Homeroom Headhunters

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  Stopping the mushrooms from growing wasn’t something Jimmy had factored into his experiment. They inflated outward, their red caps overflowing.

  None of the judges knew what to do. The spores looked like water balloons about to burst. Was this a part of the experiment?

  The judges took a step back, two steps, three—until:

  BOOM!

  A fine mist of red-splotched spores exploded out from his crop, covering the judges, Jimmy, and every student within a ten-yard radius.

  Instant pimples.

  One of Jimmy’s competitors started laughing, pointing at our crushed junior scientist and his spore-spewing project.

  More laughter. Before long, the whole cafeteria was guffawing at Jimmy’s science project.

  The blood in his body rushed into his head. His face went purple.

  And just like a whitehead pinched between your fingertips, he popped.

  COMPASS: “Think you can all laugh at me?” I yelled. “I’ll show you! All of you! We’ll see who laughs last!”

  After the science fair, nobody ever saw him again.

  But Jimmy’s been here all this time, just beneath Greenfield’s skin, waiting to rise up once more.

  e had a full four-day weekend ahead of us. From Thursday through Sunday, the hallways at Greenfield Middle would be empty.

  No students, no teachers. Not even Mr. Simms would be hanging around.

  The whole school would be utterly abandoned.

  Doors locked, lights off. Completely vacated.

  Well. Almost.

  • • •

  I had made up my mind.

  I’d tell the Tribe I wasn’t joining their ranks. No matter the consequences, I wouldn’t be revoking my Still Student Status.

  What was the best way to break it to them? Let’s explore my options:

  Option A: It’s not you, it’s me.…

  Option B: Been nice knowing you fellas, but I just found out I’m being transferred to a swanky private school in Vermont. Catch y’all at the class reunion.

  Option C: Things have gone too far. I’m in way over my head. When I first found out about the Tribe, it felt like I’d met a group of like-minded, marginalized kids who wanted me for me. But the more time passes, the more I realize I’m changing, and if this is who I have to be in order to join, then I won’t do it. Not to my mom. I’m out.

  I wanted to tell Sully first. Maybe she’d even decide to come back with me.…

  One more time and that’s it, I swore to myself. You can sneak out just one last time.

  But first—I had to get through dinner.

  You’ve never seen a man tuck into a turkey as fast as me.

  “You don’t have to eat the whole thing by yourself, you know,” Mom said. “There are two of us here.”

  This was our first holiday dinner on our own, and we hadn’t talked for most of the meal.

  “Almost forgot.” Mom rushed back to the kitchen.

  She returned to the table holding her hand behind her back. “I saved something special for you. I know how much you love them.”

  She brought her hand up to me, trying to smile.

  A turkey wishbone.

  I stared at the forked breastbone pinched between her fingers, the tiniest fleck of meat still clinging to it.

  Dad and I always tug-of-warred with the wishbone.

  Mom knew that.

  “Spencer?”

  I took hold of one end and started pulling. “Wonder how Dad’s doing.”

  “Beats me.” Mom pulled back on her end of the bone. “Why don’t you call him up? He owes you one.”

  “Dad doesn’t owe me anything.” I yanked hard, snapping the wishbone in half.

  Mom flinched. She had the larger bit of bone.

  “Make a wish, Mom.”

  • • •

  Thanksgiving is a time to show appreciation for all the wonderful things that have happened throughout the year.

  Walking back to Greenfield, I took the time to reflect upon what I had to be thankful for.

  Let’s see… I’m thankful the tryptophan from the turkey kicked in, sending Mom to bed a little earlier than usual tonight.

  I’m thankful for whoever leaves the window open in the industrial arts class.

  I’m thankful for having packed a flashlight.

  But I’m most thankful for My Little Friend. After having him destroyed in the shop, it was good to have him back by my side. More like my chest, actually. We’ve been through thick and thinly oxygenated blood cells together.

  I took a puff before crawling through the window.

  Finding Sully without alerting the others would be a challenge. I couldn’t just call out her name. That would draw too much attention.

  Passing through the left bat wing of the building, I noticed a glow emanating from behind the science lab’s door. A cerulean light flickered across the floor.

  I placed my hand on the knob.

  Unlocked.

  Opening the door, I discovered the blue tongue of a Bunsen burner lapping at the darkness.

  Sully stood before the continuous stream of flammable gas as if it were a tiny campfire, casting her shadow across the classroom walls.

  “Sully,” I said, catching my breath. “Just who I was looking for…”

  “You found me.” She managed to smile, but she remained right where she was.

  I took another step inside the lab.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Peashooter popped out from under a desk.

  “You’ve passed your final pop quiz,” he said. “Congrats—you’re almost one of us.”

  Almost?

  I heard the door shut behind me, jolting me forward. I turned around and found Yardstick, Sporkboy, and Compass standing behind Peashooter.

  Graffitied across the length of Sporkboy’s arm was: MY KID IS AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT.

