by Tim Green
Joey had the test in front of him already, but didn’t open it until Mr. Kratz gave the word.
“You’ll have three hours.” The enormous science teacher rumbled like a thunderstorm promising trouble. “Good luck.”
Joey flipped the cover page and began, confident, and wondering if it was even possible for there to be a question whose answer he didn’t know.
44
There were only three.
Three questions he put a mark by on his answer sheet. When he finished, there were still twenty minutes left. He flipped back through and studied each question, racking his brain. For the first two he was able to dig the information out of the depths of his mind. They were subtle points, details about genetic karyotypes no one should be held accountable for remembering, but which Joey did remember.
The last of the three was the real problem. Number 112. It had two correct answers. The question asked what process transformed amino acids into proteins. Joey knew it was “dehydration synthesis,” answer A. The trouble was that answer C said, “removing water to join molecules.” Removing water to join molecules was the definition of dehydration synthesis. He screwed up his face and ground his teeth. What was he missing?
Over and over he read it, muttering to himself. Finally, Joey raised his hand. Mr. Kratz’s eyebrows shot up beneath the brim of his droopy hat and he shuffled slowly down Joey’s aisle.
Joey kept his voice as low as he could while still expressing his urgency. “Mr. Kratz, for problem one twelve, both these answers are correct.”
The big teacher leaned over Joey’s desk and placed a slab of finger on the question Joey pointed to. “Use your best guess.”
Joey looked at him, agonizing. “But—”
“Uh-uh.” Mr. Kratz wagged his finger in Joey’s face like a sausage. “One is better than the other. You choose.”
Mr. Kratz hitched up his enormous pants as he walked away, giving a brief rest to his leather belt. The outside edges of his shoes had been broken down to accommodate his duck-footed walk long ago.
Joey hated the man.
He looked at the clock. Three minutes to go. He looked around. The rest of the gym was filled with students bent over their tests, pencils in their mouths, heads in their hands, gnawing on knuckles, just hoping to finish the monster test. Joey shook his head in utter disgust and circled C, since he knew removing water to combine molecules was correct and maybe there was some slight problem with the spelling of dehydration synthesis that he was missing, although he didn’t think so.
“Time!” Mr. Kratz glowered at them from the front of the gym. “Pencils down. Anyone without their pencil on their desk after this time gets an automatic zero.”
A slew of other teachers acting as proctors scurried up and down the aisles, collecting the tests. Joey watched his disappear into the pile and then up the aisle to the stack on the front table. Fifty-fifty, those were his odds. He bit the inside of his lip. The last time he was given those odds it was from Coach Barrett. He looked toward Leah. She didn’t look at him. Instead, she hung her head and hurried out of the gym.
His eyes found Zach, who gave him a disapproving frown as he made his way through the desks toward where Joey still sat. Joey got up, and the two of them turned to leave.
“Don’t tell me,” Zach said wearily, “you turned your phone off to study.”
Joey ignored that. “How’d you do?”
“On the test?” Zach shrugged and kept walking. “I don’t know. Probably fine.”
“Probably fine?” Joey said. “Zach, if you fail this class, everything we did is a waste. You won’t be able to play on the select team if you have to go to summer school.”
Zach smiled. “Didn’t I tell you? Mr. Kratz gave everyone at the train station the extra credit. That made sense. He wasn’t going to fail a third of the entire sixth grade. Don’t worry. All I had to do was pass this thing with a gentleman’s sixty-five, and I know I did that. Speaking of Kratz, any news on your mom’s investigation?”
“I have a plan. Come on, let’s go out back.” As they walked down the hallway toward the back of the school, Joey told Zach the plan about throwing himself at Mr. Kratz’s mercy if he aced the test.
Zach took hold of his arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Did you? Ace it, I mean?”
“Maybe.” Joey thought about problem 112.
“Well, that’s good, anyway, but do you know how upset Leah is?” Zach showed real concern and he kept hold of Joey’s arm, steering him toward a bench outside the back entrance to the school.
“A lot?” Joey asked.
“Bro, she kissed you and you shut down on her. I had to ride my bike over there last night to talk her off a ledge.”
Joey felt a confusion of embarrassment, shame, and something else, a touch of something he’d only experienced when thinking about how laid-back Zach was. Jealousy?
“A ledge?” Joey said aloud.
“As in, ready to jump.” Zach sat down on the bench overlooking the sports fields below. “She’s okay now, but you got to pull yourself together. Flowers or something. That’s what I think.”
“Flowers?” Joey sat down, too.
“Give her some. Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you’re crazy about her, but you’re shy and you had to study and—”
“And I’m about to go to jail for stealing a prescription drug, using it on my teacher’s dog, and vandalizing his truck?” Joey’s voice rose in pitch. “And my baseball career is over before it got started because our coach hatched some Mission Impossible scheme to get his son named on the all-star team instead of me? That story?”
Zach stared at him, calm. “Don’t get hysterical.”
