The Wig in the Window

by Kristen Kittscher

  “Before I get started here, I just wanted to say, seventh grade, make sure you go to room twenty-four tomorrow at noon. This week S.M.I.L.E.’s Brown Bag Lunch topic is on eating disorders, and we’ll be watching a film on bulimia.”

  Trista made a face and erupted into a loud, fake coughing fit. Marissa passed her a throat lozenge. The irony of watching a movie about barfing up your lunch during lunch was definitely lost on her.

  Agford ignored Trista. My muscles tensed. That wasn’t like her.

  “You’re probably wondering,” Agford began, “who the guest speaker is for today’s Special Assembly.” She pulled the mike from the stand and paced in front of the bleachers. She wasn’t smiling. Agford smiled when she talked about body odor, for God’s sake. Why wasn’t she smiling?

  “I am. I am the guest speaker,” she said curtly. She stopped directly in front of my bleacher section and pivoted to face the crowd. “Recent events have led me to believe we need to discuss a topic we’ve never before had to address here at Luna Vista Middle School.” Agford’s eyes locked themselves on mine. “Today we are going to talk about trespassing.”

  Blood rushed to my head as murmurs rippled through the crowd. I heard someone whisper my name. The members of S.M.I.L.E.—even Jenn—paused their note taking to stare at me.

  Agford began to pace again. She cleared her throat. It took effort to speak in those soprano scales. “Trespassing, you say. Why would we need to talk about trespassing?” Agford didn’t even pretend to look anywhere else but directly at me. She narrowed her eyes. For once they weren’t empty. They flashed with rage.

  S.M.I.L.E. raised its hands and waved them, their matching yellow bracelets for who-knows-what-cause spinning on their wrists.

  “Marissa,” Agford said, never taking her eyes from mine.

  “Maybe we’ve recently had trouble with some people not respecting others’ privacy?” Marissa smiled like she was baring her teeth.

  “That would be a very good reason, wouldn’t it?” Agford said. “Perhaps some people have had trouble maintaining boundaries. Can anyone give an example of a privacy violation?”

  S.M.I.L.E.’s arms shot up again. In a fake show of fairness, Agford called on Trent Spinner.

  “Hacking into someone’s MyFace account!” Trent Spinner yelled out. He looked at his friends. An inside joke, no doubt.

  “Yes, Trent, gaining access to online accounts is definitely a violation of privacy. It’s like breaking and entering. Any other ideas?”

  Trista raised her hand. Agford’s gaze flicked to her, then to me. She turned to S.M.I.L.E.. “How about you, Jenn?”

  “Going through someone’s locker,” Jenn said. She glanced back at the rest of S.M.I.L.E. for approval. They looked unimpressed.

  “Going through someone’s locker . . . ,” Agford repeated, studying the painted lines on the hardwood basketball court as she pretended to consider this. “Now that would be disrespecting someone’s property, wouldn’t it?” Agford snapped her head up to me so fast, I wondered how her wig had kept up. “What do you think, Sophie?” she spat. “Is it ever acceptable to intrude upon another’s personal, private property?”

  The gym fell silent. Even the kids on the outer fringes of the social scene—the girls who still liked ponies, the boys who still trafficked in Pokémon cards—seemed to understand what Agford was up to. They only knew the half of it.

  I sat paralyzed.

  Agford cocked her head. “I didn’t catch that?”

  “No,” I croaked.

  “No? Any idea why some people have such trouble maintaining boundaries?”

  Trista let out a sarcastic huff. Agford glared. She didn’t wait for a response from me, and I didn’t give one.

  “Regardless of the reasons someone might disrespect another’s property”—she swiveled and began pacing anew, her heels hammering out a slow rhythm on the hardwood floor—“I think we must all keep one idea foremost in our minds. One idea. And it is that, in all cases”—she stopped and turned to find me in the crowd—“trespassing has consequences.”

  It finally came then, the smile. Dead-eyed and wide.

  Wide enough to swallow me and Trista both.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bottoms Up

  I swayed unsteadily as the crowd poured down from the bleachers and made their way to the gym doors. Even the sixth graders kept their distance, as if stepping in my vicinity might be fatal.

