Alice in Wonderland High (2 page)

When we finished the third case, the cart was only halfway full, but we couldn't risk getting caught. I stood up and clutched one side of the metal frame. “Di, help me push. Dru, get the door.”

She moved in slow motion to the door, but at least she obeyed. A rare feat for her. She must have been getting sick.

Despite a rough time keeping the wheels straight, we cleared the doorway on the second try. I'd never even set that kind of stat in gym class. We made it all the way through the short hallway leading from the teachers' lounge when I heard soft footsteps coming from behind. Whitney escaping.

Dru stood in front of us, directing our path like an air-traffic controller. She'd see Whitney any second. Before I could think of a better plan, I shoved the cart forward, desperate to clear the turn coming up so Whitney could escape sight unseen. Because, the thing was, I trusted myself to keep my mouth shut. But my friends? They traded gossip like a hot commodity.

“You're going too fast!” Di shouted just as the cart broke free of our grasp, gaining speed. Too much speed, in fact. I'd only meant to get us closer to the corner, but the cart was sailing straight toward Dru and the opposite wall. There had always been a rumor that the hallways were slanted, but I'd figured it was something the seniors told freshmen to screw with them. Guess uneven teaching wasn't the only thing the school had a problem with.

Dru hopped out of the way just in time for the cart to crash into the opposite wall. Reams flew off the stack and smacked the floor. As if the first crash hadn't been loud enough to alert 911. I spun around to check for Whitney but didn't see her. I let out a relieved sigh. At least I'd done something good. Helped the girl who had mysteriously helped me.

“You pushed it right at me, Alice!” Dru jutted out her lower lip.

“I lost control.” I knelt down and scooped up a ream of paper, avoiding her eyes.

“No how. Like I'm supposed to believe that. I have eyes, you know.” For extra emphasis, she pointed to them, as if I didn't have them as well. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

“Stop arguing, okay? Someone might hear.” Di darted her eyes around the hallway. Faint music thumped from the gym in the next hallway over, where the teachers were probably shaking their booties.

“We need to get this cleaned up.” I set the ream of paper on top of what was left of the stack and grabbed another.

The music and a few whooping cheers blasted for a moment, then faded abruptly with the sound of a door slam. Heels clicked along the linoleum, growing louder as they approached our location.

“Go!” I whisper-yelled. “I'll distract them.”

The girls didn't hesitate. They broke into a sprint and ducked back down the hallway we'd just escaped from. Principal Dodgson turned the corner, arms already crossed in anticipation.

Gulp.

“Alice?” Her brow knitted. She was probably wondering why someone as blemish-free as me when it came to trouble was kneeling in front of my botched robbery.

“I can explain.” My lips wanted to buckle, but I forced a rubber-band smile onto them. A halo to reinforce my innocence. “Just getting in some extra credit, Principal Dodgson.”

She pursed her lips. “Why don't we take this to my office? I find students are more . . . cooperative in there.”

Cooperative, as defined by the high-school dictionary:
intimidated, compliant, and fucked.

Inside Principal Dodgson's office, I focused on my lap, hiding my curled fists at my sides, while she popped two Advil and chugged an entire reservoir of water. The longer she stalled, the more time my friends had to escape—and I had to come up with a get-out-of-jail-free excuse.

“I really do have to get back to the, uh, meeting.” As if on cue she hiccupped, a contrast from her sleek, brown hair that was pulled back from her scalp so tight, not a single strand escaped. Sometimes I wondered if she'd surgically turned her hair into Ken-doll plastic in order to appear collected at all times.

“I want to start an eco club.” I clasped my hands on the table and widened my eyes in the fake-innocent expression I'd perfected on my parents before . . . well, before their car crash turned me into an orphan. “You were in a meeting so I thought it would be okay if I took some paper to create flyers with.”

I held my breath as she studied me with her bloodshot eyes. Sweat formed on the back of my neck. Note to self: criminal activities required full-body deodorant or at least a perfume shower.

