Breakout (2 page)

But instead of being a freshman, I am stuck here going numb, pressed up against the ice as my oxygen meter slides from green to yellow to red, and following Mr. Scher to the office, where one little bit of bad timing suddenly has my musical future hanging in the balance.

When we get to the office, Mr. Scher has to interrupt Principal Tiernan’s daily flirting with the PTA dads, so she gives me that glare, the one she thinks is intimidating but really just makes her look ridiculous. She’s so annoying: all old but she tries to look young, with the smooth dyed hair and the shimmery skirt-and-shirt outfits and the spiky cougar heels, her eyelashes like furry spiders. The dads love it, though. Even my dad gets all smiley when she tosses him that patented wink of hers.

“I’m going to have to call home about this,” Ms. Tiernan says once Mr. Scher has laid out the details of my crimes. The call home is nothing new. That’s going to suck, but it’s what she says next that will determine my fate.

I watch her mull over the possible
Consequences of My Actions
. The makeup caked on her forehead buckles as she puts on her thinking face and taps her chin with her finger. Even this expression seems to be just in case there’s a stray dad in the vicinity. Like she’s so in control, so on top of everything.

“You can eat lunch here on the couch,” she finally says, “then miss free period …”

None of that’s a big deal. Almost there …

“And you can miss free period tomorrow too.” She struts away, heels clacking.

Yes!
I make an Allied “V for Victory” to myself and grab a seat on the black leather couch. Missing free period does
stink, but whatever. Keenan and I probably need to cool off anyway.

As long as Tiernan didn’t threaten to take away Rock Band Club or Arts Night, I can weather any punishment.

The couch isn’t that terrible a place to be. You get to watch the daily parade of carnage: sick kids, hurt kids, kids who did crazy stunts and got caught. You hear Ms. Simmons, the secretary, calling home, see the stressed-out moms running in.

Some of today’s cases are pure comedy, like when a fourth grader staggers in covered in his own snot with a plastic knife lodged in his nose that he was using to try to retrieve a corn kernel. They get the knife out but the kernel will never be recovered.

But then there are the soldiers of the resistance, keeping up the fight against all odds: like a sixth grader who got busted for forging his mom’s signature to try to get out of taking the citywide standardized test. As he stands there, red-faced—Tiernan winking her way through one of her most sadistic tools of torture, the live call to your mom’s work with you standing right there—our eyes meet and I give him a little nod. Keep fighting, young one. Someday, you’ll be on the front lines, and this black couch will be yours.

I finish my lunch and things quiet down during free period, which only means that as a middle school student you are free to be bored in the library or the courtyard. You could go out to the playground, but that’s where all the little kids are having recess.

Sitting there, I think back on that moment at the lockers. Even though Skye was wrong to just blurt out spoilers, I realize that maybe I’ve also been getting frustrated with her easily this year, ever since we dated last summer. It barely lasted two weeks and I’m over it. I totally am! I mean that was like three months ago, ancient history at this point, and everybody knows that nothing really works out in the summer anyway because you barely see each other except for online and texting. We only actually hung out twice, once at the mall and once at Magnuson Park, where we went swimming in Lake Washington. And then I guess I forgot to text her back a couple times right around when I got
Liberation Force
for my birthday, and then that was that.

We’ve smoothed it over, but now that she’s dating Keenan, I have to see a lot of her. She’s been looking really hot this year too. Like today she’s wearing this cool sweater-vest-and-button-down outfit with pencil jeans. She has a pretty sweet body, but she doesn’t flaunt it like some of the other girls in our class. Her hair is dyed kind of bloodred (the natural color is like a sandy blond, but Skye says she is
not
a blonde) and falls down the left side of her face. It’s a look that says hotness but also some brains, like she spent five minutes on it but not ten. Skye doesn’t want to be one of those cute-bots that seems
to spend their entire existence trying to look exactly like my little sister’s Polly Pockets. It’s the difference between looking good and looking perfect and plastic.

And so, I guess sometimes, even though I’m not into her, I maybe still think that she’s hot, or maybe miss dating her kinda … that is, unless she is going and opening her mouth and making me crazy.

