Book of Dark #1: Always Stand Up

by Deepak Khanchandani

  Chapter 10

  The Commotion in Chemistry

  The chemistry lab was long and narrow and took up half of B block. It was designed, on purpose, to have only two rows of desks, one on either side of the room, so that each student could access the gas pipes that ran along the walls for their Bunsen burners. The desks themselves were made for two pupils each, which was fitting since chemistry experiments tended to require pairing up.

  Outside, Keane was sneaking toward the classroom in a very catlike manner, his back against the wall, with Zara following close behind. The hallway was mostly quiet since class had already started, with only the faint voice of Mr. Green seeping out and echoing against the walls: “As the practical portion of this course starts from today, I hope all of you have selected your lab partners.”

  Keane hesitated, and Zara, slow to react, bumped right into him.

  “Will you move your butt?” she whispered sharply.

  “Shhh!” he hissed.

  “You shhh! Why’d you stop?”

  “There’s a window on the door,” he said, pointing.

  Zara craned her neck and peered past Keane to confirm that there was, in fact, a small transparent square embedded in the wood.

  She jerked her head back to the wall.

  “Okay, so what do we do?”

  Keane peeked through the small gap between door and wall, and gasped. “Oh no! He’s already handing out papers.” The panic began to rise. “We’re so late. More than late. And Greenster hates late. I don’t want to go back to Smith’s office. I can’t take any more detention. I just can’t!”

  “Okay, calm down. Just… let me see again.”

  As Zara brushed past Keane, she remained oblivious to the shudder that her touch sent rippling down his spine, and to the goose bumps it formed on his arms.

  While she peeked through the square window, Keane’s gaze lingered on the cheek dimples that had formed because of the crooked scowl she was pulling. She didn’t seem to like their prospects.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Keane declared, quite suddenly and with unprecedented confidence. While Zara was surprised, he was in absolute shock.

  He wondered where in the world that had come from. Had the sudden physical proximity to Zara surged his adrenaline levels, sparking the idea? Or could it just be all that bully-evasion practice finally starting to yield dividends?

  Zara looked him in the eye and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I trust you,” she said.

  Those eyes were going to be the death of him.

  “Students who don’t have a lab partner will be assigned one,” came Tristan’s voice from within the classroom.

  With a quick shake of his head, Keane refocused on how he was going to evade the over-attentive Greenster eye.

  He silently pointed Zara toward a free desk that he could see through the gap. It was his regular desk and he was glad to see that no one had claimed it yet. Zara narrowed her eyes and nodded curtly: mission accepted.

  When Greenster turned to write on the board, Keane sprang into action. He grabbed Zara’s hand and pushed silently but swiftly through the door.

  A wave of snickers rippled across the classroom when the other students saw them, but luckily none of them raised the alarm. Keane stayed low as he crept across the front of the class, with Zara’s hand held firmly in his, and one eye glued to Tristan who was, fortunately, still laying down chalk. Zara followed Keane diligently.

  They were inches from the desk when Tristan began to turn around. Keane nimbly swiveled Zara into her seat and slid into his too.

  Fortunately, Tristan aborted his turn, and continued to write as he explained the assignment some more.

  Keane chuckled with relief, but when Zara flashed him her most adorable smile yet, tucking back a lock of loose hair as she did, his smile ebbed, and all he could think of was how badly he ached to kiss her. So very badly.

  But he looked away before he could say or do anything dumb; before he could negate the first truly ninja-worthy feat he had ever pulled off. Brok would be so proud.

  Zara selected a notebook from her bag and started to industriously jot down everything written on the board. Verbatim. Keane barely noticed this, though, as he placed an elbow on the desk, propped his head against his hand and, smiling more dimwittedly than he knew, settled down to just watch Zara write. A blissful sigh silently escaped his lips.

  “If you want to change partners once the experiments have commenced,” said Tristan, “well, tough luck. And just one more thing—Mr. Davies, Ms. Mehrzeen…”

  He turned to look straight at the newcomers.

  Keane’s head slipped off his hand and bounced off the desk. Zara dropped her pen with fright.

  But it was when she started to wave awkwardly at Tristan, dopey smile to boot, that Keane felt the time had come to become one with the ground, and began to sink lower and lower in his chair.

  “Nice of you two to drop by,” Tristan said with a smile, clearly proud of his own cunning, “but do not expect to be admitted into my class the next time you show up late.”

  To Keane’s relief, though, Tristan swiftly returned to the board and carried on scrawling across it. “What are the practicals and how will I be grading them, you ask? Well, let’s spend some time going through that now shall we?”

  “Close one,” Zara giggled, turning to Keane.

  Keane was just about to agree with her when Brok’s head popped out from under the desk.

  “Hello!” it whispered.

