Or Not

by Brian Mandabach

  Mrs. Trumbull filled us in on everything. I am getting a trial run for the rest of the semester, and if I can keep my grades up and don’t get any referrals, it’s permanent. The teachers have a choice of transferring my middle school grades—all As—or starting me fresh. I’m going to turn in my books and check out on Friday. I shook Mrs. Trumbull’s hand and even hugged Ms. P.

  Last year’s CSAPs are still a worry. That was the first thing I thought of when they said it wouldn’t be permanent until the end of the semester. But if I can do the work, what can they say? Those scores don’t affect your grades, and they can’t hold you back because of them.

  A few other things happened today. It started with the usual “Hey, Osama” and “American Taliban” greetings, and my locker was covered with little American flag stickers. I peeled them off and stuck them to my jeans in a peace-sign design.

  Then, on my way to class, I saw DJ, who told me how tuff my flag-peace sign looked.

  DJ—I hadn’t been thinking about him much with everything that was going on, but seeing him brought me into another round of questioning the grand plan. Too late! I should tell him, I thought, but decided to wait until I found out if they were letting me go. (I hadn’t found out at that point.) As we made our way through the hall, he was being shy, not meeting my eye. It was cute.

  I sat by DJ at the Tolkien group, and wondered if we were going to be able to see each other if I went to high school. I wasn’t sure about my feelings for him, but when I caught a glimpse of him looking at me, full of admiration, let’s just say it got the blood flowing and the nerves tingling.

  When school ended, I was just removing my sticker-sign for my meeting with the principal (coward, I know), racing with adrenaline, when Quill showed up and started in with his weird voice.

  “Most righteous and awesome Cassie,” he breathed. “I was just wondering—have you received a missive—in your locker—from my estimable associate—by the name of DJ—referred to by some—as Gimli the dwarf?”

  “I don’t think so, uh—” I looked down at the stack of papers in the bottom of my locker. “Well, I did get some notes, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them.” Matthew showed up, and smirking mightily, spun the dial of his locker. “I’m saving them in case I have some time to kill in hell,” I said.

  “Excellent,” said Quill. “But there might be one here from Gimli.”

  I was embarrassed for anyone to know about the notes, but relieved as well. We sat down on the floor and went through the stack. Some were blank on the outside, most were addressed in unflattering terms to yours truly. I was accustomed to the usual Osamas, but how can you err with that understated, little-black-dress-of-a-moniker, “Bitch”?

  “Whoa,” said Quill. “They don’t like you.”

  “I wasn’t sure—thanks for interpreting.”

  “But somebody does,” he said, handing me a piece of plain white paper, folded three times and fastened with some kind of seal like hard green plastic in a fancy design. I touched it.

  “Sealing wax,” said Quill. “The dude got it from his mom. He’s in trouble, Cass—maybe you shouldn’t have given him that hair. Was it bewitched or something?”

  I laughed. “Elvish tresses are said to be a perilous gift for a mortal man—or a dwarf. But there was nothing of what men call magic about the gift.”

  “Cool,” he said. “I’ll pass that on to DJ—he’ll love it.” Then he looked at the rest of my fan mail. “Aren’t you going to turn this stuff in and get somebody busted?”

  “No, please, don’t say anything. Who could I bust? Do you think they put their names and student ID numbers on these things?”

  He pointed at a gray dome at the end of the hall. “Security camera,” he said. “Everyone who slid a note in here is probably on videotape. Just be sure you tell them that Gimli’s note was friendly.”

  “Still—it won’t help. Promise you won’t say anything. I’m staying cool, giving it just a little more time to blow over.”

  “My lips are sealed. But Master Dwarf is getting all protective—you’d better be careful.”

  “Cassandra Sullivan, please report to the office,” blared the ceiling speaker. “Cassandra Sullivan to the office, please.”

  “I will,” I said. “And tell him ‘thank you.’ Bye.”

  You know what happened at the office, and I forgot all about DJ’s note until now. I’d better read it.

  Wow! Here it is, Di. It’s done in cursive, with all kinds of flourishes and about half a bottle of whiteout, and it’s a poem:

  For Cassandra

  (formerly of the tuff, tuff hair—currently of the tuff, tuff head)

  In halls of the children of men,

  She walks alone in beauty brown

  Upon her face a solemn frown

  And she is beyond their ken.

  A soul of old incarnate,

  With eyes of brown and green and gray,

  With light transformed now fair, now fey,

  And always seeming infinite.

  In vain inscribes my pen:

  The beauty of her noble brow

  Flies and flees away and away—

  I say, “Wherefore, my Juliet?”

  —by Gimli, Glóin’s son (DJ)

  What do you make of that, Di? I wonder where he got that rhyme scheme—pretty cool. Too bad it’s one love poem for every fifty hate letters. He did seem to be mistaking wherefore and where, but I liked it anyway. It demands a response, so here I go:

  My thanks to Gimli for the verse,

  To Glóin’s son for glowing words,

  For praise so high as seems absurd—

  Still—to such lines I’m not averse.

