The Fourth Stall Part II (5 page)

L
ater that day in class Mr. Skari announced that for the next few days we'd be reviewing materials specifically for SMART preparation. He said it was very important that we do well. And if he was willing to change his class schedule around to help us prepare, then it really must be an important test—because Mr. Skari hated to deviate from his class schedule. One time he even came to school with a shattered arm. Apparently he'd slipped on the ice in his driveway that morning and broken it. Mr. Skari is like six and a half feet tall, so when a guy like that falls, it usually ends in broken limbs. But he was so obsessed with staying on schedule that he didn't even go to the hospital until after school that day. Some kids claim they could even see bone sticking out of his arm through the makeshift sling he'd made, but there was no way that was true. Right?

Anyways, the point is if Mr. Skari was willing to deviate from his regular class schedule for this test, then that meant it really was a
big
deal.

After talking about some math subjects that would be on the test, he handed out this huge packet of worksheets to complete for the rest of the day. Everybody groaned, even me. Packets are the worst. Nobody likes packets. Well, except for Garret Henley—he loves packets, but he also loves all homework, eating string cheese dipped in grape jelly, and watching the Public Access TV channel. So his opinion doesn't count for much.

“Christian?” Mr. Skari said a few minutes after handing out our packets.

I looked up from my math assignment with a frown. It was never a good sign to have the teacher say your name during classwork time. Mr. Skari motioned for me to come to his desk.

As I got up, he said, “Better grab your stuff.”

That was an even worse sign.

I collected my things, threw them into my backpack, and approached his desk.

“Yeah?”

“You need to go see Dr. George.”

“Why?”

Mr. Skari gave me one of those looks that said,
You know why
. For the most part Mr. Skari and I got along pretty well. For him being a teacher anyways. So he'd probably tell me if he knew exactly why I needed to go see Dr. George.

He handed me my hall pass and I headed off toward the administration offices.

The place where happiness goes to die.

So it seemed I was going to get my first meeting with the new vice principal. I would get to see what he was all about firsthand. I'm going to admit that I was a little nervous. I mean, you don't get reputations like Dr. George's by being an empty threat.

As bad as Head Principal Dickerson was, Dr. George would probably be even worse. They were both clearly old cranky guys with little to no hair whose faces would shatter into gory messes of blood and skin if they ever smiled, but the difference was that Dickerson was kind of a bumbling idiot, whereas Dr. George had a reputation for being razor sharp, the sort of guy you couldn't just talk your way around. He was still a doctor, after all, even if it was the fake kind.

I shuffled inside the door to the administration offices, and the secretary held out her hand. I wasn't sure if she wanted me to shake it or something, but then I looked at the hall pass clutched in my own hand and held it out to her. She snatched it away as if she thought I might pull it back at any moment.

I had never been called to the principal's office before. I was just a simple businessman, not a troublemaker.

The secretary pointed at a door to my left.

The silence could have suffocated me.

The door was huge, but the nameplate on it was tiny and slightly crooked. I reached to knock, but the door opened before I could. He'd been expecting me, I guessed.

Dr. George held the door open and swept his other hand toward a chair across from his desk. I sat down. He closed the office door and sat across from me. He was a normal-sized guy. He had a lot of wrinkles, and his eyes moved too much, but other than that and his two-toned fake hair, he looked just like any other crusty old guy.

We sat there looking at each other for a while. His breathing was loud and his nose wheezed with each exhale. He stared right at me, and I tried to hold his gaze as long as I could, but it was hard. The guy was making me nervous—even more so than adults usually do. What was his game?

“Well?” he said finally.

“Well,” I said back.

He frowned.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he said.

“For what?” I dug my fingers into the wooden armrests on my chair.

“Don't play games with me, Mr. Barrett.”

“I'm not playing games. I wish I were,” I said.

He pounded a fist on the desk. “I'm tired of this attitude from you kids! Show some respect!”

He startled me, and I jumped, suddenly more afraid than I ever expected to be in my own school. His voice echoed deep into my brain even after he'd finished yelling.

“I'm sorry, sir, I just don't know what I did wrong.”

“You don't.”

“No.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He grabbed a folder from a drawer behind him and slapped it onto the desk. Then he leafed through it briefly before closing it again. He was making a big show and I knew it.

“You were caught trespassing in the kitchen,” he said, pounding the folder with his index finger to emphasize each word. “We're not going to tolerate any funny business around here anymore. None.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. I wasn't trespassing, I was doing research for—”

“The newspaper, right. This school doesn't have a student-run newspaper, Mr. Barrett.”