“Do you know ninety percent of juvenile offenders end up in adult prison? Do you know what these past two days have been like? No, you don’t, because nothing fazes you, Zach. You whistle a tune and the whole world starts marching alongside you, singing la-la-la. Happy.”
“Don’t get mad at me. I told you not to do that to Kratz’s truck.”
Joey’s shoulders slumped. He dropped his head into his hands. “I know. You did. But the truth is, I’d do it again.”
Zach put a hand on the back of his neck and gently squeezed. “So, you know what?”
“What?” Joey’s hands muffled his voice.
“I’m going to return the favor.”
Joey removed his face from his hands. “What? What are you talking about?”
“You pulled out all the stops to help me make that all-star team. Now, I’m gonna do the same thing for you.”
“What are you talking about? How?”
Zach’s easygoing smile turned crafty, almost wicked. “Remember the fourth question on Mr. Kratz’s exam?”
Joey screwed up his face, his mind whirring back across the test. Whatever question four was, it must have been easy, because it didn’t stand out in his mind. “No. What was question four, and what’s that got to do with the all-star team?”
Zach checked all around them for a sign of anyone, then leaned even closer.
45
“Shigella.”
Joey wrinkled his nose. The question came back to him: “Which of these bacteria is transmitted by contaminated food and results in sickness lasting one to four weeks?”
“Bro, that’s disgusting,” Joey said. “What’s it got to do with the all-star team?”
“You stopped Kratz from making it to the field trip so I could play. Now I’m gonna stop Butch Barrett from practicing this week so you can play.”
“How are you going to—” The answer hit Joey like an uppercut. “Oh, no. No, Zach, you can’t do that. That’s insane.”
“Why? People eat things and get sick. It happens.”
“Do you know where shigella comes from?”
Zach shrugged. “Dirty water, right?”
“Dirty, yeah, with human waste.”
“Waste as in . . .”
“Yup.” Joey nodded.
Zach stared at him,
blinking. “Uh . . .”
“Yeah, how sick is that? No way, you can’t. I can’t even think about it. Not even to Butch Barrett.”
Zach tilted his head and seemed to be weighing the pluses and minuses. “It happens. People get food poisoning. It’s not the kind that kills you, I remember that part, and what you did for me? If I can help you make it, I feel like I should.”
Joey’s mind turned to science. Fecal matter, that was the term for . . .
“Ugh.” Joey shook his head. “No. I can’t believe I’m even thinking about it. We can’t. You can’t. It’s too gross. It’s not right.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. You don’t have to know about it.”
“What does that mean?” Joey studied his friend’s face.
Zach waved him off. “Next subject. What happened with Leah?”
Joey dumped his face in his hands again and he groaned. “I know. I blew it.”
“I tried to tell her that you do that with your phone when you’re studying, but, bro, you gotta reach out to the girl.” Zach lowered his voice. “She told me what happened.”
Joey looked at him. “It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t ‘nothing’ to her. You can’t just do that, Joey. You can’t kiss a girl and then not return her texts. It’s brutal.”
“I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”
“It’s all the same. Did your lips touch hers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It’s a kiss.”
“Why is my life falling apart?” Joey’s mom’s words about good things happening to good people filled his mind.
“Well, you got to take control of things. You can fix it with Leah.”
“I will,” Joey said. “After tomorrow. I want to nail the math test tomorrow and then I’ll call her.”
A crow flew overhead, cackling over some bit of shiny nesting material dangling from its beak. They watched it disappear into the trees.
Zach sighed. “Bro, just text her. Don’t wait. Do it now. Something. Anything.”
Joey thought about what he could say. He grit his teeth. Nothing seemed right. Anything he could think of was either too much, like “I can’t wait to see you again,” or not enough, like, “How’d you do on the test?”
“I can’t think of anything. Can’t you tell her? Can’t you explain?”
Zach laughed at him, then slapped his back. “Sure, but let me ask you something. Is she just wasting her time?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Joey, she likes you. She asked you to dance. She kissed you. Okay, it was on the cheek, but still . . .”
“I like her, too. I like her a lot.” Joey felt an ache in his chest.
“I get it,” Zach said, “but sometime—and I think it’s gotta be soon—you gotta show her, Joey. The hard-to-get-shy-kid only goes so far. You’re going to have to show her, or you’re going to lose her.”
46
The bike ride home seemed to pass in a blink. Joey couldn’t stop thinking about Zach’s warning, and that’s what he fretted about. Part of him wanted badly to go to Gideon Falls with the rest of his classmates. Instead, he was heading home to study. The problem with the falls was that Leah would be there, and he just wasn’t ready to tackle that problem. Besides, he felt so good about the science test that he wanted to do the same thing with math. He couldn’t let go of the notion that if he built up enough points for being good, he just might weather the storm over what he’d done to Mr. Kratz.
He zipped into the garage and lowered the kickstand on his bike, leaving it in its spot by the lawn mower, when the sound of a car pulling in made him turn around. His gut tightened and he wondered how much more he could take. Inside the police cruiser was his own mother, wearing her dark blue uniform and shiny silver badge. She got out and hitched up the belt weighed down by—among other things—her 9 mm Glock.
