Aru Shah and the Song of Death

by Roshani Chokshi

  Well, from my perspective, it didn’t really matter whether they were enjoying themselves or not. They had me surrounded just the same. I was trapped.

  Wait. No. That’s an excuse, and I don’t lie to myself. I could have pushed my way out of there if I’d wanted to. But now all eyes were on me. I had an audience. And I am a showman.

  Yasmany stretched his fingers wide before he made two fists. “Time to die, little man. Stand up.”

  I stood all right. Got right in his face. “Time to die?” I asked.

  “Time. To. Die,” he repeated.

  “Like the dead chicken in your locker?” I asked.

  “What?”

  See, that’s the real secret of dealing with bullies: Change the game. You thought we were going to fistfight, Mr. Tough Guy, but—surprise!—suddenly we’re talking about murdered poultry.

  “The dead chicken in your locker,” I said, explaining it to the crowd. “That’s the real reason you didn’t want to open it. You didn’t want anybody to see your dead chicken so they wouldn’t know you keep dead chickens in your locker. Because,” I said, turning to face Yasmany again, “what kind of weirdo keeps dead chickens in his locker?”

  “Stop saying ‘dead chicken’!”

  Everybody laughed. That probably would have sent Yasmany into a berserker rage if some girl hadn’t shrieked, “Blood!” She was pointing at Yasmany’s locker.

  “What?” Yasmany asked again. He and everybody else looked at his locker, and yeah, there was watery pink blood leaking from it, the kind you find at the bottom of Styrofoam meat packages. Not a lot, but enough to drip from the bottom of the locker door and pool on the floor. And it only takes a tiny bit of blood to freak people all the way out.

  Not me, though. I mean, I didn’t know SANGRE DE POLLO was going to come dripping out of his locker, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise, either. I could work with it.

  “Open it,” I said to Yasmany. “Unless you’re too…chicken.”

  If he hadn’t been completely bewildered by what was happening, he would have gorilla-rushed me for sure. Instead, he walked over to his locker and tried to undo the lock. Two, four, seven yanks on it, each angrier than the last. Then he punched his locker door again and said, “I can’t open the stupid thing! I keep trying, but I can’t.”

  “Here. Let me.”

  He took a step back to let me through. But not without asking, “What? How you know my combo?”

  His “combo” was still taped to the back of the lock. About as sharp as a bowling ball, this Yasmany.

  I looked at him over my shoulder with spooky eyes and replied, “Fool! I am a magician. I can read your mind.” Then I spun the dial with fast fingers, clock-, then counter-, then clockwise again. I tugged the lock open dramatically and, with a flourish, removed it.

  “You want the honors?” I asked him, stepping aside with a gracious magician’s bow.

  Yasmany—bro had gone full autopilot by now—stepped forward and opened the locker door, every kid behind him on tiptoe, watching, waiting.

  A whole raw chicken, like you get at the grocery store, with bumpy yellow skin and no head, flipped out of his locker, landed on its chicken butt, and went splat.

  Kids scattered, screaming. Adults would be here any second. Yasmany did a 180 and looked around wildly. He didn’t have eyes anymore: just fear. “I didn’t put no dead chicken in my locker!” he yelled. “You gotta believe me!”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  Of course I did. It was I who had put it in there, after all.

  Abracadabra, chicken plucker.

  “SALVADOR VIDÓN, HOW long have you been attending my school?” asked Principal Torres. I’d only been at Culeco for a few days, but I already knew three things about her: (1) she was a big woman, (2) she was a smart woman, and (3) most importantly, she was a principal. That meant she had zero tolerance for cacaseca.

  “Cacaseca” is the word Miami talk-show hosts use instead of BS. It literally means “dry poop,” but really it means “Dude, your poop is so played out. Don’t try to play me with your played-out poop.”

  “Three days,” I replied to Principal Torres, with exactly zero cacaseca in my voice.

  “Three days,” she repeated, letting her gaze drift around the room. Yasmany and I were sitting in tiny little plastic chairs in front of her desk, both of us doing our best not to move. Maybe then Principal Torres wouldn’t see us. You know, like cavemen hiding from T. rexes.

  No dice. Principal Torres’s glasses suddenly caught the light and locked on me like prison searchlights. “And how many times have I seen you in my office, Mr. Vidón?”

  I paused before answering. The first time was on day one, because my doctor had told me to inform my principal about my diabetes and the special equipment I needed to manage it, like needles, because if you bring needles to school, everyone assumes you’re a drug addict.

  The second time (yesterday), Mr. Lynott, my PE teacher, had sent me to her office for eating candy. But what was I supposed to do—let myself pass out in the middle of the obstacle course? Principal Torres had said she would let Coach Lynott know I had special permission to pop the occasional Skittle.