  The three boys raised their javelins over their heads and sounded the battle cry.

  Peashooter signaled for silence.

  “On nights like these,” he proclaimed to his Tribe, “we point our noses at the stars and howl long and wolf-like.”

  Sporkboy tilted his head back and howled. Compass and Yardstick added to the chorus.

  “It’s our ancestors,” Peashooter continued, “dead and dust, howling through the centuries and through us!”

  Sporkboy lead the Tribe through another round of howls. Peashooter and Sully joined in, making it sound like a wolf pack had been let loose in the building.

  Compass pulled out a coat hanger that had been unraveled and straightened, with one end bent into a shape I couldn’t make out. He held the twisted knot over the Bunsen burner’s flame.

  “Break out the marshmallows,” I said. “Love me some s’mores.”

  “Sorry—no s’mores for you.” Peashooter shook his head. His complexion looked cobalt-colored from the Bunsen burner’s glow.

  “Then…what’s the hanger for?”

  He rolled up the sleeve on his left arm, exposing the bulb of his shoulder.

  There, rising up from the rest of his flesh, was a spiral of pink skin.

  Scar tissue.

  “A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good livery of honor,” Peashooter recited. “Shakespeare said that.”

  “Then poke Shakespeare with that thing—not me!”

  “We all have one,” Compass said. “Look.”

  The rest of the Tribe bared their shoulders. Under the blue light I could make out the patterns in their cauterized skin.

  It was a version of the Tribe’s stick figure, spear raised over its head.

  I turned to Sully.

  “You too?”

  Sully pulled up her sleeve—and sure enough, there it was, hugging her shoulder.

  “No thanks.” I took a step back. “My body’s not an option for tribal product placement.”

  “Hold him down.” Peashooter motioned to Yardstick.

  Before I could even make a
break for it, Yardstick had me bent over the desk.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Sporkboy grabbed my hands and pinned me in place. He leaned over and said, “Pretty cool, huh? Just wait till you see it on yourself.”

  “Joke’s over, guys. Let me go, okay?”

  “The thing with sterilization, see,” Compass started, “is that you want to maximize the temperature and minimize the luminosity.”

  “Now’s really not the time for a science lesson.…”

  Sporkboy yanked back the sleeve of my shirt and uncovered my skin.

  “By opening up the air hole as far as it will go”—Compass kept going—“you get this perfectly blue blaze. The hottest component to the flame you don’t even see. The invisible tip of the inner flame is where things get really hot.”

  “Let me go!”

  “Too late to back out now.” Peashooter shook his head. “You’re one of us, Spencer. And when you join the Tribe, you carry the mark.”

  “I don’t want to be one of you!”

  “That’s your fear speaking. Trust us, Spencer—you never have to be afraid again. Not with us on your side.”

  My eyes widened as Compass brought the coat hanger directly before my face. The tip of the hanger had turned into an orange knot of hot wire.

  “Quit wiggling,” Sporkboy muttered. “You’ll ruin it.”

  “Time out time out time out time out…”

  No matter how much I struggled, they wouldn’t let me go.

  “The pain is temporary,” Peashooter said. “But the pride is forever.”

  Somebody took my hand.

  Looking up, I saw it was Sully.

  “Bite down on this.” She slipped a pencil past my lips. “It’s okay to close your eyes. I did.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut as Compass pressed the end of the coat hanger against my shoulder.

  “This is gonna sting.” I don’t recall who said that.

  Quick, Spence: go to a safe place in your mind.

  Your own deserted island.

  The Alaskan tundra.

  With Dad.

  I bit down.

  The pencil snapped. Through the splinters on my tongue, I tasted the salty tang of graphite.

  Between my gritted teeth, a roar erupted and echoed through the empty halls of Greenfield.

  “Done,” Peashooter said. “You can let him go.”

  Yardstick and Sporkboy released me.

  Only Sully kept holding my hand.

  I glanced down at my shoulder. Reddened flesh, bits of coconut skin flaking off around the seared edges of my new wound.

  I’d been branded.

  First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

  —Matthew 7:5

  ow late was it? My eyes wandered over to the alarm clock.

  3:42 a.m.

  I flipped onto my back.

  Someone was staring at me.

  Several someones. I could see cheeks, white as paper. Eyes, ringed in black, blending in with the shadows.

  They were standing perfectly still. Not saying a word.

  Smiling.

  Ladies and gentlemen…the Tribe has left the building.

  I reached over and switched on my bedside lamp. Light burned through every shadow.

  It was just their MISSING flyers.

  The rest of Greenfield knew them as Jack Cumberland. Benjamin Greenwood. Jimmy Winters. But to me they were Yardstick, Sporkboy, and Compass.

  Sully was still Sully.

  Almost had the whole set.

  • • •

  3:43 a.m.

  Time had slowed to sludge. There’s no way I was falling asleep.

  The burn was beginning to heal.

  Slowly.

