I grunt. My pants are on, obviously, and I’ve managed to perch on the toilet paper holder with my feet on the toilet. It’s uncomfortable, but somehow squatting on the can was too pathetic even for me.
Jax sighs with relief. “Cool. That was a risk, right there. Didn’t know what I’d be staring up into.”
I look away. The sight of Jax’s head half resting on the germ-covered bathroom floor is not the kind of thing that lifts the spirits.
“Dude, I know this is bad, but come on. Let’s go back and talk to Lewiston and see if she can shake something loose. I mean, someone’s gonna have to admit it, or at least look shifty and stuff.” He sighs. “Man, this is one nasty floor. I’m coming in.” With that he slithers under the door and just like that he’s standing in front of me.
As brutally bad as this morning has been, this is even worse. I jump down in shock and am now pressed within six inches of Jax, his flat brim almost knocking me in the nose as I try to get by him.
“Do. You. MIND?” I ask, pushing toward the stall door.
But he leans against it. “Hold your fire, bro. I just want you to know. I got your back. We’ll figure out who did this.”
I want to get mad at him, or ignore him, or something, but it turns out I don’t have the energy. After all that screaming and punching the paper towels, I’m now exhausted deep down to my bones. I want to go to sleep and wake up when seventh grade is over. I climb back onto the toilet paper roll.
“Go. Away,” I say. “I don’t care anymore.” I let my hair fall down around my face and ignore him until he finally unlocks the stall and walks out.
“If Lewiston’s handing out Starburst, I’ll bring some in,” he says as he leaves. “Though you gotta wash your hands. That’s just unsanitary.”
I stay silent, and he heads out, the soft clack of the door letting me know I’m alone again. I leave the stall door open and stare at the rust-colored stains on the floor. The hurt is far away, almost numb. Part of me feels like I’m watching myself from above, watching the loser kid, the bullied kid, hiding out in the bathroom, sniveling and pathetic and sad. It feels so removed from me that it almost doesn’t hurt, but there’s a whisper, a hint of what’s to come, like when you slam something on your toe and there’s a second of emptiness before the red-hot pain crashes in. I know it’s waiting for me.
A few minutes later Andre comes in, but he doesn’t even try very hard. He takes one look at me, sitting on the toilet paper holder, and pauses by the sink.
“Can I get you anything?” His voice is quiet, as always, but he sounds more…there. Like he’s actually present.
I glance at him, then back down. “No. Thanks, though.”
“No problem. You want to maybe come out, circle up with us? Lewiston is really upset. She’s trying to get some answers.”
I look up. “Is anyone admitting to anything?”
Andre’s worried face answers for him. Yeah. I didn’t think so.
I shake my head. “You go ahead. I’m fine.”
Andre stays a few more seconds. “Okay.” He starts to walk out.
“Hey. Theo?” he says, one hand on the door.
I give a barely audible grunt.
“Just…for what it’s worth, I didn’t do it. I think your photos are pretty dope. And, well, don’t know if you’ll want to, but I talked about your work with the band, and we’d hire you to take some stills. If you’re interested.”
I don’t say anything, and Andre shuffles his feet a little. Finally he says, “Yeah, didn’t figure it’d be something you’d want. That’s cool.”
I get an uncomfortable clench in my stomach at how small his voice sounds. I close my eyes for a second, then open them again, planning to try to thank him for even caring enough about my photos to ask.
But he’s gone, silent as usual.
It’s not until Alice comes into the boys’ room that I actually wrap up my pity party and get out of there.
I’ve moved from the toilet paper holder to the toilet itself, with my head buried in my arms, when the door flies open for the fourth time. Alice comes in at a trot, almost slamming into the urinals on the wall.
“Oh, hey! I guess I never actually thought about these! You know, they look sort of creepy, all lined up like that. Like upright coffins.” She peers closer. “WOW. They smell pretty bad, though.” She steps back. “Definitely would need some preparation before shooting anything in here.”
I’ve barely moved, though there’s something horribly embarrassing about sitting on a toilet in the presence of a girl. Even Alice.
