“Mine too.”
“You sure you don’t want any? Your lips look like they could use some.…”
“That’s okay.” I shook my head. “Don’t wanna get your germs or anything.…”
Sully’s face was only a few inches away from mine. Our breath fogged up between us—and for that one moment, just for a split second, it felt like the whole soccer field had melted into a mist of our exhales. She started to lean forward.…
The sound of glass being shattered stopped her.
Sully quickly lifted her head and looked toward the building. The window to Rorshuck’s classroom was broken.
No sign of who did it.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, standing up and running back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
here was a note waiting for me in my locker the next day. My presence had been requested by Peashooter.
Slipping into the last stall, I locked myself inside before climbing up on the toilet.
I popped open the fiberglass panel and ducked my head in.
“Took you long enough,” Peashooter said, waiting for me on the other side.
“I’ll bring roses next time.”
He’d graffitied himself again. On his left arm he’d written: ROBIN HOODLUM.
On his right, from wrist to elbow, it read: MERRY MADMEN.
“Step into my office,” he said, pulling me up.
We crawled above Mr. Rorshuck’s class.
Easing back the panel by a couple inches, we had a perfect vantage point of all the students sitting below. They lazily gazed at Rorshuck as he attacked the blackboard with his chalk.
Peashooter stared down at the class, lost in thought.
“I had a dream last night,” he said. “It came to me as a question: Why stick with just one school?”
“What? You looking to transfer or something?”
“Do you know how many schools there are in this district alone? This county? This state? Imagine how many kids there are out there just like us, looking for a group that they can call their own.”
I could sense where Peashooter was going with all this.
“Now ask yourself: How many tribes do you think we could create? Why stick with just one school when we can grow? Branch out? Increase our numbers?”
“You mean franchise tribes?”
“I mean revolution. And it all begins with a few transfer students moving to a new school. Taking it over from the inside.… Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Peashooter had totally gone full-blown Napoleon.
“A kid can dream, can’t he?” He flashed his devilish grin at me, as if to say he was only joking. I only half believed him. “Let’s practice.”
He handed me one of his hollowed-out ballpoint pens and placed a sheet of paper between us. When there was enough noise below, he tore off a corner of the paper and slipped it into his mouth. A moment later, he stuck his tongue out, displaying a perfectly balled-up wad.
“Now you.”
I had a hard time summoning up any spit. “My mouth feels like a desert.”
“Nervous?”
I gave myself a half dozen paper cuts on my tongue before finally wetting the spitball down. “Locked and loaded,” I said.
“Aim higher than the actual point you want to hit,” he said. “Watch and learn.”
He brought the pen up to his mouth. He inhaled through his nose, funneling air into his nasal cavity, down his throat, and directly into the open end of his dart gun—Pfft!
That spit wad shot out from the barrel of Peashooter’s pen and landed smack-dab in Sarah Haversand’s perfectly coiffed hair—Splat!
Sarah swatted the back of her head, unaware of the pellet that had just adhered itself to her blond locks. Bull’s-eye!
“That’s how it’s done,” Peashooter said. “Your turn.”
“I want Rorshuck.”
“Check out the cojones on you,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
“Here goes nothing.…”
Deep breath.
Ready.
Aim.
Fire!
My first spit wad splatted against the equation Mr. Rorshuck had just scribbled on the blackboard. He spun around, staring down his class.
“Who did that?”
The class stared blankly back at him, as stunned as their teacher.
“Who was it?”
Time was running out. If I was going to make my target, I had to do it now.
“Answer me!”
I went ahead and answered. I answered him loud and clear. I answered by leaning over the open fiberglass and firing up another spitball, hitting Mr. Rorshuck directly in the forehead. The spit wad struck his skin with such force that it left a splatter-pattern of saliva and pulped-up paper across his receding hairline. Perfect hit!
I turned to Peashooter, victorious. “I did it!”
“Such a shame.” Peashooter shook his head. “You had such potential.…”
“What? Are you breaking up with me or something?”
“You’re trying to take away my Tribe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sorry, Spencer, but I can’t have members of my own clan contradicting me. You’re a traitor to your own kind and not loyal to us.”
Before I knew what he was up to, Peashooter kicked my foot off the grid.
I wobbled for a second before my shoulder landed on the fiberglass panel.
I was lying on a flimsy two-foot-by-four-foot sheet of acoustic tile.
I felt the fiberglass beneath my belly begin to sag.
I heard the tile crack.
Oh boy.
“Been nice knowing you, Spencer.”
If it hadn’t been for Martin Mendleson cushioning my fall, I would’ve broken a bone or two. Lucky for me, his shoulders absorbed the bulk of my impact before I landed on the linoleum.
Dust and fiberglass particles snowed through the air as Mr. Rorshuck’s math class surrounded me. None looked more stunned than Rorshuck himself, a blossom of saliva-soaked notebook paper blooming on his forehead.