A little detail I wish I'd remembered before opening my mouth back in the kitchen. But I'd just assumed that the cooks wouldn't have a clue either way.

“So?” he said.

“So,” I repeated back.

His face reddened considerably. I almost regretted saying it for a second, but then I realized how hilarious his wrinkled face looked right then, all orange and shriveled like a dusty, old, popped basketball.

“What were you doing back there?” he demanded.

“I was just asking them about our school menu. It's been so different lately.”

“Don't you like the food we serve?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose,” I said, even though I hadn't eaten a bite of school lunch in over four years. But if anyone should be concerned about the health value of school lunches, shouldn't it be George?

Then he dropped the bombshell.

“I know you're up to something, Mac. May I call you Mac?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He didn't say anything else, letting his last few sentences sink in. I sat there and let them. And I didn't like it. I didn't like those words a single bit.

“I'm going to find out what's going on. I'll be watching you closely. I don't tolerate funny
business
in my school, as I said. Maybe you kids got to do whatever you wanted before, but now that I'm here, all of that will change. This school is more important than any of you realize, and nothing is going to get in the way of me cleaning it up, understand?”

I wasn't sure if he'd emphasized the word “business” on purpose or if my mind was just playing tricks on me. The effect was the same, regardless. My business was in danger from the worst source possible: the Administration. I could handle rival businesses, tough customers, rats, snitches, and general troublemakers. But the one thing I couldn't have against me was the Administration. As dumb as the Suits usually were, they still held the power to shut me down for good.

“You hear me?” Dr. George practically screeched.

“Sure.”

“Okay, then. I'm giving you an hour of detention for the next two days after school for your stunt in the cafeteria today. And just know that I'm going to find out what you're up to. Understood?”

I nodded. I was furious that this would cause me to miss a day of baseball tryouts, but I knew it wouldn't do any good to argue.

“That'll be all,” he said, and turned his chair so that he was facing his computer.

I got up and somehow ended up back in class, though I don't remember actually walking there. Other than it causing me to miss baseball tryouts, I didn't really care at all about the detention; I'd just use that time to work on some of my current cases. But I was concerned about the fact that the Administration was now on my tail. It'd been hard enough to keep up with business anyways; now I had to worry about being cased by Suits. All I could do, though, was be more careful and hope that Dr. George really didn't have a clue what was going on, that it had just been an empty threat.

Vince got detention, too, for the cafeteria stunt. But he hadn't gotten any cryptic threats from Dr. George, just the standard lecture and detention. He didn't like what I told him at the start of afternoon recess that day.

“What are we going to do? We've never had the Administration on our tails before,” Vince said. “This is, like, almost worse than that one time I tried to prove that gravity was a myth using nothing but a box of toothpicks, the big oak tree in my backyard, four packages of grape Kool-Aid, and a lawn gnome with a missing hand.”

“I remember that,” Joe said.

I did, too, and it had been pretty funny, aside from Vince's crooked ankle and two months of him in a cast ordering me around and whining about being one limb down. But I really wasn't in a laughing mood just then.

“I guess the only thing we can do is keep focusing on our current customers. And also be more careful,” I said. “Hey, Fred?”

“Yeah?”

“How about for a while you can be our official lookout instead of keeping records? You can sit in the first stall and watch the hall camera through a small portable TV hooked up to the DVR. You can watch the end of the west hall and tell us if a Suit or teacher is coming. Then maybe we can get Brady to watch the west entrance near my office.”

“Sure, Mac,” Fred said.

“That sounds like a plan,” Vince said.

“Then maybe today after detention, Vince and I will take a look around Mr. Kjelson's office. See what we can find.”

“What about baseball tryouts today, Mac?” Vince asked. “We're going to miss due to detention. The last thing we need as sixth graders trying to make the team is to give the coach any reason at all to cut us.”

I thought about that. “We'll just have to talk to Kjelson and make up for it on the field . . . or in the gym or—you know what I mean.”

Vince nodded but still looked concerned.

“All right. There's a line forming outside, so let's open up for business for the rest of recess,” I said.

Our first customer that day was a dual customer—and an odd pair to be showing up together, at that. A lanky, pale kid and a small kid with neat hair, a collared shirt, and a sweater vest with a goose on it stepped into my office. They were Great White and Kitten, two of the more notorious bullies in the school.

