I rolled my eyes. “It’s not that big,” I said.
“No, it’s just a little hut. I can see you live the simple life.”
I ignored him. “Come on in,” I said, opening the door. “But don’t expect much. I’ve given the servants the day off.”
Cary grinned at me. “In honor of my visit? You shouldn’t have.”
I brought Cary into the kitchen and offered him a snack. As we were eating our nuked burritos, various members of my family began wandering into the room. First was Sam. Then Karen showed up. Charlie popped his head in, and soon after that Watson stopped by, along with David Michael.
I introduced Cary to everyone and told them — in front of him — to answer any questions he asked.
“Even if they’re about your disgusting personal habits?” asked Sam.
“Especially if they’re about my disgusting personal habits,” I said.
“This sounds interesting,” Cary remarked. “Maybe I’ll start with you, Sam.”
“Excellent,” Sam answered. “What can I tell you about my beloved little sister?”
“Let’s see,” said Cary, pulling a notebook out of his backpack. “I have a few questions about her early life.” He turned to me. “Would you excuse us?” he asked.
“I haven’t finished my snack yet,” I pointed out. “I’ll just sit here quietly, okay? Not a word. Pretend I’m not here.”
Cary shrugged. “Whatever.” He turned to Sam. “Now, tell me a little about Kristy as a baby. Was she cute? Did she have any hair when she was born? How much did she drool?”
“Hey!” I said. “What does drool have to do with anything?”
Cary glared at me. “I thought you were going to sit quietly.”
“Oh, right,” I said. I pretended to zip my lips. “Go on.”
Cary looked back at Sam.
“Well,” said Sam, “as I remember, she was a little bruiser. She’d grab my finger and hold on so tight I could have swung her around. But the other thing about her was that she was constantly — and I mean constantly — wetting herself.”
“I was a baby!” I cried. “That’s what babies do!”
Cary swung around. “That’s it,” he said. “I don’t care if you’ve finished your burrito or not. You’re out of here. This is supposed to be a biography, not an autobiography.”
What could I say? Cary’d left me alone when I’d interviewed his brothers. I had no choice but to return the favor. As I left, I shot Sam a Look that was supposed to mean, “If you say one more embarrassing thing I’ll kill you.”
Sam just grinned back at me. I had the feeling he knew exactly what I meant, and that he planned to ignore me completely.
Oh, well. It was out of my hands. I headed upstairs to my room, figuring I might as well start on my homework.
An hour or so later, just as I was making headway on a paper for social studies class, there was a knock on my door. “Anybody home?”
It was Cary’s voice. Did I want to let him into my room? I glanced around. Fair was fair. I’d seen his room. More of it than he knew. “Come in,” I called, after checking to make sure nothing embarrassing was in sight.
“Well, well, well,” said Cary, glancing around as he entered my room. “I guess I now know just about all there is to know about the real Kristy Thomas.”
“You wish,” I said.
“I know all the good stuff.” He raised that eyebrow and added the smirk. “Like how you used to call your baby dolls Eenie and Beenie.”
“Big deal,” I shot back.
“And how you once cried because you thought the moon was going to crash into your backyard.”
I shrugged. If that was the worst he’d heard, I wasn’t worried.
The smirk was still there. “Then there’s the time you had an ‘accident’ on Santa’s lap,” he continued. His eyes were sparkling.
I drew in a breath. Did I want my classmates to know I’d peed on Santa? I shook myself. I could handle it. After all, they were kids once too. I made my face blank to show Cary I didn’t care.
“And, of course, there’s the Spaghetti Episode,” Cary said. I noticed that he was watching my face carefully. He was hoping for a reaction.
I tried to hold myself back, but I couldn’t. “You’re not going to write about that!” I cried.
“Are you kidding? Of course I am. It’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Cary Retlin,” I said, “you better not —”
He held up his hands. “You said you had nothing to hide, didn’t you?”
