Dweeb

by Aaron Starmer

“Sure.” Eddie reached forward and pulled the watch off Tyler’s head. He checked the time. “It’ll be morning soon. McKenzie will be here. You should get going.”

  “Agreed,” Tyler said.

  “Will you be able to make it in the dark?” Eddie asked.

  “Of course,” Tyler said. “You were a fine navigator, and I made a mental map of the pipes on the way down. Who needs eyes when you’ve got your mind? All I have to do is count the joints, calculate the distance, and I’ll be back in the school in no time. Dodge some cameras. Slip back through the window. Scurry home. Simple stuff.”

  “Simple stuff indeed,” Denton said suspiciously.

  But before he could get another word in, he heard Tyler leaping onto the pipes and starting to climb. Denton grabbed the watch from Eddie, put his head through the hole, and held the watch up. In the weak light, he could see Tyler scrambling like a squirrel from pipe to pipe until he disappeared into the darkness.

  Chapter 13

  ELIJAH

  The situation was now worse than Elijah could have imagined. As he lay in his bunk on Tuesday morning, he kept thinking about Tyler. Denton had insisted Tyler was putting them on, but Elijah knew Tyler wasn’t that talented an actor. While he loved to mess with people’s heads, he always struck immediately. He never left a room without letting you know who was in control.

  Last night, there had been no punchline. No punch, even. Nothing resembling the real Tyler. It was scary.

  Eddie’s description of the school only worried Elijah more. They had missed only a day and a half, but it sounded as though the entire place had been transformed. Fast-food trash everywhere. A library purged of books. It was the stuff of bad dreams.

  It took McKenzie’s arrival with breakfast to make Elijah rise from bed.

  “Halfway there,” McKenzie said with a smile. “Not an easy feat. Keep at it.”

  With each day, the coach seemed to ease up on them a little. Elijah assumed he must have known more than he was letting on. Maybe they were going to be down there longer than Snodgrass had told them, and McKenzie just didn’t see the point in destroying their self-esteem anymore. Elijah had seen a television show once about prisoners on death row. The guards often treated them better than all the other inmates.

  This scared him too.

  No one else was sure what the next step should be, either. Over breakfast, they discussed their options in low whispers.

  “We could be trapped here forever,” Elijah said, sniffing at his glass of cranberry juice. He placed it down, deciding against it.

  “We need hard evidence,” Denton said.

  “What we need is Nurse Bloom to come back,” Wendell said.

  It was like summoning a genie. Almost as soon as the words came out of Wendell’s mouth, the door opened slowly and Nurse Bloom walked in.

  Her eyes were washed-out and pink. Elijah wouldn’t have described her as haggard, but she looked run-down, exhausted. Beneath her white coat, she wore a wool turtleneck sweater, an odd choice for the middle of spring.

  She closed the door and smiled reassuringly.

  “Nurse Bloom. Thank God,” Wendell said tenderly.

  But Elijah wasn’t as easily swayed. He watched anxiously as she patted Wendell on the head. Then she pinched one of his hairs between her thumb and forefinger and plucked it.

  Wendell winced but didn’t say a thing. She patted him on the head again, as if it were her best try at an apology. Then she produced a plastic bag from inside her jacket and carefully dropped the hair into it. A piece of masking tape was stuck to the bottom edge of the bag. In black marker on the tape, someone had written Wendell Scoop.

  In a swift movement, Nurse Bloom was standing above Elijah. Before he could object, she plucked a hair from his scalp and dropped it into another plastic bag. She quickly moved on.

  As she plucked the hairs from Denton’s, Eddie’s and Bijay’s heads, they each greeted her with befuddled stares.

  She was a nurse, so she was careful, and it didn’t seem to hurt anyone. She was also a woman, and if Elijah’s sister was any indication, then he knew that women did strange things. It was nothing, really, just a hair off their heads. Yet it felt like some sort of betrayal.

  Finally, she stopped next to Wendell and reached into her jacket. This time she pulled out an envelope. As she handed it to him, her sleeve drew back from her hand, revealing her wrist. Splotchy and red, the skin looked burned, as if it had been plunged into boiling water.