“You’re not pooping, right?” she says, coming toward the stalls. My door is still slightly ajar, and she hesitates for a second. “Because I totally want to respect your privacy if you are.”
I kick at the door so it closes, then swings wider. “No. I’m not pooping,” I say, and my voice sounds weird and flat, even to me.
“Good.” She moves to the stall next to me. “So, these look pretty much the same as the girls’ room. Different graffiti, though.” She’s silent for a minute.
I bend down to look at her feet. They’re planted like she’s sitting.
“I actually really do have to pee,” she says. “So if you don’t mind turning the water on in one of the sinks that would be really helpful. I get pee shy.”
I take a deep breath. My eyes are still red and sticky, and I have that gross embarrassed, nauseated feeling in my stomach, but…well, Alice. Also my butt is getting kind of sore.
I get up and go to the sink, turning on the faucet.
“Thank you!” Alice calls from inside her thankfully closed and locked stall. “Does that ever happen to you? If it’s really quiet, you can’t pee? My sister used to sing me the pee song to help. But now she’s at college.”
I don’t even know where to start. “What’s the pee song?” I ask finally. I don’t want it to get too quiet, in case Alice slows midstream.
“Well, you know, it was really the Star Wars theme, sung with the word pee. Like PEE Pee, peepeepee PEE Pee…” She trails off.
“Done!” she announces, and comes out, fixing her tights. “Thank you. Seriously.” She stands next to me at the sink and washes her hands.
I turn and look at the mirror, at our two reflections. Her face looks totally normal today, which is a little disappointing. Our eyes meet in the mirror, and she grins.
“Check it,” she says, pointing to the back of her head.
I look and try not to scream. She’s created a kind of Voldemort-coming-out-of-Quirrell’s-head situation, except that instead of a Dark Lord, there’s some reptilian thing erupting from her skull.
“Wow. That’s…wow.”
I seem to have lost my verbal skills. But she beams.
“I know,” she responds. “It’s my pièce de résistance! I was so excited for today!” She sighs.
A weird silence falls. I want to tell her to save her breath and go back and circle up with the others, but at the same time I’m glad she’s here. I had gone from Beast anger to more basic sad-and-bored. Truth? I don’t know how much longer I could have hung out on that toilet.
“So,” she says. “Everyone’s freaking out, kind of.” She reports this in her usual cheerful, almost singsongy voice.
I give a half shrug/half nod. I don’t want to say what I’m thinking, which is, in a nutshell, GOOD. I HOPE THEY’RE ALL CRYING INTO THEIR STARBURSTS.
But Alice goes on. “You know, I make movies, so I write a lot of stories, and I’m also pretty good at observing people.” She pauses. “Usually people don’t really talk to me much, so it’s easy to observe.”
I can’t help glancing up at this. Her voice is still bright, but a little of my self-righteous anger slithers away. It can’t be easy to be Alice, no matter how fun she makes it look.
“Anyway,” she s
ays, after a pause, “I bring that up because I’ve been observing the four other people in the room, and honestly, Theo, I don’t think any of them did it.” She looks at me, and her dark eyes are sympathetic. “I don’t know what to say. But everyone seems seriously confused.”
I blink and grab the shreds of my anger. I’d rather be pissed and surly than pathetic. “Whatever, Alice. One of them DID do it, though. And I’m pretty sure I know who. Maybe the others know, and maybe they don’t. I have no idea. For all I know, they’re covering up for each other.”
She shakes her head, her hair swinging out of her bun. “Oops! I need to keep the hair out of Slinky back there!” she says, grabbing it and pinning it all up. “Can you check if any is…you know…sticking?”
She turns, and I’m confronted with the reptile bursting out of her skull. Slinky? Seriously? Freaking ALICE.
I try not to back up. “It’s uh…it’s fine, I think.”
She whips back around so that instead of blood and scales, I’m confronted with her giant smile. “Thank you!” she chirps. “Anyway, I don’t think they’re covering. I told you. I’m a keen observer of humankind. They’re perplexed.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Perplexed.” It’s not a question.
