Especially not teens.
I mean, if he thinks his little speech is going to get a peep out of any of us, he’s living in Loony Land. Maybe his intimidation techniques work with some people, but eighth graders?
Please.
Every single person in class is thinking, What a dope! You expect me to squeal about the rat? That’ll make me a rat!
And even though he’s in uniform, he just looks like a big, blustery cop who couldn’t chase you down if his life depended on it.
Especially since his forearm is in a cast.
Now, during all this, Mr. Foxmore has been on and off his walkie-talkie half a dozen times. He’s also been in and out the door a bunch because the bell to change classes had rung and some of Mr. Vince’s fourth-period students hadn’t heard their “Report to the media center” announcement.
But now he’s focusing on getting us moving. And since they’re using roll sheets to release us in alphabetical order, Heather is the first one out the door.
The rest of us are not allowed to look out the window.
We’re not allowed to talk to each other.
And we’re sure not allowed to text.
Now, it’s not like they’re flying through the list of names, but they’re not really dragging it out, either. And while we’re all waiting for our names to be called, we’re trying to be quiet, but everyone’s jittery. Angie Johnson is biting her nails, Sasha Stamos’ foot is wagging like crazy under her desk, Lars Teppler keeps pushing buttons on his watch, Jake Meers is spit-washing his rat-hoisting fingers and wiping them on his socks, David Olsen is doodling on his binder … everyone’s moving something.
Everyone except Billy Pratt.
He’s just sitting there, hunched over and quiet.
And then all of a sudden Mr. Foxmore snaps, “That’s mine,” from over by the door, and in an instant he’s at Billy’s desk and has snatched Billy’s phone right out of his hands.
“Huh, what?” Billy says, because it happened so quick.
“You and I met in my office last Thursday,” Mr. Foxmore says, scrolling through Billy’s phone. He eyes him. “Do you recall that, Mr. Pratt?”
Billy gulps and nods.
“Hmm,” he says, studying the phone. “I’ll have to invite Heather to expand on this message.”
“She’s just goofin’ around,” Billy says with a laugh.
Mr. Foxmore gives him a sharp look. “And you’re just stayin’ after school.” He pockets the phone. “I’m sure you remember where my office is, don’t you, Mr. Pratt?”
“Yes, sir,” Billy says.
Mr. Foxmore moves across the room and looks out the window, then checks the roll sheet and scans the room until his gaze stops on me. “Samantha, you’re next.”
And that’s when it finally hits me that I’m in a bad position.
For one thing, he knows who I am.
Why?
Because I really, really, really tried to get out of Mr. Vince’s class.
Why?
Because I hate the guy.
Plus, after what Mr. Vince said when he woke up from his little nap on the floor, I’m obviously his number one suspect!
I grab my stuff and head for the door, and at the bottom of the ramp I go right up to Officer Borsch and tell him, “I promise you, I had nothing to do with this.”
“Good enough for me,” he says.
I hesitate. “Really … ?”
He shrugs. “Go to your next class.”
I let out a puffy-cheeked breath. “Thank you.”
So I hurry over to the locker room, change for PE, and get out to the fields in time to do a few soccer drills before we’re sent back in. Then I race over to the tables where our group hangs out during lunch and find Marissa already huddled up with Holly and Dot.
“Hey!” she says. “We heard about the rat!”
“Yeah!” Dot says, sipping from her can of root beer. “People are saying Billy did it.”
“Billy?” At first I’m relieved to hear this, but then I’m not. “That’s Heather’s fault. She sent him a text, and Mr. Foxmore intercepted it.”
“Intercepted it?” Holly asks. “How’d that happen?”
So I explain about the whole interrogation process and about Billy getting his phone confiscated and all that. And then I tell them what Mr. Vince said when he woke up and how Mr. Foxmore knew my name and how I was worried that they thought I was the one who’d put the rat in his desk. “Officer Borsch was the cop taking the report, though, and he just let me go.”
