“I can’t believe you’re holding out!” Marissa says. “On us.”
“He made me swear I wouldn’t say anything, okay?” I give Billy a fierce look. “And you’re an idiot if you’re telling people!”
“I’m not!” Billy says. “But I thought for sure you’d tell them.” And even though he doesn’t say it, what’s implied is that of course I told them because they’re trustworthy and reliable and know how to keep a secret.
“Yeah,” Marissa says, and she’s obviously miffed. “Of course you’d tell us.”
I stare at Billy and shake my head. “Remind me why I swore I wouldn’t tell? Something about you being in boiling hot water if anyone found out? Something about your life being over if anyone found out? Something about getting expelled from school if anyone found out? Something about—”
“Found out what?” Holly says. “Just tell us already!”
So I eye Billy, then lean in and whisper, “Smart boy here let Heather talk him into writing ‘Die Dude’ on Vince’s whiteboard. Then she takes a picture of him in the act and blackmails him with it. And then when somebody else leaves the rat in Vince’s drawer, she really puts the screws to him.”
Dot looks at Billy. “So you put the message on the board but didn’t leave the rat?”
“Who’s ever going to believe that?” Holly asks.
“Exactly!” I tell them. “And since the rat is kinda … sick—”
Marissa cringes. “Totally nasty.”
I nod. “—and since the little dog tag detail was so Billy …”
“He gave in to her blackmail,” Dot says.
“What if she’s got a copy of the picture on her computer or sent it to someone else?” Holly asks.
Billy shakes his head. “I don’t think she did.”
Marissa gives Billy a suspicious look. “You swear you didn’t leave the rat?”
Billy crosses his little chicken-headed heart. “I swear it wasn’t me!”
Marissa frowns at me. “I can’t believe you didn’t trust us.”
“I trust you,” I tell her, then I glare at Billy. “I just swore I’d keep it a secret.”
Billy gives me sad little puppy dog eyes. “I’m sorry, Sammy-keyesta.”
Just then we hear a sound.
A jazzy, jumpy, happy sound.
“My phone!” Billy cries, checking his backpack, his pockets, his chicken hat.…
But the ringing doesn’t sound like it’s coming from his backpack.
It sounds like it’s coming from mine.
I mutter, “What the heck … ?” And when I unzip my front pouch, what do I see?
A phone buzzing around inside.
I take it out, and everyone’s looking at me like, Huh … ? and then Marissa says, “Answer it!”
So I open the phone and say, “Hello … ?”
There’s a moment of hesitation, and then, “Who’s this?”
It’s a guy’s voice.
Kinda gruff.
I snort and snap back, “Well, who’s this?”
After a second of silence the voice asks, “Sammy?” and all of a sudden I recognize who it is. “Officer Borsch?”
Everyone at our table leans back a little and looks at me with big eyes, and mine are cranked pretty wide, too, believe me. I feel like I’m in some sort of weird dream.
But I’m not dreaming, and it is Officer Borsch. He heaves a big sigh and says, “I didn’t think you had a cell phone.”
“I don’t!” And since my head feels like one big scramble of confusion, I ask, “So how’d you get my number? I mean, who are you calling? I mean, why are you calling? I mean … I don’t know what I mean!”
He makes a little sucking noise. Like he’s cleaning some leftover pastrami out of his teeth. “Where are you?”
“At school.”
He heaves another sigh. “You need to come up to the office. Now. And bring the phone.”
He clicks off, and I’m left staring at the phone. I blink at Billy. “How did your phone get in my backpack? And why are the police calling it?”
Holly pulls a face. “This does not sound good.”
I shoulder my backpack and grab Billy by his chicken-wing earflap. “You’re coming with me.”
“Wait! Where are we going?”
“Officer Borsch says I have to go up to the office. With the phone. Now.”
“Is he the cop who came the day of the sumo rat?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Now come on.”
“Do you want us to go with you?” Dot asks.
I shake my head. “We’ll be fine.”
Marissa calls, “You might want to take off that hat, Billy!”
