I write Dad a note that I’m going to the town library to work on an assignment for Ms. Latimer—thanks to him not being awake to give me the power cord for my computer. Then I collect my backpack with Dad’s camera, roll Max’s bike out from under the lean-to, and for the first time all week ride to my friends in College Park.
CHAPTER 21
I TAKE THE END-OF-YEAR STATE EXAMS ALONE, IN A SMALL room attached to the principal’s office. I don’t get to see the rest of the school or any of the kids.
I don’t belong here anymore.
But I will come back this summer, along with Chad whether or not he wants me. We’ll still be friends. I imagine his surprised look when I tell him we’ll be in summer school together. Maybe even in the same classroom, once they discover I really know everything and can be his private tutor.
When the assistant principal instructs me, I open the first page of my test booklet. Algebra I.
#1: The equations 12x + 18y = 48 and 18x + 18y = 63 represent the money collected from the sale of cupcakes and doughnuts on two different days. If x represents the cost of cupcakes, how much does each cupcake cost? (A) $1.00; (B) $1.50; (C) $2.00; (D) $2.50.
Easy. Cupcakes are $2.50. I darken the circle next to (A).
Every few times, I get one right. Missing every single question seems too deliberate.
I could have scored at least a 96 on the Algebra I exam.
Instead, I’m getting a 45.
I work out every problem in my head so I know which circles are wrong and which are most likely to be because of a careless error. Where it says to show the work, I make the careless error. Like #1: Not reading the problem carefully enough. Or #3: Solving the equations in the wrong order.
About halfway through the test, I consider erasing all my wrong answers and putting the right ones in. It will be embarrassing to fail a test. I used to cry when I got below a 90. Ms. Latimer will say it’s my fault for spending too much time making videos. She may change her mind and recommend me for the ED/LD class.
I know Dad will be angry with me. He’s arranging to go on tour as an extra musician with a band after I leave, but now he’ll have to stay home and work at Tech Town while I attend summer school. Too bad for him. He should have stood up for me and not let Mami take me away from my only friends.
Mami will be angry too, but it doesn’t matter because she isn’t coming home anyway. She’s busy in Montreal with her new band and the famous singer. I don’t think she misses me nearly as much as Mrs. Mac said she does. And now, Max—one of her normal children—is up there for the summer, playing keyboards with the band, while the other normal child, whose name I refuse to mention, has an internship in Boston.
I hand the assistant principal my answer sheet fifteen minutes early.
Next comes social studies.
#1: Farmers in the South who lived on land belonging to a large landowner, and who paid rent with part of their harvest rather than with money, were called (A) sodbusters; (B) migrants; (C) sharecroppers; (D) muckrakers.
Instead of (C), I fill in (A).
Unlike Algebra I, social studies has an essay portion. I’m supposed to interpret a cartoon about the Gilded Age and write a paragraph. I get the dates wrong and write about the Roaring Twenties.
I decide not to fail my science test. I’m already in summer school anyway for math and social studies. Science is my favorite subject. I could teach it, if Chad would only let me, and I can’t see myself going over things I recite in my sleep.
I figure on a perfect 100 in science and 45 in Algebra I. I don’t know about social studies because they could grade my essay easy. But I got wrong more than half the multiple choice and true-false questions.
Just before opening my English test, I think again about Dad and how he’ll probably take away my computer forever. That would mean no classes with Mr. Internet. And no way to upload videos.
I can still meet Mr. Internet at the public library. Hey, Dad, I’m going to the library to study. So I won’t have to repeat eighth grade, you know. Yes. That’s what I’ll tell him.
Since they don’t let you make and upload YouTube videos at the library, I’ll have to ask Antonio. As I guessed, he didn’t mind when I told him that I lost my computer for not doing my homework. Veg offered to upload the videos to his computer and edit them for me, but his aren’t getting as many hits as mine did. So I’m pretty sure Antonio will say yes to me coming over and using his computer.
