Eat Your Poison, Dear

by James Howe

  “Let me guess,” David said. “They had the same piano teacher in the third grade, right?”

  “Better than that. They’re cousins!” Milo pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, and waited for a response.

  “So?” said Sebastian.

  “So there’s a connection.”

  “There’s a connection between every one of us,” Sebastian said. “We’re all students in the same school, we live in the same town, we might be in Sunday school class together or have the same dentist.”

  “But neighbors and cousins,” Milo persisted, “are much stronger relationships than fellow students or dental patients.”

  “I don’t know, maybe there is something to your theory. I just wonder if we’re not looking too hard for a connection. After all, the poisonings could be random, you know.”

  “You mean I was a victim by chance? Twice?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “But possible.”

  “Why would someone be poisoning the eighth grade at random? What’s to be gained?”

  “That,” Sebastian said, “is just one of the questions left to be answered.”

  19

  “HEY, ADAM.”

  “Hey, Sebastian.”

  The two boys brushed shoulders before Sebastian took in the change in his classmate’s Monday morning appearance. “Adam,” he cried out, “where’d you get the shiner?”

  Adam continued down the hall. “My sister,” he said over his shoulder.

  Sebastian entered the school office. “Did you see what Joanna did to Adam?” he asked David, who was busy stapling. David put his fingers to his lips, nodding toward Mr. Hogan’s closed door.

  “Hi, Mrs. Kershaw,” Sebastian said softly to the secretary.

  “Hello, Sebastian. What can we do for you?”

  “Nothing. I was just looking for David.”

  “It looks like you’ve found him,” said Sandy Kershaw, with an almost-relaxed smile. “Do you have a few minutes? I’m sure he could use some help getting those reports stapled.” A buzzer sounded. “Oh, dear,” she said, looking toward the room the students called the “twilight zone,” “I hope Mr. Hogan isn’t going to be too hard on those two. I don’t know what’s gotten into them.” As she opened the door, Sebastian caught a glimpse of Jason and Brad standing slump-shouldered and sullen before the principal’s desk.

  “I was trying to hear what was going on in there,” David confided, once they were alone. “Adam’s sister didn’t give him that black eye. Jason and Brad did. The three of them got caught fighting five minutes ago.

  “What about?”

  “That’s what I was trying to hear.”

  “Was Harley involved?”

  David shook his head. “Nowhere in sight. And speaking of Harley, Sebastian, he wasn’t involved in any poisoning either.”

  “The report came in from the Board of Health?”

  “Right. No poisoning.”

  “No poisoning?”

  “No poisoning. The flu.”

  “But Justin and Lindsay are back in school already,” Sebastian said.

  “A twenty-four hour bug,” said David. “Just like Milo’s. And don’t tell me it’s a cover-up.”

  “You have such faith in the administration,” said Sebastian. “An administration, I might add, that just may be trying to hide a scandal.”

  “You’re right,” David said, hitting the stapler, “I have more faith in an administration that may be hiding a scandal than I do in a reporter who’s looking for one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means. You’re looking for a scoop, Sebastian. You’re not seeing straight. Mr. Hogan is an honest person. He wouldn’t cover something up or play favorites or any of that stuff.”

  Just then, the door to the principal’s office opened. “Next time, boys,” Mr. Hogan was saying, “I’ll have to telephone your parents. Remember that.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jason Bruxter.

  “Right,” Brad West mumbled.

  Sebastian and David heard the two boys start to giggle as soon as they’d reached the outside hall.

  “I hope I wasn’t too lenient,” Mr. Hogan said to his secretary. “I’d have called Jason’s father this time if it weren’t for that school board election coming up.”

  “I understand, Hap,” said Sandy Kershaw. “Dan Bruxter’s probably going to be the next president and you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with him. There’s nothing wrong with keeping quiet at times. That’s just politics.”

  David’s hand was poised over the stapler, as he and Sebastian exchanged a look.

  20

  THE TWO MET at Sebastian’s locker later that morning. “It’s useless,” David said.

  “What is?”

  “Anybody can get into the kitchen. There’s the cafeteria staff. And the volunteers. And the delivery men.”

  “How many is that?” Sebastian asked, closing his locker door. “Fifteen, twenty at most?”

  “The teachers come and go whenever they want. They do it a lot, Sebastian, especially on days when Miss Swille bakes cookies. And then there are the runners.”

  “Oh, yeah, the runners.”

  “Every morning, somebody from every class goes to the cafeteria with the hot lunch order. And it’s a different somebody every day. Practically everybody in my class has been a runner at one time or another.”

  Sebastian frowned. “That does complicate matters,” he said.

  “I’d say it does more than that,” said David.

  “Well, thanks for trying. Any word on Mr. Hogan?”

  “Yeah, I heard him speaking in code on the phone.”

  “You still don’t believe me, do you?”

  “When I’m with you, I do. But when I have a little time to think about it, I’m not so sure.”

  “There’s your problem,” said Sebastian. “You think too much.” The bell rang, and the two boys sprinted in opposite directions, David about to be late for his math class, Sebastian for cafeteria duty.