She nods. “Yes. Flummoxed. Confused. Discombobulated. Shocked. You get the idea. They’re not acting like people with something to hide.”
“But they are! Someone knows something. Obviously. Or else we wouldn’t be here in the first place!” Oh good. Just like that the anger is back, and poor Alice is right in the kill zone. “I don’t care how good you are at observing people! Because what I’m good at is facts. And the fact here is that this is the third time my stuff’s been trashed, and someone in our little Justice Club has it in for me.”
“But if you’d—” she starts, but I’m done.
“WHY SHOULD I?” I yell. And the shouting-raging-monster-me is there, ready to attack. Alice winces and moves away. But I’m too far gone to care. “GIVE ME ONE. GOOD. REASON! What do I owe you, or the rest of them, to go out there and keep ruining my vacation pretending we’re all being brave and honest and opening up and becoming BFFs. Tell me! WHY?”
Alice has backed up to the door, and she’s now holding it open, waiting. I just stare.
“Because we’re all here too. And some of us are innocent. You’re not the only victim here,” she says softly. “You’re not the only one who matters. And I know you’re a good enough person to care about that.”
I open my mouth, then close it again. I try again to grab my self-pity, but instead, I see Andre’s face, when he talked about his band practicing without him, and even Molly, whose hands still shake when we’re supposed to be sharing in circle.
We stand there for a few seconds, or maybe longer. My shoulders drop, and I can actually feel my heartbeat slow. Finally I nod. “Yeah. Okay,” I say, and head for the door.
As we leave, we nearly bang into Jax, who is coming in at a run. “You all good?” he asks as he rounds the corner. “Glad you’re coming out, but, dude, I gotta go. Like, NOW. You probably wanna dip.”
Alice and I look at each other, and I make my eyes big. She nods vigorously. “Yeah, let’s get out of here,” she says, and we slam the door as Jax flies into a stall behind us.
Alice glances at me as we walk back to the classroom. “That was a kind of close call,” she says.
All I can do is laugh. But by the time I get back to the room, I don’t feel like laughing anymore.
When we walk in, everyone freezes, old-school-Western-style. I almost expect someone to draw a pistol or something. But instead, Ms. Lewiston says, “Oh, Theo, I’m glad you came back.”
I shrug.
“When Jax comes in from the bathroom, we’re going to circle up and talk about this. And, people”—here she looks at each of us in turn—“it’s time to open up. It’s time to step up. It’s time.”
As usual, we’re in our circle, with the piece of fabric on the floor and the birch talking stick next to it. Even the pathetic drugstore fake candle is back, which fuels my rage all over again.
Andre looks down at his desk. Molly glares at something behind Ms. Lewiston’s head. Erik looks at her like she’s giving very intricate instructions in Swahili on crocheting. He doesn’t even have the brains to look guilty. And Alice carefully pokes behind her head to make sure Slinky is still in place.
I have exactly zero hopes for this entire thing.
Jax bounces in and pulls his chair into place (with the obligatory screeeeeeeeeech and Molly’s Why Me, Lord face).
“Okay, so we’re doing this,” Ms. Lewiston says once Jax sits. “Who wants to start? We can begin by each saying how we feel right now. And I want to remind you: honesty.”
She hands me the talking stick, and I take it but let it fall on the desk.
“Theo?” she says, and her voice is normal, but there’s something in the way she says those two syllables, like she wants to push me and protect me at the same time.
I sigh. Pick up the stick. Flick it between my fingers. “Well, I feel…” I pause. Look up. Molly’s eyes are on me, and she’s scowling. I scowl back. “I’m mad. Like, seriously epically NOT HAPPY. Because this makes three times. Three times someone has bothered to ruin something I made. So let’s review, shall we? First of all, at the gallery, the five of you were there, okay? You were RIGHT THERE. And you’re all saying you saw nothing, did nothing, know nothing. And the next day, someone went into the darkroom and ruined my long-exposure cameras. And again, no one knows anything. And now this. Now, with only the six of us in the building, it happened again. So yeah, while it’s technically possible I guess, through some kind of time-space continuum rip, that someone else vandalized the gallery and NOBODY SAW ANYTHING AT ALL, there’s no way anyone else messed with these pinhole cameras. So that means this whole week, all the talking, and yoga-ball soccer, and candy”—OOPS. I feel rather than see Jax jerk in the seat next to me like something stung him. Oh well—“was total bull. At least for someone. And that just really, really…” My voice trails off.