  And this time it was because of Yasmany. None of this was my fault.

  But I didn’t say any of that. Principal Torres, I already knew, didn’t like excuses. So I kept my face neutral and said, “You have seen me three times.”

  “Do you think I see every child who attends this school once a day, every day of the school year?”

  “No.”

  “That is exactly correct!” she said. Her smile could wilt flowers. “So why do you think I’ve had the great pleasure of enjoying your pleasant company in my office every day of the school year so far?”

  I thought for a moment. Actually, I just made a face like I was thinking, for the sake of the performance. Then: “Because the students and faculty of Culeco have a lot to learn about how to make school safe for diabetics.”

  She blinked and kept blinking for a few seconds. “Huh,” she said, sitting forward in her chair. “You know, I was all ready to tear into both of you. But honestly, Sal, you may be right. Culeco’s still pretty new. We only opened five years ago, and we’ve been growing and changing the whole time.” She shook her head to help her get back to her point. “We’ve never had a student with type-one diabetes before. I am going to have to instruct my whole staff on how to meet your needs. The students, too. I’ll tell my science teachers to include a lesson or two on diabetes. We will do better for you, Mr. Vidón. I promise. And I apologize.”

  One of the quickest ways you can tell if an adult is quality people is if they’ll apologize to a kid when they’re wrong. Principal Torres was someone I could work with. “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded before she turned her searchlights on Yasmany. (Not a hair moved, by the way. It was like her hairdo was made of Legos.) “I see I am going to have to make examples of a few people who don’t know how to create a welcoming learning environment. Maybe then the school will get it through its thick collective head that bullying will not be tolerated under any circumstances.”

  Man. Principal Torres wasn’t even talking to me, but she made my guts flutter just the same.

  “What did I tell you at the end of last year?” she said to him, parting her lips but not her teeth.

  This was usually the point in the conversation when the bully starts denying everything, blaming the victim, changing the subject, etc. I was ready for this. I’d made two bullies cry in front of principals at my last school just by calmly sticking to the facts and being polite. Adults really like polite kids.

  But Yasmany didn’t behave like other bullies I’d known. He looked at his shoes. “I’m having a bad day,” he told his ratty high-tops. A spattering of chicken blood decorated his right shoe’s toe.

  “No,” said Principal Torres. “You were having a bad day. Now you’re having the worst day of your young life. Because now I have to expel you.”
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  What? “Wait!” I interjected. “It wasn’t that big a deal, Principal Torres. He shouldn’t get expelled just for knocking my med bag out of my hands.”

  She pushed her huge glasses up her face. “Unfortunately, Mr. Robles has a history at this school. Since the moment he got here, I have been bending over backward to try to give him a proper education. Do you remember, Mr. Robles, how I helped you to complete the paperwork last year so that you could attend this very special magnet school?”

  Yasmany hunched over even more. “Yes.”

  “Do you remember, at the end of last year, after all the fights you got into and the problems you caused me, the little heart-to-heart we had, right here in this office?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did I tell you then, Mr. Robles?”

  “That I was on probation.”

  “That you were on probation. One more altercation with another student and it would be a-di-os.” She pronounced “adios” like an American, with three syllables. I wondered for a minute if she was a Latina who didn’t know Spanish. But she cured me of that idea with her next sentence: “Y si no tienes ninguna defensa para ofrecer, te digo ‘¡Chao pesca’o!’ ahora mismo.”

  My own Spanish is pretty okay, though I hadn’t gotten to practice it much since Mami died. “¡Chao pesca’o!” basically means “See you later, alligator!” And “defensa” means “defense.” She was asking him if he had anything to say in his defense. Or it would be bye-bye, Yasmany.

  And, I mean, I clearly wasn’t the first kid he’d bullied. Chacho was in big trouble.

  “Yes,” he said. He looked at the door, then back at Principal Torres. Then the door. Then Torres. “I will have a defense. In a minute.”

  Principal Torres cocked her head. She almost laughed but inhaled instead. “In a minute? Mr. Robles, the time is now. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  He didn’t look up or raise his voice or anything. He just said, “I just need a second, Principal Torres. My lawyer is coming.”

  Now she did laugh. “Your lawyer?”

  Her office door opened. In walked a very recognizable seventh grader, bringing in her own chair from the hallway and wearing a big smile on her face. I knew her, even though I’d only been at this school for a few days. It was Gabi Reál: student council president, editor of the school newspaper, and, apparently, Yasmany’s lawyer.

  “I came as fast as I could,” she said. “So, what’d I miss?”