Revenge of the Star Survivors

by Michael Merschel

  I nodded, started breathing again and sucked on my finger for a moment before I realized that’s probably gross.

  “I really have just one question for you,” he said. “If I made a note in my file that the problems in your Independent Study sessions were because of your instructor, would you agree?”

  I stared blankly, not quite comprehending.

  “You see,” he said, leaning in toward me, his eyes cyborg-like, “I have to put something down as a likely cause of any parental complaint. I would like to say it was . . . ‘lax supervision’ by the classroom instructor. Which it was. Right?”

  “Lax . . . what?” I stammered. “Sir?”

  He sat back a bit. “That’s just what I thought.”

  I didn’t want to agree, but I couldn’t figure out how to disagree. All I could do was stare. Which was all he needed.

  “Good,” he said, making a note in a file, then closing it. “Sherman, I knew all along I could count on you. A decorated combat veteran such as myself develops a sense of who he can trust in a bind. It’s how one survives in the bush. And thrives in the dog-eat-dog world of business. So I’ve got your back, soldier. And this soldier is glad to know you’ve got mine. Semper fi.”

  I nodded my thanks—what for, I’m not sure—and walked out.

  Back in the library, Ms. Beacon was at the checkout desk, filling out paperwork. She looked up as I came in, but I headed straight for my chair, sat down and tried to hide behind a book.

  It worked, for most of the hour. But a few minutes before the bell rang, she called me to her desk.

  “Clark,” she asked, “have you seen your classmate, Ricki, lately?”

  “No, not really,” I said, staring at my shoes.

  “Is that what Principal Denton wanted to discuss in his office?”

  “Sort of.” I felt a surge of guilt in my stomach and a rush of blood to my face.

  She nodded, and studied me for a few seconds. “Did he ask some odd questions about my abilities as an educator?”

  I raised my head just a little and gave a very slight nod.

  “And did he also casually mention that he was a decorated combat veteran?”

  I stood up straight. “How did you know?”

  She smiled. “A lucky guess. I have been dancing with George Denton for many years, and I know his steps well.”

  Dancing? This did not compute at all.

  “That’s figurative,” she explained.

  Oh.

  “Mr. Sherman, has anyone ever told you how George Denton became a principal here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, history is important. So here is a brief lesson. There are those in this community who think that what an educational institution needs is not professionals who understand education, but professionals who come from backgrounds that have nothing to do with education.”

  I tried to process this. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

  “Nor to me. But that was the will of the people. So several years ago, noneducators were recruited into this district’s leadership positions, given cursory certification and turned loose on our schools. George Denton’s exploits with a gun and his record as a business executive—he did mention that, I presume?”

  I nodded.

  “He is consistent in that way. In any case, his jargon so impressed the higher-ups that almost nobody here will challenge him. Even though the results of his blustering methods have shown what some of us predicted all along: he is an academic mediocrity.”

  Wow, I thought. Who knew that a history lesson that did not involve anybody flying a fighter plane could be so interesting?

  But this background did not exactly make things easier for me. Like him or not, he was still a principal. And a war hero. And I was, technically, still a zero.

  I ran the fingers of both hands through my hair until they met at the back of my neck. “I’m really confused, Ms. Beacon.”

  She huffed.

  “And that is an abomination, Mr. Sherman. Because we are the people in your life who are supposed to be solving problems for you, not causing them.”

  She stared straight at me as she spoke. “I have no idea what Principal Denton has asked you to do. I suspect it is vile and reprehensible. And targeted at me.”

  She managed to add intensity to her voice without adding volume, something she probably learned in librarian school. “But you’re not responsible for me, Clark. You are merely responsible for yourself. And for making correct choices on your own. Good choices.

  “You can do that. I trust you.”

  Somehow, hearing those last three words did more for my morale than all of Denton’s semper fi speeches put together.