  “Open it when you’re ready,” she said softly.

  “Nurse Bloom,” Wendell said with concern, “are you … ?”

  She simply smiled again and pulled her hand away. “Goodbye,” she said. Then she opened the door and Snodgrass stepped inside.

  “Well done, Nora,” he said. “You may go now.”

  “Thank you, Lionel.” Nurse Bloom hung her head and slinked out of the room.

  “Gentlemen,” Snodgrass said. “I trust you missed me.”

  Elijah had gotten used to not seeing Snodgrass. He felt his lip twisting up in disgust, so he grabbed his test book and looked at it instead.

  “Glad you’re enjoying your test books, but we’re gonna have a study break.” He held a cell phone up in the air for all to see.

  “Do we get to order pizza?” Eddie asked.

  “Not your best material, Mr. Green,” Snodgrass said. “No pizza today. Only calls home.”

  Snodgrass removed a handful of folded papers from his pocket. “On Sunday, you’ll be happy to know, you all e-mailed your parents,” Snodgrass went on. “Lovely messages, all sent from your school accounts. I love you, I miss you, so on and so forth. The writing was top-notch.”

  He sorted through the papers and then handed one to each of them.

  “Now you will leave these messages on your parents’ voice mails,” he said.

  “We can’t speak to them?” Denton asked.

  “They’re not home,” Snodgrass said.

  “And how do you know that?” Elijah snapped back. Snodgrass’s confidence was maddening. Somehow, he had to prove him wrong.

  “Because I already called, Mr. Rosen,” Snodgrass said. “It is a workday, after all. Please give me some credit. Some of us think things through.”

  Wendell looked puzzled by his paper. “Mine says ‘Montreal is off the hook’ and ‘Mensa is the dopest.’ Who talks like that?”

  “Kids talk like that,” Snodgrass said firmly.

  “No, we don’t,” Elijah said with a smirk.

  “You have me saying ‘Cheerio!’ at the end of mine,” Denton said.

  “He at least got that right. You do say things like that,” Eddie said.

  “I’d never say cheerio!” Denton protested.

  “Fine,” Snodgrass said, snatching the papers from their hands. “Forget the scripts. Just say that you’re having a wonderful time. That Coach McKenzie is an excellent chaperone. That you’re sorry you haven’t been able to call home sooner.”

  “What if we don’t want to?” Elijah said defiantly.

  “Well, let’s see,” Snodgrass said. “There’s the matter of the evidence. Still the issue of some stolen money.”

  “You know we didn’t steal that money.” Elijah stood up. “So let’s just say we let the cat out of the bag right now. Tell them where we are. You can bring in the police. Show them your evidence. We’ll roll the dice, as they say.”

  Wendell reached out to grab Elijah’s shoulder, but he brushed him off. Forget all this cloak-and-dagger bull. All he wanted to do was go home. Snodgrass, for all his talk, was not infallible.

  “You go ahead and roll the dice, as they say,” Snodgrass snarled, “because the dice are rigged. You think I haven’t planned for such foolishness? You know who’ll suffer the most? Your precious little pal Nurse Bloom. You don’t think I know she’s made you promises she can’t keep? Let me tell you something about her. She’s a coward.”

  “Not a chance,” Wendell said.

  “She was hired
for two reasons—her long legs,” Snodgrass said. “Your honorable Principal Phipps fell for her, and fell hard. Didn’t think with his brain. Thought like a thirteen-year-old boy. She’s not even a registered nurse, just a pretty face who couldn’t hack it in grad school. Why do you think Phipps left? I was ready to expose her.”

  “Lies,” Wendell whimpered. Elijah nodded in support.

  “I’m working to turn this school around,” Snodgrass went on. “And she is just in the way. When you finally leave this room, you’ll see what I mean. This school is taking things to the next level. And Nurse Bloom is not part of its future. She’s just looking out for herself, following orders, and hoping that I let her off the hook.”

  “We don’t believe you. It’s our word against yours,” Elijah said. He was trying to sound defiant, but his confidence was wavering and his voice was shaky.

