Reformed

by Justin Weinberger

  “Are we almost there?” Ash asks hopefully.

  “Nope!” says this woman with dark, shimmery blue hair and tattoos of feathers going up her arm.

  “So when we get back, what happens next?” I follow up, keeping my eyes peeled for any monkeys.

  “Don’t be so eager, boys,” says the blue-haired woman. “Just enjoy the sunshine and let it all happen in due course.”

  “What if I don’t like surprises?” Devon asks.

  “Or sunlight?” says the girl named Alva. I have no idea how long she has been there, due to monkey watch.

  I can see the woman smirk. “You need to let go a little, kids. If you’re always in a rush to get somewhere else, when will you get where you’re going?”

  Mark frowns. “Never?”

  “Correct!”

  “So … how exactly are you supposed to get where you want to go?” says Ash.

  She shrugs. “Just stop and look around: You’re already there.”

  Ash stops. He looks around.

  “I am not where I want to be,” he says.

  Before I know what’s happening, I feel another bubble of laughter erupt like a volcano—and I shut it down as fast as I can, but not before I’ve attracted attention.

  “Something funny about being stranded in the woods?” says a boy with hair like a spiky helmet and a hypnotizing movie-star stare.

  His aggressive, bright-white Cheshire cat smile makes me jump back—directly into the giant beanstalk with the mustache.

  “Watch where you’re walking.”

  The beanstalk pushes me forward into this giant puddle that wraps around my wrists and drains down around my foot inside my shoe.

  I look up, and Mark is standing over me. “You okay?”

  I can hear that guy with the mustache cackling and I see Devon fighting off a grin.

  “What happened here?” The teacher with the shaved head who looks like a supervillain’s sidekick catches up with us.

  “Nothing,” says Mark. “My friend just slipped.”

  “Well get him up. Don’t fall behind.”

  As the man clomps away, the mustached beanstalk keeps laughing at me.

  “Back off, Sasquatch,” says Devon.

  “What’d you call me?” asks the boy, standing up to his full height—about a head taller than any of us.

  “You heard me,” says Devon. “Walk away before I punch those diseased follicles right off your lip.”

  There’s a laugh from behind me—an audience is gathering, sniffing for a fight.

  “Dev, come on,” says Mark. “Let’s go.”

  This makes the beanstalk smile. “Good advice. You better listen to your mother.”

  Devon grins. “Way better advice than whoever told you to grow that caterpillar on your face, Sasquatch. Stachesquatch.”

  “Funny thing coming from a ten-year-old,” says the Stachesquatch.

  Devon’s eyes gleam with devilish delight. “At least I’m human,” he says. “Not some woodland creature who lost all its fur from overconsumption of Mountain Dew.”

  The Stachesquatch goes cold.

  And Devon looks down at me. “Ian. What’re you still doing on the ground, man?”

  I really have no answer to that.

  “Come on, Ian,” I hear Mark whisper to me. “Stand up, okay?”

  “Yeah, Ian,” says the Stache. “Stand up, Ian. Let’s get on with this, Ian …”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Mark tells him. “If we start a fight out here, we’ll all get sent to the Village before reform school even starts.”

  The Stache hesitates for just a second, and Mark keeps at him. “Good decision,” he says, pulling me to my feet.

  “Ever seen a bear that went bald, guys?” Devon calls out to everyone. “It’s just sad.”

  This is how Mark and Devon are when their friends are in trouble, Tom. Devon’s the brawn, and Mark’s the brains. Except that Devon’s also the brains. And Mark’s no wimp.

  The Stache watches the four of us continue on, sort of perplexed at how we escaped him, and frowns. “I’ll see you later,” he says in a way that makes me feel queasy. “That’s a promise from Cole Harper.”

  “What’s that, pal?” Devon shouts back. “Didn’t hear ya.”

  “I said, it’s a promise from Cole Harper.”

  “Sorry, didn’t catch it.”

  “Ask Ian,” says Cole Harper. “He gets it, doesn’t he?”

