Syd looked nervous. “Is this okay?” he said as Mr. Solo started rummaging through the supply cart he’d left by the courtyard door. “I mean, it doesn’t seem safe for kids to use chemicals like that. Sarah, isn’t your mom a lawyer?”
Sarah gave him a pitying look. “No. She’s an accountant.”
“Gus’s mom is an ER nurse,” Nick said. “That could come in handy.” He smiled; he didn’t look nearly as nervous as Syd did.
“Okay, here we are.” Mr. Solo returned with an armful of spray cans. “This is your first weapon.” He held up a can for us to see; it was something called Graffiti Delete.
“And this is your second weapon.” He held out a box of steel-wool pads and told us to each take one.
“First you spray; then you scrub. As hard as you can. For a while. If that doesn’t do it, spray and scrub again. Any questions?”
“Yeah, I have a question,” Nick said. “What if we’re here for no reason? What if we aren’t the ones who did the graffiti?”
Mr. Solo looked at us for a second, then shrugged and raised his hands in the air. “I suppose that is between you and Mr. Smeed. Or between you and the kids who actually did it. You could also look at it this way: Maybe you are here for a reason. Even if you didn’t do it. Think about what that reason might be.”
“To…learn how to clean graffiti?” Syd asked. Nick snorted.
Mr. Solo smiled. “Maybe that,” he said. “Maybe something else.”
He took a bucket off the supply cart and headed toward the door. “But for now, my reason for being here is to make sure the school gets cleaned up. So if you have any questions, look for me in the gym; I’ll be in there polishing the floors.”
He left us to our work.
“So. How should we split this up?” Sarah asked, pulling on her gloves.
“Well, we each actually have our name under one of the characters,” Syd said. “Why don’t we just take our own?”
“I don’t know.” I said. “That feels like admitting that we are who this says we are. Know what I mean? I think we should mix it up.”
“I agree with Gus,” Nick said. “Take someone else’s drawing.”
“Okay,” Syd shrugged. “I’ll do yours, Sarah.”
Syd went over to the Sarah caricature and started spraying Graffiti Delete on it. Sarah did the same to the Syd character.
Elaine looked at me like she was waiting to be told where to go. “Want to switch?” I asked her.
“Hey, wait—that means I’m the only one doing my own cartoon,” Nick said.
“Oh, right. Okay, Nick does Elaine’s, Elaine does mine, and I’ll do yours,” I said. Nick nodded, and went to work on Elaine’s caricature. Elaine walked over to start on mine. I gave it one last glance before she got started. I always wondered how I looked to other people—was this the answer? Ugh, these stupid glasses.
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Syd asked after he finished spraying “Sarah’s” head and long hair with Graffiti-be-Gone.
“Because Smeed’s a jerk and won’t listen to us,” I said. Smeed had been gone for the first part of homeroom. This was unusual lately. I think that after the Binaca incident, Principal Olin must have talked to him about leaving the class unattended, because it never happened anymore. And that was probably another reason he seemed to have it out for the kids in his homeroom. We hadn’t just gotten ourselves in trouble on Binaca Day; we’d gotten him in trouble too.
So this morning, when Smeed was gone and Ms. Vanwickle, the serious lunch aide, was asked to monitor our classroom for a while, everyone knew he must be gone for a real reason. And I knew what the reason was: he was meeting with my parents so they could plead my innocence. I hadn’t told anyone but Sarah, and she’d said her mom was going to send an email too. But something about your parents making a special trip to school to talk to your teacher feels more embarrassing in middle school than it does in elementary school.
Anyway, I was glad I decided not to tell anyone about their meeting, because it didn’t work. Smeed came to the classroom five minutes before the end of the period with an even bigger smirk on his face than usual, and he handed me an envelope. I tried to open it without anyone noticing, but I could tell Nick was peering over at me.
I pulled a piece of paper out of the envelope and saw Mom’s familiar neat cursive writing:
Hey, Gus—
I promise we tried our best, but Mr. Smeed wouldn’t budge. He doesn’t believe us, or at least he doesn’t want to. Principal Olin was in another meeting, but I’m going to send her an email when I get a break at work.
In the meantime, I’m sorry you still have to do detention today. We believe you and we love you, and Dad will pick you up at 5. (We know you’ll be tired, so you don’t have to walk home today.)
Love,
Mom
And in boxier letters at the bottom:
(and Dad)
Now, scrubbing away at cartoon “Nick’s” spiky hair on the courtyard wall, I felt like the steel-wool pad was chanting as it moved against the bricks: We didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. Sometimes I shifted my rhythm so it sounded more like This is so unfair. This is so unfair. This is so unfair.
“This is so unfair,” a voice said behind me. I jumped a little; it was like someone had heard my secret scrubbing chant.
I turned around and saw Quincy standing with her arms crossed, watching us. “It’s so obvious you guys didn’t do this,” she said. “Why would anyone draw these stupid pictures of themselves?”
She bent down and picked up the extra pair of gloves. “I’ll help you guys,” she said. “Is anyone doing the names?”
“Not yet,” Sarah said. “And thanks.” I could tell she was surprised; I’m not sure she’d ever seen the helpful side of Quincy before.
