The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill (13 page)

She didn't want to say anything else, because she felt fairly certain that she would say the wrong thing. So she chewed and chewed and chewed her sandwich until it turned into paste in her mouth. She should have realized something was up. He talked about his mom, but never his dad. Swallowing the lump of sandwich, she said, “Well, it's a very lunch box–y lunch box.”

“Thank you,” he said.

Hazel unscrewed the top of her thermos. That morning she had dumped a can of tomato soup in without heating it up. She wanted to get used to eating lukewarm food for when they were in the fallout shelter. “Is that true about the atomic bomb and fifteen thousand tons of TNT?”

“I did read that once,” he said, spreading out a paper napkin and then placing on it his sandwich, cut into four neat triangles. “I'm not sure if anyone knows for sure.”

“Well, anyway, thanks for the diversion.”

“It's not your fault you sneezed.” Samuel picked up one of the triangles and started eating from the inside point.

“Do you think someone put the chalk dust there on purpose?”

“That's not what I—”

“Of course we know who it was. It doesn't take a sleuth to figure that out.” She could just picture Maryann and Connie grinding the chalk into dust as they cackled their horrible laughs.

“That theory only works if they knew we were going to have a duck-and-cover drill today.”

Hazel took a bite of her sandwich and mulled over this idea. “Maybe they have someone on the inside. They were able to get that office slip, after all.”

“Forget I even mentioned it.” He wiped the tips of his fingers on his napkin. “Your folks are nice.”

Hazel groaned. “That was them at their best. You should try living with them.” She gulped some of the tomato soup. It went down her throat thick and sludgy. “It's always seeds and bulbs and grass and graves.”

“I like seeds and bulbs and grass and graves.”

“Really? Not just the graves, but all that other stuff, too?” Hazel took another drink of the soup, smaller than the first. It went down a little bit easier.

“Sure. I used to keep flower boxes in some of the places we lived. My mom would buy me seed packets, and I'd start them indoors in the winter and move them to the window boxes in the spring. It was always a good sign if we stayed in place long enough to make the transition. That only happened once or …” His voice trailed off.

Hazel felt the presence of two people standing behind her. Samuel looked up, then back down at the table. Hazel slowly turned around, then made her face into a surprised smile. “Maryann and Connie, I didn't realize you were standing there. You scared me. I mean, not that you're scary or anything—”

Maryann interrupted, but she wasn't speaking to Hazel or
Samuel. “Connie, you know what I think? I think it's just so sad that there are people in the world who are so, well, sad.”

“Triangle people,” Connie agreed, nodding.

Maryann put one hand on her hip. “There are some people you can help. But some are just—”

“Helpless,” Connie said, aping Maryann's stance.

“That's right, helpless. And mean. Making Ellen Abbott cry like that today. Poor Ellen.”

Hazel felt certain that Maryann had never before felt a single drop of sympathy for Ellen. Hazel did have to admit, though, that she did feel a little bad for making Ellen cry. She had seen the movies of the atomic bomb exploding like a mushroom, the radiation spreading out like waves at the ocean, and it had made her insides turn to jelly. Ellen was right to be scared.

Maryann switched hands on her hips, and Connie followed suit. “Really,” Maryann declared, “some people shouldn't be let out with other people. They just can't behave like normal folks.”

Hazel tightened her hands into fists and wondered what was different. Usually Maryann and Connie only targeted her if she wandered into their line of fire. Lately, though, it seemed like they were seeking her out. Her eyes flicked over to Samuel. There were two of them now, she realized, and that was simply too much for the girls to resist.

Maryann sighed as if the weight of the world were on top of her, squishing down her pretty blond hair. “And I try to tell myself that it's not their fault. After all, one of them has grown up in a graveyard.”

“With all those dead old bodies. Yuck.” Connie wrinkled her freckled nose.

“And the other, well, we all know your story, don't we, Samuel?” Maryann said.

Hazel looked over at Samuel, waiting for him to say something, to stick up for himself. His face was pinched as if he were expecting a slap, the same way it had been in the cemetery when she'd accused him of being a chicken, only tighter. She could barely see his eyes. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, standing up.

Maryann and Connie exchanged a look that made her think of her parents and the way they'd wordlessly communicated when she'd been telling them about Samuel. “He didn't tell you?” Maryann asked.

“Everybody knows,” Connie said.

They were starting to draw the notice of other kids in the cafeteria now: eyes swiveled slightly at the scene unfolding.

“Everybody knows what?” Hazel asked.

“Oh, of course he hasn't,” Maryann said. “If it were me—if I had his mother—I wouldn't tell either.”

“You're putting me on. Samuel doesn't have any secrets. Right, Samuel?”

Samuel stayed silent.

Maryann tried to make her face look sad, but it just looked wicked. “Everybody knows about your mother, about how she—”

Behind Hazel, Samuel began to cry. She heard the deep
suck in of breath and the sound of the sobs that he tried to muffle. Hazel didn't know why she did what she did next. She didn't plan it. She just heard the sound that Samuel was making and it reminded her of the time she saw some older boys tying up a puppy and throwing stones at it. Her mom had taken her by the hand and pulled her along as if she hadn't seen anything, as if the whimpers of the puppy were nothing. So Hazel lifted up her hands and shoved Maryann in the chest. Hard.

Maryann's voice choked midword and she tumbled backward. Her arms pinwheeled and she landed with a thump on the floor. A hush fell over the cafeteria, and all the adults in the room descended upon the scene.

