Narc (2 page)

“Aren’t you supposed to get permission from my mom or something?” I asked.

“You’re almost eighteen, right? So we’re treating you like an emancipated adult,” he said, and I liked the way it sounded. Emancipated. Free.

When the cops asked if I was willing to sign the Substantial Assistance Agreement and go undercover, I said, “Okay,” and just like that, I had a new job, one that I couldn’t discuss with anybody.

The subject of my assignment? The same place I’d been going since ninth grade: Palm Hammock in West Kendall. For years, my school had been dodging phone calls from angry parents, desperate to shake its reputation as “the pharmacy.” The cops weren’t interested in setting up the school for a drug bust. They had one goal: catch the shot caller in action. After targeting the head dealer, I was supposed to alert the lead officer, who would call in the troops for an arrest.

I wouldn’t call myself a party person, yet the cop was ordering me to hang with anyone who might have connections to the shot caller. In other words, the cool kids, not the stoner rejects like me at the bottom of the social totem pole.

This meant going to parties.

This meant making friends.

And another problem: They had to be the right ones.

2 :
Aaron With Two As

I’ve been in trouble lots of times, but never on purpose. The morning after my useless check-in with the cop, I sat in World History, doodling pot leaves on my desk. I made sure that people noticed. That was the plan. My doodles sent a message:
Let’s get high.
So far nobody had taken the bait. Then Mr. Pitstick noticed what I was doing and gave me a lunch detention for “destroying school property.” When lunchtime finally rolled around, I ate my turkey sandwich in the classroom with the other convicts.

Time to take notes.

Somebody’s cell phone buzzed, the ring tone featuring the classic strains of
I’m In Love With a Stripper.
It belonged to Jessica Torres, better known as Skully, a redhead with a reverse mullet (party in the front, business in the back). She tried to lower the volume, making a bloop-bloop noise with every push of the button.

“Call you later,” she whispered.

Unbelievable. Who talks on their cell during detention? I couldn’t get over it. Neither could Mr. Pitstick, who was already marching down the aisle.

Skully dipped lower at her desk, as if that did any good. “Listen, dingle-brain. You have to check it three times a day. Did you eat candy again? What the hell is wrong with you? Do it yourself. Use the flash lancing thingie. Yeah. The one with the see-through cap.”

Mr. Pitstick snatched the phone out of her grip. He snapped it shut and tucked it into his pocket. “Ms. Torres, cellular phones are not allowed on school grounds.” He strutted toward the front of the classroom.

Skully actually got up and followed him. “Hear me out,” she said. “My little brother locked himself out of the house and he needs his meds. No one else is there. He’s got diabetes.”

“Rules are rules.”

“Yeah, but the rule sucks. Say there’s an accident. What happens if the school burns down or something?”

The class rocked with laughter.

“Settle, people,” said Mr. Pitstick. The cell phone went off again, triggering another round of shrieks and giggles. He walked back to his desk and tossed the phone in a drawer.

Skully was upset, almost in tears. I kind of felt bad for her. “I swear to god it’s an emergency.”

Mr. Pitstick sank into his chair. He’s got this holier-than-thou smirk that I really can’t stand. So I did something stupid.

I raised my hand.

“Maybe she’s telling the truth,” I heard myself say. “I just don’t think it’s fair, taking away her phone.”

Heads turned to gawk at me. A few people whispered.

For a long time, Mr. Pitstick stayed quiet. Then he shrugged. “Who said life was fair?”

Everybody leaned toward me, waiting for a showdown, waiting for me to do something. Anything. Instead, I did nothing, as usual, and they went back to chewing their pencils.

It was raining in the library. The sharp tang of mold hit me as I pushed through the double doors. Last summer’s hurricane had ripped the stuffing out of the roof. Around the room, water plinked into buckets. Half the books got tossed, not that anyone came here to read. This was the only safe zone I knew. A place where I could think. I cruised the magazine rack and pretended to read about oil spills. The librarian, a middle-aged dude with a straggly ponytail, hunched at his desk, playing a game of solitaire. Kind of pathetic. But not as lame as me.

I kept looking up people online, like some kind of inept cyber-stalker. For a while I tried using “Palm Hammock” as a search on Facebook, but I didn’t see anyone familiar. The only person I recognized from school was this cute, emo-looking girl named Morgan Baskin. We were in the same history class but we never talked. Not like I’d ever tried; she was far too cool for me.

I switched back to Morgan’s Facebook page. The first thing I noticed is how lonely it looked. When I clicked on photos, I found a Polaroid of a bare arm, crisscrossed with scars. The marks were thin and raised like an ice skater’s trail on a frozen lake. I felt embarrassed just looking at it, like I was peeping on her.

The people in her friends list didn’t go to Palm Hammock. They were from all over the planet, from Australia to Iceland. I scanned through her only blog entry: Everybody Is So Fake. There’s No One Left Who’s Real.

i grab the blade and carve
this skin which no longer feels
normal
drowning in those faces
who try to catch me
the current’s just too strong.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop reading it. Guess you could say I was spacing out. I’m not big into poetry, but there was something between the words that made total sense. My eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Scoggins, would’ve called it an epiphany.

Not for the first time, I was beginning to have doubts about this assignment. What right did I have to be prying into people’s lives? I felt like an asshole.

The library door opened and a bunch of people headed straight for the so-called “lounge” near the computers. I quickly minimized my screen and cleared the search history.

Brent Campbell sprawled across a table with Morgan, the emo-looking girl I had just been checking out online. They used to go out for, like, half a second. Not that I keep track of stuff like that. No telling if they were back together, but Morgan deserved better, if you asked me. Besides. She was way too cute.