  “Really?” Snodgrass smiled, seeming to sense Elijah’s fear. “There’s no evidence I’ve ever even been down here. Have you seen me touch anything? Bloom, her fingerprints are everywhere. Her hair is scattered throughout this room. So it’s my word against hers. And when the world learns the other lies she’s been weaving, who do you think they’ll believe? Vice Principal Snodgrass, the educator with the immaculate record who assumes his five best students have been called away to Montreal? Or Nurse Bloom, the dishonest, raven-haired liar who employs young boys to steal money for her, then shelters the juvenile delinquents in a secret room beneath the school?”

  “What about McKenzie?” Denton pressed. A good point, Elijah thought. Snodgrass hadn’t covered all his bases.

  “McKenzie?” Snodgrass chuckled. “He’s like all soldiers. Easily manipulated. Easily quieted. Disposable.”

  Elijah wanted to scream, but his body wouldn’t let him. His throat was heaving and his stomach turning. He couldn’t make a sound. He could only sit back down.

  “You know what?” Snodgrass smiled, holding the cell phone back up. “I even borrowed Ms. Bloom’s phone. You’re first, Mr. Rosen.”

  Snodgrass pressed the Send button on the phone, then tossed it to Elijah. He caught it and held it in his lap, staring at it as the call connected. After the fifth ring, he heard his mother’s voice on an electronic recording.

  “You’ve reached the Rosens. If you have a message for Debby, Mike, Tara, Elijah, or even Puddles, leave it at the beep. Thanks!”

  The sound of her voice cut deep. Man, did he miss his family. With everything Snodgrass had said, with everything they had speculated about, it was impossible to know what to believe.

  Elijah slowly raised the phone to his ear. Rather than make something up or try to send some covert message, he just found himself saying what he was feeling.

  “Hi, everyone,” he said softly. “It’s me. I feel so far away from you all right now. But that’s natural, I guess … when you’re away from home. I’m doing fine. I’m learning a lot. The people here are nice and real smart. It’s tough, though. So I’m glad I’ll be home soon. I miss you all, especially Puddles. And I love you all … so much.”

  Snodgrass began clapping. “Well done. I knew you had it in you. All of you do. But Puddles, Mr. Rosen? A pooch should have a more robust name, don’t you think? My dog, Xerxes, for instance, is a canine of the highest order.”

  “Duly noted,” Elijah grumbled as he handed the phone over.

  “Just a piece of advice,” Snodgrass huffed. “And as for the rest of you, I want you to follow Mr. Rosen’s lead. Do as I say, and everything will work out in the end. For you, for Ms. Bloom, for all of Ho-Ho-Kus.”

  Elijah watched with dismay as the others made the same call and left nearly identical messages. When they were finished, Snodgrass, beaming from yet another victory, stepped into the doorway.

  “Only a few days left, gentlemen. Keep to your books and I will keep my word.”

  “What a liar,” Wendell said when Snodgrass was gone. “Nurse Bloom always comes through.”

  He tore open the envelope Nurse Bloom had given him and pulled out a sheet of paper. Almost immediately, his face sank.

  “What’s it say?” Eddie asked.

  “She knows I like Sudoku,” Wendell said with disappointment, showing them the page. “I guess she’s worried about us … getting bored.”

  That was all the page was: a Sudoku puzzle. A few numbers were filled in to get things started. Elijah had never really done a Sudoku puzzle before. He knew it had something to do with putting numbers into boxes. The only thing that seemed to distinguish this one was a message scrawled in pen at the top. It read:

  Solutions to our problems? True heroes employ patience. Every puzzle requires abilities life leaves you.

  “What could that mean?” Eddie asked.

  “Nonsense,” Denton said. “She’s off her nut.”

  Denton is right, Elijah thought. It was becoming apparent that they could no longer rely on Nurse Bloom. Snodgrass’s promises were a joke. Who on the outside was going to help them?

  Nobody. That was one thing Elijah was sure about. If they were going to get out of there, they were going to have to act on their own.

  Then it came to him.

  “Computer hacking, that’s sort of like doing puzzles, right?” Elijah asked Wendell.

  “Sorta,” Wendell said, folding up the puzzle and placing it in his pocket.

