B005N8ZFUO EBOK

by Lubar, David

  After a while, I rolled off the bed and started unpacking my clothes. At least I didn’t have to worry about how I looked. From what I’d seen so far, I wouldn’t stand out like some kind of clueless loser. When I was done, I kicked my empty bag into the corner of the room. It felt so good, I kicked it again. Naturally, I pretended the bag was the crumpled body of Lester Bloodbath.

  Torchie glanced up from the comic book he was reading. “It’s not that bad here—honest.”

  How could he say that? Until today—until this morning—I’d lived at home. Now I lived here. How in the world could it not be bad? It looked like it was time to tell Torchie exactly what I thought about him and this whole stinking place.

  CRUMPLED LETTER IN THE WASTEBASKET OF DOROTHY ANDERSON

  FROM STATE SENATE BILL SJ-35A

  WHAT’S SHORT AND SMART AND FUN TO TEASE?

  I was interrupted by a knock on the door. A short kid wearing glasses with thick black frames stuck his head in. “I brought back your magazine,” he said to Torchie.

  “Come on in,” Torchie said.

  The kid walked in and handed a car magazine to Torchie. He turned to me and said, “Hi.”

  “That’s Dennis Woo,” Torchie said. “But everyone calls him Cheater.”

  Cheater glared at Torchie. “Not everyone. And it’s a lie. I never cheat. don’t have to.” He turned back toward me. “Let me ask you this. Do I look like someone who needs to cheat on tests?” He stood very still, as if that would help me see what a wise and honest person he was.

  “No, you look awfully smart,” I told him. “Heck, you look so smart I’d probably try to copy off of your tests. Maybe I can sit next to you in class.”

  He grinned. “Hey, thanks. You’re okay.”

  I shrugged. Apparently, the subtle art of sarcasm was wasted on him. I glanced over at Torchie, trying not to grin. But I couldn’t help rolling my eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Wait, I get it,” Cheater said. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you? You think I didn’t know what you meant.”

  “Relax. I was just kidding.” I didn’t feel like making any more enemies—even little ones with thick glasses. I held out my hand. “No hard feelings?”

  Cheater looked at me for a moment, as if trying to decide whether I was going to play some kind of joke on him. Then he reached out to shake hands. As he did, I suddenly wondered whether he was going to flip me through the air.

  I guess my expression changed enough that he could figure out what was on my mind. “Relax,” he said. “You look like you think I’m going to kung fu you or something. Talk about stereotypes. Just because I’m Chinese, you think I’m some kind of karate kid. Let me tell you, I don’t know any of that stuff. I wish I did.”

  We shook hands. “I really was just kidding,” I told him.

  “Hey, I’m used to it,” Cheater said. “My ancestors have been kicked around for centuries. But you know what? I don’t think people hate us because we look different. I think they hate us because we’re smart. I have a cousin who gets beaten up at least once a week because he always gets one hundred on his tests. You see? That’s why people hate us.”

  Wow, I didn’t want to get any deeper into that discussion. If someone hated you, did it really matter why? I didn’t know. Maybe it mattered. At least there didn’t seem to be any prejudice about who went to Edgeview. From what I’d seen, the place was about as mixed as any school I’d ever been to. Trouble was color-blind.

  “I really do know lots of stuff,” Cheater said. “Ask me anything. Did you know karate started out in China? Then it went to Okinawa in the sixteen hundreds. Didn’t get to Japan until 1910. Edgeview Alternative School was built in 1932. But it started out as a factory. They rebuilt it twenty years ago. But it’s just been a school for the last four and a half years.”

  “He really does know just about everything,” Torchie said. “It’s kind of amazing.”

  “Come on, ask me anything,” Cheater said.

  I realized he wasn’t going to stop until I asked him a question. “Who invented radium?”

  “Marie Curie. With her husband Pierre. In 1898. For which they got the Nobel Prize in 1903.” He stared at me as if I’d just asked him to spell cat. “Come on. Torchie could have answered that one.”

  “Hey,” Torchie said.