I imagine myself with Antonio at his big, fancy house. Making sandwiches in the kitchen, everything shiny and clean, tile floors and granite countertops like in Hogar, the home-decorating magazine in Spanish Mami used to read. They keep sending it to us even though she’s no longer here.
The assistant principal interrupts my thoughts. “Time’s passing. You need to focus on the test.”
I realize I’ve been staring at the clock. Twenty minutes have passed of my allotted hour. And, no, I can’t hand in a blank page.
I start with the essays. This time, I answer the two questions, but I print so slowly and neatly that I have a work of art when the assistant principal calls time, but only a third of the little circles for the vocabulary and grammar parts filled in. At least when they read the essays, the people grading the test won’t think I’m a complete idiot.
I smile and hand the assistant principal my answer sheets for the English exam. She wishes me a good summer.
I could write a book on how to fail the state exams on purpose.
CHAPTER 22
DAD HAS ARRANGED TO TAKE OFF WORK TO DRIVE ME TO Montreal after my lessons with Ms. Latimer end. I wonder what he’ll do when he finds out I can’t go because I failed my exams and will have to attend summer school. I have ten days to wait before we find out my scores. Ms. Latimer has me do fun stuff like puzzles and board games. I stare at the unplugged computer and think about all the video footage in my camera that I need to edit and upload.
During the week Antonio tells me about a party he and his friends have organized at the BMX track on Saturday. He calls it the “end-of-school blowout” because he, Veg, and Brian are graduating high school the following Wednesday. He wants me to film everyone’s stunts. I haven’t been to a party since the disaster at Emily Stein’s in fourth grade. But I expect to be grounded for a long time, and this might be one of my last chances to see all my friends.
The party starts at two on Saturday afternoon and is supposed to last all night. Dad’s working until nine to make up for all the days he’ll miss, so if I get home by then, I’m safe. I tell Chad to come over at one thirty so we can ride there together—me on Chad’s bike, him on his BMX bike. I want to show up on a shiny, new bike, but mainly, I don’t want to show up alone. I want all the people I don’t know to see that I already have a friend.
Yet by two, there’s no Chad. Not even his family’s van in the driveway.
I’m itching, as Chad would say. Wasting time. Kids will be doing stunts and expecting me to film them. The thought of arriving alone makes my knees go shaky. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans and wheel Max’s bike out of the lean-to. Before I can put on my backpack and helmet, I hear the van’s peculiar cough.
Yes! I whisper to myself. I back the bike into the lean-to and run to my front porch to await Chad. Five minutes later, he rides up the street on his mountain bike, towing his BMX bike alongside him.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“McDonald’s.” He has a gauze bandage wrapped around his left forearm near his elbow, where he got a nasty turf burn bailing on a backflip yesterday. I check the saddlebags for two-liter bottles of churning chemicals. Empty. I stuff my rolled-up backpack with the camera, notebook, and pencil into a bag.
While stopped at a traffic light in downtown Willingham, Chad picks at the gauze. I tell him, “Veg wants to call your video ‘Backflop.’”
“Not funny. I’m gonna do it perfect this time.” Chad looks away, toward the river. The light changes, and he takes off ahead of me, pedal
ing hard. I pump to catch up with him, hoping the effort will make my knees less shaky.
Last-minute tutoring, I think. Maybe that will help. “Hey, Chad. What am I supposed to do?” I shout.
He grunts and drops back behind me.
I slow to let him catch up and try again. “The party? What should I say?”
“Dunno. Be yourself.”
That’s a lot of help.
“Oh, yeah,” he then says. “Make sure you get all my stunts.”
When we get there, I check my watch. Three o’clock. We have nearly five hours until I have to go home. The area around the BMX track is already filled with kids wearing the red and black colors of College Park High School.
Veg trots toward us, waving both hands above his head.
“Yo, Raggy!” Veg calls out Chad’s nickname—short for Raggedy Chad.
Antonio catches up to his friend. “If it isn’t rogue266 and Gambit Double 360.” He winks at me. I think he’s figured out my obsession with the X-Men from my YouTube uploads even though I haven’t actually told him. I smile back.