  The singed skin had scabbed over, as if the tribesman on my shoulder was wearing a scaly suit of red protective armor.

  Is this what I signed up for?

  The only clique that should get branded like this is a herd of cattle.

  So much for not following the herd.

  I had a week.

  One week left as a student. One week of being a boy who suffers through homework and steps in poop quizzes. One more week before leaving everything behind for good.

  “Nobody can know you’re leaving,” Peashooter had said. “Not your parents, not your friends. Nobody.”

  I was becoming one of them—whether I wanted to or not.

  There was no turning back now.

  I turned off the light and everything slipped back into darkness.

  What was I expecting?

  My eyes adjusted to the dark—and I found their smiling faces on the flyers again. Now they looked like ghosts. Nothing but sheets of paper possessed by the dead.

  Sweet dreams, Spence.…

  hen I woke up, the world outside my window had gone all white.

  “Ten inches and counting,” the weatherman said. “Bet there’s gonna be a bunch of happy campers when we start calling out school closings.”

  Come on, Mr. Anchorman—say the magic words: Snow day.

  He began listing off closings alphabetically: “Albemarle Middle, Anderson High, Bellevue Academy will only have a half day.…”

  It took him forever to reach the G’s.

  Come on, just say it: Greenfield Middle.

  One more time: Greenfield Middle.

  A little bit louder now: Greenfield Middle!

  “Congratulations,” Mom said. “Guess who’s not going to school today?”

  If she only knew.

  • • •

  I huffed the two miles between my house and Greenfield. The streets had been wiped away in white. Parked cars were nothing more than lumps. The world had been bleached.

  I found the building half buried. No footprints stretched over the sidewalks. Not a single tire tread wound through the parking lot.

  There, sitting in the window of one of the classrooms, was Sully, gazing at the outside world.

  “What are you doing here?” I could barely hear her through the glass.

  “Snow day! Thought you might wanna go play.”

  “We’re not supposed to leave the building.…”

  “Come on,” I said. “Just to the soccer fields.”

  “Somebody might see us.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? Because your boyfriend says you’re not allowed to?”

  “Jealous?”

  “Hardly.”

  Sully turned her head to make sure nobody was behind her. “Five minutes.”

  “Not a minute more.” I held up a gloved hand. “Scout’s honor.”

  We raided the lost-and-found and pulled out a boy’s jacket for Sully. It was a few sizes too big, but it would do. She snitched a pair of mismatched mittens.

  “Ever wonder whose stuff this used to be?” she asked.

  “Long gone now—whoever they were.”

  “Kinda sad, when you think about it,” she said. “They’re like ghosts.”

  Maybe Sully was beginning to think she belonged inside the lost-and-found box too.

  “I’m sure they won’t mind you wearing them for a while,” I said, forcing a smile.

  “Hope not.”

  We had a smooth white stretch of untouched snow totally to ourselves. Sully dropped onto her back, arms outstretched. She fanned her hands up and down, plowing through the snow until a set of cotton-white wings sprouted out from her sides.

  “I haven’t made a snow angel since I was, like, six or something.”

  “It shows,” I said. “Your snow angel sucks.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m sorry—but it’s true.”

  “Your face sucks.”

  “At least I know how to make a snow angel.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Prove it.”

  There we were, suddenly in the thick of a snow angel duel. With one
angel done, we’d stand up, take two steps over to one side, and start all over again.

  Before long, nearly the whole field was covered.

  “Looks heavenly,” Sully joked.

  But you know what? Being with Sully felt pretty heavenly to me.

  Too cheesy? Fair enough.

  Then we had a snowball fight.

  There had to have been thirty feet between my face and her fist—but one fastball later, my nose was nearly crushed under the weight of her first pitch.

  “No fair,” I yelled. “Warn me next time.…”

  “Wouldn’t be much of a fight if I told you my every move, now, would it?”

  Sully quick-fired another.

  “Ow!”

  “Got you on the run now!”

  Barreling through a barrage of snowballs, I tackled her, sending us both buckling over backward. We landed with a muffled thud on top of one of her snow angels.

  “Angel down!” I yelled.

  Sully laughed and her breath fogged up before her face. It was as if a ghost were launching out from her lungs.

  Things suddenly got quiet between us, and I imagined Sully, years from now—still the smartest girl I would ever meet, hovering above students four or five years younger than her.

  Then ten years.

  Twenty.

  “How’s your shoulder?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “Getting better, I guess.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Sully dipped her chin. “I should be going back inside now.”

  “Your lips look chapped.”

  “They are.”

  “Here,” I said, fumbling through my back pocket. “Have some ChapStick.”

  “You shouldn’t share your ChapStick with other people.”

  “Why?”

  “You never know what germs they might have.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I don’t care if I catch your germs.”

  “How romantic.”

  She said romantic. You heard her say it, right?

  “You can keep the ChapStick,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “All yours.” I nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  I watched her roll the ChapStick over her lips.

  “Strawberry,” she said. “My favorite.”