I might have said it, but I guess I didn’t mean it. The Spaghetti Episode is my secret. I’m not even going to reveal it here. “Cary,” I said warningly.
“I think I’ll lead off with it.” He stroked his chin.
That was too much. “Look,” I said desperately. “That was a long time ago. It’s ancient history.”
“I think it explains a lot,” said Cary. “About your personality, I mean.” He was being playful, but suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Well, at least I didn’t get kicked out of school!” I blurted out.
“What?” Cary was staring at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I know why you had to move to Stoneybrook,” I said. Suddenly the whole mood had changed. The joking was over.
“Why I had to —” Cary looked puzzled. He paused, and I could practically see him figuring it out. Then a shadow passed over his face. “You read my notebook?” he asked.
He looked hurt. That surprised me. I would have expected him to look angry, and he was starting to. But the pained look was unexpected. I felt a knot form in my stomach. What I had done was wrong, so wrong.
“I — I didn’t mean to,” I started to explain. “It was on your desk —”
“Don’t bother,” he said coldly. “I can’t believe you did that, Kristy. How could you?”
“I’m sorry —” I began.
He made a motion with his hand, cutting me off. “You know what? Now I know the real Kristy Thomas. And she’s a total jerk.”
He walked out of my room, slamming the door behind him.
I didn’t sleep much that night. I tossed and turned, brooding about the situation with Cary. I would spend half an hour convincing myself that what I’d done wasn’t so bad. After all, the notebook had been lying in plain sight. And I would never have started reading if I’d known it was a journal. And … well, you can imagine the rest. I had plenty of excuses. But they didn’t hold up well. For the next half hour, I would berate myself for being such a snoop, for betraying Cary’s trust, for throwing his past in his face during a stupid argument. I could see both sides of the situation. And I knew that from Cary’s side, what I had done was unforgivable.
For a while, at least.
I was hoping that Cary would come around eventually. I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’ll always be my archenemy. But it wasn’t any fun when he was so mad at me. The truth was that I’d come to see that Cary wasn’t such a bad guy.
As long as you kept him away from the computer.
Really, other than the criminal thing, Cary was an okay guy. Sure, he liked to antagonize my friends and me, and he was always acting superior and smug. But underneath it all, he was, well, an interesting guy.
Other than the criminal thing …
That was pretty hard to forget.
But what I’d done to him was even harder.
Before homeroom on Friday morning, I looked for Cary in the halls. I guess I wanted to try to apologize again. But I didn’t have the chance, because Cary was nowhere in sight. Was he avoiding me? Probably. I didn’t see him after homeroom either. Or between first and second periods, or second and third. Normally our paths cross at least a few times during the morning, so I knew he must be making an effort to keep his distance.
I hadn’t talked to any of my friends about what had happened. How could I? If I did, I’d spread Cary’s secret even further. Mary Anne could sense that somethin
g was wrong, but after she’d asked twice and I hadn’t answered, she knew better than to push me to talk.
Finally it was time for English class. Cary couldn’t avoid me any longer. When I walked into our classroom, I noticed that he was sitting in a new seat, across the room from the row we usually sit in. He didn’t look up when I entered.
Okay, I thought. Be that way. I took my usual seat.
“Hello, class,” said the woman who was sitting at the teacher’s desk. I’d barely noticed her when I’d arrived, partly because she was a completely unnoticeable person. She was medium height with medium-brown hair. She wasn’t fat and she wasn’t thin. She was wearing a beige skirt, a lighter-beige blouse, a darker-beige jacket, and brown shoes. “I’m Ms. Dewey, your substitute,” she said in a thin, colorless voice. She smiled uncertainly. “I’ll be teaching this class until — until …” she broke off. “Well, for a while, anyway.”
We all just sat there and looked at her. She seemed so absolutely boring that not even Alan Gray could think of anything funny to say.
This is who they gave us in exchange for Ted Morley? I thought.