Holly laughs. “Wow. Six months ago he would have locked you up!”
Dot laughs, too. “And thrown away the key!”
Which makes Marissa totally switch subjects by launching into the story about me being in Officer Borsch’s wedding and having to wear spiky lavender shoes. And while Holly’s and Dot’s jaws are hitting the ground about that, I happen to notice Billy over by the side of the cafeteria.
And who’s standing next to him, practically chewing off his ear?
Heather Acosta.
They’re alone, too.
“What is going on with them?” I mutter.
“Who?” Marissa asks, interrupting herself.
I nod over Holly’s shoulder. “Heather and Billy.” I watch them a minute, then say, “Wow. I wonder if he really did do it.”
Now, even though he’s clear across the way, Billy sees us looking at him, and all of a sudden he’s hurrying away from Heather. “You’re right,” Marissa says. “He’s acting really guilty.”
But later, on my way into science, Billy scoots up next to me and whispers, “She’s stalking me, okay? And I didn’t leave that rat!”
Then Heather appears.
“Talk later,” he whispers, and ditches me quick.
All through science, and then all through drama, things were kinda weird. Billy didn’t joke around or make any kind of comments at all, actually, which I think was a first. He was just … quiet.
Maybe he was worried about having to see Mr. Foxmore after school.
Maybe things hadn’t gone so well with Officer Borsch and he had to see Mr. Foxmore about more than just his phone.
Maybe he really had put the Die Dude Rat in Mr. Vince’s drawer.
Still, as much as I was trying not to be duped by Billy, I didn’t want it to be him. So my brain scrambled around for another answer, and it kept coming back to Heather.
Maybe she was trying to get Billy involved in one of her stupid little schemes.
But … if that was the case, why didn’t Billy just tell her to get lost?
Then I remembered—he hadn’t told her to get lost when she’d been so rude to Mikey and me at the mall, either, and that had happened before any of this dead rat stuff.
But after a while my brain felt fried from going in circles, so I told myself that I was probably making things too complicated. Maybe it was just simple.
Maybe Billy Pratt wasn’t such a great friend after all.
But on my way home after school, I was cruising along the mall’s winding walkway when a thought came flying at me so hard and so fast that I stumbled off my skateboard and almost fell over.
“That must be it!” I gasped.
It was the perfect explanation.
NINE
The next morning I cornered Billy before school and said, “She’s blackmailing you, isn’t she?”
He blinks at me. “No!”
“Aha!” I cry. “You didn’t even ask who ‘she’ was!”
That flustered him. And even though he tried to cover up by saying, “I didn’t have to!” I knew I was onto something.
“What’s she got on you, Billy?”
“Stop it!” He dodges around me. “You’re making me all claustrophobic!”
I chase after him and try to be a little, you know, gentler. “Come on, Billy. You don’t want to get in deeper than you already are.”
He stops. “Deeper in what?”
I look up at the sky. “Um
mm. Let’s see … How’d it go after school yesterday?”
He just stares at me.
“You know, with Mr. Foxmore? Did he grill you? Did you get your phone back? What did Heather’s text say?”
“Yes, he grilled me, and yes, I got my phone back.” He switches to a chipper British accent. “It was my first infraction with a telly, after all. Henceforth, I’m to be a jolly good chap and keep it off and away during class. It is not to reside on my personage!”
“Boy, you got off easy. Especially since he’d seen you about, you know, séancing dead people?”
He switches back to Billyspeak. “Hey, if you’re making the leap to dead rats, like everybody else seems to be, I didn’t do it.” He frowns, and it’s like poof, a heavy, dark cloud forms over his head. “I swear,” he says, “I had nothing to do with that rat.”
In all the times I’d seen Billy scolded for clowning around in class, and in all the times I’d seen him sent to the office, I’d never seen him look this serious. So I soften up a bit and say, “Billy, I know something’s going on. So if it’s not the rat, what is it?” Then I shrug and say, “Or if you’ve decided to align yourself with that evil witch, just say so and quit pretending to be my friend.”