  Black spots crowded my field of vision. I felt like I needed to sit down.

  “That’s right, people!” Trista shouted at the empty space the crowd had left around us as if she were directing traffic for a presidential caravan. She grabbed my arm and led me forward. “We need some breathing room,” she said, waving her arm at nothing. “Move it, move it!”

  Kids shot us looks like we were insane. Trista ignored them. She turned to me and scowled. “That woman is not going to get away with this. No way.”

  “Trista, we have to be careful.”

  Trista clapped me on the shoulder. “I got this. Carpool line tomorrow morning. Be early,” she said. “You’re not gonna want to miss it.”

  “Miss what?”

  Trista had already turned to walk down the hall.

  “Miss what?” I called after her.

  She wheeled around and grinned. “You dragged me into the quicksand,” she shouted. “Now you gotta trust me.”

  Trista sauntered down the hall and disappeared around a corner before I could say another word.

  “That’s the thing civilians never remember about war . . .” Grandpa Young pulled off his baseball cap and laid it on the kitchen table next to my social-studies textbook. Though the book looked perfectly normal, over the course of the last week’s study sessions I’d concluded it was actually a direct portal to Pyongyang, 1952. Grandpa couldn’t even look at its cover without a story coming on like a sneeze. I was on my one hundred and eighty-third reading of the same paragraph about the Emancipation Proclamation.

  It wasn’t only Grandpa’s stories that kept me from focusing. My mind was caught in an endless loop of worry. If Trista was planning revenge, Agford would think I was behind it. And then what? There’s no telling what she might do. There I was again, back to Agford.

  “Firepower’s nothing. Words are more dangerous than missiles,” Grandpa continued. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes searching the ceiling. “But silence—now there’s the best weapon of all. I’ll tell you what, Soph, when the enemy talked, we sat back and listened. Not to what they said, but to how and why.”

  I thought back to Agford at the assembly. If words were missiles, it didn’t matter that she’d launched a full-scale assault: She never ran out of ammunition.

  Just then my pocket vibrated. I faked a coughing fit, leaned over, and pulled out the cell. It read:

  Bathroom window in 5. Dad needs his cell back.

  “Grandpa?” I coughed again, for consistency’s sake. “May I use the restroom?”

  He looked up. “Forward march!” he cheered.

  I looked down at Grace from my perch on the bathroom windowsill. I’d just unloaded the whole Agford assembly story. She sat hunched into her jacket among the shadows, fuming. Until then I’d felt more humiliated than anything else. Now I felt my rage at Agford surging. That is, until Grace finally spoke.

  “But you said she hadn’t seen you!” she hissed. “Jeez, Sophie. It should have been a simple in-and-out.”

  I almost fell off the sill. She was mad at me? It took me a second to find my voice.

  “What happened to ‘no pressure’? You were the one who said I should try to get in the house if I could!” I said.

  “Soph, you were supposed to look for evidence, not leave it. I knew there was no way you could have cleaned up all those footprints.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  I thought of the way Trista had looked when she’d asked me where Grace had been.

  “Wait, why didn’t we send you over?” I shot back. �
��You’re the FBI superagent. When’s the last time you took a risk? Oh, that’s right. Piano recital, was it? A little Minuet in G while I was practically licking up Agford’s garage floor? Or maybe by then you were already at Natalie’s party?”

  Grace looked caught off guard.

  I couldn’t stop myself. “Maybe you’d benefit from therapy sessions with a raving maniac?” I added. “Or would you prefer your parents give her an open invitation to stop by anytime?” My words came out harsher than I wanted them to. It reminded me of those phases I go through when, no matter what, everything I say to my parents sounds like I hate them.

  Grace clenched a rubber band in her mouth as she fashioned her hair into a ponytail. She tugged at it and looked away.

  “I’m sure she’d be happy to run a whole school assembly to mock you,” I said. “Or send her S.M.I.L.E. clones to spy on you.”