I felt like crying.
“So!” Ms. Dewey smiled brightly. “Let’s all take out a piece of paper, shall we?”
“What for?” called a voice from the back.
Ms. Dewey adjusted her beige glasses. “Well, for an assignment. I thought we would spend our class time working on a short essay today.”
“We?” That was Cary. “Are you going to write one too?”
“What’s it supposed to be about?” asked Cokie in a tired tone. “What we did over Thanksgiving vacation or something?”
We’re used to substitutes who give meaningless assignments. And normally it doesn’t bother me much. But for this woman to come along after I’d become used to Ted … well, let’s just say it was disappointing.
“Oh, no,” said Ms. Dewey in answer to Cokie’s question. “That would be silly. I thought we would do something more in line with the biography unit you’re working on. For example, I thought we might write about ‘My Favorite Historical Figure.’ ” Her fingers made little quotation marks in the air as she announced the title. Then she smiled hopefully at us.
Everybody groaned.
Her smiled disappeared. Her hands fluttered as she tried to figure out what to do next. “I think if you just try, you might find it interesting,” she began.
“Not!” called out Alan.
“I second that,” yelled another boy.
“Oh,” Ms. Dewey said, almost to herself. Now she was twisting her hands. I felt sorry for her. After all, it wasn’t her fault that Ted had been suspended. And it wasn’t her fault that she was the beige-est, most boring person in the universe.
I felt sorry for her — but I felt sorrier for myself and for the rest of the class. It wasn’t fair! What had we done to deserve this? No Ted. A boring substitute. A beyond-boring assignment.
Wait a minute.
Was that true? Was there really nothing we could do? Were we going to let people like Mrs. Dow decide what our English class would be about?
I sat straight up in my seat. And without even raising my hand, I started to talk. “You know,” I said, “this just doesn’t seem fair. I mean, where’s Ted? Why isn’t our teacher here?”
Ms. Dewey looked shocked. “Why, he — he —”
I waved my hand. “No, I know where he is,” I said. “What I mean is, why are we letting it happen?”
Kids were looking at me. They either thought I was crazy — or right. “Look,” I continued, turning around to meet as many eyes as I could. “We should do something about this. We shouldn’t just sit here and take it.”
Kids were still looking at me. I had their attention, all right. But did I have their support?
“We can’t let a few people tell our school what to do. If we disagree with their ideas, we need to say so. We need to let our voices be heard!” I paused and looked around.
There were a few seconds of silence in the room. Then Claudia spoke up. “Kristy’s right,” she said. “If we let them punish Ted for this, what could happen next? What if an art teacher is fired for showing us pictures of naked statues or something?” A few kids giggled, but Claudia ignored them. “I’m serious. This issue isn’t going to go away. We need to stand up for freedom of speech.”
“That’s right,” a voice said from the other side of the room. “This is about freedom. We can’t just sit here and let our rights — and Ted’s rights — be taken away.” It was Cary!
I felt so much better knowing I had the support of two classmates. I glanced at Ms. Dewey and realized something interesting. I had her support too. She was still standing in front of the class, but she’d folded her arms and she wore a slight smile. The fact that she had let me and the others speak must mean that she agreed with me.
I met her eyes and smiled at her. Maybe she wasn’t completely beige after all.
Two rows over, Merrie Dow cleared her throat. Then she tossed her braids back and started to speak. “I think,” she began in a tiny voice.
I braced myself. Were we about to hear from the opposition?
Merrie cleared her throat again and spoke a little louder. “I think Kristy’s right. If we don’t speak up, nobody will know we even care. And we do. Or at least I do.”
I stared at her. Merrie wasn’t known for being a rebel. As far as I knew, she usually went along with whatever her mother thought.
She continued, her voice growing louder with every sentence. “Mr. Morley was — is — one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. He makes learning exciting and fun. And I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with that reading list. If there are books on there that you don’t want to read, don’t read them! It’s your choice.”
