by A. J. Lape
The fact that Finn successfully exposed this information was absurd.
The fact I’d asked him to do so was even more absurd.
Pulling the three photographs from under my shirt—along with the faxed photo from Tito—I resolved to use my time wisely by interviewing the poor fools next to me.
I got a lot of, “No, never seen him…Big guy…He’s weird…What did they do?” But there was nothing definitive from a credible source. Then I heard this voice—the voice that’d be burned into my brain eternally as nothing more than Beelzebub’s brother.
Oliver “Bean” Anatoly was the biggest ponkey that ever walked the earth’s surface.
“Walker!” he shouted. I swear to God, if there were a beach around, I’d dig my way to freaking China.
I shifted my weight and slid further down the wall. “Walker!” he screamed louder. Now Bean had a loud voice—possibly the biggest ever placed on a human’s head—but he somehow found an even higher pitch. “What were you doing on the roof this morning?” he finished.
When I gave him a surprised, who-me look, he laughed hysterically, “You’re so stupid.”
He got a takes-one-to-know-one stare. I didn’t particularly like Bean. Maybe it’s because I saw in him what reminded me of me—unstable, unpredictable, with a mountain of OCD quirkiness. Bean could be the poster child for Things That Can Go Wrong When You Never Read a Fashion Magazine. He had glasses two inches thick, hair balding at the crown, and wore all blue with a pocket protector and gel pens. What hair remained had been styled in a bowl cut he’d been rockin’ since second grade.
How did Oliver get the nickname of Bean? In third grade, he stuck a lima bean up his nose to see how long it’d take to germinate. The answer? Four days. Sure enough, a little green sprout was seen when we shoved a flashlight up his nostril during classroom changes. Forever after, he was known as Bean, the kid who shoved a bean up his nose. Unfortunately, I became known as the kid who dared him.
I’m thinking he held a grudge. “Nice to know you’re still a ponkey,” I mumbled.
“Ponkey?” the boy beside me asked.
I explained ponkeys were a cross between a punk and a jackass. At least I got a laugh.
While teachers paced up and down the hall, Bean wriggled over the tan linoleum, army-style, and squeezed in on the opposite side. He pulled a folded-up sheet from his back pocket.
“What’s that?” I asked, pitching my chin toward the paper.
“Voting ballot. It’s that time of year for the It Girl election.” I raised a brow. “Yeah,” he continued. “The guys from the in-crowd,” believe me, I stifled a huge freaking laugh here, “decide who is this year’s It Girl. Then we rank the runners up.”
“Runners up?” the guy to my side wanted clarified.
“Yeah, we call them Hot Girls,” Bean explained. “Last year, you were a Hot Girl, Darcy. Actually first on the list. Although there might’ve been problems with the balloting. At least that was the rumor.”
Well, excuuuuuuuse me.
I choked down the overwhelming urge to spit on him. “I’m sure the balloting was fine,” I said self-righteously. “So who was I behind?”
“Behind Brynn Hathaway, there’s a list of nine other girls.”
My ears started to bleed. Of course it was Brynn. That was like saying grass was green and dogs hate cats. That stuff was written in the stars.
“So am I number two again?” I asked hopefully.
Bean looked like someone shoved him in front of a moving car. “Um…no. Geeky girls are out. Brains are in.”
I shot up to my feet, shoving my arms on my hips, defiant like a mule who refused to move. I didn’t care who saw me, and I didn’t care I was supposed to be hunkered down like a good little girl waiting for a storm to kill us all. “I’ve got brains,” I snorted. Bean glanced up, raising a brow. “I do!” I shouted and articulated all of the things I was smart about. Eh, the list was small. So be it. I asked, “What does it take to go from last year’s It Girl—”
“Runner-up,” he corrected. “Runners up are Hot Girls.”
“Last year’s runner up Hot Girl,” I repeated sarcastically, “to not even blipping on the radar?”
Someone yelled, “Sit down, Walker!” and when I turned, I tripped over Bean’s boat of a foot and took a header—my legs twisting painfully in the scorpion over my back.