  “Sorry,” Cheater told him. He looked back at me.

  All right. I’d give him my hardest question. “Who played the monster in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein?” That was a real stumper. Most people would guess Boris Karloff. They’d be wrong.

  Cheater didn’t even blink. “Glenn Strange,” he said, giving the correct answer.

  Wow. I guess he really might know everything. Except how to stay out of trouble.

  A bell rang in the hall.

  “Dinnertime,” Torchie announced, getting to his feet like someone who had just been invited to take a stroll to the electric chair.

  “I’ll grab some seats,” Cheater said, dashing out the door.

  “They short on seats?” I asked Torchie.

  He shook his head. “No. Cheater just likes to be first in line.” Then he leaned over to whisper, even though we were alone. “He doesn’t really need glasses. But he kept bugging his folks for them. Don’t tell him I told you. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I followed Torchie out the door. “How’s the food?” I asked as we walked toward the stairs. I noticed that nobody seemed to be in a rush. I scanned the halls for Bloodbath and spotted him safely ahead of us.

  “On a good day, it stinks,” Torchie said. “But you’ll get used to it.”

  We joined the herd shuffling toward the cafeteria on the first floor. Even from far off, as the smells reached me I got the feeling Torchie wasn’t kidding about the food. I grabbed a tray and went through the line with Torchie, letting a bored-looking woman with a net over her hair and clear plastic gloves on her hands give me a plate loaded with various piles of glop. I wondered if the gloves were for our protection or for hers.

  We wove our way between the round tables that seemed to have been dropped at random on the cracked linoleum floor, heading toward Cheater, who stood there signaling his success in getting some seats by waving one arm. As I followed Torchie to our spot near the far wall and plunked down on a wobbly plastic chair, I could see that the kids were split up into different groups, with anywhere from four to eight kids at a table. I’d guess there were about two hundred kids altogether. Bloodbath was hanging out with a bunch of tough guys at a couple tables in one corner. Everything about them—clothes, hair, attitude—said, Don’t mess with us. The tables nearest them were empty. I guess nobody wanted to get too close to the sharks.

  On a hunch, I looked at the table farthest from Bloodbath. Yup, the smallest, most scared kids were all clustered there, like a bunch of little bait fish.

  “We used to have more tables,” Torchie said. “But they got rid of all the square ones last month.” He almost had to shout. There was a lot more talking than eating going on around us, filling the room with noise that seemed to wash over me from every direction.

  “Rectangles,” Cheater said, correcting him. “They were longer than they were wide. So that made them—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Torchie said, glaring at Cheater. “Anyhow, I guess they figured round tables would make us behave better or something.”

  “Fascinating.” I turned my attention to choking down the food. It’s hard to believe that anyone could ruin macaroni and cheese, but the school cooks had managed to do just that. And the potatoes were awful. “These mashed potatoes really suck,” I said.

  “That’s because they’re turnips,” Cheater explained. “A popular food source in Germany before the introduction of the potato.”

  I decided not to ask what the stringy green stuff was. Until now, I’d thought Mom was a pretty bad cook. Her idea of tomato sauce was ketchup with a dash of parmesan cheese. As I ate, I realized she could have been far worse. And at least back home we’d h
ave takeout chicken once a week from Cluck Shack, and lots of pizza. I guess I wouldn’t be getting anything like that for a while.

  Between bites, I checked out my companions. Besides Torchie and Cheater, there was one other kid at our table. He looked pretty tough. Big shoulders, dark hair, eyebrows that seemed to want to grow together to form one furry strip across his forehead, and the beginnings of a stubbly beard threatening to burst through his skin. A year or two from now, I’d bet he’d be shaving twice a day. They called him Lucky. I almost laughed when I heard that. I didn’t see how anyone who deserved that nickname could be stuck in a place like Edgeview. Unlucky was more like it. Or maybe Unfriendly. He didn’t seem all that happy to meet me.

  Not that I cared.

  By the time I’d choked down half the macaroni, I had the whole place figured out. Except for one person.