  You must know, I’m like bait for the sharks.

  I drift on the waters of the flood—

  All spreading incarnadine with my blood—

  But your poem’s a rescuing barque.

  I pay no mind to the cursed curse,

  The mindless utterance of the herd

  —Who’s naught but animated mud—

  But yours is a light in the dark.

  Not too bad myself. Okay, I used the rhyming dictionary, but not for my favorite bit, “Glóin” and “glowing.”

  What am I doing? Is it a good thing to keep encouraging DJ when I am going to be gone in a couple days? I’ll have to tell him tomorrow.

  I can’t believe this is real. I’ve been putting so much energy into hating school—and being hated—that I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. Everything’s changing. It’s like I chop off my hair and get new clothes and suddenly I am going to be this totally different person. But I don’t feel different. The same me is talking to myself in this book, but everything else has changed. I put these causes in motion and all of a sudden, like magic, presto-change-o, I’m racing forward into the unknown.

  26 September

  Though it started out pretty cool, today was bizarre.

  At writing club, Quill read his triumvirate. It was a scene, “from his novel”—which I hadn’t known he was writing—set in a futuristic world of zombie/robots and rebel fighters. Lots of action, but pretty cool.

  Before I read my poems, I was going to tell everyone that it was my last meeting. I chickened out, though, thinking I would tell them after. But I chickened out again because of the way DJ was glowing at me.

  When I handed him his poem at the end of the meeting, his glow shined even brighter, so I couldn’t tell him then either.

  On my locker I found one lonely little flag sticker, which I put upside-down on my butt. That’s the symbol of opposing Mr. Bush’s plans to invade Iraq, not that anybody at this narrow-minded little school would know that. Maybe there is a peace group at Parker, or maybe I could start one. Am I determined to make
people hate me there too?

  At lunch, DJ sat down and told me that the poem was tuff, and that he needed a dictionary. I accused him of using a rhyming dictionary for his and admitted that I had myself. He asked if he could call me, and because it just seemed too weird to give him my phone number, I told him to look me up, I was in the book. That seemed even worse, once I had said it, and I blurted out that he would have to call me, because tomorrow would be my last day at Tabor.

  He had seemed really happy, but then his face fell.

  “It’s not like we can’t still be friends,” I said. Quill was looking puzzled, Liz was mad.

  “Are you moving?” DJ asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going, well … I’m going to high school.”

  “High school?” Liz said.

  “Yeah, you see, I started kindergarten a year late, and … ” I explained the whole plan.

  DJ sort of checked out, seeming to stop listening about halfway through, and when I finished, he got up and left. Quill followed him.

  “You could have told us what was going on,” Liz said.

  Kelly looked confused and uncomfortable, then he got up and followed Quill and DJ.

  “I mean,” Liz continued, “here we think you’re, like, our friend, and then you just announce you’re ditching us.”

  “I’m not. It’s not like that—”

  “Yeah, whatever. It’s cool. But what about DJ?”

  “I said he could call me.”

  “Whatever. You don’t understand. Ever since he got suspended last year with Quill over that ‘fuck the test’ shit, his mom has been threatening him with Christian school, and he’s been miserable. You didn’t know him then. He’s been so happy lately. I was afraid you were playing with him. And now this. I’ll see you later, Cassie. Like, later much.” She got up.

  “No, wait. Liz—” But she was gone.

  Once everyone was gone, I opened a book and pretended to read so I wouldn’t feel so stupid sitting there all alone. But I couldn’t concentrate and just sat there feeling wretched.

  Finally, it was time for reading class, where Liz refused to even look at me.

  Mr. Sinclair’s usual routine, no different today, is that as soon as everybody settles into silent reading, he slips out across the hall to fill his carafe. Then he makes a pot of tea in his microwave.

  Right after he left today, something hit me on the back. I ignored it and kept reading. Then something hit my leg. Without moving, I glanced down on the floor and saw a pink disposable razor. Then all of a sudden it was raining razors: pink ones, purple ones, even a few blue ones. I sat stunned until Sinclair came back.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “Can’t I leave the room for a minute? Cassie, what’s this all about?”

  “Don’t ask me. I was just trying to read.”

  “Yeah, right,” somebody said. “She was just trying to read.”

  “Little miss innocent.”

  Unbelievable. They were blaming this on me?

  “Apparently,” I said, “somebody has read Carrie—or no, it was on TV, wasn’t it?”

  “Okay,” said Sinclair. “Who is responsible for throwing these?”

  Dead silence.

  “Cassie, who threw these at you?”

  What could I say? Everyone? And what could he do?

  I’m outta here, I thought, and I’m not going to start trouble now.