  7.03.02

  Our conversation gave me a lot to think about. But I am not using that as an excuse for what happened next, because a star explorer is supposed to be ever-vigilant.

  I wasn’t. So what happened was entirely my own fault again.

  It is almost officially spring, and marginally warmer weather means that the important lessons being conveyed in PE and Athletics have shifted from Throwing of Balls in Confined Spaces to the Mindless Circling of an Outdoor Pasture. Some people call it track.

  On the one hand, being outside gives me more room to maneuver—and fewer projectiles to dodge. On the other, it requires even more precision timing than usual. If I want to avoid my predators in the locker room at the end of class, I must carefully keep them on the opposite side of the track. Failing that, I try to be surrounded by lots of people who can serve as a buffer.

  But today, lost in thought about Ricki’s disappearance, Denton’s demands and Ms. Beacon’s revelations, I made some critical errors.

  First, I didn’t see that Coach Chambers was actually monitoring us. And when he saw me walking what should have been my final lap, he made me do another. This threw off my timing considerably.

  By the time I ran that extra lap, not only was I worn out, I was feeling a little sick. And I was so far behind the main pack of students that there was no hope of using them as a shield.

  Staggering toward the school, I was hoping that this was a day when Ty’s gang had some other urgent activity to get to, such as a kitten-drowning. But when I finally got to the locker room, sweaty and queasy in my baggy PROPERTY OF FESTUS gym shorts and T-shirt, I saw two things that froze me in place:

  The rest of the class had already cleared out . . .

  . . . Except for three people who were suiting up for a baseball practice.

  You can guess which three. And you can guess what type of wooden baseball device they held as they stood there, grinning hungrily.

  “Hey,” said Jerry, calling me by a particularly terse anatomical nickname.

  I looked behind me. Coach Chambers was out of earshot. But I knew he was not far away. I couldn’t run out past him in my gym clothes; he’d slap me with detention for violating his rule about wearing them only during class. But I hoped that his presence might quell any overt violence. So I needed to stall for time.

  Then I remembered how, in Episode 14, Captain Maxim outwitted a squadron of Vexon destroyers by doing the unexpected: instead of fleeing, he charged straight at them. By the time the Vexons recovered and turned about, the hyperdrive had been fixed and the Fortitude got away.

  So that is what I tried.

  “Hi, guys,” I said as I strolled nonchalantly through their midst and toward my locker. I bumped shoulders with Bubba as I passed.

  It worked! They clearly had not expected that. Of course now they stood between me and the exit. I was counting on Coach Chambers walking in by the time I finished dressing. I quickly started pulling my street clothes on over my gym uniform.

  But by the time I’d yanked my sweatshirt down and zipped my jeans up, he was nowhere in sight.

  I tried to keep the bluff up, and my lunch down, as I grabbed my Cosmos backpack and strolled straight toward them, hoping that what had worked on the way in would work on the way out.

/>   It didn’t.

  Ty stopped me with a full body check.

  “What’s the rush?” he asked.

  We were deep in the locker room. The profanity he used in place of my name echoed off the concrete floor, against the cold metal lockers, through the mildewy air.

  Retreat was not possible. Maybe one more feint forward?

  “I don’t want to make you late for practice, so I’ll just get out of your way,” I said, casting my eyes down as I tried to spin off of Ty and slip between him and Jerry.

  It didn’t work. Jerry jammed his shoulder into my side; I bounced from him into Ty, who pushed me forward. I held my backpack like a shield and faced them. This was the most dangerous situation I’d been in with them, but I was too afraid to be afraid. I felt . . . detached. I wasn’t thinking about the wicked smiles on their faces or the heavy wooden bats in their hands. I was thinking about heads. And how the worst creatures in classic mythology always had three of them—Cerberus, the dog at the gates of hell; King Ghidorah, a match for Godzilla; the three-headed giant in that British film about Camelot that I tried to watch once. Why was it always three? Maybe because even the ancient people who wrote those classics knew that where a clever warrior could win any one-on-one encounter, and a strong man might defeat two, even a hero would be overwhelmed by three. Now, maybe if I had a lightsaber, I could—

  Uh-oh, Ty was talking again.

