Molly sobs and rushes toward the door. As she pushes it open, Ms. Davis must be pulling it from the other side, because the door flies open, and Molly smashes into Davis at full speed.
“OOOF!” Ms. Davis grunts, crashing into the wall. “What is going on here?”
But Molly Claremont, paragon of Shipton excellence, has broken. “GO TO HELL!” she shrieks, and dashes down the hall.
The only sound is the crashing of her footsteps.
From the floor, Jax groans a little. “Dude. I hit my head, I think.” He lifts his hand away from the back of his head, and sure enough, there’s blood on his hand.
“Ooooh, that looks sick,” Alice whispers, but one look at Davis and she shuts up with a squeak.
“Mr. Fletcher. To the office. Immediately. And, Ms. Lewiston”—here Davis pulls herself up like an X-Men villain and glares—“come with me.”
The funny part is that when I sat in the bathroom stall surrounded by graffiti and the unrelenting stank of classmates who don’t even try to aim, I thought things were bad. And yet, in the fifteen minutes since I came out, we’ve gone nuclear. Leaving aside the whole someone-hates-me-and-wants-to-ruin-my-stuff factor, now:
Davis is raging, and if that whole “staff cuts” threat from before is true, Ms. Lewiston could lose her job.
Molly’s life is legit falling apart and she’s freaking out.
Jax has a bleeding head wound (a real one, not an Alice-created one).
Truth? Somewhere deep inside, I’m actually frustrated that everything’s blown up like this, because it means I’m not even the one people feel sorry for anymore. I mean, I can’t even feel all that sorry for myself, which is a serious buzzkill.
Andre, Erik, Alice, and I stare at each other.
“Well, does anyone want this?” Alice asks, holding up the talking stick.
Andre and I silently shake our heads. Erik stares at it for long seconds, as though trying to set it on fire with his mind. (Although maybe it’s just me who used to try doing that. Never worked.)
Finally Erik grabs the stick. “I want it,” he says. “Because I have something to say.”
I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. Here we go. But the real question is: Will he threaten us to keep quiet, or does he figure that none of us losers is even worth the effort? I try to look like I don’t care, but the stabby stomach pains are back, and I want to curl up in a ball. I try to remind myself that this is vindication…that I knew it was him all along. But instead, there’s a deep gut-churning ache. Part of me, I realize, still wants to be wrong.
Erik looks past me, right at Andre. “I want to say I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about the fact that you said you were in the bathroom, not in the gallery, and none of us even noticed you. That’s just…not right. I mean, it was a small group, and you’re…you’re like…” He’s quiet for a second, looking puzzled.
“One-sixth of us,” Alice chirps.
Erik shoots her a grateful look. “Yeah. Exactly. It’s not cool that we didn’t even notice you.”
Andre nods slowly. “Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”
Erik nods too. We all sit in silence, nodding at each other like those old-school bobbleheads. I lean back and exhale. I don’t know what to do with the relief that makes my arms and back floppy. I close my eyes for a second, wishing this whole thing were over and I could move on to important things, like looking up new darkroom techniques on YouTube or clearing a massive deuce from Otis’s litter box. Anything other than this.
Alice speaks up. “I knew you weren’t there. But I thought it would be more fun if you came this week.”
We all spin to look at her. She looks back, her cheeks a little pinker than usual. “I just…well, we have LA and math together, and you’re so quiet I wondered if you had a secret. Like, a secret persona. I thought it would be interesting to get to know you…” She stops talking and looks at Andre. “Well. Sorry. I guess I want to apologize.”
Andre looks stunned. “You what?” he asks, and his voice is squeaky-toy-high at the end. “Wait, are you serious?”
It should be noted that Andre’s voice is now literally the loudest I’ve ever heard. I wonder if he’s going to go full death-metal-crazy on Alice, which is somewhat exciting, somewhat terrifying to imagine.