On her face, she wore a look of disgust. She marched up to the garage, standing just outside it so that the light fell full on the shiny blond braid slung over her shoulder like another badge of honor.
“Joey. I’m glad you’re here. We need to talk.”
Joey forced a laugh. “Really? What about?”
“Let’s go inside.” She pointed toward the door that led to the short hallway by the stairs and laundry room and finally, the kitchen. “It’s about your teacher, Mr. Kratz.”
47
Joey’s hands and knees trembled. He listened to the cadence of her steps as she followed him down the short hallway and into the kitchen.
“Have a seat.” She sighed and sat down across from him, folding her hands and laying them on the table. Her blue eyes bore into his.
“Mom, I . . .”
She looked at him curiously, waiting. Nothing came out.
“I hate to put you in this position, Joey, but I have to ask you.”
Joey closed his eyes.
“Is there anyone you know around school who hates Mr. Kratz? I mean really hates him? Someone who maybe said something about getting revenge on him or something?”
Joey kept his eyes closed. He knew how his mom worked: she’d never just come straight at him. She was a python. She’d loop herself around her victims, squeezing a bit at a time, until there was no room left to move or breathe or think, and, bang, she had you. You were dead.
Joey shook his head. “Not really.”
“Because I got the blood test back from the lab.”
Joey started to lose his breath. He bit into his lower lip.
“It’s just what I thought, a benzodiazepine. Commonly used as a tranquilizer to sedate animals. The question now is, which benzodiazepine and how much?”
“How much?” Joey’s eyes opened. He knew by her tone that somehow, miraculously, he’d been spared. She wasn’t even thinking of him or her very own Valium, and he figured that somehow the two drugs were so similar they had been mistaken for the same thing.
“That’s right. It’ll take another two weeks to know for sure, because they’ve got to do a whole other round of tests, but the question is, Was whoever did this trying to kill Daisy? If so, then who?” His mom held a hand up over her head. “I know I didn’t raise you to be an informant, but I have to ask. It’s part of police work. You go to your sources and you ask, so I’m asking you. Is there anyone who’s said anything about doing something to Mr. Kratz?”
“No, Mom. No one.”
“No one on Facebook or tweeting or any of that stuff? No rumors, even?”
“A lot of people don’t like him.”
“Right, but no one said anything about doing something?”
“No one at all.”
His mom drew a deep sigh and slapped her hands on the tabletop. “Okay. Gotta get back to work. Sorry for the cop-mom drama, but I just found out and I was in my car and close by and I just thought, ‘You know, Joey might tell me, especially if I ask him face-to-face.’”
She stood up and he did, too. She put a hand on his arm. “I think an awful lot of you, Joey. Be good and I’ll see you at dinner. Oh, how’d the test go?”
He grinned. “I think I aced it. He puts the grades online tomorrow, so I won’t know until then.”
“Aced it? Wow. That would be something. He said you were good. Okay, bye.”
Joey watched her leave, then poured himself a glass of milk from the fridge. His hands were still shaking. He took a drink to wet his mouth, then turned on the computer at the desk built into the wall next to the fridge. He googled “bensodiazapan,” and it came up under the correct spelling, “benzodiazepine.”
“Oh, no,” he said.
Benzodiazepine was a group of drugs that included Valium. He wondered how long it would be before his mom figured that out and made the connection between that and her own missing Valium. The good news was that benzodiazepines were used as tranquilizers for animals. The ray of hope was that his mom was so focused on her own theory and the dosage amount and looking for someone who might want to harm Mr. Kratz that she mig
ht never connect her own missing Valium pill with Daisy. Why should she? She already bought Joey’s story of using the pill himself to get to sleep the night before the big game.
Joey erased his search from the computer’s history and sat back, uttering a cautious sigh of relief. For the first time in several days, the storm clouds of disaster might finally be starting to clear.
He took a moment to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of telling Mr. Kratz the truth and asking him to put a stop to the investigation. Could he really count on him to grant the wish he spoke of that first week of school? Even asking depended on his test grade, and for that, he’d have to wait for the posting tomorrow. In the meantime, he threw a ham sandwich together and washed it down with the rest of his milk before heading up to his room to study math.
He worked all afternoon, and paid almost no attention when he heard his parents get home. Outside his window, the sound of Martin and his dad playing on their swing set filtered through the open window. Below, the clank of pots and pans marked his mom’s preparation of dinner. He didn’t hear his father’s cell phone ring, but when he marched into the house, up the steps, and knocked before opening Joey’s door, he held the phone open in his hand.
“Joey, it’s Coach Barrett.”
Zach’s shigella plan flashed into his mind. What were Zach’s last words on the subject? “I’ll take care of it”?
His father held the phone out to him again.
Joey asked, “What does he want?”
“I don’t know. Here. Take it.”
48
Joey took the phone and brought it slowly to his ear. “Hello?”