“Sure,” Quincy said. “It helps if you spray the cleaner on the wall and the steel wool. Although it would be way easier if they let you use a power sprayer. That’s the best way to do it.”
“How do you know that?” Nick asked.
Quincy smiled at him. “Don’t you worry about that, Zambrano.”
She sprayed some Graffiti Delete on the E in Elaine. “I just can’t believe you guys are taking this,” she said.
“What can we even do about it?” Sarah asked. “No one believes us.”
“Actually…,” I said, “my parents believe me.” I felt a little bolder admitting that, knowing Quincy believed us too. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Did they come to school to try to bail you out?” Nick asked. “I saw them going into the office this morning.”
I wondered if he’d also read Mom’s letter over my shoulder. “Well, not just me,” I said. “All of us. I told them none of us did it.”
“You’re lucky,” Elaine said. “My parents didn’t believe me at all.”
“Mine neither,” said Nick.
I wasn’t sure what to say. “Maybe my parents could talk to them too?” I offered.
“I just want to find out who did do it,” Nick said. “Then everyone will believe us.”
“Not necessarily,” Syd said. “Not if we don’t have proof.”
“See that?” Quincy asked, pointing toward the top of a courtyard wall. “Your proof is right there.”
I looked where she was pointing. I couldn’t believe it. How had I never noticed it before?
“Holy crap,” Nick said. “It’s a camera.” He squinted to read the small print below it. “SS 1400 Security System. It’s a security camera.”
“It sure is,” Quincy said. “And it points right at this wall.”
She stood up straight and stopped spraying. “Think we should take a break and visit Ms. Olin?”
* * *
We couldn’t do anything about the camer
a until the next day. Nick ran down the hall to ask Principal Olin if we could see the video from the security camera, but she was already gone for the day. When he got back, Quincy took off her gloves and looked at us.
“You guys, you really should quit until they know who did this. Go on strike until you get a fair trial.”
“Quincy’s right,” I said. “Why should we keep working if there’s a chance we can prove our innocence?” I took off my gloves too and sat on a bench.
When Mr. Solo came to check on our progress, we were all sitting on the ground or on benches. I was eating my granola bar. Elaine, Sarah, and Quincy were braiding blades of grass into bracelets. Syd and Nick were throwing crab apples into Syd’s hat.
“How’s it going out here, people?” Mr. Solo peered through the courtyard door and saw us all sitting down. He stepped the rest of the way in and looked at the wall, which now had five headless characters and five names on it (one of the names was now laine, since Quincy had erased the first E). He looked at Quincy. “Why are you here? I left five kids working, and I came back to six kids having a party.” Some party this would be.
“Quincy was helping us,” I said. “She scrubbed the E.”
“Well, that’s very kind of her. But why isn’t anyone doing anything now?”
“We’re on strike.” I tried to say it with the same amount of force Quincy had used a minute ago.
“What was that?” It’s possible Mr. Solo hadn’t understood me because the word “strike” had come out as a whisper.
“Strike,” Quincy said. “It means they won’t work until their demands are met.”
“I know what a strike is,” Mr. Solo said. “I just couldn’t hear her. But I’m not sure what you kids are driving at. What are your demands?”
“We demand that we not have to do any more cleanup until someone listens to us and believes that we didn’t do it,” Nick said. “We have proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
All six of us pointed up at the security camera at the exact same time.
“Aha,” Mr. Solo said. He looked at the camera for several seconds, then back at us. “You guys really didn’t do this, did you?”
Sarah and Elaine shook their heads. The rest of us shouted, “NO!”
“I believe you,” Mr. Solo said. “But it’ll take some doing to get Ms. Olin to crack open that camera for the footage. I think they have to involve the police if they want to watch it.”
“That’s fine by us,” Syd said. “We’re innocent!”
“Okay, okay,” Mr. Solo said. “You can go home. I’ll talk to Ms. Olin for you and we’ll see what we can do about this tomorrow.”
Nick’s brother, Moe, gave me a ride home. I had texted Dad to pick me up, but since we were done early, he was stuck in a meeting at work and asked if I could wait. I really didn’t feel like being at school a half second longer so I took Nick up on his offer to ride with him.
Moe has always been kind of fascinating to me. Did you know his real name is Morris? He’s five years older than Nick and me and he never hung out with the neighborhood kids our age when we were younger and running lemonade stands or building tree forts. I don’t know if you ever noticed, Louie; you were pretty little when we were doing that stuff. Moe would ride by on his bike or skateboard sometimes, either with friends or by himself. Most of the time he was listening to music on headphones and ignored us; sometimes he’d flash us a peace sign or take out one earbud and talk to us for a minute while he bought lemonade. Last year he got his driver’s license, so we don’t see him on his bike anymore. And I guess we aren’t doing lemonade stands or tree forts anymore either. But if he sees me in our yard he’ll still flash me a little peace sign. Even if he doesn’t look at me or lift his dark sunglasses, I feel like he’s still a pretty cool guy, as older teenage brothers go.
And here’s some news: I think he has a girlfriend. Because when he came to school to pick us up, there was a girl in the car with him.
