The Rule of Won (12 page)

Hearing the bell, I rerolled the picture, snapped the rubber band back on, and shoved the drawing back in his bag. I should have felt guilty, but I didn't. There was something really strange about how . . . how
orchestrated
this all felt.

People filed in. Lots. At least half I'd never seen before. Nodding to those I knew, I sat down way in the back. Good
thing, too, because we quickly ran out of chairs. By the time Erica showed, nose in book, it was standing room only. Barely noticing me or anything else, she wedged her way past some people and leaned against the far wall.

“Hey,” I called to her. “Want my seat?”

My voice muffled by the bodies, I had to say it again, louder.

I was hoping for some dark and deathly quote, but she didn't say a word. She looked up from her writing just long enough to shake her head.

“Erica,” I called.

She looked up again. “Yes?”

I studied her face. She looked even more intense than usual and, if possible, more pale. Her eyes had circles under them and she was wearing thick makeup, like she was trying to hide how tired she was but was too tired to make it work. For days I'd wanted to talk to her about what I'd found in her notebook, but had no idea what to say.

“Good luck with your studying,” I called out.

The right side of her lip rose in a wry Mona Lisa smile, making her look a little more like the Erica I knew, or at least imagined I knew. I was thinking of bagging my chair and standing next to her, but Ethan and Vicky picked that moment to return, both wide-eyed at how big our Crave had grown.

Vicky mouthed “Wow!” at me, then stood off to the side near the front of the room. Ethan, grinning ear to ear, did his teacher thing. He welcomed everyone, especially the newcomers. Once the whoops and hollers trailed off, he again rattled
off the basics, for those of us, as they say on TV, joining the show in progress.

At this stage of things I wasn't sure whether I believed in this stuff at all anymore, but I desperately wanted something to decide for me, something to make it all work, something that made sense.

“Okay, if everyone's clear on all that, why don't we move on to our next Crave? This week I've picked . . .”

My hand shot up.

“Ethan?”

He didn't even look at me, as if he were pretending I wasn't there.

“Hey, Ethan? Ethan?”

Finally, his head snapped toward me. “Yeah?”

“Why don't we put this one up for a vote?” I said.

Something unusual happened next. Perfectly poised Ethan shook his head in a kind of anxious, twitchy way. For the first time that I'd heard, he hesitated when he spoke.

“I . . . don't know if we're ready for that,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked, looking around. “We've been through two big Craves together already.”

As Ethan took a few seconds to compose his answer, the crowd murmured. I glanced at Vicky long enough to see her angry stare, which I found oddly satisfying.

Ethan was about ready to speak again, but before he could, the now Goth-less Landon, still wearing that too-small hoodie, put in his two cents.

“That wouldn't work. Everyone would just vote for their own Crave,” he said.

I shrugged. “I won't,” I said. “I'll vote for Erica's.”

At the sound of her name, Erica picked up her head and looked around nervously.

I continued. “Come on. We got funding for the school, the Basket Cases won—how hard can an algebra test be?”

I was quite tickled I'd thought of it. Mr. E was right, I am facile. If it worked, it solved all my worries. I could continue to believe in the book, even if I didn't particularly like Ethan, and I wouldn't have to worry that Erica was headed for a loony bin. And if it didn't work . . .

Mike stuck his hand up. “Hey, why don't we imanifest
everyone
in the class passing that algebra exam? It'd help out the school, maybe even raise our standing in the state.”

Good old Mike. Now people were nodding. They liked the idea, regardless of what Ethan's sister had drawn.

“I . . .?” Ethan said.

He was looking around, hoping someone else would talk, but they were all waiting to hear from him.

After letting him sweat a second, I said cheerfully, “Why don't we at least vote on whether we should vote?”

Now
everyone
, everyone except Ethan and Vicky, was nodding.

Ethan scanned us, weighing the mood of the crowd. That mad scientist look flashed in his eyes again, only not the kind you get when you've just created life from the dead,
the kind you get when the monster you've created is about to hurl you off the top of the castle.