  Grace held up her hand. “I get it, Soph. Okay?” she said. “I’m worried for you—all the time. And I just want to do something. But think about it! I’m practically under twenty-four-hour house arrest, and I’m not even in trouble. You really think I wanted to go to piano? To Natalie’s stupid party?” She seemed small below the windowsill, the rosemary bushes buffeting her on either side. With her head angled up to me, she looked unfamiliar.

  I pictured Grace’s life over the past few days. Her parents cheerfully dragging her around to piano competitions and lunch with family friends, the long hours spent graphing equations and conjugating ser with Miss Anita while I squared off with Agford. I’d thought it was easy for her to be tucked safe and sound in her fortress at 86 Via Fortuna with all her “lucky” animals and good chi she didn’t even appreciate. Maybe I’d been wrong.

  “It’s harder than you think, you know,” Grace said. “At least”—she paused—“for me.”

  “Well, I could do without the judgment,” I said. “And maybe you could listen more?”

  “You’re right.” Grace unfolded her arms. “From here on out, I shut up.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

  “Okay, I try to shut up.” Grace curled her lips closed around her teeth for all of ten seconds. “Oh, that’s never going to work. I just—I don’t do well on the sidelines, Sophie.”

  “We’re letting her get to us, aren’t we?” I said. “Only the army animated with the same spirit throughout its ranks can reign victorious,” I quoted Sun Tzu.

  Grace squinted at me.

  “We can only win if we work together,” I translated.

  “Gotta hand it to Chinese philosophers,” Grace said as she pulled herself closer to the ledge and smiled.

  “So what’s the next step?” I asked.

  Grace shrugged. “I take my marching orders from you these days, General Sun Tzu.”

  “Do I detect a note of sarcasm?”

  “Maybe just a little.” Grace grinned. “But only a little. I promise.”

  “Give me a day to draw up battle plans.”

  “All I ask is that you put me on the front line.”

  “You got it, Agent Yang.”

  The next morning I stood in front of Luna Vista Middle School half an hour before first period, worried about what Trista had in mind. It wasn’t long before the sun rose higher and the carpool line hummed with SUVs and minivans. Students bearing unwieldy instrument cases and mangled lunch bags poured forth. Marissa and her friends arrived as a set, looking like displaced flight attendants as they strode along the sidewalk, their matching rolling backpacks in tow.

  I caught sight of Trista and jogged over. She fumbled in her pocket and flashed me a smile. “And . . . cue music,” she announced, nodding toward the street.

  A high-pitched siren wailed. Heads turned. Parents unloading sugar-cube California missions and rainforest dioramas from trunks leaped to their driver’s seats, sure they’d accidentally triggered their car alarms. That is, until they realized the siren’s source.

  “Hold on, ladies and gents,” Trista commentated for my benefit only. “For your enjoyment: Act Two. This is a little something I like to call: the Panic. . . .”

  All eyes found their way to Agford’s cherry-red Mustang convertible as it motored up. A wide-eyed Agford punched every button on her dashboard as she tried to stop the racket, but the alarm cycled through its many orchestral movements: from the High-Speed Police Chase sonata to the Whooping Crane Etude in high E and Staccato Horn Rendition of “La Cucaracha.”

  Trista raised a finger as though conducting the score herself. “Wait for it, now. . . .” An ocean gust kicked up as the sirens reached their climax. “Oh, here we go. . . .” Frrip! Agford’s automatic convertible top peeled back like a broken accordion as Trista pumped one fist high above her head.

  Sheets of paper flurried like white confetti, spiraling skyward in the updraft. The crowd let out a collective gasp—half in awe, half in horror—as Agford’s helmet of hair, too, took flight. Trista hid her smile as it flopped to rest, un-noticed, in a storm drain while every member of the Luna Vista Middle School community beheld the real hair of Dr. Charlotte Agford. That is, if the matted brown rat’s nest on her head could even be called hair at all.

  As Agford screeched off, Trista’s guffaw rang out above the chorus of laughter. “And cut!” she said as she slapped me on the back. “It’s a wrap, people.”

  Grinning, I turned to her. But she’d already slipped away. I found myself staring at Marissa instead. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, staring at Agford’s scattered belongings. “Ladies!” she called to her fellow flight-crew members. As she launched into a run, I did what I had to. I dropped low into Snake Creeps Down, my leg extended. Marissa toppled forward. S.M.I.L.E. shrieked and swarmed to the rescue as I raced for the street, seizing Agford’s wig and every loose scrap of paper as though a birthday piñata had just opened.