But Erik, apparently, is too committed to his freakishly-fake-nice-guy routine to leave it hanging.
“Well, I’m seriously glad you’re here, even though it was a bad call,” he says. “I mean, otherwise I don’t think I’d ever have known about your drumming, or your sick band, or anything. And now I’m following you on YouTube and Instagram, so you’ve got fifty thousand and one followers!”
Andre stares for a second, then laughs, which I think shows that he’s a seriously decent human being. He shakes his head. “Alice, you’re a trip. Well, at least you noticed me, so that’s cool.” He laughs again. “We’re good.”
We lapse back into silence. The gut churn starts all over again.
I want Erik—and everyone else—to tell the truth. I want to know if they’re all lying, all faking everything I’m seeing and hearing. But at the same time, I don’t want to know. If I don’t know for sure, I don’t have to deal with it. I look away from them, watching the door, waiting for Ms. Lewiston to come back, waiting for Molly to come back, even waiting for Jax to come back and reassure us he doesn’t have a concussion or anything.
Finally the door swings open and Molly walks in. Her face is blotchy, half red, half pale, and her careful braid is frizzed out. But otherwise, she looks normal.
Luckily, we have Alice, who will always choose awkward comments over awkward silence. She jumps up. “You’re back! I was worried about you but had a feeling you didn’t want company. You seem like someone who would rather cry alone.” She walks over to Molly and puts her arms around her. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t hug you, right?”
Molly stands there, her arms pinned to her sides, while Alice hugs her. Molly’s face is frighteningly close to Slinky, but somehow her expression is empty of its usual Someone Hand Me a Vat of Hand Sanitizer look. It’s empty of everything, really, but she closes her eyes for a second and lets herself be hugged.
Alice lets go. “Here,” she says, leading Molly back to her chair, which someone has picked up. “I brought you something.”
Alice opens her backpack, and Andre, Erik, and I all peer forward, curious. Molly leans back slightly. I can’t totally blame her. With Alice, there’s no knowing what might come out of there. Could be an origami crane, could be a pickled shark in a jar. As we all learned the hard way.
But Alice pulls out a small wax-paper envelope. “Here. I made these last night.”
Molly opens the bag and gasps. “You made this for me?”
She holds it up so we can all see. It’s a cookie, but that doesn’t really do it justice, because it looks like it was decorated with lace and cobwebs and snowflakes. It’s the most intricate thing I’ve ever seen.
Alice shrugs. “Well, I thought you’d like it, since you’re kind of into sugar. I love to bake. Or, really, to decorate baking. It’s not that different from special effects, though I use less blood.”
Molly blinks, and for a minute her empty expression looks so impossibly sad that I have to look away. But she smiles at Alice, a real smile, and her blotches fade a little.
“It looks amazing,” she says. “But I can’t eat it. I want to save it forever!”
“It’ll mold or something,” Alice says with a shrug. “So you should probably eat it.”
“You could take a picture!” Erik says, then claps his hand over his mouth, his eyes huge. It would have been funny—like a kid who dropped an f-bomb at the Thanksgiving table—except that it jackhammers home that there are secrets and lies all over the place.
There’s an
other awkward silence that even Alice doesn’t try to break.
Finally I speak up. For this moment, at least, I feel like I have nothing left to lose.
“Seriously, you guys, it’s okay. But…can you tell me the truth? I don’t even care anymore.” I pause and sigh. “Okay, I care, but…whatever. I just want to move on. So, you know. If you can tell me anything…” I let the words trail off and look at them, starting with Erik, then looking around the room.
No one is looking at me. No one answers.
The only sound in the room is the soft crunch of Molly eating.
Ms. Lewiston doesn’t come back. Instead, Ms. Davis walks in, her shoes slamming into the floor like she’s trying to hammer nails.
She levels us all with a stare and says, “I think it’s abundantly clear that this ‘Justice Club’ ”—and here she makes totally annoying finger quotes—“is not going to yield satisfactory answers. Theo, am I right that your work has been tampered with again? In this classroom? With only your so-called partners in justice knowledgeable about its existence?”