“Uh . . . fine,” he said.

You ever see a high school student put up a hand and say, “Nah, I really don't think I should be trusted with a decision”? Of course everyone voted to be allowed to vote.

After that, I stayed quiet while Ethan made a little speech in favor of better food in the cafeteria. But hey, once Mike talked about a whole class passing an algebra test, Ethan's choice seemed downright petty. Even Ethan knew it; you could tell by how his voice trailed off more and more, how he winced when he mentioned the value of good nutrition.

So in the end, Vicky won one election, and I felt like I'd won one, too.

Ethan led us all in a meditation to conjure a mesmory. From the black infinity of my iceberg mind, my faithful spork rose in a snap, and soon we were chanting, in unison, “Everyone will pass the algebra test. Everyone will pass the algebra test.”

I caught Erica trying to keep herself from smiling too widely. There was even some color to her cheeks. Maybe she was blushing? I hoped I hadn't embarrassed her too much.

After the meeting, I was pleased to see Ethan looking shaken. Hey, it was probably because the group had grown so large so fast, and, you know, the air was pretty close in that trailer. Or not.

Vicky went up to him and they whispered to each other. I didn't hang around to listen. I did look back through the open door a few times as I moved across the parking lot. First, I saw
them standing there together. I looked back again a few seconds later, but they'd vanished inside, probably to finish packing the place up, or to curse my name.

I was just nearing the bus stop when a hand made its way to my shoulder.

“Thank you so much,” a surprisingly gentle voice said.

It was Erica. For once, she wasn't writing in her book.

“I . . .,” she said, flailing her fingers in front of her as if trying to shake out the words. “Just . . . thanks.”

“You're welcome,” I said. We walked quietly toward the bus. When we stopped, I looked at her again.

“Do me a little favor, Erica?”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Could you at least study,
too
?”

Her face twisted, but her brow frowned. Her lips smiled, but her eyes looked pensive. This was one complicated girl.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Okay.”

Near as I could tell, after that, Vicky wasn't talking to me anymore.

By that, I mean I'd say, “Hey, Vicky!” to her really loudly and even though it was completely obvious she'd heard me, she'd keep walking.

On the other hand, the rest of the Crave couldn't get enough of me. I was getting all these “Hey, Calebs!” and pats on the back—sometimes from people I didn't even know, which, frankly, can be a little unsettling. I felt like a hypocrite, especially since Eldridge was now the school newspaper's adviser and my own faith in
The Rule
wasn't exactly steadfast. But having gotten that vote thing going, it was like I'd established myself as a kind of second leader. I don't think anyone disliked Ethan, I think people just like to see authority challenged, and, well, Ethan had set himself up for that.

Meanwhile, the group tripled in size. You could see those little “1” pins everywhere now. The Cravers had even taken to imanifesting in the hallways, which had its own dark
strangeness. More often than not, it wasn't enough to just say hi when you saw a fellow Craver. No, you had to look each other in the eyes, grin, and say together, “Everyone will pass the algebra test!”

Aside from being cheesy, it got old fast.

Worse, some kids looked like they were afraid
not
to chant, especially when Dylan or one of his pals was around. He'd gotten a couple of other jocks to join up, and they were all acting kind of like the Gestapo. I was disappointed to see Mike hanging with them. Thought he was better than that. So now, we had, like, a secret police, which I don't recall reading about anywhere in the book.

If any of them saw you skip a chant, they'd get up in your face and practically scream, “Come on! Everyone will pass the algebra test! Everyone will pass the algebra test!”

I found myself being forced to chant, a lot. But if it worked, what the hell?

Erica and I were chatting all the time now, on the bus, in the halls, in class. She even called me once or twice just to gab. Turns out her folks were professors at some university, which I guess explains her literary bent. Neither knew a lick of math, which I guess explains her algebra problems. Her mom was fired because of politics, whatever that means, and her dad quit in disgust. Now they're in PR at a friend's business about an hour away from Screech Neck, barely making ends meet. The scholarship she'd mentioned on the board? It was the only way she could afford college.