  BREAK TIME

  I’d watched him on and off during the meal, and I didn’t have a clue why he was by himself. Well, as my dad always said, if you don’t know the answer, ask a question. Of course, whenever I asked him a question, he usually told me to shut up and stop being such a wise ass.

  But dad wasn’t here, so I figured it was safe to ask a question.

  “Who’s the loner?” I asked Torchie, looking over toward the kid eating all by himself at a table near the opposite wall. There was nothing I could see about his clothes or appearance that would explain his isolation.

  “Him? That’s Trash.”

  “Nice name,” I said.

  “It’s not like that. It’s just that he trashes stuff. You know, breaks things.”

  “Yeah,” Cheater said. “I heard that at his last school, he smashed up a whole classroom—desks, chairs, windows. The kid’s wacko.”

  I looked back at Trash. It was hard to imagine why someone would break stuff for fun.

  “Hey,” Lucky said to Cheater, “you shouldn’t say wacko. It’s not nice.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Cheater said. “My mistake. He’s not wacko—he’s bonkers. Or maybe he’s loony. How about deranged? I like that one.”

  “How’d you like to be called that?” Lucky asked.

  “I think I’d prefer insane, if you’re going for technical terms,” Cheater said. “But flipped out has a nice ring to it. And let’s not forget all those wonderful phrases that can be used to indicate a mind that is somewhat less than perfect: one card short of a full deck, one sandwich short of a picnic, off your rocker, out in left field—the list goes on and on. Hey, do you know where the word bedlam comes from? It was a crazy house in England.”

  “Listen,” Lucky told him, his voice dropping so low I had to lean forward to catch the rest of it. “If enough people call you crazy, maybe you begin to believe it, even if you aren’t.”

  All three of them started arguing about putting labels on people and about stuff like self-esteem. Everyone was talking at once. They sounded like a bunch of miniature psychiatrists. I guess they’d gotten a lot of that in class here. Personally, I thought they were all a bit crazy. Or wacko. Or bonkers. But I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t do much about kids like Bloodbath who’d hate me because that was how they treated everyone, but I didn’t want to turn the whole place against me. I didn’t want to end up eating dinner all by myself every day, like that pathetic loser they called Trash.

  So I stayed quiet and let them go at it. Eventually, the argument faded out and everyone went back to eating.

  “Well,” Cheater said as we finished our meal, “welcome to Edgeview.”

  I was about to say, Thanks, when a crash from across the room made me jump. Nobody else seemed surprised. I realized Trash had thrown his plate down. It sounded like it had hit hard. I expected to see shattered pieces all over the floor, but the plate hadn’t broken.

  “He does that a lot,” Torchie said. “They give him a plastic plate, so at least it doesn’t break.”

  I watched Trash to see what he would do next. I wondered if he’d throw his fork, or maybe even his chair. Even though he was off on the other side of the room, I got ready to duck. But he just sat there. I couldn’t see his face really well—he was hunched over and his hair hung down kind of long on the sides—but he didn’t seem angry. He didn’t seem happy, either. He actually appeared kind of sad.

  “Wacko,” Cheater said.

  Lucky glared at him.

  “What do you guys do after dinner?” I asked as we got up from the table.

  “There’s a TV in the lounge,” Torchie said. “But Bloodbath and his gang hang out there.”

  “The library’s not bad,” Cheater added. “And on Friday nights, we all—”

  “Play checkers,” Lucky said.

  He cut off Cheater so quickly I was sure they were hiding something. That was okay. I couldn’t get angry over a secret or two. They didn’t know me yet and they had no way to tell whether they could trust me. Just like I didn’t really know yet if I could trust them.

  “Yeah,” Cheater said. “That’s what I was going to say. We play checkers. Yup. Every Friday. That’s what we do.”

  A bell rang, signaling the end of dinner. “Oh crap,” I said as it hit me.

  “What?” Torchie asked.

  “Nothing.” It wasn’t a thought I felt like sharing, but I’d just realized my whole life was going to be measured by bells.