So I swipe it off his head and jam it inside his backpack. And when we get up to the office, there’s Officer Borsch, waiting for us.
With Mr. Foxmore.
And Mr. Vince.
“Uh-oh,” Billy says under his breath.
“What have you gotten us into?” I ask between my teeth.
“Nothing!” Then he gives me his stupid puppy dog eyes and does his little cross-my-heart thing again, and starts to run away.
I grab him by the sleeve and bungee him back. “So what’s up?” I ask Officer Borsch as I drag Billy along.
Mr. Foxmore ninjas a look at Billy and me and says, “What’s up is a meeting in the conference room.” He puts out his hand. “The phone?”
I hand it over, and we all file into a room that has a big oval table with a conference phone in the middle of it. “Sit,” Mr. Foxmore commands Billy and me, so we do. And since they’re all still standing and sort of glowering at us, I ask, “What happened?” and believe me, my voice is not sounding too steady.
“There was a message left on Mr. Vince’s phone,” Mr. Foxmore says. “On his school extension.” Then he cocks an eyebrow at Mr. Vince and gives him a little ninja nod that apparently means Activate the conference phone, because Mr. Vince leans forward and punches the keypad until a mechanical voice says, “You have … no new messages and … one saved message. To listen to your messages, press one. To—”
Mr. Vince presses one on the keypad, and suddenly the room is filled with a deep, dark, angry voice. “You’re gonna DIE, dude!”
When the machine is quiet, I just kind of stare at it and then at Mr. Foxmore and then at Officer Borsch.
“The call came from your cell phone,” Mr. Foxmore says to me.
“It isn’t my cell phone!” I cry.
“We know that,” he says, like Vice Principal Smarty-Pants. He zooms in on Billy. “It belongs to Mr. Pratt.”
Billy jumps up. “I swear I didn’t leave that message! I swear.”
“Sit down, Mr. Pratt,” Mr. Foxmore snaps, then looks at me. “Why did you have the phone?”
“Somebody put it in my backpack! We were sitting around eating lunch, and all of a sudden it started ringing. I had no idea it was there!”
They turn to Billy, whose mouth moves up and down while his hands go jerking around in front of him, but no sound comes out, until finally he says, “Mr. Vince asked me to put my phone on his desk. It got taken during the fire alarm, and someone put it in Sammy’s backpack!”
Mr. Foxmore eyes him. “Why shouldn’t I think that someone was you?”
“What?” Billy cries. “Why would I do that?”
Mr. Foxmore just scratches an ear.
So I say to Mr. Vince, “Look, everybody knew Billy’s phone was on your desk. And we all left our backpacks in the classroom for the fire drill. And even though you locked it, the room was unlocked when the fire drill was over! So anybody could have used Billy’s phone to make that call and then put the phone in my backpack.”
Mr. Foxmore’s mouth pulls way off to one side. He looks like a fish on the line, but he makes it clear that I’m the one on the hook. “Someone like, say, you.”
“No!”
“Well, let’s see,” he says, producing a small notebook from inside his rumply suit coat. “According to the phone’s t
ime stamp, the message was left about one minute after the all-clear bell rang.” He looks at me. “According to Mrs. Ambler, you dashed away from your assigned safety area, and according to, uh, others in your class, you were the last one to arrive back at Mr. Vince’s room.”
“I was trying to find my friends! Ask Marissa McKenze! I went to the soccer fields!”
Mr. Foxmore whips a ninja look at me. “You were told to go directly to class.”
“But—”
“So why was seeing your friends such a priority for you?”
“Because … because they’re my friends!”
Then Billy pipes up with, “Are you saying Sammy left that message? The voice on the recording isn’t a girl’s. It’s a guy’s!”
Mr. Foxmore looks at him. “And you, Mr. Pratt, are a guy.”
“But I don’t sound anything like that.”
“I’m familiar with voice changers, Mr. Pratt. They’re probably already in the stores for Halloween.”
Then, finally, Officer Borsch says something. “It is possible, isn’t it, that these two have been set up? Who would use their own phone to leave a death threat?”