Her bangs fell across her face like a shadow. She had a lip ring and a million hoops glinting along her earlobes. I could picture her at a Renaissance fair, selling dreamcatchers or jars marked “ashes of evil fairies.”

Morgan liked to tell everyone that she danced ballet professionally. I believed it. Her muscular legs nearly stretched the length of the table. She always wore flat shoes—moccasins or pillowy Uggs trimmed with fake fur. She must’ve been sweating in those boots because she kicked them under her chair. Until then, I’d never seen her bare toes. They were thick with calluses, almost bent the wrong way.

“Oh, my god. That boy is staring at my feet. What a pervert,” she said, pointing at me.

Brent turned so fast, he might’ve got whiplash. A trio of studs glinted across his pointy chin, as if a nail gun had attacked him. Right. Like that’s so hardcore. “Got a problem?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Leave him alone,” Morgan said. “I can’t blame him for staring. My toes are fugly. They’re totally messed up from jumping in pointe shoes.” She rolled her eyes. “Hey, did you know I danced in a commercial?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Morgan looked surprised. “You do?”

“She was, like, ten,” Brent said.

“Shut up.” She gave me a little smack. “So, like … how do you know?”

“Everybody does,” I said. “It’s online.”

“Really?” she said.

“Somebody uploaded it,” Brent told her, as if she didn’t already know. She’s probably the one who put it there.

In the milk commercial, Morgan wore pigtails and fake eyelashes.

“Does a body good!” she sang, a catchphrase that would never die, thanks to the video posted on YouTube, not to mention the boys who chanted it whenever she walked down the hall.

Brent ripped a page from his notebook. He was always working on some dumbass rap lyric, spitting out rhymes about hustling and hos. If he didn’t make it to the major leagues, he was going to play out his beef in freestyle battles. “It’s good to have a backup plan,” I once overheard him say.

“Your boobs are popping through your shirt,” he told Morgan, holding up her drawing. “You can see the nipples and everything. Were you smoking when you drew this?”

My ears perked up at what might be my first lead.

“I refuse to answer that question,” she muttered. An answer in itself.

I’d never seen Morgan Baskin at the Tombstone, this spot on the edge of campus where the smokers hung out with their pipes and rolling papers. The Tombstone was just a stupid block of fake marble bombed with bird poop. It had a bunch of rich people’s names carved into it, including some kid who died back when I was a freshman.

I didn’t really know the dead guy. He was a few years ahead of me. Someone said that his girlfriend had just dumped him. All I could remember was the bandanna he wore all the time. On the day of his memorial, his locker was plastered with cards. The school put his picture on a music stand in the auditorium. A couple people stood and mumbled into the microphone. His girlfriend talked about how much he loved Egg McMuffins. When I’m dead, I hope that somebody remembers more than just my favorite fast food.

They said the guy had a big heart. They didn’t talk about his bad grades. They didn’t mention the car crash, the six pack of beer, or fight with his ex. Maybe dying isn’t so bad, if people remember who they want you to be rather than what you were.

The Tombstone wasn’t Morgan’s scene. We were at opposite ends of the social scale, so that made sense. But that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t interested in weed. Now was the time to make a move. Only one problem: I had no idea what to do or say around this girl.

“So. Skully’s house party. Are we going or not?” she asked Brent.

Skully’s parties were the stuff of legend. Of course, I had never actually been to any of them.

“I’m going,” I said, taking a seat at their table.

Brent thumped my arm. “Who are you?”

Morgan grinned. “God. You sound like a Nazi. That’s Aaron Foster.” She leaned forward and her shirt dipped open, flashing a glimpse of “the puppies,” as Collin used to call them. I tried to focus on a strip of masking tape on the carpet.

“You know my name?”

“Of course. You’re the enemy,” she said, keeping her gaze locked on mine. Was she onto me? What the hell was that supposed to mean? At that moment, I imagined her mind scanning me, trying to fit me into the right slot. I was the “quiet kid,” so quiet that teachers skipped over my name while taking attendance. In other words, I was human wallpaper.

Brent meanwhile was going off about Photoshop, how digital cameras had “replaced drawing as an art form.” Did he really think he was impressing her with his amazing intellect? Anyway, I was no expert on what girls wanted to hear.

“Whatever, Brent,” Morgan said. “I’m still going to take Advanced Drawing next semester.”

“My dad was a photographer for the Air Force,” I told her. “He used to take these really dramatic pictures of things like soldiers jogging in a sandstorm. You know.
National Geographic
stuff.”

“Where is he now?”

I didn’t answer.

“Oh.” Morgan stared at her fingernails. After a minute, she said, “You’re a military brat?”

I told her my first lie. “I was born on a base in the Azores, these little islands off Portugal.” Actually, I’ve never been out of the country. I just looked at my dad’s photos. God. This whole lying thing was getting easier. That’s the part that freaked me out.

“So that makes you an alien,” said Brent.

Morgan tapped my arm, and I could feel my skin burning. “What was it like there?” she wanted to know.

“Pretty weird. My parents used to play golf near this extinct volcano. The sand on the beaches was black.”

“That’s so amazing,” she said, touching me again.

At this point, Brent was about to explode. “Why are you flirting with this dude?” He scooted closer, as if to kiss her, but she moved. Instead, he licked her cheek.

“Gross,” she said, pushing him away.

He picked up Morgan’s sketchbook and flipped through it. “Why don’t you rip out these pages?” He tossed it across the table. “You should stick to taking crappy photos.”

“Let me do it over,” she said, lunging for the sketchpad.

He yanked it away. “You only draw skulls and shit. That’s the problem. Get a magic marker and make the neckline thicker. Make the shading a little more … you know. What the hell were you thinking?”