It Wasn't Me

by Dana Alison Levy

  Ms. Lewiston smiles like someone gave her a present. “That’s exactly right, Erik. Thank you. Like Jax’s and Molly’s comments showed, it is about how someone’s action affects all of us. And like Andre said, it’s about realizing that Theo’s been hurt, and it’s only right that, as a community, we make it better.”

  Ms. Lewiston keeps talking, about the circle and our agreement to make this a safe space (whatever) and to respect the talking stick (sure) and to keep an open mind (doubtful). She’s already explained most of this, so I tune out, staring around the room at the art projects that line the windowsill, the pile of books on the back desks (looks like they got to read The Crossover, which is freaking awesome despite being about basketball), and the flat gray winter light coming through the windows. It’s ugly, but even so, I find pockets of interest, random stuff in shadow or the detailed mosaic on some kid’s mosque diorama. Too bad I don’t have my camera.

  I make myself turn back to the circle. From the glazed eyes around me, I have to assume I’m not the only one zoning out. Glancing around at my fellow Justice Warriors, I am not optimistic that there’s any deep thinking happening. I wonder if anyone else is debating gnawing off a limb. Probably not…they’re not creative enough for my kind of problem solving.

  Molly’s staring down at her notebook, taking notes as fast as Ms. Lewiston talks, and Ms. Lewiston is going at quite a clip. Molly must be literally writing every word. Does she think there’s going to be a quiz? Apparently overachieving isn’t something that Molly can turn on and off. If she’s going to be in this Justice Circle, she’s going to be the Best. Darn. Justice-Circle-Goer. EVER.

  Then there’s Alice, who appears to have disappeared to Aliceland. She finished crafting that black yarn thing and now is gazing at the ceiling, smiling like she knows some excellent secret, and moving her lips slightly while whispering to herself. She’s so creepy it’s almost awesome.

  Andre is sitting totally still, staring to the right of Ms. Lewiston. His hands are in his lap, and the only part of him that’s moving is his wrists, which look like they’re doing some complicated patterns under his desk. I have to stop looking because staring at a dude’s lap, even if he is a major nerd, is just asking for trouble.

  Erik looks like he’s about to start drooling. His heavy eyelids are doing those drop-and-pop-open-again moves that come before total head bobs. It would so delight my evil heart if he straight up fell asleep and smashed his head on the desk.

  And Jax…if he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who could potentially trash my photos for the LOLs, I might feel bad for him. He looks like he wants to do grievous harm to something or someone, or maybe himself. He’d totally gnaw off his leg if it were in a trap. Just a guess.

  Finally Ms. Lewiston winds down. I feel bad for her. She loves this justice stuff—she’s all fired up for us to use this experience as a way to grow and be braver and better people. But I mean, really, we are as checked out as it’s possible to be while still in a circle with a fake candle and a bunch of special rocks. And come on. I’ve done my job. I agreed to show up. Isn’t it up to them now? Don’t they have to make it up to me and be all…I don’t know…just?

  There’s a moment of silence, and I realize Ms. Lewiston has probably asked us something. Whoops.

  “Okay. We’re going to try something else,” she says, her voice cheerful.

  I wasn’t aware we had tried anything at all yet. Guess I need to pay more attention.

  “Everyone get out of your chair. Come on! Stand up, push the chairs back, and lie on the floor. Right on the floor.” Ms. Lewiston starts us off, shoving her chair back with an unholy screeeee­eeeee­eeeee­ch that makes Molly whimper, and lies right down. Her knee makes a crack like a popgun, but she doesn’t complain.

  “Um…the floor…isn’t it kind of…” Molly, still firmly planted in her chair, wrinkles her nose.

  “It’s fine. I’m not asking you to lick it,” Ms. Lewiston says, her voice the tiniest bit impatient.

  I snort. I can’t help it. Molly shoots me a death glare, and I stare back. Again, I mentally give her a shout-down that I’m doing everyone a solid by agreeing to spend my vacation here. She looks away, pushes her chair back, and slowly lowers herself, nose wrinkled in a fierce Everything Is Awful face. One by one everyone else clambers down.