  If Sebastian was in fact late, Dottie Swille didn’t seem to notice or to care. She was already at the counter, ladling out apple noodle soup and words of advice. “Eat your broccoli, dear,” she said, smiling. “It’s high in Vitamin A.” Behind her, Bea Goode and Harley Davidson transported trays while loudly dueling their favorite songs by Willie Nelson and Bruce Springsteen.

  Standing at the sink, his hands under the hot, running water, Sebastian closed his eyes and listened. This was the cafeteria the way he’d imagined it to be: Miss Swille cooing like a contented pigeon, the clatter of silverware and the banging of trays, the chatter of students, the singing of the kitchen staff. Maybe he’d gotten carried away with this poison thing, after all. He wasn’t ready to believe it was the flu, but perhaps the poisoning was accidental. His ears heard only harmony now, only harmony until—

  “Does this look like thirty-five cents to you? Don’t you try to shortchange me, young man. Hey, hey, where are you going?”

  Sebastian’s eyes snapped open. Lillian Dribowitz was standing beside the cash register, her arm outstretched, her eyes flaring angrily. “Miss Swille,” she called, without looking away from the object of her anger, “Miss Swille, will you please call Mr. Hogan’s office?”

  “What’s the problem, Lillian?” Dottie asked.

  Sebastian saw the cashier’s shoulders rise a fraction of an inch, probably in response to being called by her first name in front of students. “The problem,” she said, turning sharply to address the cafeteria manager, “is that Darryl Johnson thinks he can pay thirty cents for an orange when he knows it costs thirty-five cents.”

  Dottie Swille continued ladling her soup. “Let’s not make a fuss over five cents, Lillian.” She turned and added quietly, so that the students in line wouldn’t hear, “I’d rather see Darryl Johnson pay what he can for a piece of fruit than go without or snitch it when we�
��re not looking.”

  Lillian Dribowitz slammed the cash register drawer shut. “I didn’t know we were a welfare agency now,” she said tightly. “I’m going on my break.”

  “But, Lillian—”

  “I’m entitled,” said Lillian Dribowitz, storming out of the kitchen. “And don’t come looking for me. I’ll be back when I’m good and ready.”

  Dottie Swille took a deep breath. “Sebastian,” she said, “would you take over here, please?” She grabbed a pillow from under the counter to place on the cash register stool (she was a good head shorter than Lillian Dribowitz), and apologized to the student who was waiting in line. “Sorry, Melanie,” she said. “Even grown-ups fight from time to time.”

  “Tell me about it,” the girl named Melanie replied. “My mom’s been married four times.”

  Dottie gave a startled laugh and turned to Sebastian. “Nothing’s going to get me down today,” she told him. “Do you know why?”

  “I can guess,” Sebastian said.

  “There isn’t an ounce of suspicion left,” she said. “My kitchen—and my apples—received a clean bill of health, across the board. I’ll tell you, Sebastian, when Bea said it could have been the apples, I just about died.”

  “Why?” Sebastian asked, putting down the ladle. “Do apples go bad or something?”

  Waiting for the last student to pick up her tray and move away, Dottie Swille leaned against the cash register, and said, “It isn’t that they go bad. But the seeds are poisonous.”

  Bea and Harley stopped their singing to listen.

  “Apple seeds contain prussic acid,” Dottie explained. “Also known as cyanide.”

  Sebastian whistled through his teeth.

  “Could they kill you?” Harley asked. Sebastian turned and noticed for the first time that Harley wasn’t wearing his usual motorcycle outfit. In fact, the plaid button-down shirt looked new.

  ‘Only if you were to eat a great many,” said Dottie. “It seemed awful far-fetched to me. I mean, first, the seeds would have had to get into the cooking. And, second, as I say, it would have taken a lot of them. Still, I’ve been using a lot lately—”

  “It’s a government program,” Bea told the boys. “October is apple month. We’re getting so many surplus apples that if we don’t use them, they’ll rot.”

  “Lucky I’m such a creative cook,” Dottie Swille remarked. “Oh, boys, if that report had come in saying my kitchen was the cause of those children getting sick, it would have ruined everything. Not to mention, of course, how bad I would have felt.”

  “What do you mean, it would have ruined everything?” Sebastian asked.

  Miss Swille exchanged a glance with Bea Goode. “I can’t really talk about it because I’m not supposed to know,” she said. “Let’s just say that my twenty-five years here are not going to go unmarked.”

  There was a loud bang. Lillian Dribowitz had returned to the kitchen and dropped a tray of silverware into the sink.

  “Time to feed Fanny,” Bea commented.

  “I’ll do it,” said Harley.

  “Why, thank you, Harlan,” Miss Swille said. “Some days it’s a positive delight having you around.”

  Harley smiled, not even bothering to correct his name.

  Sebastian understood the change in her; what, he wondered, accounted for the change in Harley?

  21

  HOW SHOULD I KNOW?” Adam said. The dark glasses he wore to cover his black eye made it hard to read his face. “I just thought,” said Sebastian, “that Jason and Brad might have told you something about Harley.”

  Adam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He glanced at the clock: one minute until the bell would ring for French class. He glanced at the door: there was no sign of the teacher. “I have nothing to say to those creeps,” he said. “And they have nothing to say to me.”