“It seems like a pretty elaborate setup,” Mr. Foxmore says. “And who would do that?”
Billy and I look at each other, then blurt, “Heather Acosta!”
Mr. Vince snorts. “I knew you’d say that. And I did give her a bathroom pass, but that was at the start of the drill.” He leans in and snarls, “But there’s also the mysterious destruction of her phone—something she seems to think the two of you also know something about.”
Well, okay. At that point I want to jump up and demand a lawyer. I mean, come on! If Mr. Vince is on my jury, just shoot me now. So I push back in my chair and say, “I feel like I’m being railroaded here. I had nothing, nothing to do with any of this Die Dude stuff, and I had nothing to do with Heather’s phone winding up in the outhouse. I also have no idea how Billy’s phone wound up in my backpack!”
Officer Borsch steps forward and says to Billy, “The whole class knew your phone was on Mr. Vince’s desk?”
“That’s right, sir. And when we came in from the fire drill, it was missing.”
“And you’ve got people who know where you were during the time the phone call was made?”
Billy nods. “I came straight back to class.”
He turns to me. “And you were with your friends? Can an objective third party corroborate your whereabouts during the time in question?”
“I’m sure someone saw me. But I was with three of my friends—Marissa McKenze, Dot DeVrees, and Holly Janquell. Call them in here one at a time—they’ll all say the same thing.”
Officer Borsch turns to Mr. Vince. “You locked the door on the way out to your evacuation site?”
“That’s right.”
“Were you surprised to see your students inside your classroom after the all clear was given?”
“Very.”
“So who unlocked the door?” Officer Borsch looks at Mr. Foxmore. “Who else has a key?”
Mr. Foxmore pulls out a chair and sits down across from Billy and me. “All the administrators have master keys. So does the custodial staff. And some of the teachers …”
“And you have an assigned routine to check each building during a fire alarm?”
“That’s right.”
“So, as part of your all-clear routine, somebody went in and checked Mr. Vince’s room, correct?”
“That’s correct. But are you implying—”
“I’m just collecting information. Could you get me a list?”
“Of?”
“Of anyone with a master key. And I’d like to know who’s assigned to clear Mr. Vince’s room during drills and alerts.”
Now, I’d never seen Officer Borsch act so calm and professional.
Ever.
So I’m thinking, Go Borschman! but Mr. Foxmore seems kind of annoyed, and Mr. Vince is shaking his head like he thinks Officer Borsch is an idiot. Especially after Officer Borsch says, “I’ll want to question anyone who had access to the room.”
Mr. Foxmore stands and says to him, “And I’ll want a meeting with the parents,” like Billy and I are not even there.
Billy closes his eyes and sort of sinks into his chair, and I take a deep breath and try hard to look like I’ve got no problem with them calling home.
The fact is, though, I’ve got a huge problem with it.
I look at Officer Borsch, and he knows what I’m thinking.
This has just gone from really, really bad.
To even worse.
FIFTEEN
Billy and I were put in different holding cells while Mr. Foxmore brought in our “parents.” Billy got put in the Box, and I got put in a supply room across the hall from the faculty lounge that was full of boxes.
Now, the Box is not called the Box by people who work in the office. It’s called the Reflection Room. But anyone who’s spent any time reflecting in it knows—it’s a box. It’s got nothing on the walls but paint, it’s got one light overhead and one chair to sit in, and I swear it’s smaller than Grams’ closet.
I should know—I’ve spent plenty of time in both.
But since there were two of us and there was no way Mr. Foxmore wanted Billy and me “reflecting” together, he put Billy in the Box and stuck me in the supply room. “Stay here,” he told me, like I was a naughty little puppy.
The supply room was actually worse than the Box because it was hot and stuffy inside, and I had to sit on a stack of copy paper boxes. I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, too, looking around at other boxes and a cubby-holed wall of colored paper. After I was bored blind from that, I made a fleet of paper airplanes and flew them around. They couldn’t go very far, though, and kept crashing behind boxes where I couldn’t reach them.