But it’s been fine, no big deal. And of course none of that is Keenan’s fault. He definitely waited long enough before he started dating her. And it was Skye’s idea, and Keenan asked me if it was okay.

Still … it’s been a long three and a half weeks being around them being together.

The rest of the day is dumb: after free period, it’s social studies and math, and I make sure to just keep my head down and go unnoticed.

I don’t see Keenan and Skye until we’re back at our lockers at dismissal. I wonder if either of them will still be mad, but it’s business as usual. I can’t help feeling in a better mood too. It’s Thursday, which means Keenan and I have Rock Band practice.

“Still good for the show?” Keenan asks immediately.

“Yeah,” I say. “Unless my parents freak out.”

“She called home?” Keenan asks.

“She said she was going to. And when’s the last time Tiernan forgot to torture a kid?”

“That’s so ridiculous,” says Skye as we walk to her locker, she and Keenan with their arms around each other, slouching their single Siamese body along beside me. “You guys are best friends! They should know you were just kidding around. It was so nothing important!”

“I know,” I say.

“I think Scher
wants
to get you kicked out of Rock Band,” Skye continues. “I bet he totally gets off on that idea.”

It’s nice to have allies again, but I wish Skye would just drop it. She’s one of those girls who
always
have opinions. And not, like, after carefully considering anybody else’s point of view—with Skye it’s like ninja opinions that just drop down on you like
bam!
before you even have a chance to maybe work through some of the sides of the issue or anything. I’ve never seen her dwell. Or mull. (Yeah, I know those words, Ms. Rosaz, even though you don’t think I do.)

Then again, I should probably be annoyed with me, because I didn’t think her opinions were annoying before we broke up. What I used to think was that it was cool the way Skye could say what was on her mind so fast. I can’t do that, except if I’m mad about something. A lot of times I feel like by the time I think of what I want to say, the moment is over.

Skye packs her bag, grabs her coat, and pulls out a large sign attached to a piece of wood.

“I bet Tiernan was just looking for an excuse to call your dad and hit on him,” she says as we make our way to the front doors, and we all do laugh at that, though maybe me a little less. I’m not looking forward to dealing with the fallout at home.

“All right, well, later,” says Skye. She slobbers a kiss on Keenan’s cheek and I try not to look, because it’s like Keenan is getting attacked by a jellyfish (except maybe I remember what those kisses felt like).

“Oh!” Skye rummages in her shoulder bag. “Here, take these, and could you wear them tomorrow? That would be great.” She hands us each a button and then heads outside to meet up with her friends Katie and Meron.

The button says the same thing that the three girls start shouting among the stream of departing kids, and the same thing their signs say:
WINKY NEEDS ACTION
.

The button also has a hand-drawn sketch of Winky, the little injured sparrow that lives in the school courtyard. Ever since the bird flew into a window back in September and broke its wing, Skye has been on a mission to save it. Ms. Tiernan wanted to have it caught and removed, but Skye successfully protested that it would be cat food in the wild, so they should let it live there. She and her friends built it a birdhouse, and she feeds it each week.

Their latest crusade is to get a female sparrow to live with Winky, to improve his “quality of life.” Meaning so he can make some baby sparrows. So they’re trying to raise money to have someone from the Audubon Society bring a female bird
in, along with netting to kind of force them to date. Their fund-raising is going slow, but typical Skye shows no signs of stopping. You kind of have to hand it to her, standing out there in the sea of kids leaving, shouting her lungs out to help a dumb bird.

And we’ll get an earful if we don’t wear the pins, so Keenan and I put them on before heading up the hallway.

Now that it’s just Keenan and me, I realize that our fight earlier is still on my mind. I feel like I don’t want to turn too much in his direction.

“You have time to play
LF
tonight?” he asks.

“Depends on the stupid phone call,” I say. Odds are my parents will be mad but not grounding-mad. Game time could be on the line, though, which sucks, and I am reminded that all this
sucks
! Like one little intense moment between friends even freakin’ matters!

Well, but Fat Class mattered.

