Slob

  “Go get security.”

  Security! Not the principal?! Security!

  We had one security guard, a big guy with a bald head and perennial sweat marks under his armpits who sat by the front door and looked bored. He was going to love this. I wondered if, unlike Wooly, he had permission to use force against me.

  Mr. Wooly stuck his face close to mine. I could smell old coffee on his breath and could see the tiny red veins on the creases of his nostrils, that’s how close he was.

  “If that kid is having a seizure in there,” Wooly said, “and he injures himself, or drops dead, then it will be your fault, Birnbaum. You hear me?”

  If he had known the truth about me and my parents, he couldn’t have said anything more perfectly designed to tear my heart out.

  I am a boulder. Boulders don’t move.

  I felt tears burning my eyes, and my throat was swelling and every muscle in my body was begging me to let it move, but I had promised Mason not to let them see, and I would not let them see. Jeremy was with him. If things got too bad, she would get help.

  I am a boulder, I am a boulder, I will not move.

  I felt a cold tap on my back. The locker room door had opened. Jeremy appeared by my side.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “Over?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around the words. They had come so close on the heels of Wooly’s comment about Mason dying that I felt a rush of fear.

  “The seizure is over,” Jeremy explained quickly. “He’s okay. He’s just resting.”

  Wooly made his move then, pushing past me into the locker room. I let my body be pushed aside. It didn’t matter anymore. As the cops like to say, “The show is over, folks. Nothing interesting to see here.”

  My mind let my body have its way. I slipped down to the floor and sat there with my knees up and my head on my knees, eyes closed. I felt overwhelmed with exhaustion. I wanted to be back in my bed, alone. I wanted to sleep for three days straight.

  I felt a light brush against my left arm, and I opened one eye to see that Jeremy had crouched down beside me. We looked at each other for a moment without saying a word. It had all been so strangely similar to that night two years ago, only back then I had been blocking the door from Jeremy, not Wooly, and it had not ended with everyone being just fine.

  “You did a good thing,” Jeremy said. “That was really . . . you know, heroic.”

  I nodded. I didn’t feel heroic. But maybe it’s one of those overrated things.

  15

  I almost felt sorry for the security guard. He came rushing through the door, his underarm stains already creeping farther down his uniform than I had ever seen before, ready for a full-blown riot. But when he burst into the locker room, he was told that he wasn’t needed after all. He still hung around for a few minutes in the hopes, I’m guessing, that some new riot would break out. No such luck. Mason’s teacher’s aide appeared and quickly ushered him out. She must have had some harsh words for Wooly because he came out of the locker right after, muttering angrily to himself. He walked right past us without even noticing me and Jeremy on the floor. The noon bell rang. Gym class was over.

  Jeremy went back to her classroom (GWAB had slipped out of the lunchroom for The Blue and White Rebellion, since they had lunch right before we did), and I changed back into my clothes and headed out of the gym. It was almost as though nothing had happened. Almost. But on my way out of gym class, Andre Bertoni failed to thump me anywhere on my body and no one made any farting noises as I passed by. If someone less of a bully magnet than myself had defied Wooly the way I had just done, there probably would have been some hooting or some “You rock”-ing. But no one knew what to do in my case, so they didn’t do anything. And you know what? That was fine by me.

  The part that wasn’t so fine by me was having lunch with Izzy. With all the stuff that had happened in the gym, I had completely forgotten about Izzy and my suspicions. I even forgot to check inside the IPuffins tote bag to see if the cookies were gone before I went into the lunchroom. Of course the second I saw Izzy’s head towering above everyone else’s, it all came back to me.

  Still, I didn’t feel like I could just go up to him and say, “Okay you creep, I know it was you who took my Oreos all along,” because I didn’t have any real proof. It was all circumstantial evidence, as they say. Instead, I decided to simply not sit with him. That was a statement in itself. Unfortunately, Izzy spotted me before I could find another seat and started waving like mad with this crazy big grin on his face.

  And then he gave me the thumbs-up.

  It’s really hard to snub someone who is giving you the thumbs-up. Try it sometime and you’ll see.

  “I heard all about it, man,” Izzy said when I reluctantly approached the table and sat down. “The hallways were buzzing with the news.” He held out his bear-paw-sized hand and I had to shake it. “You are truly a hero, dude.” He lowered his head so that it was closer to mine. “But why’d you do it? People are saying you were protecting Mason Ragg. They said that he got scared of doing this race with you and he made a run for it back to the locker room and you wouldn’t let Wooly get at him to drag him out. Why’d you do that, man? I thought Ragg was your number one archenemy.”

  “He’s not my archenemy,” I said.

  No, that title belongs to you, I thought.

  “He never stole my Oreos, you know,” I said.

  “Really?” Izzy made the phoniest surprised face I had ever seen in my life.

  “No,” I said coldly, staring back at him.

  “Do you know who did?” Izzy asked.

  “Let’s just say I have my suspicions,” I said.

  Izzy lifted his upper lip like he smelled something bad. “Why are you acting like that?” he asked me.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Like a detective on one of those cheesy old TV shows.”

