You (4 page)

The coach keeps his eyes on you. “Did you take his wallet?”

“I found it in the stairwell. I was going to bring it to the office, but I didn't even get out of the stairwell before he was all up in my face.”

“Gentlemen,” the principal says, “I'd like to see the both of you in my office.”

Jake jumps up first. You sigh and stand, glancing at the coach as you walk by. He looks you in the eyes and you're startled at what you see.

He believes you.

You've never had him as a gym teacher, you're not on one of his teams, you've never spoken to him
before. But there in his eyes, something that says he believes you.

Well now, that was unexpected.

 

E
verything else that happens—the accusations, the suspension, getting grounded—goes pretty much the way you thought it would.

T
he fourth time you go ahead and hit
SEND
. Her phone rings way too soon.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ashley, what's up?”

“Eric?”

Eric? “No, it's, uh, Kyle.”

“Kyle? Oh my
god
, we were
just
talking about you. How are you?”

Just talking about you? With Eric? Who the hell is Eric? “All right, I guess. Just hanging out.”

“I can't
believe
they gave you three days and they only gave Jake one night's detention. And that was for swearing. It sucks.”

She knows the jock's name? “Yeah. It sucks.”

“I was at my locker getting stuff for my class and all of a sudden I hear Jake swearing his head off. F this, F that…”

She never swears. Well, not
really
swears. You first noticed it a few months back when she was pissed at her parents for something and she still didn't swear. You wonder why, but you never asked her. It makes her more interesting, special.

“…then like
everybody
rushes to the stairwell, and I'm so short I can't see a thing. All I heard was that a bunch of hoodies mugged Jake in the stairwell.”

“Who told you
that
?”

“I don't know, that's just what I heard. Then at lunch, Sophie told me how you got caught lifting Jake's wallet—”

“What?”

“—and I'm like, Kyle? No way—”

“Thank you.”

“—I mean Jake would just
crush
you—”

“I didn't try to take his wallet. I found it. It was there on the stairs. I picked it up and was checking to see whose it was and then he comes slamming into me like I stole it.”

“But you got suspended.”

“They couldn't prove that I took it and they couldn't prove that I didn't, so they gave me three days for starting a fight.”

“So they just couldn't prove anything?”

“I didn't take his wallet.”

There's a pause. A long pause. “Okay. So you didn't take his wallet. Jeez.”

“Why would you think that I would? I don't
steal
stuff.”

“I don't know, it's just that's what everybody was saying.” She pauses again. “But I should've known.”

“Yeah, you should've known.”

“It's not like you to do something like that, especially to somebody like
Jake
.”

You know what she means, but you say, “What do you mean?”

She gives a laugh, and for the first time you don't like the sound of it. “If you're gonna steal from anybody—”

“I didn't steal anything.”

“I'm just saying,
if
. God, don't get so freaked.
If
you were—
if
, Kyle—you'd be smarter than to try to jump Jake.”

This is the point where you're supposed to say “I could kick his ass” or words to that effect, but really, you
are
smarter than that.

“Anyway,”
she says, dragging every syllable out of
the word, changing her voice to let you know that she's dropping the subject, “remember that job I told you about, over at the piercing booth in the mall, the one Cici went for? The manager called me. I got an interview tomorrow.”

You'd like to go to the mall and just happen to bump into her after her interview and ask her how it went and suggest you go to Starbucks or something, but of course you're grounded. She's going on about what she's going to wear and what she's going to say and how she can get a 20 percent discount and how it's so great because it's right at the mall and part of you wants to point out that she doesn't have the job yet and another part of you wants to find out who this Eric is. But one part—the part that wins—just wants to hear her talk. So other than the occasional yeahs and nos, you say nothing. It's not what you want, not what you were hoping for, but you can hear her voice and, for now anyway, it's good.

 

T
uesday. Your first day back and there's a quiz in your math class. Ms. Ortman isn't sure what to do with you. The way it works is she's supposed to have sent any work she assigned for you to the main office where they gather it all together and then your mom comes in and picks it up, but from the way she's acting—telling you how she was
sure
she had sent that packet to the office and that maybe it got lost there or something—you know she didn't send it down. That's okay, your mom never came by to pick it up anyway, mostly because you never told her she had to. But if you told her this time she'd wonder why you didn't tell her the last time and you'd have to make up some story, so it's just better for everybody this way.

Back to Ms. Ortman. It's her second year and she's still trying real hard to save the world, just like all the new teachers. But when it comes to the rules and the paperwork, the stuff the older teachers worry about, she fakes her way through and hopes
no one notices. You all notice, but why would you say anything? She's almost apologizing now and decides that, since the rest of the class is taking a quiz and since she really has to walk you through this next unit after school because you're an idiot, she's going to give you a pass to the library, that way you can catch up on the work you missed in your other classes. You both say yes, that's a good idea, knowing there's no chance of that happening, and you're out the door, pass in hand.

The first thing you check is the time on the pass. It says 9:14. You could change it to 9:44, but you'd have to avoid getting stopped for half an hour and that's not likely. So you go to the library, taking the longest route that could still be believable.

