez. This girl was a walking Wikipedia.

  “That’s intense,” I said, watching Mr. Pitstick unlock his bike, an old-school Huffy dappled with rust.

  “I’m surprised he’s still alive,” Skully said. “Thanks again for rescuing my phone. Mr. Pitstick is an ass. It’s like, he doesn’t realize there might be a good reason why I’m breaking the rules. I have a life, you know?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  She nodded once, then skipped off like a grade-schooler. The back of her head was pale white with pink streaks. It reminded me of fur, like a stuffed animal. When she was gone, I whipped out my memo pad and added her name to my list.

  3 : Solitaire

  The breeze smelled like cut grass and leftover thunderstorms. I made my way to the Tombstone. A bunch of people were hanging out there, including Nolan Struth, this kid that everybody liked to torture, just for the hell of it.

  Nolan was in the Special Needs program. He was never going to graduate, in any real sense of the word. Every year, he racked up useless classes like Video Production. During the morning announcements, he rolled his wheelchair in front of the camera and read the list of vegetarian lunch options. That was his big thing, along with his never-ending science experiments.

  “How’s the time machine coming along?” I asked him.

  “Still working on it,” he said. “Needs more plutonium. And that’s kind of hard to find, unless you know the right sources.”

  The guys started tearing into him, saying stuff like, “Hey, Nolan! Can I borrow your time machine?”

  “Well, you would have to get on the waiting list … ” he said, ultraserious. Nolan wasn’t stupid. He just wanted to be there so bad that he put up with their shit.

  If I had a time machine, I would zoom into the future, then float back in time and get things right.

  I took a walk around the empty football field to clear my head. I needed to meet people if I was going to find the shot caller. At the same time, it was kinda nice talking to girls. At school, I hardly talked to anyone, didn’t have any friends. Of course, this was all going to hit the fan, sooner or later, and I wouldn’t have friends then either. Why did I care what they thought of me? I should stop caring.

  There was Morgan, sitting alone on the bleachers. Just like that, the lights around the goal posts clicked on. I was bathed in fluorescence, like I was going to recite poetry or something. Instead, I climbed up and found a spot a few seats down from her.

  “Hey,” I called out.

  Morgan didn’t hear me. She was too busy fiddling with her old-school iPod, scrolling that stupid wheel around with her thumb. Instead of ear buds, she had these enormous Walkman-style headphones that would’ve kept her warm in a blizzard. Maybe if I stared long enough, she would feel it.

  She bopped her head to the beat. In her other hand, she gripped something sharp and metallic. It looked like a piece of aluminum screening, the kind that shelters swimming pools. I watched her lift up her skirt and drag the metal across the pale flesh of her inner thigh. She did this a couple more times, slow, careful strokes, then slipped the piece of metal in her sock.

  I sucked in a gulp. For the past few seconds, I’d forgotten to breathe. Morgan was looking at me now. After a second, she unplugged herself from the headphones.

  I could see her eyes now, which were puffy from crying. I thought about walking away. Too late. She’d already noticed me. I moved closer instead.

  “Are you a spy?” she asked.

  “You mean like James Bond?” I tried to concentrate on walking.

  “There was this book I was obsessed with as a little kid. This girl, Harriet, goes around spying on everyone. When the people at her school find out, they end up hating her for telling the truth.”

  “What’s your name again?” I asked, like I didn’t remember.

  “Morgan Baskin. Like the ice cream company. Not that I’m related.”

  “You never know. Maybe they’re the long-lost branches of your family tree.”

  “I wish,” she rolled her eyes. “Then I’d be set for life. Unfortunately, my family tree is suffering from root rot.”

  I laughed. This girl was so crush-worthy. Why the hell was she talking to me?

  “We’re in the same history class, right?” she said. “Mr. Pitstick?”

  “That’s right. He busted me today.”

  “For what? Cheating on that quiz about the Trojan War? For the record, everybody did. Brent sent me the answers on his cell phone.”

  “No, I actually studied for that. But I got in trouble for doodling.”

&nb
sp; “Geez. He should’ve locked you up in Supermax. I bet you’d look good in an orange jumpsuit.”

  Look good? What did she mean? Was she flirting with me? This felt so wrong. I needed to stop obsessing.

  “I doubt it,” I told her. “Orange isn’t my color.”

  “Is it anyone’s?” asked Morgan. She slung her bag across her chest.

  “You’re left-handed.”

  “Yep. But my stepmom made me use my other hand. She used to tie a rubber band around my wrist and snap it when I used my left.”

  Hearing that was like getting kicked in the guts, as if her pain had leaked into my skin.

  “That really sucks,” I said.

  “It’s no big deal. Now I’m ambidextrous,” Morgan said. “Most of the world’s famous artists were left-handed, you know. Like Michelangelo.”

  “The ancient Greeks thought it was unlucky.”

  “Gee. Thanks.” She blew the bangs off her face. Up close, she was smaller than I realized, half-drowning in her granny-style getup. When she spoke, her gravelly voice poured out so slow and deep, it surprised me.

  “You smoke?” Morgan took out a pack of rolling papers, along with a pouch of tobacco.

  “Not cigarettes,” I said slowly.

  “Gotcha,” she said, sticking out her tongue and licking the end of a sheet. “You looking for bud?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “A dime bag,” I told her, “for the weekend.”

  “Talk to Jessica. She’ll hook you up.” Morgan plugged herself into the headphones. Screamy music leaked out.

  “Jessica?” I asked, a little confused. I kept flashing back to Morgan’s skin, those cuts, her skirt bunched above her thighs. It was getting hard to concentrate.

  “Hello? Jessica Torres? Otherwise known as Skully?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “You’re going to that thing on Saturday, right?”

  “Maybe,” she said.