It's Only Temporary (12 page)

“We gotta think of some way to get even with them, or they're gonna keep going after us,” Pip said the following Thursday afternoon when Ms. O'Hare left the art activities room to take some papers to the office. “They think we're easy targets.”

“Oh, no,” Maddy murmured, her face losing its color. She was obviously imagining another so-called “collision,” Skye thought, biting her lip in sympathy.

She didn't know what to fear for herself.

Ms. O'Hare's art activities group had started meeting on Thursdays as well as Tuesdays, because work was piling up. Homecoming was in two more weeks, and there was still the thirty-foot-long banner to finish and the special Homecoming newspaper to assemble. “Amelia Earhart is gonna kick Thomas Alva Edison's
butt
this year,” Aaron
and his friends kept going around saying, to Skye's secret delight.

Matteo Molina shifted in his seat. “I dunno,” he mumbled. “What can we do?”

“I didn't even tell my dad what happened at the party,” Pip said. “He'd probably say it was my own fault for taking art. He says art is for girls. You better believe I had to sneak my Halloween costume out of the house that night!”

“I used to get that, too – about art,” Matteo confirmed. “Until my uncle got a job in computer graphics and started making more money than anyone else in the family.”

“The grown-ups at school don't really care about what happens away from school,” Amanda informed everyone, “so you can't tell
them
when something goes wrong. But bad stuff is going to keep on happening – at both places. To
us
.”

“I don't get why those football guys even care about us,” Skye said, shaking her head. “When my brother was in middle school, he and his friends never paid attention to any younger kids. They were too busy messing around and stuff.”

“I didn't know you had a brother, Skye,” Maddy said, her brown eyes widening in surprise. “Why didn't you ever tell me that?”

Because Scott was one of
her
syndromes, that was why, Skye thought, not meeting Maddy's curious gaze.

“Well,” Amanda said, ignoring both the subject of Skye's brother and Maddy's question, “I don't know why they're picking on us. Maybe they're bored, or maybe they just hate anyone who's different from them.”

Scott and Maddy
, Skye thought immediately. They were different, too, and they always would be, at least a little, and people would judge them – and maybe even be mean to them –
because
they were different.

And it wasn't a temporary thing for them.

“I can do something about it,” she heard herself say.

All the art kids looked at her in silence for a second. “Yeah, right,” Pip finally said, laughing.

“No, I mean it,” Skye told him – and the others. “I can. Because we're in charge of the Homecoming newspaper they're giving out at half-time, right?”

A couple of the kids nodded.

“Well, you know that insert that's going to be inside the newspaper?” Skye asked. “The one with all the football players' individual pictures in it?”

“Yes,” Amanda said cautiously. “I heard everyone gets the players to sign the pictures, and then
kids tape them inside their lockers – as if those guys were rock stars!”

“Like they aren't getting enough attention already,” Pip said, outraged.

“And the school might even put the insert in the yearbook this year – for the very first time,” Jamila reported.

“Not when I get done with it, they won't,” Skye said. “'Cause I'm gonna do a job on the mean guys' pictures. You know, fix them up a little – or draw whole new ones and sneak them in. I mean, those guys are messing with us because they think we don't have any way of getting back at them, right? So this'll teach them a lesson.”

“You could do that?” Matteo asked, sounding skeptical.

“Yeah, like what are you gonna do?” Jamila chimed in. “Draw mustaches on their pictures? 'Cause that's just lame.”

“I can do better than that,” Skye said, sliding her sketchbook out of her book bag. Her heart was pounding as she mentally reviewed the drawings inside it: there were those really mean drawings of Scott she'd done last summer when she was still so angry with him, not that any of these kids knew Scott. But there was also that drawing of Pip that made him look freakishly flexible and thin, like some kind of mutant, and the one of Jamila wearing the world's goofiest smile, and the one that made Matteo look like a sumo wrestler on a bad day, and the one of
Amanda that made her look like she was made entirely out of twisted party balloons.

And then there was the drawing of Maddy – made just a week after Skye had arrived in Sierra Madre – that made her look completely out of it, as if her brain was totally empty. That drawing would” hurt the most, Skye knew, suddenly ashamed. You could draw a bad picture of anyone, really – especially when you didn't know them.

“Let me show you a couple of drawings, just so you can get the idea,” Skye said. “But you have to back up a little, 'cause this is private. It's like my journal.” She hurriedly selected a few harmless pages to show them, and the art kids were quiet for a moment.

“Hey, those are pretty good,” Amanda said, surprised.

“They're
really
good,” Matteo said, leaning in close to get a better look. “But do you think you could draw those actual guys? So people could recognize them, I mean?”

Skye nodded. “I can try,” she said. “I'll just make 'em look a little more…
interesting
.”

“Great!” Pip said, looking hopeful for the first time all day. “Revenge! This could really, really work, Skye – if you can make those guys look bad in front of everyone. We'll teach 'em what happens when they mess with us art jerks.”

“Teach who not to mess with whom?” Ms. O'Hare said
as she backed into the room holding a cookie sheet.

“Oh, nothing,” Amanda, Matteo, and Pip said in unison.

“Well, I made you some quesadillas on the hot-plate in the teachers' lounge,” Ms. O'Hare said, grinning, “because I know how hungry you kids get after school. But use plenty of paper towels when you clean up, okay? Because we don't want to leave any fingerprints on anything.”

“We'll try not to leave fingerprints,” Pip promised, and all the art jerks knew exactly what he was talking about.

But Skye had the distinct and suddenly sinking feeling the only “fingerprints” on this stunt were going to be hers.

P
ip strode into the almost empty art activities room ten minutes after school ended, as the muffled
thump thump
of the school band's drums floated in from the playing field. The game was about to begin, and the special edition of the Homecoming newspaper he'd just turned in to the parent volunteers would be given out at halftime.

Skye planned to be long gone by then.

“Did you do it?” Amanda asked in her squeaky voice. “Did they notice anything was wrong with the insert?”

Pip shook his head. “It's not like they would,” he told the nervous group of kids. “It's on the inside, and Skye only changed four little pictures. Besides, everyone is gonna be too busy watching the game to check out the paper for at least another hour. It's not like they think anything in it is really
news
.”