Anyway, I got so hot and sweaty and claustrophobic that I finally couldn’t take it anymore, so I opened the door a crack and peeked outside.
Across the hallway, the faculty room door was wide open. I couldn’t see any teachers in it, but I could see a big pink donut box in the middle of a table.
Now, Foxy Foxmore had confiscated our backpacks, and since I hadn’t exactly had a chance to eat my smashed PB&J during lunch, I was starving. That box of donuts was only about twenty-five feet away, and it was calling my name.
Loud.
So I opened the supply room door a little more and checked up and down the hallway. The coast seemed clear, so I snuck over and stuck my head inside the faculty room.
Nobody home!
Well, unless someone was in the faculty room bathroom … but I decided to take my chances. I zipped over to that donut box and flipped open the lid, and what was waiting for me inside?
Half a sorry-looking chocolate cake donut.
Still. It was better than nothing, so I snagged it. Trouble is, as I’m heading for the door with it, I hear voices coming down the hallway. It doesn’t sound like Mr. Foxmore—it sounds like two women, but I can’t be sure he’s not, you know, walking with them.
Now, students are not allowed in the faculty lounge. Everyone knows that. And I can’t exactly jet out of there clutching a stolen donut—I’ll run right into whoever’s in the hallway! And I can’t just stand there, because whoever it is will see me and think I’m a crummy donut thief.
Which I am!
Besides, Mr. Foxmore had told me to stay put.
Which I didn’t!
So I panic. My head goes whipping around, looking for someplace to hide, and since there is no place, I dive behind the door and pull the big trash can in to make myself a little wedge of a hiding place.
So there I am, crouching behind a door and a trash can, holding my breath—and half a stale donut—when the voices enter the room.
“… and it’s terrible to be treated that way, but there’s a reason the kids hate him. He never has a nice thing to say about them, he’s rude and crude and condescending to them, and from what I understa
nd, he assigns a lot of busywork.”
“He didn’t used to be that way,” the other, sorta warbly voice says. “When he first started, he was so young and enthused.…”
“Weren’t we all? And we’re all overburdened. But if he doesn’t like kids, he shouldn’t be teaching!”
I can hear the clink of a coffee cup against the counter, and then the Warbler says, “I think Suzanne leaving him had a profound effect on him.”
“Well, that’s true. And I did feel very sorry for him when it happened, but it’s been over two years! And regardless, it’s not professional to be such a pill at work.”
Now, I just know they’re talking about Mr. Vince, and I’m pretty sure the stronger voice belongs to Mrs. Ambler, but I have no idea who the Warbler is. So I inch over and peek through the space between the edge of the door and the side of the trash can. Sure enough it’s Mrs. Ambler, and she’s with a teacher named Mrs. Sanford. I’ve never had Mrs. Sanford, but everyone says she’s nice, even though she looks like she’s been teaching for about eighty years.
Mrs. Ambler’s fixing herself a cup of coffee, and Mrs. Sanford is opening the donut box, saying, “Personally, I think Suzanne leaving him sparked a midlife crisis. It happens to a lot of men, you know. Especially if they’re dumped for a younger, more attractive man, and that’s what happened to Bob.”
Mrs. Ambler shakes her head. “Times sure have changed, haven’t they?”
“Kids sure have changed, I’ll give you that.” Mrs. Sanford closes the donut box. “Can you imagine threatening a teacher? Good Lord. It’s unbelievable.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” Mrs. Ambler says, stirring some sugar into her mug of coffee. “I just hope it’s not the two they suspect.”
“Samantha and Billy?” she asks, like I’m somebody she actually knows.
Mrs. Ambler nods. “Sammy’s had a rough go of it here. And she and Bob had a rocky year last year, but I can’t imagine her resorting to that sort of tactic.” She taps the spoon against the rim of her mug and sighs. “Maybe she got caught up in Billy’s antics. I hope not.”
Now, I’m so wrapped up in what they’re saying that it takes me a minute to realize that Mrs. Sanford is coming toward the garbage can with the donut box. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to throw away their trash,” she mutters.