  That made me turn red in the face, which annoyed me to no end, since he was the one who should be embarrassed.

  “I found my lunch sack in the boys’ bathroom today,” I blurted out. “It was hung up on a piece of wire that was so high off the ground only a really tall person could have reached it.”

  Not very subtle, I know. But I was upset.

  I watched Izzy’s face go through some interesting changes. It was such a big face that all the little twitches were magnified—his eyebrows dipped down, his nostrils pushed out, his lips spread into a grimace, then contracted into a pucker.

  “So you think I put it up there?” he said finally.

  Faced with accusing him directly, I hedged a little bit. “Well, I certainly think it’s a possibility.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I did.”

  I felt a surge of dismay. There was a little piece of me that was hoping I was totally wrong.

  “But,” he added quickly, “that doesn’t mean that I’m the thief.”

  My dismay moved directly to self-righteous anger. “Oh no? You knew I was upset about the whole Oreo thing! You knew I was trying to catch Mason in the act! If you saw my lunch sack and you didn’t steal it, why on earth wouldn’t you just give it back to me? Why would you hang it up in the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said. “I wanted you to find it. But I didn’t steal it.”

  I grabbed my lunch and stood up.

  It would have been a pretty dramatic moment. I was just about to call him a liar and find another table to sit at, but one of the hall monitors came into the lunchroom and told me that I was to report to the principal’s office ASAP.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Surprised and mortified. I had never in my life been sent to the principal’s office. I didn’t even know what a principal’s office looked like.

  Mason was already sitting in a chair outside the office when I arrived.

  “Ms. DeRosa will be with you shortly,” the secretary told me.

  “Hey,” I said to Mason, sitting next to him.

  “Hey.?
??

  I felt weirdly awkward with him suddenly. I now knew more about him than I was sure he wanted me to know. I started to ask him if he was okay, but I had a feeling he might not like that, so instead I asked, “Are we in trouble?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to tell.”

  “Hmm.” I said.

  There was a squirmish silence during which I heard Wooly’s booming voice on the other side of the door, talking to the principal.

  “I wasn’t running away because of the race thing, you know,” Mason said.

  “I know.”

  “I mean, I didn’t run away, then have a seizure. I ran away because I knew the seizure was coming.”

  “I figured,” I said.

  “Ok,” he said. There was another silence.

  “How did you know it was coming?” I suddenly wondered out loud, then wished I hadn’t.

  Still he answered me and didn’t seem offended.

  “I hear a train,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “It’s nothing weird,” he said quickly. “It’s my aura. A lot of people with seizures get auras right before they seize. Some of them see lights or hear music. Mine’s a train.”

  “So when you get the hall pass and leave the classroom,” I said, “it’s because you’re hearing the train?”

  He nodded. “There’s usually enough time for me to find my aide before I start seizing. I heard the train when those girls walked in the gym today, but I kept ignoring it, hoping it would go away. That was stupid. I waited too long.” He paused, then tapped the evil genius side of his face. “Got this from waiting too long.”

  “How?” I asked, and once again instantly could have kicked myself for asking.

  Still, I was really, really curious.

  “I was taking a shower,” he said. “I heard the train, but I thought I had time. When I started seizing, my hand hit the cold water tap and turned it off. This side of my face got a full blast of boiling hot water the whole time I seized. Burned it bad.”

  “Oh.”

  It was not quite like an M-80 firecracker being thrown at you in revenge for strangling a girl with her Molly Wildchild necklace.

  “Can I ask you something else?” I said. I thought I was probably pushing my luck but everything was turned upside down and inside out today.

  “Maybe,” he said cagily.

  “Do you really carry a switchblade in your sock?” I asked.

  To my surprise, he instantly lifted his left foot and placed it on his chair. Then he hiked up his pant leg. I could see the narrow, oblong outline under his sock. He reached in and pulled out something metal and shiny and tossed it to me. I didn’t catch it. I never catch things that are tossed to me. It bounced off my hands and landed in my lap. I looked at it. I’d never seen a switchblade in person, but I had seen them in the movies, and this looked like a bona fide switchblade. I didn’t think it was in my best interest to be sitting outside the principal’s office with a switchblade on my lap.

  “Very nice,” I said, picking it up by the corner and holding it out for him. I was sorry I’d asked about it.

  “Don’t you want to open it?” he said, not taking it.

  “No. Nope. Here you go.” I glanced up at the principal’s door, expecting her to appear at any minute.

  “Look,” Mason said, leaning across to me. “There’s a button on the side. Press it.” Now I could hear some scraping inside Ms. DeRosa’s office, like they were getting up from their chairs.

  “Could you just—” My voice was rising with panic. They were going to open the door any second. “Put this thing away, will you!” I dropped it in Mason’s lap. He picked it up calmly and held it in his palm. With his index finger he pressed a button on the side of the box.

  Snick!

  I flinched backward. Then I looked down. A tiny metal drawer had shot out of the side of the box, and inside it were three keys on a ring.

  “My house keys,” he said.

  “Oh.” There was a thin sheen of sweat on my face.

  “I keep them in my sock because they tend to fall out of my pockets.”