  When we got back to the room, I borrowed a magazine from Torchie. He had a great selection—monster stuff, sports, comics, cars—though some of them looked like they’d been snatched from a fire. I read for a while, then decided to go to sleep. We had to turn out our lights at ten, anyhow, so it wasn’t like I was missing anything.

  Right about now, back home, I’d be saying good night to my sister.

  Good night, you spoiled brat.

  And she’d be saying good night to me.

  Good night, you creepy little twerp.

  It was sort of a ritual with us. Funny how, in one day, home had turned into back home. Somewhere else. Somewhere I wasn’t.

  I could hear Torchie across the room breathing. Out in the hall, it sounded like someone was wrestling. The walls shook with the thud of a body hitting hard. Maybe it was a fight. I didn’t care. It had nothing to do with me.

  Tomorrow was Monday. I’d get to find out firsthand what classes were like. Maybe these teachers would be better. Maybe I could get along with them.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the places I’d been before Edgeview. All of a sudden, the other schools didn’t seem that bad. Sure, there’d been a lot of jerks to deal with, but I guess there were jerks everywhere. Maybe I was a jerk myself for getting kicked out so often.

  But this was it. Edgeview was the last place that would take me. This was the place for kids who had been thrown out of all the regular schools where they lived. Six counties in the northern part of the state had gotten together to make this dump. There was nowhere to go from here. Edgeview was my dead end.

  THE THINKING HERO

  DENNIS WOO

  A LITTLE CLASS

  A bell woke me.

  “Good morning,” Torchie called from across the room in a disgustingly cheerful voice.

  I coughed a couple of times as I sat up, wondering why my lungs felt like I’d spent the night in an ashtray. The answer sat in the bottom of my wastebasket. I stared at the charred ball of burned paper that had once been a student handbook.

  “Hey, are you trying to kill us?” I asked Torchie.

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” he said.

  “Right.” There was no point arguing. We’d just get into one of those did-not, did-too things that don’t go anywhere. So I dropped it and got ready for my day at Edgeview.

  My first class after breakfast was math. When I reached the door, Cheater waved to me from the middle of the empty room. “I got us some seats,” he said.

  “Thanks.” I plunked down next to him. “I was afraid I’d have to stand.”

  “I’m not going to copy off of you,” Cheater added. “Everyone
says I do. But I don’t.”

  “Fine.” I didn’t care if he copied from me.

  Torchie grabbed the seat on my other side. He’d sort of attached himself to me. That was okay—! didn’t mind sticking with someone who knew what was going on. And, compared to a lot of the kids I’d seen, he was reasonably normal, if you didn’t count his slight problem with fire. Besides, he was so relentlessly friendly that being mean to him would be like kicking a puppy. He didn’t act like those kids who ask, Will you be my friend? Now, those kids I don’t mind kicking. With Torchie, it was more like he was saying, I’m going to be your friend.

  I didn’t see any point fighting it.

  Bloodbath wasn’t in my math class, but I saw three kids just like him sitting in the back row. They all had that same deadly look. One had rings in his nose and in both eyebrows. He might have had a ring in his tongue, too, but I really didn’t want to get close enough to see for sure. I didn’t even want him to catch me looking in his direction. His buddy had a tattoo of a skull on his forehead. It looked like he’d done it himself. Just the thought of a needle being jabbed over and over into my flesh made me shudder. I wondered if his pea-sized brain realized the humor of putting a skull on the outside of his own skull. Probably not. The third beast in that cluster of thugs had GRUNGE tattooed on the back of each hand. As far as I could tell, none of them carried any books to class.

  “Here comes Mr. Parsons,” Torchie whispered as the teacher stepped into the room. “Careful. He’s got a bit of a temper.”

  A teacher with a temper? Now, that was a shock. I watched Mr. Parsons walk to his desk. He looked pretty much like any of a million other middle-aged math teachers, except for the long strands of hair that he’d combed over the top of his head from the side. He was wearing a rumpled green jacket, rumpled green pants, and a blue tie—not a bow tie, but I still didn’t trust him.

  “Good morning, class,” he said.