God hated me. He really, really did.
“And that’s why you dropped out of the Top Ten,” Bean mumbled as explanation. “I’d tell you it’s an honor to be nominated, but I stopped lying a year ago. All that matters is making the list.”
I found it weird that I crawled back to a sitting position, like making a fool of myself was as expected as a sunrise. Maybe that’s why I tumbled from the list. I was too weird to date.
“Who is the It Girl this year?” the guy on the other side asked.
“Of course, Brynn is number one,” Bean almost drooled. “But Rudi Morgan is number two, by only one vote. Just you wait. She’s invading the school. And I’m going to take her and the rest of the list on a date before the year ends.”
A smile crept up my lips, quirking all the way to the sky. Rudi deserved to be the It Girl. One of the few girlfriends I had, she was a colleague of mine at The Double-B and teeny-tiny at barely five feet and less than one hundred pounds. She had big brown eyes, cool Ben Franklin glasses, and brunette hair styled in an asymmetrical chin-length bob. If I were a guy, I would’ve voted her number one. Trouble was, she was deaf and dirt poor. She could speak in that underwater-muffled sort of way, but she preferred to sign, lip read, or have someone interpret. Being the almost It Girl would make you think she’d have plenty of dates—she’d didn’t. Not only did she have to fight a language barrier, but also the fact she was just too good.
Most guys found good a foreign concept.
“I don’t think we’ve talked this much since counseling,” Bean said to me. “Do you remember?”
This would fall under the category of There Are No Words. Bean and I saw the same therapist, and as much as I tried to avoid him, we ultimately wound up on the same weekly rotation. After two years, I’d sprung the joint, and I briefly wondered if Bean ever had. Bean suddenly snagged all four photographs from my hand, pulling them up to his eyes. I feared he’d blow the lid off of my plan, but instead of decking him, I flat-out lied.
I took a deep breath, jutting my jaw out with confidence. “School contest,” I fudged. “Just like yours. All of them have come into some money, and it’s my job to track them down.”
No one questioned or even cared. That’s one of the benefits of a school this size. Contests, raffles, and split-the-pots were constantly in play. Last I remember, Bean ran with a seedy crowd. Maybe this was destiny speaking. I adjusted the wattage on my smile and started the twenty questions. “Do you know them, Bean?”
I fluttered my eyelashes flirtatiously, choking down the vomit that reminded me Bean was Grade A Ponkey.
Bean flipped through all four photographs, stopping to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve. “Detention,” he said when he was finished. “They’re part of the Saturday morning crowd. These two,” he muttered, pausing at the coffee-stained photograph and the one Rookie was investigating, “I’ve never seen before.”
That stripped the wind right from my psychotic sails. When I debated a sob, Bean slid them across the hall to an equally geeky friend of his. My palms started itching, and before I could get my fingers back on those photographs, they’d gone through about ten people. What the heck, I went for it. I cupped my hands over my mouth in a loud whisper, “Could you write on the backs of the pics if you have classes with any of them?”
There was no protest; interested folks simply took the pink gel pen Bean pitched, jotting down notes like it was a classroom assignm
ent. While the sky cracked with angry sounds from Mother Nature, Assistant Principal Vance Unger scurried up and down the hall like we were one foot from the grave. It reminded me that no matter where you came from, at the end of the day, everyone is one and the same…no matter what you have in your brain or what number you are on the It Girl List.
AP Unger stopped directly in front of me with a frown that’d scare the hair off of Sasquatch. “Walker, you can’t wear a shirt to school with guns on it.”
I glanced down, totally forgetting I’d worn my “Homeland Security” t-shirt with Native Americans, proudly holding their rifles.
I grinned, “I’m celebrating my people.” Murphy had Native American roots; you could see the chiseled features all over his face. My skin was darker than normal, but the rest was watered down by European influences.
“You’re advertising terrorism,” he frowned.