I close my eyes for a second, wishing for a TARDIS, or a wormhole, or even a stomach flu…anything that would get me out of this room. When I open them, Alice, Andre, Erik, and Molly are all staring at me. I lower my gaze and shrug.
Ms. Davis stomps forward until her sensible skirt-and-jacket combo are inches from me. I don’t look up.
“Mr. Gustav. Please. I don’t know about you, but I would like answers here, and that means starting now, with your own voice. Did you or did you not have work ruined again last night?”
I swallow hard. It’s not like I’m going to lie. Why would I? The cameras are gone, and someone here must have done it, unless there’s some secret photography-hating spy ninja-ing around the school and popping out when everything’s dark and quiet. This seems like an unlikely scenario.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “I guess. I mean, we don’t know who did it, but—”
Ms. Davis bulldozes right over me, and honesty compels me to admit I don’t really have anything useful to add, anyway. I mean, the cameras were trashed. Period.
“So,” Ms. Davis says, looking around at everyone else. “It seems that Ms. Lewiston’s plan for openness and caring hasn’t quite panned out. Your time and mine has been wasted, and for what? For some fantasy version of education. Now here we are, with one day left of vacation, and we are no closer to the truth, are we?”
No one answers, which seems wise. Ms. Davis already looks way too delighted that this has gone so badly off course.
“Now that we’re done playing at ‘alternative’ solutions, we will proceed to the point where we should have started in the first place. Theo, you are free to leave today and not return until school starts on Monday. You were victimized here and bear no responsibility. The rest of you will come back tomorrow and sit in detention. Real detention. Ms. Lewiston can sit with you, but you will be in my office, and following my rules. If no one confesses, you will all be suspended for three days, beginning on Monday. I hope for your sakes that someone manages to tell the truth, or you will all be considered guilty. And your coaches, teachers, and parents will of course be informed.”
Alice sneezes twice, and Ms. Davis looks at her suspiciously but says nothing. Instead, she looks back at me.
“I’m sorry, Theo, that you were not only victimized yet again, but also forced to lose your vacation to this obviously unsuccessful effort. I’m afraid Ms. Lewiston has all kinds of excuses and stories that allow perpetrators to feel entitled to the damage they cause. Again, it’s a real pity that you were caught up in this. It’s almost like you were a victim all over again. I am sorry.”
It should be noted that Ms. Davis does not look sorry. She looks freaking delighted, and her mouth seems to savor the word victim a little more than a normal person’s would. The sight of her barely contained glee makes my fist clench.
“I’m actually fine with what Ms. Lewiston did,” I say, and I make myself look around the room. “Even if we didn’t find out who did it, I think she’s right. I think there’s probably more to the story than I know, and I’m glad we were all here. I mean, I definitely got to know my classmates better.”
My face flames as I say this, but watching the smirk fall off Ms. Davis’s face is almost worth it. Still, if I thought my little speech was going to rally the troops, I was destined to be horribly disappointed. No one stands up in support, or tearfully confesses to vandalizing my work, for that matter. Alice appears to have lost all interest in the conversation and is squinting at something outside the window and murmuring under her breath. The others look down at the floor.
I let my hair fall over my face. Whatever. It’s not like I expected them to suddenly step up and admit the truth. No matter what I said—and let’s be honest, I mostly said it to mess with Ms. Davis—these guys might have stories and secrets of their own, but they’re still keeping to their proper place in the food chain of Shipton Middle School. They matter, and they’re not about to screw with that for me. I want to be angry again, but instead, all that’s left is a hollow gut-punch emptiness. This train wreck of an ending confirms what I guess I knew: people can’t help but disappoint you, no matter what.
Ms. Davis makes a horse-snort sound and yammers on about effective discipline and zero tolerance (of course) until finally she winds down.