“Alice, you're. A good. Student.” Her words had awkward pauses in the wrong places. “But an eco club?” The giggle that escaped from her mouth didn't do anything to calm my nerves. Neither did the fact that she dropped her water glass en route to her mouth and it splattered all over her papers. She sat up straighter, peeling the papers off her desk and then acting like nothing unusual had happened. She cleared her throat and spoke her next words slowly, clearly trying to make them sound as normal as possible. “You never came to me about starting one, and frankly,” she said, looking constipated as she tried to suppress a hiccup that broke free anyway, “I don't know why you would after all the bad press the energy shortage has gotten in Wonderland lately.”

“I know that.” I decided to play her way. If I didn't see anything unusual, maybe neither did she. “That's why I was afraid to ask without reinforcements—like the flyers,” I added because while most towns embraced and even encouraged “Going Green,” Wonderland, Illinois, was more in favor of everyone “Going Black.” As in, blackout. The township had deemed the closing of the nuclear-power plant the fault of environmental activists—including my parents—and since we were all feeling the effects of limited electricity, most citizens were very vocal against practically anything with the word
green
. All the more reason I had to fix this.

She hiccupped again, and a lopsided smile slid over her face. “Tell you what. You never gave me problems before. You clean up the mess right now and pick up trash on school grounds the rest of the week after class, and I'll let this be a warning.”

I nodded eagerly. A good-girl reputation was like the kiss of death in social circles, but with administrators? Backstage pass.

Or it would have been, if the mess had still been there to clean up. When we got back to the crime scene, all that remained was the TV cart, guts removed, TV still perched on top. Someone either had a warped idea of what would be valuable on the black market or a sick sense of humor. Instead of the paper reams on the ground, chalk outlined where they used to be like a dead body at a crime scene.

Did Di and Dru carry this out for me on their own? It didn't seem like them, but the thought made my heart swell. And if they didn't, then why would someone stage the missing paper in such a showy display?

The answer came very clearly the next morning, as soon as I entered school. A large crowd was gathered around a set of lockers. Unless a cute boy was stripping for test answers, it didn't seem worth it to hop up and down, trying to see over people's shoulders. The curse of being less than five feet tall. Whispers were flying in a jumble of clipped phrases, nothing standing out to give me a clue.

I turned back the way I had come and decided to try for another hallway. Principal Dodgson ran past me, yelling into her walkie-talkie. “Analyze the handwriting! I don't care if this isn't
CSI
. It's our best lead.” She stopped short when she saw me and dangled the walkie at her side, where it screeched with static. “Quick, tell me.” She pointed at me. “Did you have an accomplice?”

“What?” I glanced around for some clue as to what she was talking about. Truthfully, I'd been banking on her being too drunk to even remember our chat.

“The paper. Did anyone help you take it?”

“N—” The word tried to fly out of my lips in a desperate rush, but I caught myself and stared directly into her eyes, slowing my breathing so my voice came out steady. “No. Why?”

She tilted her head at me. “You don't know why?” She pursed her lips at whatever she saw in my face. “Well, I know it wasn't you, and whoever it was won't be at this school much longer.”

My throat went dry. What had Di and Dru done?

Principal Dodgson waved me away just as the warning bell rang. I hiked my backpack farther up my shoulders. The hallways were so thick with students lining the walls, I could barely get through the crowd. I elbowed and pushed, using mosh-pit techniques to clear a path to my English classroom.

When I walked through the door, I stopped short, eyes wide. Every desk in the room had been decoupaged with white paper watermarked with the school seal; not a single surface of faux wood remained visible. A patchwork of shellacked white-and-black letterhead text covered every blue chair down to the floor. Even the items normally on the teacher's desk now rested upon a thick coating of stolen paper. The room was blinding white, like a winter morning, only without school being canceled.

“I heard it was a prank against homework handouts,” Dru was saying to Quinn Hart, president of every club she could squeeze into her schedule. “Pretty brilliant, if you ask me.”

“Or me,” Di added.

Quinn flicked her long, red curls out of her face. “Do you know who did it?”

“Di, do we have any idea?” Dru asked.

“I might have some clue.” Di stuck her nose in the air and smiled.