“No, I’m advertising Homeland Security which combats terrorism. Sounds to me like you’re discriminating against my people and culture. Or maybe you’re a liberal. Liberals believe we can love people into good behavior. Murphy will straight-up tell you that’s not possible. He’s tried and failed—and has the battle wounds to prove it,” I giggled.
“Oh. My. God,” he groaned. “You’ve given me a migraine.”
AP Unger and I had a tempestuous relationship. In fact, when a gun-wielding student chased me last spring, he took a couple of bullets as he ran in hot pursuit. I rushed to his side when he fell, triaged as best as possible, and took his BlackBerry to call for help under the alias of Jester. He had no memory of giving me his phone, and I accidentally chucked it in the water when said student breathed down my neck like a fire-breathing dragon on drugs. In fact, AP Unger barely remembered getting shot—only that he woke up in the hospital a week later.
Jester, my alter ego, was safe…for the moment.
By the thank-you-God look on his face, we were destined for an early dismissal. There were no two sweeter words in the student language than “snow day,” but today that spelled disaster. He gave me his we’ll-discuss-later frown and hotfooted it down the hall.
Bean propped himself up, his body falling into mine. “Can I help with your project?”
Bean acted like we were in this thing together. You wake up in the morning thinking you’re best friends with Mr. Do-the-Right-Thing (um, Dylan), and then you find out you’re running deals with ponkeys. I had to admit it was an exceptional idea.
When I did nothing but choke on my own spit, Bean pushed for an answer, “Yeah?”
I looked at Bean; he wasn’t going away. In fact, he acted like a stray dog that’d finally found a home.
“Fine,” I heard myself saying. “But this is only between you and me. One slip up, Bean, and you’re out.”
Bean excitedly nodded up and down, already giving advice. “Why don’t you give everyone your cell number and have them call if they find anything out?”
I reluctantly returned Bean’s nod. He had a point. I could look for these guys, or I could really be stupid and have them come looking for me.
8. Political Football
Everyone that jotted down so much as a pencil smear got my digits. I tacked on the request to feed information on anything they’d hear about Coach Wallace’s car too. My deal with Coach didn’t stipulate I had to fly solo, and even if it did, I wasn’t above bending the letter of the law. Against my better judgment, I confessed to Bean that a school contest was merely a front. I didn’t say the front was actually to out an identity thief; I allowed him to believe the front was simply to find out who’d wronged Coach. When he continued to act all Dr. Watson to my Sherlock Holmes, I commissioned him to interview two students Coach thought might have motives (Owen Lancaster and Wyatt Brown). I realized I’d have to sift through a lot of “Beanisms” to get to the truth, but my gut wasn’t leading me toward those two anyway.
Buses had been called to school early, and after a quick check-in at homerooms, we were released to the pick-up line or parking lot. Finn, Grumpy, and I took off toward the gym to meet up with Dylan, our ride home. Grumpy complained, or should I say mumbled, how Clementine Miriam Rabinowitz needed to date his Gentile body. Grumpy could have his finger lopped off, and he’d barely crack a wrinkle. But Clementine brought a whole herd of mumble I’d never experienced.
He ran a hand through the tangled mass on his head society called hair. “I want to date her, and get her a nice Christmas gift, or Hanukkah, or whatever,” he said to whomever would listen. “I don’t know what Jews do. What do Jews do, Walker?”
Finn and I never slowed our gait. Grumpy didn’t want a response, and the wallflower in me sure as heck didn’t know how to advise him. While he fretted over his private life, I worried about the promises I’d made. Like a gift from Heaven (or elsewhere), I got the bright idea to tap into the school’s database. Due to Bean’s suggestion (and the notes students scrawled on the backs of the photographs), I now had a “semi” idea of the days of Slapstick Wilson and Damon Whitehead. What I needed was their full schedules which would up my chances of bumping into them. Then I could stake them out. See how weird or unweird they seemed.
So whose computer to use? Since we were on our way to the gym, Coach’s computer seemed as good as any. But let’s face it, I wasn’t sure it’d work, or if I was smart enough to resurrect what should’ve been put down decades ago.