Veg lowers his voice and tells us, “Gotta show you the new ice chest we made.”
Chad and I follow Veg and Antonio to a smaller clearing in the woods where some other high school kids stand in a circle, holding cans. They step aside to let us through. At our feet is a pit, three feet by three feet, lined with a shower curtain and filled with soda, beer, and ice.
“Cool!” Chad says.
“You dug that hole?” I ask. It makes me think of the holes I dug for Brandon’s wrestlers, only a hundred times bigger.
“This morning. It’s Mother Nature’s ice chest.” Antonio crouches down and grabs a can of soda. I do the same.
When Antonio isn’t looking, Chad snatches a beer can from the hole, pops the top, and takes a long swallow. I gulp my soda. We’re both sweaty from the ride and the almost-ninety-degree heat. And I’m not surprised to see Chad drinking. He’s had beer with the other guys before, chugging his cans like someone who’s been sneaking them from the refrigerator for years, which on one wobbly ride home he told me he did.
After Veg and some other kids scoop up cans, Antonio drags a sheet of plywood over the hole. Some of the kids drift away. Antonio and I walk through the woods in the opposite direction toward the creek. I smell pine sap mixed with perspiration. Mine. Antonio’s. The buzz of many conversations fades the farther we get from the pit, replaced by the gurgle of water running past rocks.
I take the camera from the backpack to get some footage of the creek. I know I’ll use it at some point. Running water always makes for cool images.
“Want me to interview you?” Antonio asks.
“Interview?”
He wriggles the camera out of my hand and points it at my face. “We’re here with the world-famous videographer rogue266. Rogue, say hi to your fans.”
“Hi, fans,” I mumble, confused.
“A little more enthusiasm, okay?”
Louder, I repeat, “Hi, fans.”
“Through image and music, you’ve captured the thrill of freestyle BMX and mountain biking. What’s your secret?”
The words don’t come. I shift from one foot to another. Gaze at the pine needles under my sneakers. Keep the camera still? Never let the bike leave the frame? Zoom into his center the moment the rider takes to the air—and the moment he wipes out?
“I … I can’t,” I say, looking away to the side.
“Sorry I put you on the spot.” Antonio lowers the camera and hands it to me. After deleting his recording to avoid further embarrassment, I tuck it under my arm. “I guess great artists don’t talk about their work,” he says. “They just do it.”
He’s right. When I’m behind the camera, sitting in the grass overlooking the BMX track, I feel strong. Capable. Like I belong.
We return to the track. The sun is high, and shadows don’t get in the way of my filming. The boys take turns doing their stunts while I record them. Even some girls ride the mounds. Chad gets a lot of attention for the perfect backflip that he practiced yesterday. That trick is beast, a couple of the other kids say. They all think he’s really cool—or beast, which I guess means cool.
I write their names along with their stunts and a description of their bikes in my notebook. This way, I can match the riders with their videos. Some of the names I recognize from previous weeks, even though I don’t recognize the faces.
Three hours later, the sun has dropped toward the horizon. I have to move around more for the best lighting to capture the expressions on the riders’ faces and the details of their stunts. Fewer kids are riding because the glare messes with their moves, just as it washes out my picture if I aim the camera the wrong way.
Someone brings a stack of pizza boxes to the edge of the woods. Someone else refills the pit. Antonio brings me a slice of pepperoni on a paper plate.
“I’ll take another soda,” I tell him. People are eating now, not riding, and I have nothing else to do except stare at the empty track.
He comes back with a diet soda. I frown.
“You drink diet, don’t you?” he asks.
“No. Not really.”
“Sorry. I thought most girls—”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt. He ought to know by now I’m not like most girls. But I don’t want to mess things up, so I pop the top instead.
With the first sip, I recoil at the fake sweetness. I force myself to drink more, then cover up the chemical aftertaste with a bite of pepperoni. Antonio sits on a patch of grass next to me. Suddenly, I feel dizzy. My mouth is dry. I take another swallow. I have to tell him about the test.