Great White was British and had blond hair and pale skin. He also had a real mean streak and was one of the best fighters and toughest kids in the school. Kitten was meek and mild with a soft voice and neat clothes. But his appearance was deceiving. He was quite possibly the most insane person in the entire state. He probably belonged in a psych ward. Seriously, if he and I didn't get along so well and he hadn't helped my business so much in the past, I'd have turned him in to state officials a long time ago. If you crossed him, he was more dangerous than anyone in the city, probably. He'd eat your dog right in front of you with a knife and fork and a napkin tucked under his collar if you made him mad enough. But he and Great White weren't friends, so it was weird to see them together like this.

“Have a seat,” I told them.

They sat down in the two chairs across from me. For the first time I noticed that Great White had a black eye and a large bandage on his neck. I remembered that some kids had complained about him picking a lot of fights lately due to the lack of punishment from the school. I wondered if this could be related.

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.

“Well, besides the fact that this little git over here bit me in me neck like some sort of vampire?” Great White said.

“You bit him in the neck?” I said to Kitten.

Kitten looked calm, collected, and small as usual. “He started the fight. I just finished it,” he said quietly.

I held back a laugh. Didn't Great White know any better than to mess with Kitten? “So why are you both here? Also, if you started the fight, Great White . . .”

“No, no, I'm not, like, here to tattle on the little psycho. We're here because of the punishment we got for scrapping on school property, yeah? I mean, we was just knockin' about, minding our own business, and then some little squealer had to go and tattle on us. Anyway, lately I is only be gettin' like two days' detention, tops, for fighting, but now this Dr. George guy be giving us two weeks' detention for one little scrap!”

I looked at Kitten for confirmation and he nodded. “Yeah, I've never gotten two full weeks for simply defending myself.”

So George was apparently pretty serious about ending the funny business in our school. Which was fine, in a way, but he was a direct threat to my business and maybe even more than that.

It was official. I had to get rid of Dr. George.

“I'll see what I can do,” I said. I suddenly felt kind of like I was suffocating. I just didn't have the manpower to handle all of these problems. Getting teachers and coaches fired was hard enough, but now I had to worry about getting rid of a Suit? I'd never messed with the Administration before, and I didn't exactly want to start, but it was looking like I might not have a choice.

“O
kay, Vince, are you ready?” I asked.

“When aren't I? Seriously, Mac. We always ask each other if we're ready and we always are.”

“Good point.”

“Quiet down! This is detention not social hour,” Mr. Daniels said from behind his computer.

Mr. Daniels had been the detention warden for as long as anyone could remember. He always just sat behind his computer playing games or maybe doing stuff we didn't even want to know about, rarely even looking up at the kids sitting in detention. And he would generally yell at us every fifteen minutes to quiet down but never actually handed out any more punishment. That bit about “social hour” was his signature line. He'd yell that exact same line to a room filled with nothing but silence and a few sleeping eighth graders. Everybody had figured out long ago that Mr. Daniels didn't really pay any attention to us at all.

“Anyways,” I continued in a voice just above a whisper, “who was the last Cub to hit for the cycle?”

Vince scoffed. “Are you insulting me?”

“Whatever, it's not that easy.”

Vince gave me a look that said,
Yes it is.

“Even my grandma could get this one, and she thinks that baseball is some sort of satanic ritual invented in 1812 by Communist kangaroos to help an alien tribe of sea creatures called Trout Mask Replicas build the ancient pyramids.”

I tried desperately to hold in my laughter.

“It was Mark Grace, beloved first-baseman-turned-Diamondback traitor,” he said.

I nodded reluctantly.

“You'll never—” Something at the door caught Vince's eye.

I spun around in my desk, and there she was: Trixie Von Parkway. Otherwise known as the dark-haired girl who'd come to see me in my office yesterday and who'd made fun of me with her friends in the cafeteria today. Obviously Trixie wasn't her real name, but I hadn't gotten around to having Tyrell find out what it really was just yet.

She slithered into the room, looking as poisonous as ever, and handed Mr. Daniels her detention slip.

He glanced at it and grunted. “Have a seat and work on homework quietly. This is detention not social hour.”

The dark-haired girl moved past me without any kind of acknowledgment and sat right behind us. We turned around and stared at her as she dug through her backpack and removed a notebook. Then her eyes met ours.

“Hey, you two freaks got a problem?” she said.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, and turned around.

Vince followed suit. We glanced at each other and shrugged.

“Oh, wait. It's just you,” she said. “I didn't recognize you.”

I turned around again. “What do you mean, ‘just me'?”

“I thought you were just two guys with ridiculous crushes on me or something, that's all.”

My face grew hot.

“So about my problem. Have you two done
anything
yet besides whine about calories all day? Oh, wait,
obviously
not, being that I'm in detention right now,” she said.