“This isn’t the way to the bathroom,” I said.
I took a quick puff off of My Little Friend. Once I got my breath back, I looked up to the ceiling.
Peashooter was gone.
could blow their cover right now, I thought as I awaited my death sentence in Pritchard’s office. I could lead Pritchard down to the boiler room, show him where the Tribe has been hiding this entire time, and in a blink, this underground ring of runaways would be broken up for good.
But my beef wasn’t with the Tribe.
Just Peashooter.
He had turned the Tribe into the embodiment of the very attitudes they’d rallied against.
He knew I could rat him and the rest out.
But why take the risk?
Because without the Tribe, I have no friends.
Because my teachers don’t believe a word I say.
Because even my mom thinks I’m crazy.
I’ve got no one.
I had spent all this time trying to get in with the most exclusive clique at Greenfield. And my membership had been officially revoked.
How am I going to crawl my way out of this one?
“Give me one good reason,” Pritchard said, storming in. “I’m sincerely asking you for just one simple reason why I should believe anything you say right now.”
“You’ve got nothing to lose?”
“Not good enough.”
“I’ve got everything to lose?”
“At least tell me you read the book.” He exhaled. “Can you do that for me?”
The question caught me off guard. “What book?”
“The Catcher in the Rye?”
“Not…yet?”
Pritchard shrank. It looked liked I’d hurt his feelings.
“But it’s at the top of my reading list, I swear!” I said.
“Consider this strike two.”
“Can’t we just say it was a foul ball?”
Before I could dig my own grave any deeper, Pritchard’s attention shifted behind me. I turned…
“…Mom?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Mrs. Pendleton—please, come in.” Pritchard waved her in. “Thank you for joining us on such short notice. We were just about to discuss Spencer’s suspension.”
• • •
Three days’ suspension. Three days at home.
To reflect on what I’d done.
Mom wouldn’t talk to me during our drive home. Her knuckles were turning white from gripping the steering wheel.
To fill up the silence, I tried to turn on the radio.
Mom instantly switched it off.
She laid into me. “The ceiling, of all places! What were you doing up there?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.…”
“Try me! Because at this point I don’t know what to believe.” She started counting off example after example of me not acting like me: “You haven’t been sleeping, you’ve got a temper you’ve never had before, and you don’t talk to me anymore!”
I thought about the Tribe. How each one of them must’ve had this exact same conversation with their parents before they ran away. Maybe it helped them push on.
Could I really have disappeared into thin air and never let anyone know what happened to me?
Peashooter did. Compass did. Yardstick did. Sporkboy did.
Even Sully.
Poof. Good as ghosted.
“You ever wonder what it would be like if I wasn’t around, Mom?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind.”
Mom slammed on the brakes, and we screeched to a halt. The car directly behind us had to brake just as fast in order to avoid puckering up to our rear fender.
Mom spun toward me. “You can’t just say something like that and take it back by saying never mind! You’re not thinking about—”
She cut herself short.
“What?”
Mom’s eyes widened. Something on my shoulder caught her attention.
I looked down and—whoops—wouldn’t you know it, but I was bleeding through the sleeve of my shirt.
Before I could stop her, Mom had pulled up my shirtsleeve.
I didn’t think it was possible for her eyes to open any wider, but one look at the Tribe insignia branded into my arm and they expanded to the size of Firestone tires.
“It’s not what you think, Mom.…”
“Did you—did you hurt yourself on purpose?”
“I can explain—”
Her eyes were watering up. “How could you do something like this?”
“You’re not listening to me!”
“Then what? What is it?”
“You really want to hear the truth?”
“That’s all I’ve ever asked for!”
The car behind us honked its horn.
“Fine,” I sighed. “Ever since we got here, there was something strange about school.”
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. The others would kill me if they found out.
“At first,” I kept going, “it felt like the school was haunted—”
Mom got that look on her face. It crept up into her eyes and eased into her cheeks, like she’d just eaten something sour.
I knew that look. I’d seen it a million times before.
“I’m telling you the truth! The school has people…living in it. Students who used to go to Greenfield but dropped out. Not dropped out. More like dropped in.”
“Spencer…”
“The kids who never fit in. Well—they finally found a place where they do! They’ve made the school their home. And they asked me to join them.”
The car behind us honked again, longer this time.
Mom looked like I’d said something so mean, so cruel, that she’d never be able to forgive me. “Is it so hard for you to tell me the truth?”
“See for yourself! They’re there right now!”
“I don’t want to hear it anymore! I’ve trusted you, even when the voice in the back of my head said I shouldn’t—and still, still you try to take advantage of me!”
We both went silent. There was nothing left in either of us to yell about. It had all come flooding out from our mouths, drowning us both.