  Keane almost browned his pants with shock, while Zara let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  This time, it wasn’t just Tristan who turned. The entire class wanted to know what had spooked the new girl.

  Zara had both hands clasped on her mouth and could do little but stare back dumbly at Tristan. Keane, meanwhile, had started to hyperventilate, his white-knuckled hands clenching the desk as if his life depended on it.

  Tristan raised his eyebrows at Zara as if to ask: Well?

  She grinned nervously while desperately kneeing Brok’s head back under the table.

  “It was a-a rat,” she blurted. “Big rat. But it’s gone now.” She stole a glance to confirm that Brok’s head was, in fact, no longer visible. “Yeah, all gone.”

  “A rat?” said Tristan, skeptically rubbing his chin.

  “Uh… umm…” Zara floundered. She turned to Keane for help but he looked like he just wanted death to come forth and claim him right then and there. So, she swiftly turned back to the teacher, now sporting an edgy smile.

  “No, not a rat,” she rambled, “Looked like a rat. Didn’t quite catch it. But, um, whatever it was, it’s gone now. Really, quite gone now.”

  It didn’t help that she ended with the least sincere grin that Keane had ever seen. He knew that there was no way Greenster was buying any of this, but he also knew that the chemistry teacher had a class full of students with short-attention spans to attend to.

  And, sure enough, Tristan returned to the blackboard. “Moving swiftly along,” he said, “practicals count for exactly thirty percent of your grade…”

  A weight lifted and Keane exhaled deeply. Then, relief gave way to annoyance and he pulled Brok’s head back out from under the desk.

  “Brok! What are you doing down there?” he whispered.

  “Ah! Aha!” Brok whispered back. “This is the genius of me, this is. I’ve outdone myself, I really have!”

  Keane and Zara exchanged dubious looks, but Brok carried on entirely unperturbed.

  “So, you know how they always get us on the way to chemistry? So I thinks to myself, I says, Brok ol’ buddy, ol’ chum, ol’ pal, how can we avoid getting pummeled for the twenty billionth time. And then I says to myself, doi! Just get to class before the bell and then no one can getcha!” So Brok had had the exact opposite idea to Keane’s. Keane could see in the boy’s eyes that he genuinely believed he’d hatched the best plan that had ever been hatched since plan hatching began. “Absolutely no one!” finished
Brok, his fingers wriggling evilly.

  “Um, other than hall monitors?” noted Zara.

  “Okay, maybe them,” Brok conceded. “But just them!”

  “People on toilet breaks?”

  “And them.”

  “Students standing outside on punishments?”

  “Them… too… I guess.”

  “Students with free period?”

  “Hey, you know what? You’re in my seat. Cos that’s my seat. Hey, Keane, who is this girl and why is it that she’s in my seat?”

  “I’m Zara,” said Zara. “And you haven’t explained why you were still down there once class had already started.”

  “Yeah, Brok,” said Keane, the validity of the question dawning on him. “Why were you still under there?”

  “Oh, right,” said Brok, as if only just realizing that indefinitely maintaining the unnatural position he’d assumed was not exactly normal. “So, when I got here, and you weren’t here, well, I thought if Randy showed up, this time I’d have to take it on the nose and… and, well, who knows where else! Also,” he added, with a yawn, “I may or may not have fallen asleep just a little bit.”

  The sharp knock on the door startled Keane and Zara and, together, they crammed Brok’s head back into the space under the desk.

  Tristan answered the door to Mrs. Applebottom whose distraught face sent muted chuckles coursing through the classroom—there was no trait the students of John Atkins shared more than their hatred for the infamous Grouchina.

  “Mr. Green! Oh, thank goodness you’re here! Please come quickly!” urged Mrs. Applebottom. “The Committee needs you. There’s been a disaster with the floral arrangements!”

  “Oh no! Not the flowers!” squealed Tristan, his pitch so high that only dogs and bats could perceive it. The giggles making rounds of the classroom amplified. Shocked by his own overreaction, Tristan hastened to clear his throat. “I mean, I’ll be right with you, Mrs. Applebottom.”

  He turned to the students, “Class, read your handouts. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” As he was dragged away by Mrs. Applebottom, he hastily reminded them about his policy on ‘funny business’ and how there was to be none of it while he was gone. But, inevitably, the room erupted in a cacophony of conversation and ringtones almost before the door had even shut fully.

  Brok popped back out from under the desk. He looked angry. “I resent being pushed around, I’ll have you know.”

  “And I resent having to cover for kids hidden under my desk,” said Zara, as Brok struggled to extract himself from his hiding place. Only with both Keane and Zara’s help did Brok finally get to his feet. He then threw his hands into the air as if he’d just completed a perfect gymnast’s dismount.