I realized my mouth was hanging open as I stared at Merrie. The rest of the class looked stunned too.
Merrie stopped speaking and looked down at her desk. A blush reddened her cheeks.
“You go, Merrie!” yelled Alan, breaking the silence.
The rest of the class broke into an excited buzz.
“I don’t know,” Cokie said above the din. “I mean, what if my parents don’t want me to read some of those books?” She looked worried.
“Then you don’t have to read them,” chorused three or four kids together.
Cokie nodded. “I guess that’s true,” she admitted. Then she grinned. “But I might anyway.”
Ms. Dewey had taken a seat at her desk by then. Now she stood up again. “All right,” she said, holding up her hands for quiet. It took awhile, but finally everybody stopped yelling. “It sounds as if you have a new project on your hands. I hear a lot of energy and a lot of good intentions. But what are you going to do next? Exactly how are you going to make your voices heard?” I gaped at her. Ms. Dewey was definitely not all beige. “From what I understand, there will be an open administrative hearing next Monday to discuss Mr. Morley’s case —”
Cary didn’t let her finish. “Then we need to be there,” he said. “And we need to round up as many other kids and as many parents as we can. There’s strength in numbers.”
We spent the last ten minutes of class planning our strategy. Ms. Dewey took notes on the board. “I suppose I could be suspended for this,” she said with a little laugh at one point. “But I’m only a substitute. Let’s consider this a lesson in, let’s see, organization!”
By the time the bell rang, we had a plan. And I had been elected our class representative to state our case at the meeting. I walked out of the classroom feeling terrific. I caught Cary’s eye and smiled at him — but he didn’t smile back. He might have supported me in the classroom, but that didn’t mean he had forgiven me.
As I walked out of school toward my bus later that afternoon, Cary fell into step beside me. All right, I thought. Maybe he’s coming around after all.
“That was pretty great, what happened in English class today,” I said tentatively. “I mean, that everybody was so
psyched about helping Ted.” I added that last part hastily, since I didn’t want him to think I was complimenting myself for having started the ball rolling. He nodded. “I just hope we can round up enough people for that meeting,” I went on, filling the silence he’d left. “It would be awesome if we could fill the room with Ted’s supporters.” I glanced at Cary. He didn’t seem to be listening anymore. “Don’t you think?” I added desperately.
“Look, Kristy,” Cary said, a little too loudly. He pressed his lips together and frowned. “It’s like this. What you did was absolutely despicable. Invading someone’s privacy like that is just about the lowest thing you could do.”
“But —”
He held up a hand. “This isn’t an argument, Kristy. I’m telling you how I feel. And how I feel is that I have no desire at all to talk to you. None.”
“Oh.” I took a step backward.
Cary sighed. “But I can’t afford to fail this English assignment. So I’ve drawn up a list of questions I need you to answer for my biography.” He stopped and bent to rummage around in his backpack. Then he pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to me without meeting my eyes. “This is all I need to finish things up,” he said. “You may have some final questions for me too.”
“I — I …” I was so shocked I couldn’t speak.
“If you do, you can just write up a list for me. I’ll fill in the blanks and pass it back.” He shouldered his backpack. “See you,” he said. Then he walked off, disappearing into the crowd of kids waiting for their buses.
I stared after him. Yikes. I’d learned something. Playing archenemies had been annoying. But being real enemies was horrible. I felt sick.
I glanced at the list in my hand. He’d probably thrown in a bunch of gag questions, just to be a smart aleck. But no. Every single question — I scanned the list quickly — was serious, straightforward, and, to tell the truth, kind of boring. Not at all like the Cary I knew.
I let my hand drop to my side and stood staring off in the direction Cary had gone. For a second, I had a wild hope that he would reappear around the corner of the building, grin at me, and say, “Gotcha!”
Kristy Power! Page 5