  Something told me this was better than a birthday.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Exhibit (Dr.) A

  A hiss of whispers rose up as I walked into science fifteen minutes late. Before class I had sneaked across the soccer field to the trail that led down to the beach and stashed Agford’s wig and papers in a hole under a sage plant. No way that evidence would be safe in my locker.

  Ms. Gant looked up for only a second before she resumed passing back the quizzes from the week before. Her mouth was tight and small like a hyphen. “You’ll have to check in with the attendance office first, Sophie,” she said. “I’ve already marked you absent.” Handing me my quiz seemed to disappoint her as much as me. C plus. I wondered if this was what Trent Spinner felt like all the time. I’d start flinging pudding at people, too.

  As I meandered back from the attendance office and down the empty outdoor halls, I spotted Marissa Pritchard standing in the courtyard locker area. Her back to me, she gestured to her head as she spoke. What was she doing out of class?

  When Marissa turned, I had my answer. She was talking to Dr. Agford, who appeared to have retrieved her backup wig from home. (It seemed even poufier and more bulletproof than the other, if that was possible.) Marissa pointed to the front of the school and shrugged. Agford stiffened. No doubt they were discussing Agford’s little morning mishap. I quickened my pace and rounded the corner to the science room.

  Groups were scattered around the classroom with magnets and batteries working on a lab when I entered. I’d have to face Ms. Gant to retrieve the handout and be partnered up.

  “Hey,” a voice whispered behind me.

  I turned around. My heart skipped a beat. It was Rod.

  He smiled and hinged his hands apart, miming Agford’s faulty convertible top. “You got her back for the assembly, didn’t you?”

  I grinned mischievously. “Whatever would have given you that idea?”

  Rod flashed back a knowing smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because it was awesome?”

  My skin tingled. Who needed a science lab? I’d just transformed into a walking electromagnet. “In that case . . . maybe it was me.”

&
nbsp; Ms. Gant’s voice rose above the din of the classroom as she circulated among the tables. “I’d better be hearing the sound of hard work! I expect your write-ups by tomorrow, don’t forget.”

  “Hey,” Rod said quietly. He looked down and shifted his weight in almost exactly the same way he had in the lunch line on Friday. “Have you gotten any of my texts?”

  “Texts?” I felt my breath catch. He had used the plural, hadn’t he? As in, not just one, but multiple texts. Possibly streams of texts. Somewhere there was an inbox filled with texts from Rod. “Oh, gosh. My parents took my phone away. You know.” I gestured, as if that could begin to explain the past week.

  “Oh, right.” Rod shoved his hand into his pocket. Was it me, or had he blushed just a bit?

  “But they wouldn’t read them,” I lied as I imagined my parents poring over them. Thank goodness they were probably too preoccupied with work. “I mean, not that you texted anything, you know . . .”

  “It’s cool,” he said. “With everything that’s going on, I just wanted to make sure . . . if you need anything . . .”

  Want to help me catch a fugitive? I was tempted to ask. But I didn’t. I knew better. When it was all over—and it would be all over—I’d tell him everything.

  “Just let me know,” he whispered quickly, swinging back around just as Ms. Gant approached his group’s table.

  I floated through the rest of the morning. When I was supposed to be multiplying polynomials, I was imagining the headline in the Luna Vista News-Press: “Local Sleuths Foil Fugitive.” My fantasies moved quickly from there to my future beach wedding with Rod. Except then Grace couldn’t be my maid of honor, since she hates the ocean. Maybe a mountain meadow location? By third period I’d just accepted a professorship at Oxford. Asian Studies, of course. Rod wouldn’t mind staying home to be a house husband and care for our identical twin girls.

  I forgot all my fantasies the instant I discovered Charlotte Agford standing at my open locker during break, arms folded as she watched Mr. Hiller, the head of maintenance, empty its contents. He pulled off my schedule from my inside locker door to peer behind it. It ripped in half.