  “Ta-da!”

  This had no discernible impact on the class. Only a bored brunette sitting one desk over turned her head, and even she looked away promptly. Brok was displeased by her lack of amazement. “Oh, yeah? Well, let’s see you pull that off without losing your undies.” The girl didn’t react, finding the chemistry assignment more interesting than Brok. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  Brok turned to Zara. “You can go back to wherever you’re supposed to be sitting now, new girl,” he said, patting her shoulder.

  Keane squirmed in his seat. “Um, so, yeah, Zara and I, we… decided to partner up, see?” he mumbled awkwardly.

  Brok’s peepers grew to half the size of his face, giving a new meaning to the term ‘puppy dog eyes’.

  “Y-you? H-her? P-partners?” Brok’s lips whimpered as he spoke. “B-but what about you-me-partners?”

  Keane grabbed Brok’s collar and took him aside. “Oh, come on, buddy, I might actually have a chance here,” he whispered.

  “Guys? You know I can hear you, right?” said Zara.

  “You’re… you’re dumping me?” said Brok, ignoring her.

  “No! It’s not like that, buddy,” said Keane. “We’ll still work together.”

  “You’re dumping me!” cried Brok in anguish.

  “No, honestly…” Keane took Brok even further aside. “She’s not that smart, so we’ll kinda need to work together.”

  “Still right here,” said Zara, putting her hand up as if to help the boys locate her. “Still hear you. Loud-and-oh-my-god-so-clear.”

  Keane and Brok stared at her. They each seemed to come to the same conclusion—that any further conversation would be plagued by interruptions from the new girl—so, Keane turned back to Brok. “You get the gist.”

  Brok studied Zara for a moment, as if sizing her up for worthiness to be his best friend’s new partner. Then he turned back to Keane.

  “Yeah. Sure,” he said, with a weak smile and a gloomy nod. “I get it.”

  As he watched Brok hunch his shoulders and drag himself to a free desk a few rows behind, Keane was filled with unprecedented guilt. For a fleeting moment, he considered ditching Zara and chasing after the poor kid to tell him that it was all just a big fat joke, and that of course they were going to be partners. They were best friends after all. And, besides, boys from the orphanage needed to stick together.

  But one glimpse of Zara’s molten gold eyes peeking up at him from under those toffee brown bangs saw that sentiment quickly dismissed.

  Just then, like unstoppable forces of nature, Randy, Pete, Don and Johnny burst in through the door.

  Keane grabbed the assignment sheets that Tristan had left on his desk and held them up against his face.

  After suffering a bloody nose and still having to live through the daily torture of after-school detention with Grouchina, he was in no mood to deal with the Bullies—not now, not ever again. Besides, he’d already vowed to stick to the ol’ ‘run and hide’ routine after Brok had reminded him of just how much below average they were, and while he couldn’t actually run, not when class was technically still in session, he could at least hide.

  The only problem with hunkering down behind the handouts was that his trembling hands were rustling the sheets, which was actually drawing more attention to him.

  Zara glared at him, appalled by his behavior. “Keane?” She tried to pull the sheets away, but he clenched the pages tighter still and drew them even closer to his face. “Keane, what are you—?” She stopped abruptly as her own assignment was snatched from right under her nose.

  Randy and Pete had claimed the pages for themselves and were laughing as they made away with their prize.

  “Hey!” she screamed after them. “That’s mine!”

  “Correction,” said Randy over his shoulder. “Mine now… Nerdess.” He looked visibly proud of the fitting nickname he’d just come up with for the four-eyed new girl.

  “Keane! Did you see that?” asked Zara, self-consciously adjusting her glasses, but Keane was busy struggling to breathe as his throat tightened with stress.

  “Er, hey, yeah, er, no problem,” he yammered. “We’ll just, uh, get a new-other-one—I mean, another one—when Greenster’s back. Yep, that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Listen to Freak Show, Nerdess,” warned Randy, without breaking his stride.

  “Keane, you’re being ridiculous,” said Zara. She turned to Randy. “Give me back my paper, you… you ignoramus!”

  “Uh-oh,” croaked Keane, knowing exactly what was coming next. He wondered if it was possible to sink further out of sight, perhaps through the table and all the way down into the space in which Brok had been hiding. He now attempted to do just that.

  Randy stopped and did a slow, menacing turn, the kind of turn that only came from years of practice intimidating people.

  “What did you call me?” he growled.

  Zara opened her mouth to speak, but before she could insult Randy further and inadvertently end up on the wrong side of his trigger-happy fist, Keane interrupted.

  “N-nothing. Nothing at all,” he said from behind the pages in his still quivering hands. “She was talking to me. That’s it! I’m the ingorgimous. Isn’t that right, Zara? Am I not the inorganimus? Er
… Zara?”