He looks at me.
Looks away.
Looks at me.
Looks away.
“Billy, it’s me. Just tell me.”
He looks all around, then breaks down. “Maaaan, I am in so much trouble.”
I let out a big, puffy-faced breath. “Okay. Thank you. Now let me help you.”
“I’m going to be in boiling hot water if people find out!” He shakes his head. “They’ll probably expel me, and then my life will be over.”
“Billy,” I say, gripping him by the shoulders, “just tell me.”
He pinches his eyes closed for a second, then blurts out, “I did that Die Dude on the board, okay? It was actually Heather’s idea. I was dressed like a soldier and just goofing around, going, ‘Die, dude! Die, dude!’ She said it would be a crack-up if I wrote it on the board and pulled down the screen so when Vince rolled it up, bam, there it’d be. But while I was writing it, she took a picture of me with her phone!”
“Wait. Without you knowing?”
He nods. “And after she showed it to me, she started making me do stuff like get her lunch and tie her shoe.… She was acting like it was a joke, so I just played along, but now that that rat showed up, she’s like, Do my homework and Give me twenty bucks.”
“Or she’ll tell?”
“Yeah! And she’s serious! She says Foxmore’ll never believe I did one and not the other!”
“That evil snake.” I think about it a minute, then say, “Just tell Foxmore the truth.”
“I can’t! Heather’s right—he’ll never believe me!” Billy wipes sweat away from under his mop of hair. “Man, I should never have told you! If you—”
“Don’t worry! I’m not going to tell anyone. I promise.”
He heaves a sigh of relief.
I grab his arm. “Look, we’ll figure something out, okay?”
He nods, and when the tardy bell rings, he puts on his class clown smile and hurries away, calling, “See ya, Sammy-keyesta!” like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
So there I am, watching him go, trying to figure out what I can do to help him, when a voice next to me asks, “Hey, wassup?”
I jump a little, and there’s Lars Teppler standing right beside me. I blink at him a bunch because I may have him in homeroom and in Mr. Vince’s class, but I only sort of know him, and he’s never said “Hey, wassup?” to me before. “Sorry,” he says with a laugh. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”
I laugh, too. “And I didn’t mean to spaz.”
He flips his head around to the left, whooshing his hair out of his eyes as we start toward homeroom. “Freaky class yesterday, huh?”
“No kidding.”
“I don’t know why we were automatically the criminals. That rat could have been planted way before any of us got there.” He whooshes his hair again. “You think that cop got anything out of anyone?”
I snort. “No.”
“He sure let you off easy,” he says, smiling at me.
It’s a strange smile. Like only half his mouth is trying. And it makes a little tingle creep up my neck because I remember how I’d noticed him pushing buttons on his watch.
He’d been timing us?
All of a sudden it hits me that maybe I should have hung out and chatted with the Borschman a little instead of jetting out of there. All of a sudden I’m thinking that maybe getting off easy was going to turn around and make things hard for me.
“Yeah?” I ask, looking at him all surprised. “Didn’t feel like it to me.”
We’re at Vince’s class now, so we go inside, only we’re not greeted by the sunny attitude of the Spit Collector telling us to sit down and shut up. No, it’s Mr. Foxmore at the podium, and apparently he doesn’t need the words sit down or shut up in his vocabulary because everyone does it automatically.
He doesn’t explain why he’s there or say anything about Mr. Vince. He just leads us in the Pledge, then reads the announcements. It’s actually the first time all year that I’ve been able to hear the announcements because no one else is talking. Plus, he’s reading them like they matter. He says stuff like, “Here’s one that concerns most of you,” and then launches into the announcement. Or he reads one and adds, “You kids really ought to try that club—sounds like something that would get you involved in doing good things for your community.”