“Dad wants to send me to Montreal this summer,” I begin.
“Max is there, right? It’s cool you’re staying with him.”
Cool? No, it’s not cool. “I flunked my state exams on purpose,” I tell Antonio.
“No way,” he says.
“So that I’ll have to stay around and go to summer school. And I bet my dad’ll ground me.” Thinking about it makes my stomach do a backflip. A mouthful of soda sets it back where it belongs. “But you can come by and visit.”
“Wow. Like a jail visit.”
“Something like that.”
Antonio leans in toward me. His breath is tangy. Sweet. “You’re a big-time troublemaker. First getting kicked out of school, then getting your computer taken away for not doing your homework. Now this.”
The lie about the homework, thrown back at me, makes me hesitate. I have to keep track of the lies. “Yeah, it was really weird. I used to never fail tests. Most of the time I got a hundred.”
“So … why?” Antonio licks his lips. I wonder what it’s like to kiss someone … on the lips? The backflips start up again.
Under the influence of the Golgotha space creatures, Rogue and Wolverine kissed.
Antonio stands up and moves to my other side. Does he know I wanted to kiss him? My gaze falls to his red muscle T-shirt, his bare arm, and the Livestrong tattoo.
“I wanted to stay with my friends,” I say.
I touch Antonio’s shoulder. His skin is hot. My arm stiffens, and a burning sensation spreads from my fingers all the way to my heart, as if instead of sucking out his emotions, he’s sucking out mine. He doesn’t think what I did is cool. He thinks it’s stupid and weird. I let my hand drop into my lap. Heat flows out of my body. The swirling inside me stops.
Antonio taps my shoulder. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Anna Paquin?” he asks. When I look up, he brushes back the strands of hair that have come out of my ponytail.
“Really?” My voice comes out as a squeak. “You know she plays Rogue in the X-Men movie?” I twist around and notice the groups of kids walking toward us. “But I’m the real Rogue.”
“Two-six-six.” Antonio smiles at me—a big smile that I think means he cares about me.
I stand, brush the dirt from my jeans, and pick up my backpack. “Can we, like, walk somewhere?” I ask, not wanting t
he rest of the kids to hear about the X-Men and me.
“Sure.”
When we get to the woods, I tell him about Rogue and Wolverine and Gambit, about needing to find my special power so I can make the world understand mutants and be nicer to us, and he listens to me. But I’m nowhere near finished when I hear a rustling.
I whirl around.
A husky-voiced “Boo!” makes me jump.
Chad steps out of the woods and stands in front of us, hands on his hips. He’s not smiling.
CHAPTER 23
ANTONIO DROPS HIS CAN. “WHAT THE … ?”
Soda spills out and soaks into the ground, leaving a puff of foam.
Chad lights into me. “You’re supposed to be by the track, Kiara. Recording us.”
“No one was riding. You were all eating.” I glance at him, confused.
A muscular boy with short dark hair and a black College Park High School T-shirt jogs up to Chad and slaps his back. “Yeah, Raggy, what’s with your girlfriend not recording you?”
Two boys and two girls join them. My watch tells me we only have forty minutes until I have to leave. The growing crowd and gloom of dusk tell me I may have lost my last chance to talk any more to Antonio.
“Know what you need, Little Man? Muscles like that dude. Then she’d want to take your picture.” The kid with the black T-shirt pokes Chad in the chest. Chad only comes up to his shoulder, and he stumbles backward, arms flailing. The big kid laughs.
“Lay off him, Josh,” a girl says. Her tight red T-shirt reads College Park Girls’ Basketball. She musses Chad’s hair.
“Check out those pencil arms,” another boy says. He lifts Chad’s unbandaged arm and squeezes his bicep.
Chad shakes loose from his group and stalks toward me. He spits to the side, inches from Antonio’s feet.
“She’s retarded, Wheezer. She lives for those stupid X-Men.”
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