“Do you have anything you want to say to Theo before we leave?” she asks.
I look up for a second, but no one meets my eyes. Molly and Erik are staring at the floor, no doubt thinking about how much it will suck to tell their parents that they’re going to be suspended after this whole thing. Andre looks at Alice like he’s expecting her to speak up for him, but she’s staring out the window and doesn’t say anything. After a few seconds, Andre stares down at his lap and stays silent.
“Fine.” Ms. Davis sounds downright triumphant, which makes me feel even more of that post-puking hollow queasiness. “Theo, you are free to wait in here or in the lobby until pickup,” she says. “And I want you to know, this kind of hate, this bullying, this blatant unkindness to make a student feel unwelcome…well, it has no place in our school. We will continue to have ZERO TOLERANCE for this behavior.” She takes a long, theatrical look at her watch. “And as soon as Ms. Lewiston returns to chaperone you, I will go prepare my office to serve as a detention room. Then she will escort you down there.”
With that she flaps her hands at everyone, telling them to pack up at once and asking for “silence, PLEASE.” She has to call Alice’s name twice, and Alice squeaks and knocks her messenger bag off the desk before getting up.
I almost smile, but the sight of everyone standing up and looking everywhere but at me stops me. I let my hair hang down in my face and stare at the floor. Then I lean over and stare more closely.
“Alice, are those…Why do you have giant metallic Sharpies?” I ask slowly.
The pens rolling around are the huge Super Sharpies, each as thick as three normal markers, in colors like metallic blue, orange, bronze, and so on. The kind that were used to draw all over my work.
I look up. “Alice?” I say again, and I can’t help it, my voice cracks a little.
Everyone freezes. Alice looks at me, then lifts her chin. “What?” she says, her voice belligerent. “They’re pens. I like to draw. I—”
“Where did you get them?” I ask.
Alice looks down. “I don’t…I don’t know. I don’t remember. I’ve had them a while.” She bends down and starts shoving them in a bag, and I stare at the creepy thing sticking out of her head, wondering how well I know anybody.
Alice.
Alice?
Alice, who wants to make friends, and who does sick special effects, and who brought in a cookie for Molly? Alice, who has a giant bronze Sharpie in her bag and doesn’t seem to want to talk about it? The world tips a little bi
t, and I stare. The vertigo feeling comes back, and I desperately wish I were anywhere else. I open my mouth, then close it, because what is there to say, really?
Alice doesn’t look at me.
Before I can think of something, Ms. Lewiston walks in.
Ms. Davis gives another theatrical glance at her watch, then at Ms. Lewiston. “Ah. Finally. Can you please ensure that the room is put back the way it needs to be for class next week, then escort the students under suspicion to my office?” Without waiting for a reply, she says, “Thank you,” and stomps out of the room.
Ms. Lewiston looks tired.
“Jax’s father is picking him up to get his head checked, though he didn’t black out, and there doesn’t seem to be a risk of concussion.” She drops into the chair next to me and turns, a half smile on her face. “Silver lining, I guess?”
Silver lining. That’s another of my dad’s favorite sayings. Or at least, it used to be….Who knows if he still says it anymore. Any catastrophe, any dropped eggs or missed flights or spilled milk, he’d find something totally irrelevant to remark on, then smile and say, “Hashtag silver lining, right?” Hearing Ms. Lewiston say it doesn’t help my mood. At all. I don’t smile back, and her face falls.
“Look, Theo. I understand how you must—” she starts, but I shake my head. Hard.
Oh good. That anger I wanted earlier is showing up. It floods through me, and suddenly I’m too mad to even look at Lewiston’s face. I don’t want to see her worry or sadness. This whole freaking disaster is her fault, and I cannot—I WILL not—listen to any more of her garbage.
“STOP. Just…stop.” My voice is louder than I meant it to be.
“Theo,” she starts again, but I stand up, kicking my chair back so that it crashes into the one behind it.
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