Maryann was crying and so was Hazel. Samuel wiped at his eyes and sank down into the bench. Connie began speaking a mile a minute. “We just came over here to say hello to Samuel and to introduce ourselves so that he could make some
other
friends and I guess Hazel got jealous or something because out of nowhere she just pushed Maryann. Oh my goodness, Maryann, are you okay?” Connie fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around Maryann. It was like something straight out of one of the soap operas Hazel's grandmother watched.

“That's not true. They came over and were making fun of us, and they were saying mean things about Samuel. Right, Samuel?”

It was her word against Connie and Maryann's, but once Samuel told them what had really happened, it would be okay.

The teachers' heads turned and they all looked at Samuel.
He had his father's lunch box gripped to his chest like a shield. He looked at Mrs. Sinclair and Mr. Hiccolm and then back to Maryann, but never at Hazel. “It was nothing,” he said.

So then, for the first time in her life, Hazel Kaplansky was marched down to the principal's office.

Hazel was impressed by the inside of Mrs. Rushby's office. The walls were all painted a muted yellow, and student artwork hung in plain black frames as if it were a museum. Her desk was big and metal with a glass top that let you see right down to her feet. Mrs. Rushby always wore heels, and today they were green with a snakeskin print. Hazel wondered if they were real snakes, and if so, what kind. They might be wild, venomous snakes, from someplace like Argentina. Or perhaps, she imagined, there were snake farms, where simple garden snakes lived short, miserable lives before becoming shoes.

While Hazel pondered the origin of snakeskin shoes, a teacher explained what had happened in the cafeteria, or Connie's version, anyway. Then Mrs. Rushby said, “Thank you. I can take it from here.

“Hazel Kaplansky, Hazel Kaplansky,” Mrs. Rushby said. Her red-framed glasses were on the tip of her nose and she seemed to be looking not at Hazel but at a spot on the wall behind her head.

Hazel sat on her hands and sucked in her lip so she wouldn't
explode out of her hard wooden chair to exclaim that the whole situation was misrepresented and it wasn't fair that the victims were always blamed.

Mrs. Rushby shifted her gaze so she stared directly at Hazel. “You know that your mother and I went to school together?”

This was not something that Hazel had known, but it didn't surprise her. Most of the town had grown up in Maple Hill and then just stayed. Hazel herself, of course, had other plans.

“She and I were actually good friends. She was a spitfire, that one.”

Hazel had a hard time associating either spit or fire with her mother.

Mrs. Rushby chuckled to herself. “When we were in sixth grade she took on a whole group of eighth-grade girls because they were writing these lists and circulating them around: ugliest girl/boy you'd most like to kiss, nastiest teacher, that sort of thing. Your mom thought it was mean and she told them so.”

Hazel looked down at her lap. “If you say so,” she mumbled.

“I do,” Mrs. Rushby replied. “Now then, why don't you explain what happened?”

Hazel's hands flew out from under her legs and began waving around. The words came out of her like water from a fire hydrant: “It wasn't like they said at all. Samuel and I were just sitting there minding our own business when Maryann and Connie came up. And they started saying how we were hopeless triangle people and how I lived in the cemetery and Samuel, well, they didn't get that far, but he was crying and I pushed her.
I don't know why he didn't stick up for me. Some friend. But they started it. And I know they have everyone fooled, but Maryann and Connie are
not nice
, and I know that violence is never the answer, but some people just deserve to be shoved.”

Mrs. Rushby folded her hands together and regarded Hazel, nodding. She picked up her pen and wrote something on a piece of paper. “They don't have me fooled,” she said.

Hazel, who had been fairly shaking with righteous indignation, stilled.

“The truth of the matter is that there have always been girls like Maryann and Connie and there always will be. Which is not to say that I condone it. I'm just letting you know that this is something you will have to deal with, even as an adult. While it may seem that some people deserve to be shoved, you simply cannot go around shoving people. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but—”

Mrs. Rushby shook her head. “I might not be able to make those girls nice, but I can help you to have an easier life, so let me reiterate: you cannot go around shoving people, no matter how angry or hurt they make you.”

“I understand, but—” Hazel needed to make Mrs. Rushby see how they were going after Samuel for no reason. That they had made him cry
on purpose
. When everyone was telling
her
to be so nice to him, they just waltzed up and made him cry.

“You will be going home for the rest of the day, and tomorrow, too, which is the most lenient sentence I can give for fighting.”

“It wasn't fighting,” Hazel said.

Mrs. Rushby pushed her red glasses up into her thick brown hair. “You are making it increasingly difficult to help you. Why don't you try sitting on your hands again?”

Hazel blushed, but did as she was told.

“Rest assured that Maryann and Connie will also be punished for antagonizing you.”

“They'll say they didn't do it. And since Samuel won't stick up for me, it's just my word against theirs. Two against one.”

“But I believe the one,” Mrs. Rushby said. “And I am the principal.” She picked up a stack of papers, read them over, and then tapped them against the desk. “Sometimes our friends disappoint us, Hazel.”

“Maryann and Connie are not my friends.”

“I'm speaking about Samuel.”

Hazel scowled.

“I imagine that he wanted to stick up for you. I imagine he's feeling terribly guilty right now that he did not. If he felt he could have, he would have. There's more to the story than you know.”

“What else is there?” she demanded. People kept making reference to Samuel's story, but no one would tell her, least of all Samuel. She couldn't imagine anything that would justify his betrayal of her. Not even his dead father.

Mrs. Rushby looked at the spot on the wall above her head again. “It's not my place to say. The point is that when we have friends, we take them as they are, faults and all, because
sometimes their faults are out of their control. Do you understand?”

Hazel said she did, but she wasn't buying Mrs. Rushby's story. Samuel had let her down, simple as that.