“Hey, Gus,” Moe said. “Gus, meet Keira. Keira, Gus.” Keira turned around and gave us a little wave.
“Hey, Keira,” Nick said, and she said “Hey, Nick” back in a way that made me think they’d been around each other a bunch of times before. When Keira turned around, I looked at Nick and mouthed, Girlfriend? and he shrugged in a way that seemed more like a yes than a no.
Keira’s dark hair was on top of her head in a crazy bun that would have looked messy or goofy on most people, but somehow made her look cool. She had dangly beaded earrings and—get this—big glasses with thick black frames. And somehow those looked cool too. Glasses.
“Did you get glasses?” Nick asked her. “I’ve never seen you wear them before.”
“They’re fake,” Moe said. “She has perfect vision but she wanted to be able to see through things like Superman.”
Keira gave him a light slap on the arm. “I just like the way they look. Gus knows what I mean, right?” She looked at me like we were in a high-fashion-glasses conspiracy together.
“I guess?” I said. But I knew I couldn’t really fake it in front of Nick and Moe, who knew I’d had glasses most of my life. “I mean, actually, mine are real. I’ve always had them.”
“Ack, you’re so lucky! I’ve been wanting to get them forever, but my mom said she wasn’t going to spend money on something ‘frivolous’ like that, so I saved my babysitting money to get the frames I wanted.”
Ironic, right? I was babysitting to pay for contacts, and Keira had used her babysitting money to pay for glasses.
“I like your frames too, though,” she said. “I like how they’re rounder than mine.”
“Yeah, I like Gus’s glasses too,” Nick said. He was looking out the car window, and his voice was so low I could barely hear him. I looked over and saw that his ears looked a little red. Maybe he didn’t want Moe to hear him say something nice to a girl?
“So how come you guys keep getting in trouble this year?” Moe’s voice didn’t sound like he was making fun of us; he seemed genuinely curious.
“It’s Smeed,” Nick said. “He has it out for us.”
“Ugh, I had him in sixth grade,” Keira said. “He’s the worst. Does he still spray Binaca in his mouth all day long?”
“Yeah,” Nick said.
“Want to tell us more about that, Nicky?” Moe tried to catch Nick’s eye in the rearview mirror. And okay, this time it did seem like he was making fun of us a little.
“No, we’re all set,” Nick said.
“So what do you mean he has it out for you?” Keira asked. “Are you getting in trouble for stuff you didn’t do?”
“Yes!” I said. I didn’t wait for Nick to answer; I was dying to talk about Smeed with someone older than us who knew what he was like. “He thinks we painted graffiti in the courtyard. Stupid pictures of ourselves. Why would we do that?”
“So who did do it?”
“We’re trying to find out,” Nick said. “Tomorrow we’re gonna ask Ms. Olin if she can check the security cameras.”
“But Mr. Solo said they have to ask the police,” I said. “Do you think that’s true?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Moe said. “Evidence of a crime and all? I don’t know.”
“Who do you think did it?” Keira asked.
“What about that Gosley jerk?” Nick said. “The one who pinches all the girls?”
Keira’s head whipped around. “What do you mean, ‘pinches all the girls’?”
“That’s exactly what he means,” I said. “This guy roams the school and pinches us on our butts. Hard. People call him the Gooser. Although I haven’t heard of him doing it since Nick yelled at him at the dance. And El…and someone tripped him.” I almost forgot Elaine wanted to stay anonymous.
“That’s crazy,” Keira said. “That’s actually assault. Has anyone reported him?”
/>
Wow. “Assault” sounded much worse than “pinching.” I didn’t know what to say. I guess Keira could tell the answer was no.
“Okay, Gus, you should just know that’s really bad and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. You guys should tell someone. Definitely if he does it again.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I didn’t see much point; I didn’t think it would change anything.”
Nick looked serious now too. “Promise you’ll say something if he does it again?” he asked.
“Yes, okay,” I said. I suddenly really wanted to change the subject. I didn’t like thinking there was yet another thing this year I’d handled badly. Even if it really wasn’t my fault.
“Anyway, back to the graffiti,” I said. I looked at Nick. He hadn’t heard Sarah’s and my theory yet. “I think it was some girls in our grade. I think it was Addison and those guys. Heidi and Marcy.”
“Didn’t you used to be friends with Marcy?” Nick asked. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, which was the truth. “I mean, last year she kind of annoyed me because she wanted to hang out all the time, so I tried to keep my distance from her. And then this year everything was different. She was different.”
“Well, she probably got tired of trying to hang out with you and getting shot down,” Nick said.
“Geez, Nick, don’t give Gus a guilt trip,” Keira said. “Sometimes friendships just change.”
“Thanks,” I said. Although I did wonder sometimes if Marcy was mad at me for not hanging out as much as she wanted to last year. Or maybe she just realized she fit in more with Addison and her gang after she grew a foot and got into makeup and jewelry over the summer in Canada. Maybe a little of both.
“Here you go, Gus,” Moe said, pulling up in front of our house.
“Thanks for the ride.”
I got out of the car and started walking up our front steps.
The 47 People You'll Meet in Middle School Page 15