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  He smiled. It was the evil genius smile. I hadn’t imagined it. It was straight out of the comics, it really was.

  The principal’s door opened and Mr. Wooly stepped out. He glared at us. I don’t think things had gone very well for him in Ms. DeRosa’s office. She didn’t look too happy either when she called me in.

  “So,” Ms. DeRosa said after I sat down in a chair on the opposite side of her desk. “Let’s hear your version.” She sipped at a metal thermos of coffee as she listened to my side of the story. I tried to be as truthful as possible. I was slightly less than truthful about Jeremy and GWAB. Actually I didn’t mention them at all.

  She listened really well. Not many people know how to do that. When I was finished, she gave me a short lecture about endangering a classmate with a serious medical condition and said she would be speaking to my sister as well (of course, Wooly would have told her about The Blue and White Rebellion). Then she said she hoped she’d never have to see me in her office again.

  I said, “I hope not too,” and then wondered if that sounded rude, so I said, “Nice chatting with you.” But that sounded like I didn’t take this thing very seriously, so I bowed. Just like she was the Queen of England.

  I told you I do idiotic things when I’m nervous.

  Do you know what Ms. DeRosa did? She bowed back. Not just a dip-your-head bow either. She put down her thermos, stood up, and bowed deeply to me. I thought that was really classy of her. I like to think that each of us felt the other one deserved a bow.

  But maybe she was just being polite.

  16

  After school, Jeremy wasn’t waiting for me by the corner. I stood around for a while, hoping she’d show, but she didn’t. I thought things between us might have improved because of what happened today. Obviously, I was wrong.

  It wasn’t until I was almost home that I remembered I had Penny Marshall’s birthday in my pocket. I stuck my hand in my pocket and touched the paper, although I didn’t really have to look at it again. The date was fixed in my brain: October 15, 1943. Now all I had to do was go through the October 2006 issue of Retro TV Magazine to see what time that Brady Bunch episode had been aired and I could pinpoint the exact timing for the surveillance camera. I might have to do a little more scavenging for a bigger dish so that I could bring in the signal more consistently, but all in all, things were looking good.

  A calmness came over me. All the puzzle pieces were in place—or nearly. In nine days, if all went well, I was going to see the face of the person who had slammed a wrecking ball into my life. In a few days’ time, his bad karma was going to come crashing down on his head like a grand piano.

  Just then something occurred to me. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, but now that I did, I felt a shiver run along the back of my neck. Not only was I going to see the man’s face, I was also going to see the whole crime. Everything. My parents’ faces, the gun firing. My mother screaming and the gun firing again. Could I bear it?

  You’ll have to, I told myself. That’s all is there is to it.

  When I got home, Honey happily pounced on me as usual and I realized that lately my walks with her were pretty lame. Once around the block and home again so I could get back to work on Nemesis. Today I decided to walk her over to Riverside Park, where I could let her run around off the leash. She must have had a premonition, because she jumped around like mad when she saw me take out the Crap Catcher and she was already straining at the leash when we stepped off the elevator. She pulled the whole way to the park. When we got there, I took off the Crap Catcher and unclipped her leash from her collar. She shot off like a stretched-out rubber band that’s suddenly been released. For a solid fifteen minutes she ran around me in a circle, her mouth stretched wide in that pit bull smile. When she finally winded herself she collapsed on the grass panting. I sat down with he
r, even though the ground was pretty cold. I watched the boats on the Hudson River gliding past and a helicopter flying over the boats. I watched some little kids racing each other on the promenade. I didn’t think about Nemesis or being fat or how Izzy had betrayed me. I was just . . . fine.

  Honey probably feels like that all the time.

  We sat there for a long time, and it was only when my butt began to feel a little numb from the cold that we started walking back home.

  A half block away from my apartment, I saw a boy up ahead, holding something in front of him and having a hard time with it. He stopped every few seconds to rearrange the thing, lifting it higher, then dropping it down lower. It wasn’t until I was a few feet away that I realized it was Arthur. Right after that, I realized that she must be holding the carton of Retro TV Magazines.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my eyes fixed on the box.

  “I’ve been impeached,” she said. She spat out the last word, her expression full of fury and disbelief. I felt like she wanted me to be shocked too.

  “That’s awful,” I said. “Why are you taking the box back?”

  I know that wasn’t very tactful, but Arthur didn’t seem to notice.

  “Because it’s her fault I was impeached,” Arthur said, nodding contemptuously toward my building. “She steps all over my speech in gym class, and then she sneaks into the boys’ locker room! She had no right to do that. We had everything all planned out and she hogged all the attention.”

  These were the most words I’d ever heard Arthur use at one time.

  “I don’t think she did it deliberately,” I said as Arthur heaved the box up again. Part of me wanted to snatch it away from her and make a mad dash for the apartment. But I controlled myself.

  “Yes, she did! She always has to be the boss. Well, now she is. GWAB called an emergency meeting after school and they took a vote. I’m out, she’s in. She’s the new president. Long live the queen.”

  “King,” I said.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I’m done with GWAB and I’m done with Jeremy Birnbaum.” She shifted the box to her right hip and started to walk away.