  And even though I feel shivers down my back, Ash keeps me marching forward, away from Cole “the Stachesquatch” Harper, until he’s out of earshot.

  “Our boy’s a great negotiator, right?” says Devon, grabbing Mark around the neck as we head down the trail.

  Mark’s a pretty good talker, I guess you’d say. The whole Wheeler family is made up of lawyers and school board members and a mayor or two.

  “It wasn’t hard,” says Mark. “It’s just a matter of mutually assured destruction.”

  “Mutually assured destruction?” I ask.

  “It means that if we fight, nobody wins. Everyone gets sent to the Village—so we have to find a way to live together, even if we’re not happy about it.”

  “You explained that to him?” I ask, looking back in the Stache’s direction.

  Mark nods.

  “In small words so he could understand?” Ash adds.

  “Guys, let it go!”

  We let it go. But I’m still worried, Tom: As everyone knows, there are plenty of ways to tease, taunt, and torture someone that don’t leave a physical mark.

  “Where’d you go, Hart?” says Devon as I slide down the table next to my friends at the dining hall that night. I was trying to disappear and get two minutes alone, but I don’t tell anyone that. Can’t show any weakness, Tom.

  But we haven’t gotten a break yet. Not after surviving that hike—or those weird trust exercises the teachers made us do to “learn about each other.” My stomach is a tight ball and my mouth is so dry I can’t swallow right. But now dinner’s here. That’s something, right?

  Ash pushes a little plate into the middle of the table for me. “Pie was going fast,” he says. “Got you some lemon meringue, though.”

  “It’s so fluffy.” I drag the pie with its creamy, foamy peaks toward me. “You’re the best, Ash.”

  He shrugs. “One of the many services I provide.”

  Before I can even settle into enjoying my pie, I feel the slam of a dinner tray against the table. The force of the crash sends earthquakes through my more gelatinous food items, and from behind me comes a horrible voice.

  “Anyone sitting here?” says the Stache. I mean, Cole. “Pretty crazy first day, huh?” he adds, squeezing his giant body onto the bench. Cole doesn’t wait for an answer. He just smirks and snarfs about half of my lemon meringue pie in one bite.

  “Mmm, good pie!” he manages to get out, along with a spray of food particles. His version of “sharing,” I guess. Then there’s that wide, grinning mouth … daring us to say anything.

  “It’s always a big decision, right?” Devon breaks the silence.

  “What’s that?” says Cole.

  “Where to sit in the cafeteria of a new school,” says Devon.

  “Sure is,” says Cole with a grin.

  As the silence closes in on us again, Alva comes up to us with her tray.

  “Mind if I join?” She eyes us all warily and slides down the bench.

  Cole sort of smiles at her, and he bumps me down so there’s bench next to him. “Make space, dude.”

  Without looking up, she opens her mouth and says, “You guys are from the same school or something?”

  “The four of us,” says Ash, pointing at Mark and Devon too. “East Huron Elem—Middle School.”

  “You can call us the Huron Spawn,” I say.

  She smirks. “Did you just give yourself your own nickname?”

  Cole laughs and I can already feel my cheeks reddening, so I just focus on what I should have been doing the whole
time: staying quiet. I watch this Alva Anonymous girl, and the longer she sits with us, the more it feels like maybe she’s just jealous we’re here with friends. Which I can totally understand, you know?

  Ash sees me watching her and looks at me with raised eyebrows, but just then Mark elbows me.

  “Ian, come on,” he says. “We’re leaving now.”

  I look up and see my friends gathering their things to go.

  “Okay, coming.”

  But when I stand up, something feels wrong. I look down to figure out why but I’m already falling forward—and as I stretch out my arms to break my fall, all the slimy remains of my dinner end up on my clothes and face and down my shirt. I feel it all happening in slow motion, but I don’t realize until I’m on the ground looking at my feet:

  My shoelaces are tied together.

  Cole Harper bursts out laughing, and a bunch of other kids join in too.