“Kjelson put you here?”

“What do you think? Do you think I'm normally in detention? That I'm a bad girl? Is that what you think?” She seemed to be getting dangerously close to tears and anger all at once. She was possibly the scariest person I'd ever met—about as calm and predictable as a city-leveling tornado.

“No, no. I just thought . . .” I started to apologize.

Then she started laughing. “You should see your face. I'm just kidding around with you, Mac.”

I tried to laugh with her. Vince had no problems laughing at me either. I glared at him and he just laughed even harder.

“Quiet down! This is detention not social hour,” Mr. Daniels yelled.

“Wow, he just gave the three forty-five warning at three forty-four,” Vince said. “He's ahead of schedule.”

Trixie giggled madly at this.

For the first time ever I wanted Vince to stop talking, but I honestly couldn't tell you why; it had been a pretty funny thing to say.

“Seriously, though, when are you going to get Kjelson off my back? This is my fourth day of detention in a row because of him. I didn't even do anything wrong at all today. He just gave me detention.”

“You had to have done something,” I said. “Teachers can't just give out detention for no reason.”

She scoffed at me like I was an idiot. “Oh no? Then why am I here? I swear, I was just sitting in class taking notes. I think maybe my pencil broke or something and made a noise because suddenly he was like, ‘Trixie, no talking!' And I was shocked, so I didn't really say anything. I just kind of sighed. Then he was like, ‘That's it! Detention again, young lady!' So I was like, ‘But I didn't do anything!' You know? Because I hadn't. But he got all red in the face and was sputtering like a dying motorcycle and said, ‘Okay, that's two days of detention!' So I started to protest, but he was just on a roll, you know? He started screaming, ‘I'm tired of your attitude! Another outburst and you are out of here for good!' So what was I to do? I need to pass that class to graduate and go on to high school. So I shut up and took my detention.”

That sounded pretty horrible, but it also didn't sound like Kjelson at all.

“That kind of reminds me of this one time that my grandma wouldn't stop cursing in church,” Vince said. I groaned. He had a Grandma story for
everything
. “We were like, ‘Grandma, you have to be quiet. We'll get kicked out.' But she just went on ranting and raving, with every other word being a swearword, about how her Lucky Charms had been mocking her during breakfast. But the best part is that she didn't even have Lucky Charms that morning. She had, like, waffles with hand lotion on them or something. Anyways, she didn't stop, so we got kicked out.” He laughed. “How many people do you know who got kicked out of church?”

Instead of getting annoyed at how pointless his story was like I thought she would, Trixie actually laughed. She and Vince were cracking up together.

“Quiet down,” Mr. Daniels barked. “This is detention not social hour!”

That was just like Vince, too. Always telling lame stories when there were more pressing issues. Sometimes I wished he could just not tell a Grandma story for once. But I still had to admit that most of the time I found them pretty funny. Even this one was pretty funny.

“Well, anyways, we're working on it for you,” I said over their laughter. “It takes time to get to teachers; it's only been two days. Rome wasn't burned down in a day, you know.”

“Gosh, you are a cutie,” she said.

I blushed. “What . . .”

Vince nudged me. “It goes, ‘Rome wasn't
built
in a day,' Mac.”

I blushed even more, and I turned around to keep her from seeing. I actually couldn't stand this. I didn't remember ever feeling this embarrassed. Ever.

Vince and Trixie shared a laugh while I regrouped.

“We'll actually be working on your problem right after detention today,” Vince said to her.

“Good. I seriously cannot wait to get that succubus Mr. Kjelson off my back.”

I turned to Vince with a raised eyebrow. He was always my go-to guy when people said something that didn't make sense. But to my surprise he just grinned and shrugged.

“What if he's still around?” Vince asked.

“He won't be,” I said as we moved down the empty hallway toward Mr. Kjelson's classroom. “He's probably still at baseball tryouts in the gym, remember?”

We weren't old enough to have Mr. Kjelson as a teacher, but we'd found his classroom location on the school's website. I still was convinced that as a Cubs fan there was no way he could be as evil as Trixie made him out to be, but I'd also learned a long time ago never to trust someone's appearance entirely.

I took out the key I'd gotten from the janitor earlier that day. The janitor was a cool guy, even for an adult. We had an
understanding
, so he was always helpful when I needed access to something inside the school.

We were several feet from the classroom door when I was proved wrong about Kjelson not being there.

The door flew open, and Mr. Kjelson burst into the hallway. Why wasn't he at practice?