  “I was just reading,” I said. “I didn’t see.”

  “Nobody saw anything?”

  Then Liz, who may have been mad at me, but at least isn’t a sheep, said, “Mr. Sinclair, man, it was, like, everyone. I mean, not me and, like, Rae and Tonya, but Cassie didn’t do anything except sit there. And blow off shaving for some bizarre reason.”

  “I see,” said Sinclair. “Cassie, what do you think should happen?”

  He was asking me? I thought he was in charge.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Idiocy is its own punishment.”

  “There’s no call for personal attacks here, Cassie,” he said.

  Really? Wasn’t there?

  “Okay, class. The next time anybody pulls a stunt like this, I’m keeping you for detention, every last one of you.”

  Next time? I thought. What about this time? They’re just getting away with it? This is why I never asked for help. Nothing would happen and it would only get worse.

  “And now everyone will pick up one razor and put it in the trash until they are all picked up. Everyone except Cassie and Liz.”

  At the end of class, I was surprised when Liz waited by the door for me. “That was weird,” she said.

  “I’m getting used to weird.”

  “So is that really why you’re taking off?”

  “Part of it, but I am a grade behind.”

  She walked with me to my locker.

  “Well,” she said. “About our conversation at lunch … It’s just DJ, you know? I’m sort of protective.”

  “I noticed. And maybe I should have said something before, but I didn’t know until yesterday. I’m sorry, too. You guys have made me wonder if going up to high school is the right thing. You’re the only people who have been nice to me in a long time.”

  “You’re not that easy to get to know. You’re sort of different—but that’s cool. Maybe we can still hang out sometimes?”

  “That’d be cool.”

  “Friends?”

  “Of course.”

  “I gotta go. And you do not want to be late to art.”

  Then she hugged me and took off.

  Talk about weird. I have friends? Who stick up for me? And hug me?

  27 September

  It’s my final day, Di, wish me luck.

  I meant good luck.

  Isn’t it funny how people wish for good luck or pray for things when it’s already too late? When whatever you’re wishing or praying for has already happened or not happened, and you just haven’t found out?

  When I was wishing for luck, my CSAP scores were already there in the stack in Mrs. Trumbull’s office. She had already called the principal at Parker High School, and he had already told her that I was no longer welcome.

  I got to school early and went to the counseling office to get my checkout paper, but the secretary told me that Mrs. Trumbull wanted to see me. In her office, she was sitting at the conference table with Ms. Price. Stacks of paper surrounded them.

  “Sit down and look at this,” said Mrs. Trumbull, and handed me three sheets of paper printed in black and green. “Can you explain for us?”

  Ms. Price wouldn’t look at me.

  I shook my head.

  “These must be the lowest scores in the entire school. We have children who are retarded who managed to do better than this.”

  “You threw it, didn’t you?” Ms. Price said. “You went from getting almost every single point to missing almost every single point. Tell me this is some sort of computer error. Tell me your score was so high that you blew up the computer. Tell me you didn’t deliberately make asses out of us.”

  Tears were coming now.

  “You did this on purpose.”

  I nodded, shaking with suppressed sobs.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Was it just to make idiots out of us?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why, then?”

  “It’s all anybody cares about—the stupid test. And it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means a great deal to us, Miss Sullivan,” said the principal. “We strive for excellence. All the teachers, myself, the students—except for you. It matters. This is such an unbelievable insult. What you must have done—the lengths that you must have gone to in ord
er to do this poorly. You—”

  She waved her hands, left them hanging in the air for a moment, then let them drop to the table.

  “You cheated. You cheated us. But you cheated yourself too, because as much as I would love to be rid of you … You are going nowhere.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I know I can do the work in high school. I can. I won’t—”

  “I’ve already spoken with Mr. Buckingham. He does not want a kiddo who is going to blow his scores.”

  “But—”

  “The trial semester was contingent on your not getting any discipline referrals. This amounts to a level two insubordination, your second this year. You’ll be finishing the year with us. You’d better pull yourself together and get to class.”

  “But—”

  “It’s over, Cassie,” said Ms. Price.

  And it is.

  Mr. Math asked me if I had a checkout sheet for him.

  “I’m staying,” I said.

  “Well, are you moving into my accelerated group?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well—are you going to get started on the warm-up, or are you going to just sit there?”

  “Get started.”

  A little while later, DJ stopped at my desk on his way back from the pencil sharpener. “Did I hear you say you’re staying?”

  I nodded.

  “No high school?”

  I shook my head, giving him a bleak sort of smile.

  He met this with a concerned frown, and went back to his seat.

  After class he asked what happened.

  “They changed their minds,” I said.

  “How come?”

  I was having a hard time keeping it together, so I told him I couldn’t really talk about it, I’d tell him later.

  Next period, I got a pass to come to the office and call Mom, but I ignored it until she called again.