The comment. I mean, a little. But I know Keenan only said it in the heat of battle. He knows it’s not really Fat Class, that calling it that is just a joke.

Except sometimes it maybe feels like Fat Class.

So the deal is, I’m overweight. Actually, if you just go by my body mass index, the All-Powerful BMI, I’m technically
obese. By one stupid digit! Which is extra dumb because I don’t look that fat and it’s not like I’m busting out of my clothes or anything. I just wear baggy jeans and my hoodie and it’s all good.

But the real problem is that on the inside I’m what’s called prediabetic. It has to do with your blood sugar and other stuff and the point is, if I don’t lower my weight and watch my diet I could end up with type 2 diabetes, which is the kind that onsets when you’re older.

“There’s still time,” the doctor said at my last checkup, but he said it with this look in his eye like the bullets had hit vital organs and I was already a goner.

So that’s why Mom signed me up for Fat Class. It’s really called Life-in-STYLE! but even I’d rather call it Fat Class than
that
. It’s one of those classes that are mainly for grown-ups and old people. I’m the only kid there. But actually, that’s what makes it okay. Nobody at school sees me, and compared to the older guys I do okay at all the exercises.

I mean, I guess I wouldn’t really care if my classmates knew I went. They all know I’m not some athletic type. It’s just easier to give them as few bullets to use against you as possible.

Which is why it hurts that Keenan would use that kind of ammunition. And I feel like he never would have done that before Skye. Keenan is my best friend and bandmate and we always used to know which things would be annoying and irritating to say just to push each other’s buttons but also which things we shouldn’t bring up.

It’s not cool how a girl can screw all that up. Suddenly everything is freakin’ life-or-death all the time. Like today, when what should have been just normal Keenan and Anthony joking at our lockers like old times ended up feeling like Level 13 of
Liberation Force
. Which is to say that girls basically make life feel like when you’re trying to take out the bell tower sniper during the Battle of Metz in November 1944. The bridge is out because you missed a hidden land mine on the last level, and then suddenly your buddies are going down and you lose your medic and you have to run the blockade on foot to get that stupid sniper before you can start your assault on the final panzer, and there are bullets everywhere and dust and rubble and screams and pain.

I barely even see Keenan outside of school anymore except as a GI in the game. We used to have a good pattern of hanging out, like on Sundays when we’d get doughnuts and chais at Top Pot and then sneak them into the early matinee at Cinerama. Or when we’d get mochas and sit in the aisles at Secret Garden Books reading the graphic novels and showing
each other the cool panels. It was like reading two books at once. But now all that time is gone.

I wonder if I should say something to him about all this now. But I’m not sure what. Not that it’s a problem that he’s dating Skye or anything, and he probably knows that he crossed the line with the Fat Class comment. Just, in the future, maybe …

But we’re already up the stairs and Keenan is asking, “Did you practice the new tune?”

And I feel like it’s too late.

Maybe it will come up another time. Or maybe I’m just a wimp. Whatever! Rock Band is our time and I’m not going to let some stupid moment that was probably Skye’s fault get in the way of our friendship.

So I just answer his question. “Yeah. Worked on the song a lot, and also started learning some of
Arcane Sweater Vest
too.”

That’s the new album by the Zombie Janitors. It’s sick. Those guys are hilarious too, for a metal band, which is obviously because they’re British. They’re our second-favorite band after SilentNoize, but the Noize hasn’t put out an album in like two years because their lead singer, Jake Diamond, is at some kind of holistic mineral detox spa in Sedona and their old drummer left to start a ringtone-only record label.

“Yeah, I started working through the ZJ album too,” says Keenan. “I didn’t practice much for today, but I’ll rock it.”

I nod because Keenan will. He’s a really good bass player. Almost as good as I am at guitar.

We pass the cafeteria and arrive at a door with a hand-painted
sign that says Student Lounge. I can feel the floor vibrating already, and that hum in my sneaker soles makes the stupidness of this whole day finally seem to shake loose, like it’s a crust that has cooled around me and now I am bursting free of it like some awakened mutant, raining down flakes of rock on the terrified scientists who discovered me.