My gut told me to dive for cover, but we were in a school hallway and there was nowhere to go. So I stood there, frozen, like a small critter about to get flattened all over a stretch of asphalt. Vince didn't move either.

But it didn't matter. Mr. Kjelson turned away from us immediately and barreled down the hallway in the opposite direction. His classroom door slowly eased back toward the frame and then right at the end slammed shut with a loud double thud.

Vince and I looked at each other.

“Why was he in such a hurry?” he said.

I shrugged and said, “Did you see what he was carrying?”

Vince nodded slowly.

We watched Mr. Kjelson reach the end of the hallway and turn left. He was walking so fast he was nearly running. In his left hand he held a large wire cage with at least two small furry animals inside. Neither appeared to be moving.

Vince and I turned to each other, nodded, and ran as quietly as we could after Mr. Kjelson. We needed to find out where he was going and what he was planning on doing to those animals.

We tracked him all the way out to the parking lot, making sure to stay about twenty yards behind him at all times. I didn't know if that was too close or too far—Tyrell was my tailing expert; I wasn't used to fieldwork. A few times I thought for sure Mr. Kjelson would turn around and spot us and then that'd be it, but he never did. In fact, he was moving so fast that we had to jog to keep up.

When we got outside, Vince and I ducked behind a few bushes and watched as Kjelson went to his car. It was a small orange thing from at least the time of the dinosaurs, possibly older. But it did have a large Cubs sticker on the back. He opened the trunk and struggled to get the cage inside. The whole time he looked around so often that his head practically spun on his neck like a top. I'd never seen a teacher act so nervous before.

Then he got into his car and drove off.

Vince and I looked at each other from behind the bushes.

“Well, shall we head back to his classroom, then?” he asked.

“Um, yeah.”

I was dying now more than ever to see what we could find.

The only person we saw in the halls on our way back was the janitor. He gave a brief nod of his head, and that was that. The janitor never asked questions. Which was perfect for me, because I didn't really like questions all that much.

Mr. Kjelson's classroom looked like any other science teacher's classroom. It had ten long, rectangular lab tables with shiny black tops and a small sink in the middle of each. The room was neat and orderly, and the teacher's desk was cleared of everything except for a computer and a little cup with pens and pencils inside of it.

“So what are we looking for?” Vince asked.

I shrugged. “Let's check out his desk.”

He nodded. We moved around behind Mr. K.'s desk. I pulled at the top drawer, but it didn't budge. I tried a few of the others while Vince tried the drawers on the other side. None of them would open.

“Locked,” I said.

“Where's Joe Blanton when you need him?”

I gave Vince a look.

“What?” he said. “Everyone knows that he can open locks with a single touch.”

“Right, Vince, whatever. Joe Blanton couldn't open a lock if he had the key and the lock was already unlocked anyway.”

“Numbers don't lie, Mac,” Vince said, once again referring to Blanton's career 4.23 ERA or whatever pedestrian number it really was.

“We don't have time for this now,” I said, but I also laughed. “What about that?” I pointed at the door behind Kjelson's desk. His office probably was behind it.

“Will that key get you into his office?” Vince asked.

“I don't know. I think so.”

“Well, let's find out already.”

I nodded, and we approached the door.

The key slid into the doorknob easily. As if it belonged. Behind the door I thought I heard desperate squeaking from several animals. Vince tensed next to me.

“Hurry up, Mac!”

I started turning the key, and then a voice behind us just about caused me to pee all over my favorite jeans.

“What exactly is going on here?”

I slid the key out and pocketed it as quickly as I could before turning around.

Mr. Kjelson stood a few feet away, leaning against a lab table with his arms crossed over his chest. His voice was clear and crisp, kind of like the sound of biting into an apple. He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head forward.

“Christian and Vince, were you trying to pick the lock to my office?” he asked.

“No, sorry, Coach. We were . . . I heard sounds coming from back there. They sounded like rats or something; we were just trying to find out what they were,” I said desperately. “What are you doing here anyway? Aren't you supposed to be at practice?”

Vince nodded.

“It ended early today. But shouldn't I be asking you the same thing?” he said. “You didn't even show up at all today.”

Vince and I looked at each other.

“We were actually meaning to talk to you about that,” I said. “See, we got detention; that's why we missed. And we'll be late tomorrow, too, also because of detention. But I swear we'll be there on time every time after that, Coach. And we'll play even harder. We'll make up for it.”

“Fair enough.” Mr. Kjelson nodded and examined us carefully. “You asked about noises coming from in there. Well, I put all the animals in my office every night because
somebody
has been stealing them,” he said. “You guys know anything about that?”