Which explained her desperation.

And made me worry about her more. As a friend. I think. A really good friend, anyway.

I wasn't sure just how much studying she was doing, but the circles under her eyes had disappeared and her mood lightened a bit, which in the case of Erica Black was the same as saying the sun was shining at night.

“Hey, you magnificent slouching beast!” she cheerfully called one Screech Neck morning a few days after our last Crave.

“Hey?” I said, not sure she was talking to me. That was one thing I liked about her—she was definitely the kind of girl who made you think.

She came closer, books held against her chest the way girls carry them sometimes. “Yes, Mr. Dunne, it's you I'm greeting, you, wonderful you, glorious you.”

She stopped about a foot from me and I noticed she had this smile on her face. It was odd to see her smile sincerely in the first place, but this one quivered a bit, almost like she was bursting with good feeling.

“Thanks,” I answered. “Is it the clothes?”

I stuck my arms out, vaguely modeling my standard oil-stained overshirt. The T-shirt I wore beneath it had the poster from the movie
Slacker
on it. A classic everyone should run out and rent.

“Hmm . . . I think it's more your . . . your . . .
je ne sais quoi
.”

I knew what that meant. I'm not dumb, just lazy. It was French for “I don't know what”—a certain something that can't be put into words. Only for some reason I didn't remember that at the time, so I just nodded and said, “Ah.”

Then out of nowhere she said, “Want to get together after school and study algebra with me?”

“Oh. Me? Study?”

“Yes. It involves books. They have many pages and contain a lot of information. People sometimes read them for knowledge and pleasure.”

“I knew that,” I said. “It's just . . .”

All of a sudden I started thinking that maybe Erica and I had been talking a little
too
much. Did she think I'd championed her Crave because I, you know, had secret feelings for her? I felt closer to her, but with everything else going on, I didn't know if I wanted to head anywhere with that.

I wanted to say something to let her know where I was at, but I didn't want whatever I said to send her rushing back to the dark planet she called home. So I began the same way someone always does when they're about to say something awkward.

I frowned and said, “Look, Erica—”

“Oh,” she said, reaching into her bag. “I baked you some cookies.”

“Cookies?”

She pulled out a small baggie with these thick chocolate chip suckers wedged inside. You could see they were moist from the way they clung to the plastic.

I
love
big moist chocolate chip cookies.

She held out the bag. When I didn't take it right away, she shook it, like I was a frightened squirrel she was trying to attract. It worked.

I took the cookies, pulled open the bag, and popped some chocolatey heaven into my mouth. Oh, they were good.

“Look, Erica,” I said again, my mouth full.

I guess my words were garbled, because she said, “Tomorrow after school would be perfect,” and wandered off down the hall.

I was torn between running after her to straighten things out and standing there while I sucked the bits of semisweet chocolate goodness from the hollows of my molars.

Maybe studying with her wouldn't be so bad. I did like her.

And maybe there'd be more cookies.

The warning bell rang. It was a free period for me, but security didn't cotton to folks exercising personal freedom in the hallways, so I headed to the library, planning to find a quiet corner to further enjoy my treat in private.

The construction crews must have been on break, too, because the noises were gone, making things extraordinarily pleasant. I'd just found a lounge chair and was curled up in it, munching away and eyeing a graphic novel someone had left on a table, when I spotted the First Couple of SNH, Ethan and Vicky, strutting by.

They gave me a look, but I flashed them a big chocolatey smile like I didn't have a care in the world. Once they passed, I followed them from the corners of my eyes. They sat in a love seat a few yards away. Every now and then I'd look up to see what they were doing.

The library was so quiet that ten minutes later, when Ethan's cell phone vibrated, I heard the buzz. After glancing at the caller ID, he hightailed it out a side door, Vicky in tow.