“Stinks.” This is Alice, filling in the word.
Ms. Lewiston doesn’t reprimand Alice for talking without the talking stick. She nods.
“Thanks, Theo. Anger seems pretty reasonable right now. But maybe you’re feeling other things too?”
I shake my head, not in disagreement, but because I’m done talking for now. “Who’s next?” I ask, holding up the stick.
“I’ll take it,” Alice says, and as I pass it to her across the circle, she gives my hand a small squeeze.
“I can tell you, I feel betrayed, I guess,” she says, leaning back in her seat and speaking in the same cheerful voice as usual. “I feel like, for a little while at least, I had friends, the way normal people do. Like we might say hi to each other, or ask each other how our weekend was. And now I guess I feel like someone here who would trick Theo into thinking they were friends, and that they cared about the cameras, then would trash them…well. I guess someone who would do that wouldn’t really be my friend after all.”
There’s silence after this, and everyone looks at their desks. Then Erik slams his hand down and looks up, straight at Alice. Except her head is bowed, so he’s actually looking more at Slinky. He does a double take, then says, with the kind of tone I associate with battlefield speeches, “I’ll still say hi to you! And ask about your weekend!” His face is quite red.
Jax raises one eyebrow, but no one says anything.
Alice looks at Erik for several seconds before smiling. “Thanks” is all she says. But Erik looks satisfied.
It crosses my mind to wonder if he’s an actual sociopath. Like, someone who actually doesn’t realize that destroying someone’s work and also pretending to be their friend is all kinds of messed up. But he can play his Good Boy Scout role for Alice all
he wants. I’m not buying it.
“Who’s next?” she asks, holding out the stick.
Molly grabs it. Her hands are trembling again. “I’ll go,” she says. “I’ll tell you how I feel. I’m scared. I mean, I can’t be suspended. I can’t. I just can’t! My parents…I told them this whole week was a special intensive pre-algebra prep course, which is fine, but if I have to explain…” She stops talking.
Ms. Lewiston looks concerned. “But a letter went home, Molly. They signed—”
“I signed it, okay? I sign everything that gets sent home! And I can’t get in trouble over this. Don’t you get it?” Molly’s scarlet now, holding on to her ponytail like she wants to pull it out of her head.
Jax leans forward. “Girl, what is your problem? You’re every parent’s dream and you know it! What, you think if you do one thing wrong, they’re going to lose it? Try living in my shoes for a week and see how you like it! ‘Jax was disruptive in science!’ ‘Jax needs to concentrate more in math!’ ‘Unfortunately, Jax’s last quiz shows no improvement.’ Man! You worry about messing up once like it would be the end of the world!”
Ms. Lewiston turns to him. “Jax, first of all, it’s not your turn to speak. And second, I want you to think about what it feels like to have your words invalidated like that. To be told ‘you shouldn’t feel that way.’ Because that’s what you told Molly. She’s—”
“That’s not what I said!” Jax yells, jumping up.
“That’s exactly what you said! And you know NOTHING about my life, got it?” Molly yells back. She stands up, pushing her chair so that it falls over with a giant CRASH.
Alice squeaks.
“My parents can’t handle ANYTHING. Okay? My brother died this summer, and they—they can barely get out of bed in the morning. They don’t cook, they don’t shop, they don’t check homework, they don’t pay bills. I’m keeping everything going for me and my sister and We. Are. FINE. But they’re so useless they might as well have died too!”
With that she shoves past Ms. Lewiston, who’s standing up, and pushes Jax with all her strength. He gives a cry of alarm and, off balance, falls over, crashing into his chair.
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