  “Heads in the middle, close together, like the rays of a sun,” Ms. Lewiston calls. Her voice sounds a little flat from the floor.

  I turn my head and quickly turn it back. I’m WAY too close to Alice’s fake black eye for comfort. That thing looks completely real. Impressive, in a fairly disgusting way.

  “Okay, we’re going to close our eyes, and we’re going to go around the circle, each of us saying one thing people don’t know about us. This has nothing to do with Theo’s photos,” she adds, which is interesting, because I was about to ask what the heck this has to do with my photos.

  But okay.

  “I’ll start,” she continues, “and we’ll go around from there. Jax, you can go next.”

  There’s a moment of silence—well, not really silence, but no-voices quiet, where the only sounds are people squirming and breathing and the occasional squirrrrk of a sneaker against linoleum.

  “I’m terrified of birds,” Ms. Lewiston says suddenly. “Not in a funny way, but really frightened. When I was a kid, a magpie got into my kitchen and got caught in my hair. I still remember the strength of the wings flapping and hitting my face, the smell of bird poop, the sharp claws as it scrabbled around trying to get free. I really don’t like them. They scare me.”

  Well. That’s kind of intense.

  Silence reigns supreme for a moment. Then of course…

  Jax snorts, tries valiantly to make it sound like a sneeze, only to make the most pathetically fake sneeze sound in the history of pathetic fake sneezes—we’re talking a full-on cartoon AAAAHHHHCHOO! Then he snorts again, then starts laughing.

  Like a stack of cruel, helpless dominoes, we go down.

  First Erik, then Alice, and finally Andre and me, who I thought was going to be mature in the face of it all, ultimately burst out with an explosive BHAAAAA! Even more tragically, the effort of trying to hold back the laugh was apparently too much for Molly’s system, because she lets out a massive trumpeting fart at the same time.

  At this Jax is totally gone. He rolls back and forth from stomach to back, kicking and flailing his arms like a baby. No sound comes out of his throat, just a kind of choking, gasping that so often accompanies the best hysterical laughter.

  Gaspsnortwheeze.

  Gaspgaspgasp.

  Snort.

  I’m laughing so hard I don’t hear the door open. But we all hear Ms. Davis just fine.

  “Ms. Lewiston!”

  That’s all she says, but what is clearly expressed, without words, is:

  WHAT THE @#$*$% IS HAPPENING HERE?

  HOW IS THIS A JUSTICE CIRCLE?

  IT’S NOT EVEN A CIRCLE.

  I DID NOT AGREE TO GIVE UP MY SCHOOL VACATION WEEK AND THE SIMPLE ACT OF SUSPENDING FIVE KIDS FOR THIS RAMA-LAMA-DING-DONG EXERCISE.

  Or something like that.

  Ms. Lewiston sits up. Somehow seeing her sitting literally at the feet of Principal Davis, who, honestly, is a bit of a troll, makes me feel pretty bad.

  “It was laughter therapy,” I say, sitting up and brushing off my hands, which are gritty and gray with dust. Molly might have been on to something with her This Floor Is Going to Kill Us face. “Um. You know. Laughing to release emotion?”

  Ms. Lewiston shoots me a complicated look. It might be “Thanks for having my back, home slice.” But it might also be “Shut up, you’re making it worse.” Hard to tell with adults sometimes.

  “No worries, Ms. Davis,” she says, and her voice is pretty composed and cool, considering sh
e’s covered in school-floor-toxic-waste-or-maybe-just-lint and being mocked by seventh graders. “This is part of the process.”

  She pauses. “It’s all part of the process,” she repeats, and looks at Jax, who sat up and is staring at the floor. The laser force of her gaze could burn through most household objects and possibly titanium and platinum too. Jax looks at her, then proceeds to be fascinated with the ceiling.

  Ms. Davis pauses for a minute, then delivers a final, threatening-sounding “I’ll be checking back on the ‘process’ later. And I’ll hope that it has led to a confession, rather than a waste of time and resources.”

  Then she stomps out of the room like a bad movie villain. I think she even wanted to slam the door, but of course it’s one of those pressure-type doors that won’t slam. Bummer for her.