  When she didn’t reply, Keane turned to her, and immediately an involuntary yelp escaped his lips. She looked irked. Very, very irked.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Randy, highly amused by Keane’s fear, exceedingly pleased to see that Freak Show was no longer aching to pick a fight, but had instead returned to his rightful place in the social hierarchy—the bottom rung.

  “No!” Zara bellowed at Randy, “I said ‘ignoramus’ and I said it to you. In fact, you’re such a special case of ignoramus that that you’d even have to look up the word ‘ignoramus’ just to know what you are!”

  Keane wished that she’d stop saying ‘ignoramus’ so much, and that she’d stop staring Randy right in the face in that confrontational manner, not in the least because the entire class was now watching the escalating situation with the sort of curiosity usually reserved for car crashes and natural disasters.

  Randy took a sinister step toward Zara. “Say that again, Nerdess.” He came closer still. “Say it right to my face.”

  Keane noticed that Pete, Don, and Johnny had started to gather behind their leader. He’d seen this formation many times before, of course, and not one of those times had it been a good sign.

  “Nope. Don’t. It’s a trap, just a trap, such a trap. So just don’t, o-okay?” Keane rambled. Then he started to throw elaborate hand gestures Zara’s way to get her to stop talking.

  “I wasn’t aware asses had faces,” said Zara, nonchalantly.

  Keane couldn’t understand why Zara was completely ignoring all of his signals, or why she was so intent on provoking the sleeping giant; ‘sleeping’ in the sense that he hadn’t punched someone quite just yet. Keane couldn’t understand why Zara wanted to be that someone.

  “Do you have a death wish, Nerdess?” asked Randy.

  “I’m not scared of a dimwit like you. Oh, no, wait!” She feigned concern by slapping a hand onto a cheek. “Now that's two words you'll need to look up. How ever will you manage?”

  Randy took another step toward Zara and now ominously loomed over her. His fists tightened and his weighty arm muscles flexed. Keane gasped when he finally recognized that look. Randy was about to hit her!

  But Zara stood her ground.

  She stuck a defiant chin out and smiled wryly, as if challenging him. Her reasons were simply unfathomable to Keane. She seemed to think that Randy wouldn’t strike her just because she was a girl. Needless to say, Keane didn’t share her confidence. In fact, he was more afraid than he’d ever been before—if there was one thing worse than being hit by Randy, it was seeing Zara get hit by Randy.

  The other students had started to mutter disconcertedly. The interest with which they had been watching was quickly transforming into horror. Keane took comfort in the fact that everyone’s eyes were now on them, and surely Randy had more sense than to risk doing something this anti-social in full public view. Surely…

  But Randy’s knuckles were now white with pressure, his eyes were bulging, and his cheeks were turning red.

  Keane grabbed onto his chair with one hand and onto his desk with the other, ready to slingshot himself between bully and new girl if things escalated, prepared to take the beating on Zara’s behalf if it came to that.

  Randy started to raise his rock-like fists, ready to strike. Zara crossed her arms and smiled crookedly. Unbelievable, thought Keane, she was still egging the big, bad bully on! He clenched, took aim, and prepared himself for the launch.

  The door flew open and Tristan strode in. “Okay, disaster averted. The flowers will be fine. Now where were we—?”

  Randy took a quick step back when the door opened.

  “Come on, boys and girls. Back to your seats now. Playtime’s over,” said Tristan, clapping his hands at the kids who’d been standing around watching the Randy-Zara-face-off. The students scampered back to their desks.

  Tristan then spotted Randy lingering beside Keane and Zara’s desk and cast him a do-you-want-to-challenge-my-authority-today smile.

  Randy turned to the new girl, teeth gritted, scowl intense to a level beyond human, and muttered “This isn’t over, Nerdess,” before motioning a full retreat to his cohorts.

  Under Tristan’s relentless glare, the Bullies sashayed silently back to their desks, the ones in the very last row.

  Air escaped Keane’s lungs as he deflated against his desk. He felt dizzy, but was overwhelmingly relieved to be reminded that Mr. Green was one of the few teachers whom the Bullies still feared.

  He turned to Zara and grinned.

  And Zara gave him what was probably the foulest look he’d ever gotten in his life. His smile vaporized.

  His heart sank as the new girl edged her chair farther and farther away from him.

  “Zara, I…” he started, but Zara was clearly ashamed of him, and no longer interested in anything he had to say.

  As Keane reflected on how the confrontation with Randy had played out, and on how he’d reacted to it all, it dawned on him just how much of a coward he’d been.

  And then he discovered that he didn’t even blame Zara for her reaction. In fact, he actually shared her sentiment.

  He was ashamed of himself too.