My iPhone belted out “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” and a glance at the number showed Murphy’s frowning mug. Whenever there’s an early dismissal, the school sends a robocall, informing parents their kids were being sent home, unattended. For most, that’s not a worry. For Murphy, it’s like finding out a fox was in the hen house.
“Hey, Murphy,” I greeted.
“Hop on your broom, kid, and hurry home.”
I took a second to laugh. “Finn, Grumpy, and I are meeting up with Dylan. Then we’re going to smoke pot, rob the liquor store, and make naked snow angels in the front yard. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Watch out for frostbite,” he grunted. “And hey, tell Finn I think your toaster has some sort of toaster virus. I could swear it said, ‘Mmmmmmm, girl, your butt looks good in those jeans’ when a waffle popped up.”
I repeated the message to Finn who gave me a devilish wink as Murphy unloaded a dial tone.
Finn invented a talking toaster as a gift for my sixteenth birthday. If a Pop-Tart was set on the lowest setting, it whistled out an, “Oooh, that feels good.” The hottest growled, “Oooh, baby. Gimme more of that burn.” Anything in between was so off-color it made me feel like I’d lost my virginity.
That got me to thinking. If you wanted to tap into school property, who better to assist than someone smart enough to do it with as little of a conscience as you?
While Grumpy scouted around for Dylan, Finn leisurely tagged alongside me, sawing logs even though his eyes were wide open. No kidding…I too felt school was a snoozefest. I blurted out, “I need to break into Coach’s computer.”
Finn was a little too street smart to try and manipulate. He knew something was up, and when I put my finger to my lips in a “Shhh” manner—mimicking a six foot two posture with bulging muscles (ahem, Dylan)—he grinned, mouthing in French, “Oui.”
We quickened our pace, juking around stragglers, taking a left at the water fountain and freshman lockers. The gym provided a quick cut-through to any side entrance, and it was occupied enough for us to slide by Coach Wallace undetected. He moved a portable wheeled cart around the floor, picking up basketballs and other items left haphazardly in the rush.
While Grumpy aimed for him, Finn and I stole inside Coach’s office, immediately getting down to business. He picked up the computer, looking on the back for a serial number as if he searched for gold. I dug down in my purse and pulled out a new stopwatch that I’d bought to replace the on
e I’d destroyed. I left it on Coach’s desk with a big note in red lipstick that said, Love, Darcy. I didn’t use paper, people.
Ask me if I cared.
When finished, I staged myself as lookout and explained what I needed.
This little work of sin meant nothing to Finn, and if it did, he was smart enough to know this wasn’t the time for questions, let alone explanations. He slid into the black leather chair, ravaging the school’s computer like a raccoon does trash. After a few keystrokes, lo and behold, a screen popped up that said Valley High School Registrar.
I heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in my mind.
Da-da-da, dum. Da-da-da dum…
Taking one last glance toward the gym, I watched Grumpy scratch the back of his neck and wonder how in the world the two of us fell off the grid. Dylan paced next to him with a deep frown, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
Immediately, I clicked mine off, attempting to do the same with Finn’s, but I found his wasn’t even charged. “Hurry,” I giggled to him. Finn typed a little too leisurely for me to feel comfortable. At the risk of feeling stupid, I decided to take his ease as a good thing and picked up the photo of Coach’s wife. It was turned upside down and backward, an angle different than yesterday. I strode over, dusted it on my leg, and then set it aright.
That made me think of the future…
…and the girl-next-door to Dylan.
I said to Finn, “Can I ask you a question?” Finn nodded, still looking at the screen. “Have you heard anything about a relationship with Dylan and Brynn Hathaway? I know they went out this past summer. Dylan told me. He even said it didn’t mean anything; but honestly, I’ve kind of found myself pulling away since our car accident. All I know is I bring trouble along with me, and I don’t want Dylan or you, for that matter, to be on the receiving end of the crap I conjure up. And look at Grumpy. He seems to be more traumatized than all of us. He’s a walking mood machine.”