Anyway, when he’s done with homeroom business, he says, “I’m sure you’re wondering about Mr. Vince. I’m pleased to report that he’s fine, and he’ll be back tomorrow. For those of you who have a class with him later in the day, be assured a real substitute will be arriving shortly.” He smiles at us. “I guess you’d say I’m the substitute’s substitute.” Then he adds, “I certainly appreciate how well behaved you’ve been this morning. I’ve already taken roll, so go ahead and get yourselves ready for first period.”
Now, the funny thing is, for all the grumbling and complaining and yelling Mr. Vince does to get us to mind him, homeroom has never been this civilized. It’s like Mr. Vince has told us how horrible we are so many times that we don’t even care about being good.
I mean, why bother?
Anyway, I spend a couple of minutes getting my binder in order and reviewing my planner, and then I decide to sharpen my pencil for math, which I have right after homeroom. And I would have just gone up, sharpened, and gone back to my seat like a good little girl, only while I’m cranking away, I happen to notice that Mr. Foxmore is clicking away at Mr. Vince’s computer.
Something about the way he’s doing it feels really intense to me. He’s sort of hunched forward, and he’s moving the mouse around fast. So I keep that pencil sharpener going, and I see that what he’s doing is checking the history list.
Not one that has anything to do with the classes Mr. Vince teaches.
No, the one that shows what Internet sites Mr. Vince has been to recently.
Mr. Foxmore clicks on the next link in the list, and up pops a picture of a set of golf clubs.
He closes that window and clicks on the next link, and up pops a road map to who knows where.
Next comes a video of a dog riding a skateboard.
Then a gleaming cherry red motorcycle.
Then another video that’s just starting to play when Mr. Foxmore catches me watching him.
Real quick, he shrinks the window and ninjas me a look that sends me back to my seat. Then when the dismissal bell rings about a minute later, he says, “Have a productive day,” in a kind of chummy way as he ushers us out. He even smiles at me, like, See ya.
Now, the teachers’ computers belong to the school, so I guess the vice principal ought to be able to use them. But something about Mr. Foxmore nosing around on Mr. Vince’s computer felt a little … sneaky.
Li
ke he was digging through Mr. Vince’s desk drawers.
And really, I shouldn’t have cared. I mean, in the few weeks we’ve been in school, Mr. Vince has probably already given us eight in-class worksheets, and while we sweat to find answers in the textbook, he’s up at his desk “working” at his computer.
The monitor faces away from the class, so it’s not like we can see what Mr. Vince is doing, but anytime someone comes near his desk, he always shrinks the page and gives them an annoyed look. Like he’s in the middle of something really, really important, and how can we be so dumb as to not know how to do a simple worksheet ourselves?
So knowing that ol’ Vincy-poo’s been surfing the Web really ought to tick me off at him, but it’s weird—it’s like Mr. Foxmore is the one who’s being sneaky.
Sneakier, even, than Mr. Vince.
Anyway, I head over to math and try to forget about the whole Mr. Vince stupidity, then go to language, where Ms. Needer spends the class period instructing us on the differences between similes, metaphors, and analogies. I try to concentrate, but my mind keeps wandering, and boy, am I glad to bust out of there when the bell for break finally rings.
Marissa’s already waiting for me at the tables, eating a breakfast bar and swigging water. Marissa used to buy her snack and her lunch at school, but since her family’s gone into crisis mode, she’s been packing food from home, just like me.
Anyway, besides eating, she’s also standing there doing the McKenze Fidget. I used to call it the McKenze Dance because when she got nervous Marissa would bite her thumbnail and squirm around like she had to use the bathroom. It’s a lot more subtle now—she just sort of twitches at the knees—but I still know what it means.
“Hey,” I say, plopping down my backpack. “What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t even try to pretend it’s nothing. “I think my parents are going to split up.”
“Aw, don’t doom-and-gloom. They’re just fighting over money. They’ll figure it out.”
She shakes her head. “Mikey and I moved into Hudson’s last night.”
“Wait a minute—you’re living there?”
She nods, then bursts into tears. “My dad got totally drunk and was talking crazy stuff. Mom called Hudson, and he came and picked us up.”