  “I don’t think he heard you,” Bubba said.

  Ty pushed me, hard, toward the back wall.

  “Are you awake now?” he asked, spitting out an angry combination of words that I had not actually heard before.

  My wide eyes signaled, Yes, you have my attention.

  “We’ve missed you,” Ty said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Oh, out and about. You know me.” The words were glib, but my voice—high, breathy—gave me away.

  “Well, maybe we can make up for lost time by doing locker-room batting practice together.” Jerry’s and Bubba’s smiles spread wide, as if someone had just told them Christmas had been moved up nine months.

  I blinked rapidly. “Uh, thanks but no,” I said. My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth as I tried to form the words. “I wouldn’t want to . . . to be in your way.”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t be,” he said, lifting his bat off his shoulder.

  “Yeah, well, you know, um, I’m sure you could have plenty of, uh, fun practicing without me,” I said.

  Ty’s smile became thinner and wider. “No,” he said. “I think it would be extra fun with you.” He grasped his bat and assumed a batting stance. “Locker room batting practice goes like this: One!” He swung mightily, and the bat carved an arc in front of him, backing me flat against the wall. “Two!” He took a step closer, and the bat missed me by less than a foot. “Three!” He swung a third time, and it missed me by a few inches.

  I wanted to put up my arms to ward off the blow I was sure was coming, but I was afraid that any movement would throw off his timing.

  Jerry spoke. “Pretty good. But a real power hitter looks like this.” He demonstrated. I didn’t actually see, because I had squeezed my eyes shut while I pressed my cheek against the cold cinderblock wall. I felt the bat graze my ear as it whipped past.

  Jerry took about two innings’ worth of powerful strikes. About half of them touched my ear. One brushed my cheek. Ty and Bubba kept the banter to a minimum. They were watching some precision work, and although I don’t think they cared that much for the sanctity of my head, I do think they realized that their entertainment would be curtailed if my brains ended up splattered against the wall.

  I wondered, If that happened, would I actually hear the sound of my skull cracking? Would I feel it? Or would I just start walking down the long tunnel toward the light?

  Finally, he declared himself out. “You’re cleanup, Bubs,” he said, passing the bat.

  Bubba hesitated. “Uh, yeah,” he said. And he stared at the bat. Was he doubting whether he had the same level of control as his friends?

  I was. And I would like to say that I quickly calculated the odds of my survival against his bat versus the odds of surviving my alternate course of action. But that would be a lie. I acted out of terror. I pushed off that wall with every muscle in my frail, alien body, held my Cosmos backpack in front of me and gave a guttural yell—“GARRRRRRRRRRR!”—that bubbled up from somewhere in my churning stomach.

  Eyes wide, teeth bared, I charged right at Bubba, and he took a step back in surprise. This gave me enough of a gap to slip between him and Jerry, and I raced toward the door. Whipping around the corner and toward freedom, I slammed right into Coach Chambers.

  “What the . . . Sherman, what’s your problem? Do I need to make you run another lap?”

  I looked up at his scowling face, into those squinty brown eyes that sank in behind the sunburned lumps of his cheekbones. A gigantic sob was welling up inside my gut. I was determined not to appear weak in front of him, so I held it back. I held and held and held but it was no use. Out it came. With all the fear and frustration I had been keeping down. And also with my lunch.

  SPLAT. It landed on his shoes.

  He jumped.

  And I ran.

  7.03.03

  I ran hard. I didn’t care where. I ran toward the library, then realized it might already be closed, and even if it wasn’t, I didn’t want Ms. Beacon to see me like this. I turned and made for the front doors.