You spend a lot of time in the library. You used to be a big reader, horror mostly, but also those fantasy novels about guys with swords and women in metal bikinis. Mangas were cool for a while, but then the one bookstore that carried them got picketed by
a church group and now they only stock G-rated graphic novels Paige would find dull.

You go to the library twice a week to get out of study hall. Not that you do any work there, but you go and sit by the magazines. And every time you're there, the librarian looks over now and then to make sure you're not sleeping. But—surprise—you're reading.
Time
,
Newsweek
,
U.S. News & World Report
. The articles are short and some are interesting and all of them are more relevant than what you're doing in class. Last week in American History, you were the only one who knew who the president of India was. The teacher didn't even know. “I'll check on that and let you know if you're right.” Next day, of course, he didn't say a thing about it.

So you walk into the library and there's a ninth-grade English class over by the magazines, supposedly doing research but mostly just screwing around. You do a quick check of the room. You don't see anybody you hang with, so you head to
an empty table over by the science books, a part of the library nobody is likely to visit. On the way you grab a magazine off the rack—
Maclean's
—push out a chair with your foot and slump down, ready to kill forty-seven minutes.

You're two paragraphs into a story about the Canadian Army when you sense someone standing by the table. You look up.

What if you hadn't looked up? What if you'd just kept on reading, ignored him until he went away? Or what if when you saw him, you'd taken off, left him there to find someone else to kill time with? Or stood up and sucker punched him before he said a thing? All right, that wouldn't have happened, but it all seems so random, doesn't it?

You look up.

He's about your age, maybe a bit bigger than you. He's wearing a bright red shirt under a black sport coat—the kind your father would wear—top button open and no tie. The shirt's tucked into a pair of
jeans that are not as baggy as the kind you wear. A dork by anybody's standards. He looks at you for a second, then smiles this strange smile.

“My name is Zack,” he says, “and I'll be your waiter today. Would you like to hear the specials or should I just start you off with something from the bar?”

You look at him and you can feel yourself scowling. The last thing you need is some retarded kid hanging around. Except he doesn't look retarded. He's standing there, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans, shoulders relaxed, way too cool to be retarded.

So he must be queer.

You say as much under your breath, loud enough for him to hear, adding a few of the appropriate F-words.

He sighs and shakes his head. “Such a predictable first guess. Sorry, wrong answer. But it's still your turn.” He reaches over and spins a chair around and
sits down at the corner of your table. “Try ‘Bizarre New Kid' for a hundred points.”

You ignore him and think about moving, but you were here first. You flip the page in the magazine and act as if you're reading the ad.

“Let's see, Watson,” he says, and now he's pretending to have a British accent. “Black T-shirt, black hooded sweatshirt, baggy black pants, fashionably unkempt hair, horned skull ring on one hand, fingernails bitten down to nubs, sullen piss-off expression…yes, quite obvious. At some schools they're called the Freaks, at others the Burnouts, at one school in the east they're referred to as the F-U tribe, as that is their traditional greeting.” He leans in on the table as if to get a closer look at you. “Here at venerable Midlands High, I believe the species is known as the Hoodies.”

Head down, you look over at him. You want to reach out and smack that smug smile off his face, but if you got in a fight your first day back, your
parents would seriously kill you. You look down at the magazine and realize you were staring at an ad for Viagra. You flick the page so hard it rips.

“I know, I'm amazing, but you'll get used to it in time.” He drops the accent, pauses long enough so that he knows you're listening, and says, “Trust me, I know you will. Mr. Kyle Chase.”

Your head snaps up—it's instinct—and you look at him, trying to look hard, but you can't keep the surprise out of your eyes. He's got your attention now and he knows it. He flashes his eyebrows up and down several times, that same stupid smile on his face.

No, not a smile. A smirk.

“You
are
Kyle Chase, fifteen, of 122 Woodbine Lane, aren't you?”

You are, but you just look at him.

“Yes, I know all about you, Mr. Kyle Chase, fifteen, of 122 Woodbine Lane. Like how right now your best grade is a C minus in math, that last year
you put your fist through a bus window, that you have accumulated an impressive eighteen days of detention since September, that you were in no less than four fights last year, all of which you started, and that you have just completed three days' suspension for stealing Jake Burke's wallet.”

“I didn't steal his wallet. I found it on the stairwell and—”

“Yes, yes, yes, it was
all
in the report, Mr. Kyle Chase, all in the report.”

You feel your head tilt to the side, your eyes narrowing.

“Picture it, Kyle,” he says as he leans back in his chair, balancing easy on two legs, his hands conjuring up the scene. “New kid in the school, history of…
indiscretions
. The principal—here playing the role of the stern but understanding adult who wants to give this kid a fresh start—calls said child to his office for the reading of the riot act. In the midst of his soliloquy, an unnamed secretary intrudes, says that there's
a matter only he can address, and suddenly the new kid finds himself alone in the principal's office with nothing to read but the folders on the desk.”