  When she’s gone, Ms. Lewiston takes a deep breath. Silence, thick and uncomfortable, spreads.

  Then, out of the corner of his mouth, Jax makes a quiet, barely audible cawwww sound. Like a bird.

  Ms. Lewiston stands up, with a fairly impressive yoga lift from sitting, and holds out a hand to Jax. They leave the room in silence.

  Wow. Welcome to the Justice Club.

  The rest of us stare at each other in awkward silence. Then Alice leans forward. “Molly, if you want a Gas-X, I always have them in my bag. Help yourself. Irritable bowel syndrome is no joke.”

  And just like that I realize we haven’t even scratched the surface of awkward.

  Things settle down after the great bird/laugh/fart/Davis meltdown. (Which, I have to say, is not a combination I ever thought would appear in a single sentence.)

  Jax and Ms. Lewiston return, Jax quietly mumbles an apology to all of us about not respecting the process, and we lie back down in our circle. Ms. Lewiston once again asks us to tell something about ourselves that others don’t know.

  This is what people share. I’m totally blown away by the bravery people showed—if by “blown away” I mean “literally willing to be blown backward through a space-time continuum to avoid listening to such time-wasting garbage ever again in my life.”

  Molly states that she’s allergic to every kind of animal fur.

  Jax states that he freaking loves Wu-Tang Clan and that we should have an iPod in here.

  Erik states that he once tried playing ice hockey and it was wicked cool, but then he committed to basketball.

  Andre states that his family has moved five times.

  I state that I’m saving up for a telephoto lens, but the one I want is four hundred dollars.

  And Alice—well, there’s always Alice. She shares plenty, that’s for sure. We learn that:

  She always wanted a hairless cat because they look elegant.

  She’s seen Blair Witch Project seven times.

  She has a younger sister who does not like horror movies.

  She’s scared of ferrets.

  Finally Ms. Lewiston has to interrupt her. “Thank you, Alice. That’s fantastic that we get to learn so much about you. But we’re going to stop sharing these facts and switch directions, okay?”

  I almost wish she would let Alice keep going….It’s oddly soothing listening to her babble.

  Then Ms. Lewiston asks us to think about something that makes us feel nervous or vulnerable. Not to say it out loud—she has to say this quickly, because it’s clear Alice is about to let loose with what is sure to be a cosmically weird or embarrassing fact—but simply to think about it.

  I don’t want to do it, and, really, how’s Ms. Lewiston going to know? I could be thinking about macro zoom lenses or cheese or Doctor Who. But like a magnet drawn to the true north of miserable memories, I think about my dad saying he still loves us but can’t live this life anymore. And how he cried, but my mom and I didn’t, and I had this weird idea that by not crying I was siding with her.

  Gut punch.

  I have no idea what my face looks like, but when I look around, I can see that at least some kids are following instructions, or at least they, like me, can’t help themselves. Molly looks like she swallowed glass. I mentally roll my eyes. I’ve been in classes with Molly Claremont since kindergarten and Mrs. Gershuny’s class. She always had coordinated outfits, lunch boxes with whatever Pixar-animated character was coolest, and, back when popularity was dictated in part by birthday celebrations, a parent who not only baked cupcakes but brought them in one of those special triple-decker cupcake-carrying containers. Because she had to be the best at everything in life, including Having the Most Cupcakes.

  Ms. Lewiston speaks again, and her voice is soft. “Now, I’m not going to ask you guys to share what you were thinking, but I hope you looked at each other. I mean really looked. Because I want you to remember one of my favorite quotes.” She stands up and goes to the board. Taking a marker, she writes Be kind, for all of us are fighting unseen battles.

  She turns to us, and says it out loud, slowly. “ ‘Be kind, for all of us are fighting unseen battles.’ Think about it. Think about what you might not know about each other, what others might not know about you.”

  We nod like we’re pondering these great mysteries, but I suspect I’m not the only one who’s thinking that my giant hot chocolate was a while ago and I need to pee like someone’s squeezing my bladder.