  Then I heard squeals. It was the cheer squad, spreading through the halls as they decorated for Friday’s pep rally. Sweating underneath my two layers of clothes, tears and puke staining my face, I did not want to be seen by them, either.

  So I dove into the wormhole network.

  I opened the nearest door, a seventh-grade science classroom. It was empty, but I ducked and began crawling on my hands and knees between the lab tables. I went into the supply closet, among the dusty boxes of prepared slides and pig fetuses in formaldehyde, then scrambled into the connected eighth-grade science classroom.

  I crawled from room to room, in and out of closets and behind desks and anything else that could hide me, until I found myself in an English class.

  The walls here were accordion-style partitions, so it was easy to part them and slip from one to another, except I forgot about the latch, which caught on my shirt, which suffered a greasy rip right across the middle.

  I was now around the corner from the cafeteria and after that the maintenance room and the safety of the Sanctuary. Just one more section of exposed hallway to manage.

  I stuck my head out the door and looked left. All clear. I looked right. Equally clear. I crouched and prepared to lunge, when I heard:

  “Ready, OK!”

  A whole gaggle of cheerleaders had clustered in the cafeteria. I could not imagine a worse scenario.

  A moment later, it got worse.

  From far down the echoey hallway, I heard the clacking sound of heavy brown dress shoes. The sound made by only one pair of shoes in the school. The pair worn by Principal Denton.

  He was looking for something. Possibly me. I pulled my head in as he rounded the corner. I heard him rattle the door on the adjacent room; he would be here in seconds.

  What were my choices? I could try to walk out as if nothing were going on. I looked at my torn, stained shirt, wiped my sweaty forehead with a grimy hand, and decided to try something else:

  Hide like the worthless coward I was.

  Not that an English classroom had many options for this. The high-level kids were taught in an “open” environment, which meant chairs in a circle, lots of chances for expression, precious little cover.

  Denton was closing in. I was about to crouch behind the bookshelf that held twenty-seven unopened copies of Five-Paragraph Essays: The Intermediate Years when I realized that the wall next to the teacher’s desk, obscured by inspirational posters of rainbows and beaches, was actually a door. To a closet. I had no idea where it would lead. But I had no cho
ice. I plunged in, closing the door behind me just as I heard Denton rattle the knob from the hallway.

  Desperate for cover, I clawed my way through the darkness into the farthest corner.

  “Ow!” said a voice.

  And that is how I found Ricki.

  7.03.04

  Just enough light slipped through the crack under the door for me to see that she was sitting on the floor, wedged next to a roll of butcher paper and some extremely dusty toner cartridges, her knees pulled up to her chest.

  She looked up fearfully. Then angrily, as she realized just who had shut himself in a closet with her. Then perplexedly, as she took in my disheveled appearance and look of panic.

  “Shhh!” I told her, pointing a thumb at the door. “Denton!” At that she scrunched even further against the wall. I sat opposite her, atop a box of bubble sheets for a standardized test.

  We heard the classroom door creak open. We didn’t breathe.

  I was shaking, and sweating, and would probably have thrown up again if Denton had found us.

  He didn’t. We heard the classroom door click shut; we heard footsteps taper off down the hall. We exhaled.

  But we didn’t speak. We just sat in silence while my pulse slowed, the sweat dried and the acid feeling in my throat began to melt. At that point, it did seem as if something needed to be said.

  I was too tired for anything clever.

  “This school is nuts,” I said.

  “You’re telling me,” she said.

  “What are you hiding from?” I asked.

  “Who says I’m hiding?” she replied defiantly.

  It was difficult, in the darkness, to tell if she was joking. “This feels a lot like hiding to me,” I said.

  “It is not. I am taking control of the situation,” she said.

  I reflected on this for a bit. “You haven’t, like, gotten oxygen-deprived in here, have you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then, if you don’t mind my asking, do you have some other sort of brain damage? Because I’m really having trouble imagining how sitting in a closet can be seen as ‘taking control.’ ”