I marched over to the powwow. “Quinn, can you give us a sec?”

“It's cool. I've got some gossip to spread!” Quinn rushed off toward some girls a few desks away.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Dru grabbed my arm and tugged me into the corner of the room. Di followed, naturally. “You can thank me later,” Dru said.

“Yeah, we saved your butt. I can't believe what you wrote on the desks!”

“What are you talking about?” I tried to peer over her shoulder at the nearest desk, but the whole not-being-tall-enough-to-ride-roller-coasters-at-the-amusement-park thing kind of prohibited that.

“Don't play dumb, Alice.” Dru brushed her fingers through her straight hair. “You should have heard what kids were saying before we got involved.”

“Contrariwise.” Di leaned in and lowered her voice. “If they think it's a prank against homework, maybe this will actually make you legendary and not the laughingstock of school.”

“I didn't do this.”

“Then who did?” they said in unison. Awesome. Now they weren't just tag-teaming me; they were becoming a backing chorus.

“Who else would care enough about environmentalism to do this?” Di raised her eyebrows at me.

“Who was coached by her parents for years?” Dru took the next line in the verse.

“Who begged her friends nonstop until they got so annoyed they gave in?” Di's voice cracked. “We could have gotten expelled for what we did yesterday!”

Their words dug into my gut and twisted with the point of a knife. “Di, I—” My lower lip trembled. I swallowed. “And Dru. I'm really sorry that I almost got you in trouble, but I didn't tell on you guys.” I grabbed Dru's arm since she seemed to be the one I needed to get approval from, and when her eyes widened, I snapped my hand away. I tried to keep the hysteria out of my voice. “Please. You know this means so much more to me than being coached by my parents.”

“Alice . . . ” Di picked a piece of lint off Dru's shirt. “I've heard it all before. And frankly, I don't agree with you.”

“We only agree on this: the Going-Green crap is a bad idea.” Dru crossed her arms.

“If you want to finish what your parents started, you can do it without me.” Di took a step away from me.

“Or me,” Dru added, though that went without saying.

As the girls plopped down into their white thrones, the bell rang.

A lump swelled in my throat. I pulled out the chair gently, as if making even the slightest sound would set me off. The white paper felt scratchy beneath my elbows. My eyes shifted to read the message scrawled in black permanent marker on my desk.

How's this for waste?

“I need everyone to take their seats.” Mr. Hargreaves, our teacher, clapped his hands to stop the jabbering. “School will continue as normal. And just think! If you forgot your notebook today, you'll have plenty of paper to take notes with.” He snickered at himself. He was fresh out of college and still had that new-car smell.

A loud sound by the window made my classmates suddenly twist their heads. Cashing in my mob-mentality card, I joined them. My mouth dropped as Whitney Lapin shimmied through the window and into the classroom, knee-high boots first.

I was Going Green with envy. This girl had exactly what I needed: guts to be a bad girl where it counted. In public.

Whitney squatted on the radiator. Her long hair fell down her back in curly crinkles, and the fluorescent lights made it look bleached clean of any color. She wore a pleated miniskirt and a black hoodie, as if she couldn't decide between grungy, trendy, or slutty, though the brief glimpse of her hot-pink underwear skewed the scale toward the latter. The pocket watch dangling from her neck swung in time with the swivel of her hips as she spun to face the class.

Mr. Hargreaves's black Chuck Taylors squeaked as he headed toward her. “Was there something wrong with the doorway, Whitney? Should I call maintenance?” He chuckled, then caught himself and cleared his throat.

“You told me if I walked through the door late one more time, you'd give me detention.” Whitney wiped her palms together. “So I didn't use the door.”

“You're wearing a watch, and yet you're still late.” He shook his head, smile still plastered on his face.

“Some mysteries just can't be explained.” She hopped to the floor. “Like the new décor, I'm guessing?” She met my eyes and gave me a little smirk. Suddenly, it all clicked into place. She'd stolen the paper and decoupaged the entire school to get her message across. The girl best known for cutting class and shunning extracurricular activities spent her spare time . . . doing environmental activism?