All that was left was the continuous whine of the car at our backs, blaring its horn at us.
“Maybe you’d be happier giving your father a hard time,” she said. “Go live with him. See how long he puts up with your attitude.”
“I hate you.” The words were barely even a whisper, but there they were.
“You’re not such fun to be around either.”
• • •
I held off on slipping into the kitchen until Mom was upstairs. I lifted the phone receiver from its cradle with the kind of technical delicacy a bomb squad uses when disarming a land mine.
Nothing but a dial tone.
Perfect.
I knew his number by heart. It used to be my phone number, too. I punched in the digits without even thinking.
First ring: Pick up the phone pick up the phone pick up the phone…
Second ring: Please pick up please pick up please…
Third: Pick up pick up pick up…
“Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded unsure of who would be calling.
“Dad?”
“Hey, bud…” Instant warmth. The tone of his voice softened in milliseconds. Suddenly he was Dad again. “Whatcha up to?”
“Oh, you know. Nothing much, really. How ’bout you?”
“Little of this, little of that.”
It sounded like he was doing something else while talking to me. I found myself feeling instantly jealous over whatever Activity #2 was.
“Your mother still giving you a hard time?”
“You know how she is…always worried I’m gonna burn something down.”
“Tell her I said hey. Better yet—don’t.”
“Okay.”
“Sounds like something’s on your mind.…”
“Just miss you, is all.”
“Miss you too, bud.”
“You—you think we could get together? Just you and me?”
“You bet.”
“Really?”
“Sure thing,” he said. “I’m a little tied up at the moment—but I bet we could hang, say, at the end of the month. How’s that sound?”
“The end of the month?”
“You know how busy things get this time of year. One week. Two weeks, tops—okay? Christmas is coming up, so I want you to start thinking of something you can’t live without. Something expensive. Just don’t go burning down any more buildings between now and then, okay? Now, I should get off the phone before tu madre wants to talk.…”
“Okay.”
“Talk soon, bud.”
Just as he hung up, I blurted out, “Love you, Dad—”
Nothing but dial tone purring in my ear.
The second I plopped the phone onto its cradle, I felt this knot twist in my stomach.
“What’d he say?”
I spun around—and sure enough, there was Mom, leaning her head against the door frame. She didn’t seem angry at me for calling him. Just kind of…nothing.
“He’s not coming, is he?” she asked.
“No.”
ully had no idea I was doing this. Standing at the door to what was once her house. About to ring her bell.
I didn’t know what to expect next. All I knew was my lungs suddenly decided to go on strike. I fumbled for My Little Friend and gulped a gust of chest steroids.
“Can I help you?”
A man with a twenty-o’clock shadow peered from behind the chain-locked gap in the doorway. A comb hadn’t plowed through his hair in days. Maybe even weeks.
I’d recognize that hair anywhere.
Sully had her father’s locks.
“Is this the Tulliver residence?”
“Yes?”
“Are you…Sully’s dad?”
“Who are you?”
“A friend. Of Sully’s.”
“You’re just in time.” He unlatched the chain-lock. “There’s been another occurrence.”
“Um…occurrence?”
“She’s back!”
• • •
The house was so quiet, I couldn’t tell if I was hearing a clock ticking away in some corner of the house, or if my own pulse was slowing to a dull trudge.
Where was Mrs. Tulliver?
A stillness hung over the room as if the air refused to move.
This house needed an inhaler.
“Have a seat,” Mr. Tulliver said. “She should be returning shortly.”
“I can’t really stay for long.…”
“Please. We need to be still. She won’t manifest if there’s any interference.”
First thing I noticed were the pictures.
Sully’s face was framed all across the walls. Photographs of Sully as a little girl at the beach, her auburn hair pulled back.
Sully as a baby in her mother’s arms.
Sully just before she disappeared.
I shouldn’t be here. This was a bad idea.
“How did you say you knew Sully?” he asked.
He said knew. Not know. Past tense.
“From school,” I said. “I know her from school. Knew her from school.”
“Sully didn’t talk a lot about her friends. After her mother passed away, she didn’t spend much time with kids her age.”
“We’ve only met recently.”
“Recently? I knew it!” He clapped his hands. “Of course she’d establish contact with one of her old friends! You two were close, then, yes?”
“I guess you could say that.…”
I suddenly noticed the deep rings under his eyes.
He looked like he was being haunted.
“I pushed her away—I know that now. She took care of me when I should’ve been taking care of her. I treated her like an adult—not a child—so it’s understandable that she’d reach out to someone her own age first.”
Against all better judgment on my part, I went ahead and said, “Not that I know anything, Mr. Tulliver, but if I were you…”
“Yes?”
Deep breath. “Don’t give up on her just yet.”
He seemed to ponder this for a bit, allowing the room to go silent again.
Homeroom Headhunters Page 15