  “If Eddie could get you the parts, could you build a computer?” Elijah asked him.

  “Maybe.” Wendell shrugged.

  “Then you can hack in and control the whole school?” Bijay said excitedly. “Like in the movies?”

  “Not exactly,” Wendell said. “But, theoretically, I could probably disable some alarms. I could access some information. Files, manuals, that kinda stuff.”

  “Passwords? Combinations? E-mails?” Elijah said.

  “I dunno, I guess,” Wendell said.

  Ideas were piling on top of each other in Elijah’s head. It was like writing a story. When inspiration struck, Elijah grabbed onto an idea and let it take him wherever it led.

  A computer. That was the idea he focused on now. It was a starting point, a link to the outside world. It would give them information, and information was power. What they would do with that power was hard to say. But they had to do something.

  “Guys,” Elijah said. “It’s time to take some bigger risks.”

  Chapter 14

  WENDELL

  “In the back of the computer lab, there’s a closet full of old parts,” Wendell told Eddie. “No one’s gonna notice if some of it’s missing. Bring back as much stuff as you can carry.”

  Eddie was game. They waited until after dinner; then they tied bedsheets around him like a tunic. He was to use them as ropes, or bags, or whatever he needed, if he found himself in a pinch. Then Wendell strapped the watch to Eddie’s head and they sent him on his way.

  A computer! Its hum and glow, that was what Wendell was looking forward to most. Even without games, it was something familiar. It was like inviting an old friend into the room with them.

  Eddie returned less than thirty minutes later, confidence pulsing through his face. “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” he said. “There are shortcuts everywhere in this place.”

  Over his shoulder, he carried a sheet tied in a bundle. Inside was a smorgasbord of computer parts—wires, hard drives, keypads, discs, modems, the works. He even brought back wire-cutters and a set of mini-screwdrivers. He fed it all back through the hole, or at least what could fit through it.

  “What are we supposed to do with this screen?” Eddie said, trying and failing to push it through.

  “I guess we’ll just have to leave it back there,” Wendell said. “We can still hook it up. You’ll just have to prop it up somewhere, and I’ll have to do my work with my head in the hole.”

  “Whatever it takes, right?” Eddie said.

  Wendell got to work, splicing wires and moving around chips and circuit boards. He cursed and sweated and kept at it. He could feel the
others watching him quietly over his shoulder, but no one said a word—until Eddie casually remarked, “I think there’s something going on up there.”

  Wendell paused.

  “What do you mean, something going on?” Denton said.

  “In the school. Like a meeting or something? There are people in the halls. Adults.”

  “Well, get up there and see what it is!” Elijah said excitedly.

  “Really,” Eddie said, “should I?”

  Denton paused. Then he said, “If you think you can do it without being seen, I don’t see why not.”

  “Wendell?” Eddie asked. “You’re cool?”

  Wendell slugged back some bottled water. There was nothing he wanted more than to get back to his pile of electronics. For the last few days, he had felt useless. But now …

  “I’m good,” Wendell said, smiling for the first time in days. “I’m great, actually. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Take your time. Eat some Mackers while you’re out.”

  “And be careful,” Denton added.

  Eddie was back through the hole in seconds.

  It took Wendell barely an hour. The results were hardly pretty. It was a mess of wires and circuit boards, a bulky rounded screen, disc drives and reconfigured modems, and all manner of equipment that most people would have relegated to the trash ten years ago.

  Still, beauty had nothing to do with function, and Wendell was pretty sure it would work.

  He handed a cord to Bijay, who crouched next to an outlet in the wall and inserted the plug. “Ready to go,” he said.

  Gingerly, Wendell used a pencil eraser to press a node on a circuit board. He took a step back and all four boys looked through the hole at the screen, which was sitting behind the wall atop all their test books. A green dot appeared in the middle of it and expanded slowly, like a ripple in water. Then the screen went completely black.

  “Oh, man,” Elijah said disappointedly.

  “Just give it a second,” Wendell said cautiously. And just when he was ready to give up hope, a blinking green cursor appeared at the bottom of the screen. “Nice!” Wendell cheered.