  And for a second, I see myself like I’m one of them, watching it all happen. My hands, my clothes, everything covered with slime. I’m outside of my own body, looking down on it all. And the next thing I know, there’s a weird whooshing sound all around me—like a toilet flushing—and the dining hall starts to stretch out like gum when you’re peeling it off the bottom of your shoe. Like the whole world is inside a toilet bowl that someone just flushed.

  Great.

  Here we go again.

  F

  L

  U

  S

  H

  !

  Have you ever been sucked into a black hole, Tom? No? Well, they say your whole body gets stretched out toward infinity by its gravity, and then your whole body gets crushed down to a speck.

  Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever, that’s not important. Point is … one second ago I was on the ground in a puddle of slime. Then the dining hall got sucked down a drain, and when the world started to make sense again, I was somewhere else.

  The boys’ bathroom, alone in a locked stall.

  This used to happen to me a lot when I was younger. I’d give the wrong answer in front of the whole class, or take a kickball to the stomach and fall down, and my head would get really hot and everything would go blurry, like I was about to pass out … and the next thing I knew, I’d be in the boys’ bathroom all by myself, with no memory of how I got there.

  I’d just be sitting on top of the toilet, head between my knees. And I could feel the toilet flushing, in the very center of my being. Like, I know that’s weird—but it’s true. I could feel my heart swirling around some cosmic vortex. As if it had gotten sucked right out of my chest and into the porcelain U-bend.

  And in my head, the embarrassing thing I did just kept playing on loop. Over and over. The cosmo-flush happened again and again, and there I was: back at the beginning of the nightmare once more.

  Time travel isn’t like it is in the movies, Tom. It really sucks.

  But eventually the swirling vortex has always slowed down and stopped. And I remind myself it’ll happen again today.

  After a million slow-motion replays of the dining hall, the toilet will stop being a time machine and become a toilet again. And the bathroom will just be a bathroom.

  And so when it does I do what I have to do: I pull my heart up from the pipes by the arteries—very, very carefully—and Scotch tape it back into place, and I walk out, back to my prison cell full of bullies. Just in time for lights-out.

  Our dorm has about a dozen bunk beds, including one that’s got my name on the card at the end. I climb up into it, shucking off my shoes and socks as I go, fumbling my way through the dark.

  Devon’s already asleep as I climb above him into my bunk. He doesn’t even twitch, just keeps sleeping soundly, no matter what’s in his way. Why can’t I be like that?

  I freeze in place. There’s a hulking shadow in my bed—

  “Ian? Get up here!”

  “Ash! You freaked me out.”

  “I think we should keep watch tonight,” he says.

  “I don’t have a watch,” I tell him.

  “Ian. I meant that we should stay up and make sure no one tries anything funny while the other guys sleep.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Smart plan. I’ll take the first watch.”

  “Be strong,” he says and hands me an invisible watch, which I invisibly fasten around my wrist.

  Just then a hand shoots up and grabs his ankle from below.

  “Don’t slip, Ash,” hisses Cole, walking past like nothing happened.

  Ash puffs up his chest a little, showing no fear: Ash knows to never let a bully see that they’re getting to you.

  “You have to sleep sometime,” whispers the Stache.

  “So do you,” says Ash.

  “And there are two of us, and only one of you,” I add.

  “Is there only one of me?” says Cole. “Seems like a bit of a, what do you call it … an assumption.”

  “Would you all shut up?” that kid with perfect hair and teeth barks at us.

  Cole turns on him. “You shut up!” he yells.

  Then there’s a shoe flying through the air. It misses me and hits Devon right in the stomach. “Ow!” he grumbles, startling awake. “Who did that?”

  The door swings open and the bright hall light spills in.

  “Boys!” An angry silhouette stands in the doorway. “You may not talk or be out of your own bed after lights-out.”

  I try to peer closer. There’s something about the voice that’s slightly familiar to me. But just as I blink, trying to see who it is, the lights go out again as the door closes with a loud ka-chunk!