  “Then how’d the fight start this morning? Somebody must have said something to somebody.”

  “Not much. I told them I thought they were kidding themselves, that’s all. I said, ‘One of these days, you guys are going to get bored being Harley’s clones, and when you change back into who you really are—’”

  “Which is what?” Sebastian said.

  “Which is a couple of spoiled little rich kids from Riverview Estates, that’s what. When they drop Harley, they’re going to be real, real sorry—because Harley isn’t going to like it. And they’re going to find that their old friends aren’t interested anymore.”

  “Old friends like you, huh?”

  Adam looked up to the clock. Five seconds.

  “Right,” he said.

  The bell rang, and Phil Greenburg swept into the room.

  “Alors, mes enfants,” he said, turning into Monsieur Hameauvert, “nos histoires. Who has written a story they’d like to read?”

  Harley Davidson raised his hand.

  22

  “WHAT DO I KNOW about Harley?” said David, repeating Sebastian’s question. The two friends had stopped for some pizza on the way home from school. “That he’s an obnoxious bully who gets in trouble on the average of three times a week; that he likes picking on anybody smaller or smarter than he is, especially Milo Groot who is both; that he’s a wiseguy and a show-off; that he likes motorcycles, and dresses as if he’s just been in an accident with one—”

  “Not today,” said Sebastian. “Today he was wearing new clothes. Button-down shirt. Chinos. Hush Puppies.”

  “Hush Puppies? I don’t believe it.”

  “What else do we know about him? What do you know about him from working in the school office?”

  “I know he’s Mr. Hogan’s most frequent visitor.”

  “Seriously.”

  “I’m being serious. All right. He lives in that big stone house up off Route 7. The one with the red mailbox out front.”

  “Nice place,” said Sebastian, wiping tomato sauce from his chin.

  “It’s his grandfather’s, I guess. He lives there with the old man, his father and two sisters. I don’t know what the story is on his mother except that she isn’t around. His father works at the Mobil station on Main Street. He owns the place, I think. That’s what Harley says. The family has a social worker, I don’t know why. And that’s all I know.”

  “Not a lot.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Less. I wish we knew more.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re going to become Harley’s friends now too,” said David, catching a glob of dripping cheese with his tongue.

  “I don’t think we could be Harley’s friends if we wanted to. But I have a hunch—”

  “Oh, oh.”

  “—that whatever happens, Harley’s going to get the blame. I just wish I knew if he deserves it.”

  “He deserves it, he deserves it.”

  “Guilty until proven innocent?” Sebastian asked.

  “Why not?” David said. He’s always been a troublemaker, right? So, when there’s trouble…”

  “Blame it on Harley.”

  Nodding, David said, “You want to share another slice of pizza?”

  “Sure. It’s pretty good today. Just one thing it could use, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Apples.”

  23

  OF ONE HUNDRED and ten students in the eighth grade at Pembroke Middle School, seventy-seven threw up at lunch the following day. Of those seventy-seven, two fainted. And one of those two was hospitalized.

  Milo and Adam were among the afflicted, while Jason, Brad and Sebastian went unscathed. Jason and Brad had brought lunches from home; Sebastian was simply living up to his reputation as “the boy with the iron stomach.”

  School was immediately cancelled for the rest of the day, as parents were summoned to retrieve their ailing children. Miss Swille was told to report to the Department of Food Services at once. And the Board of Health shut down the cafeteria until further notice.

  In all the commotion, no one noticed Harley Davidson empty his lock
er and walk out the front door.

  24

  THERE WAS NO ONE home to greet Sebastian when he arrived early from school but his two cats, Boo and Chopped Liver, and theirs was less a greeting than a scornful acknowledgement that their afternoon naps had been rudely disturbed. Glad to be alone, Sebastian dropped his bookbag on the kitchen table and went to the refrigerator to pour himself a glass of milk.

  As he sat down, his eyes fell on the large lump in his bookbag. What had made him do it? he wondered. Why had he taken it? He’d been following a hunch, sure, but he’d also tampered with evidence. And if his hunch turned out to be correct, he was not only tampering with evidence, he was concealing it. There was a part of him, the part that liked Miss Swille, that hoped his hunch was wrong. But another part, the part that wanted the truth (or a scoop, he wasn’t sure which), that hoped he was right. He was about to open the bookbag when the telephone rang.

  “I concede,” said the voice on the other end. “It was poison, not the flu.”

  “It doesn’t take much to convince you. Just seventy-seven kids throwing up in unison.”

  “That must have been quite a sight,” David said. “Like Niagara Falls.”

  Sebastian laughed. “It really isn’t funny, you know. Justin Greer’s in the hospital.”

  “I know. Hey, you want to come over?”

  “Not right now.”

  “I could come over there.”

  “I don’t think so. Can I call you back later?”

  “Sebastian, are you having one of your moods?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. First, you don’t want to hang out, now you don’t want to talk. You have these moods, you know, where you get all quiet and mysterious.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah. Look, don’t worry about it. You can call me when you’re back to normal, whatever that is. I’ll be here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. What are friends for?”