  As though she’s reading my mind (awkward), Ms. Lewiston claps her hands. “Let’s take a break to go to the bathroom, grab lunch, and stretch. Then we’ll come back and circle up again.”

  Jax is out of his chair like someone used a catapult. I’m right behind him.

  When I get back to the room, Ms. Lewiston’s still gone. Judging from my time with her last year, I’m guessing she’s in the teacher’s lounge holding her mouth open under the coffee maker. That woman would have an IV drip of caffeine if she could.

  Meanwhile, Molly is opening her backpack and settling in. She squirts sanitizer on her hands and rubs vigorously. Then she spreads out a cloth napkin and pulls out a bunch of tiny metal containers that all fit together, laying them out like they’re fragments of an ancient scroll. As she opens them up and places the different foods on the napkin, I swear all I can think of are the old picture books I loved as a kid, about a badger named Frances. (Note: I didn’t know Frances was a badger until around two years ago, when we gave some of these books to my cousins. Nathan asked me to read the badger book, and then his little sister Rachel went to find the book and bring it to me. And who knew? That weird black-and-white-striped creature? I guess it’s a badger.)

  ANYWAY. My point is that in those books, Frances has the most epic lunches. I’m talking six courses, complete with condiments and, if memory serves, a tiny vase of flowers for ambiance. Molly wasn’t quite there, but she was close.

  Next to her, Erik pulls up his chair and opens his backpack. He then proceeds to unwrap a cinder-block-size stack that turns out to be four sandwiches. Each one disappears in around three bites. I’m both disgusted and mesmerized. It’s like seeing a snake unhinge its jaw and swallow a rodent whole.

  Erik leans toward Molly. “Dude. This is so weak. I can’t believe I’m missing ball camp for this.”

  Molly makes a noncommittal noise, her eyes flashing to me, then flicking away fast when she sees I’m listening. Good. Doesn’t feel right to whine about being here? Doesn’t seem like you’re the victim? Exactly.

  But Erik’s oblivious, for something totally new and different. Like I said, just because he’s never been proven to be a bully doesn’t mean he doesn’t join his Neanderthal bro-mates in nerd bashing when he has the chance. I mean, if one person hangs out with guys who regularly throw people’s backpacks in the garbage, isn’t he slightly more likely? Deductive Reasoning 101, right?

  Molly lowers her voice. “I can’t actually believe I’m a suspect.” She cuts her eyes to Jax and Alice, then back to Erik. “You know?
”

  Erik doesn’t answer, probably due to the half pound of processed lunch meat glued to the roof of his mouth, but he nods.

  Molly continues. “I mean, why would I even care about his photos? It’s so wrong!”

  I lean back in my chair. I know exactly what she means. It goes against the laws of physics, aerodynamics, or at least the laws of Shipton Middle School. Why would top-of-the-food-chain people like Molly Claremont, of permanent honor roll fame, even bother with me?

  I’m not the bottom of the food chain, the phytoplankton that can’t even be seen. That would be Andre, who’s invisible. And I’m not the oh-so-vulnerable clown fish, whose bizarre coloring helps shield it even while it stands out looking poisonous and weird; that would be Alice. And I’m not like Jax, who’s like…I don’t even know what. Maybe the hippo, or something that isn’t carnivorous but manages to trash everything in its path regardless. And I’m certainly not, and never will be, Erik Estrale, Most Likely to Be in the Town Newspaper While Wearing a Mouthguard.

  Before I can go any further down this accurate-but-depressing wormhole, Jax crashes back into the room.

  “Man, was that you, Theo? Or Erik? The bathroom smells like someone took a monster-size deuce in the sink.” He waves a hand in front of his face. “Nasty.”

  I ignore him. Like I’d poop at school. My lower intestine would have to be exploding first. But Molly’s face closes up like a fist.

  “Why do you have to be so disgusting, Jax? Seriously. Why would you need to tell us that?”

  Jax straddles the back of his chair again and uses his foot to pull his backpack closer. “Oh, sorry, princess. Didn’t realize you were so delicate. Must be hard for you, hearing about such things.”

  Molly scowls. “What are you talking about? I just don’t want to hear about the smell of the boys’ bathroom while I’m eating!”