  When the sky lightens to an eerie gray, the level starts all over again. I’m back at the very beginning, Tom. Trying to get it right.

  It’s a gut-punch sort of feeling, starting over, and it knocks my heart loose from the tape that’s holding it in place. I feel it smash into the floor with a thwack! and when I get my bearings I realize there’s a blaring alarm playing through all the speakers in the school. At first I’m pretty sure there’s a fire emergency in the building, but then I realize it’s even worse: It’s our wake-up call.

  “Why is this happening to me?” I moan at the uncaring universe.

  By the time my brain catches up with my body, I’ve got my school uniform jacket halfway buttoned up—the only problem is that I’ve got my legs through the armholes. It does not work very well as pants.

  “My jacket smells like old people and gym class,” says Devon, pouring himself into his uniform.

  “Two great smells, together at last,” says Mark.

  “Matches with the weird color, though,” I mumble.

  “I kinda think it works on me, guys,” says Ash, and when I look up he’s climbing out of his bunk in his puke-colored clothing.

  Hold on, I didn’t tell you about the uniform yet? Whoa. Well! It’s like the sort of jacket and pants that people wear to a funeral—except it’s this weird, pukey sort of color.

  Pink, Tom. Only, it’s not pink, they told us. It’s salmon. Since when is salmon a color, you may be asking yourself. Turns out it totally is a color. It’s midway between coral and puce … which are also colors. The world is a strange place.

  “So, Ian,” says Ash in the dining hall at breakfast. “How does it feel being the youngest kid in a school bursting with juvenile delinquents?”

  He holds an invisible microphone in front of my mouth, and even though I’m so tired that the air feels like it’s as thick as soup, and twice as hard to breathe, I smile like I’ve just won a big contest and I’m starting my acceptance speech:

  “Wow, such an honor, Ash. I never imagined I’d know what it feels like to be this lucky …”

  “So lucky,” Ash agrees. “What’re you looking forward to the most this summer?”

  “Oh man. There’s so much. I can’t really choose, but for sure I can’t wait to be pummeled by everyone in this whole entire place.”

  “We’re all looking forward to that, I think,” says
Ash into the mic. “What else do you want to say to the viewers at home?”

  I shove him and grab the fake microphone: “I’d like to dedicate this to Louie the Grade-Five Hamster,” I say. “Louie, you peed on us every day and I will never, ever forget you.”

  “Or your many fluids,” Ash agrees.

  That’s when I notice a little snort from a couple tables away.

  Alva Anonymous. She doesn’t look back at us or anything, but she knows we’re listening …

  “You know,” she says, “in my school, class pets weren’t allowed …”

  “That sucks,” says Ash. “Why not?”

  Instead of just answering, she lifts her tray and puts it down next to Ash so she can speak really quietly: “It’s probably because of all the mysterious ‘accidents’ that kept happening.”

  “Accidents?” I say.

  “At night, when no one was around,” she adds with a spooky look. “Some kids thought there was a ghost haunting one of the seventh grade lockers, and they said that if it kept happening Principal Nolen was going to have to condemn the whole building …”

  “Seriously?” I say.

  “Yeah.” Now she’s just getting warmed up. “Nobody knows if it’s a ghost or a demon or—”

  “—or if it’s a weird liar girl with issues?” Devon butts in from across the table.

  “It’s a theory,” she agrees. “The way I’ve heard the Weird Liar Girl Theory, she has been known to defenestrate people who offend her without the slightest warning. You should watch out for her.”

  “Defenestrate?” says Ash.

  “Chuck ’em out of windows,” says Mark.

  Alva smiles.

  Devon takes a long look at her. “You are so damaged.”

  But before she can say anything, a tall girl who’s probably some sort of cheerleader in her real life walks by with three other girls.

  “Nice threads, gentlemen,” she says. I summon up enough bravery to smile in her general direction, but then I see she didn’t mean this to be a compliment.