by Lisa Graff
“Everything okay over here?”
Seven heads whirled around from the window. Miss Sparks was standing behind them, arms across her chest. “You all seem a little … preoccupied,” she said, a smirk of a smile on her face. “Is there something that’s disrupting our club time?”
They shushed and coughed, all of them, poking one another in the sides and clearing their throats, and generally acting—Francine thought—like a bunch of criminals caught in the middle of a bank heist.
“Oh, um, we’re fine,” Alicia said quickly. “Just checking to see if the weather forecast is right.”
Miss Sparks nodded in that knowing way she had. “I see,” she replied. “Well, now that you’re sure it is indeed cloudy, perhaps we should begin getting ready for today’s announcements, don’t you think? Only thirty minutes until the bell rings. Francine, can you give me a hand with the extension cord for the camera?”
And that was that. They all went about their business, same as they did every morning. But they left the window open, and Francine noticed that she wasn’t the only one whose eyes kept darting to the flagpole, tall and sturdy and completely flagless.
As Francine helped unroll the orange extension cord and cover it with the heavy gray mat so no one would trip on it, she snuck in a quick whisper to Natalie.
“No way Kansas’ll do it,” she said. She was growing more and more positive by the second. “And even if he does do it, he’ll get in trouble, and then no way he’ll get to be news anchor. Mrs. Weinmore will kick him out of the club for sure.” Mrs. Weinmore, Auden Elementary’s principal, was famous for her harsh punishments.
Natalie frowned. “Don’t you think you might get in trouble too, if Mrs. Weinmore finds out you’re the one who dared him?”
Francine tugged at a knot in the extension cord. “No way. Anyway, it was Brendan’s idea, not mine.”
“Just be careful, okay?” Natalie replied. “Otherwise you’ll both get kicked out, and then who would be news anchor?” And she crossed the room to help Alicia get ready.
Francine shot another quick look out the window. Still no Kansas. Still no underwear.
The last half of Media Club passed quickly, just as it always did. While Francine did her special duties as camerawoman—unlocking the camera from the closet, setting it up at the front of the classroom, checking all the settings—the other members had their own tasks to perform. Alicia, the news announcer for fall semester, was the star of the show. She set herself up behind Miss Sparks’s desk, in the large swively chair right behind Miss Sparks’s red dippy bird, and studied the morning’s announcements while Natalie, who was in charge of hair and wardrobe, made sure that she was “camera ready,” occasionally dabbing at her face with a tissue.
Brendan was the news editor, so he was in charge of setting the order of everything Alicia read each morning, deleting any duplicates, and adding in any last-minute announcements. Those came from Luis and Kansas, the show’s runners, whose job it was to race around to all the classrooms before the bell rang and collect any new announcements the teachers might have.
Just fifteen minutes to go.
There was a tremendous crash from Francine’s right. Emma had managed to knock over an entire stand of lights. Emma was the “special effects technician,” which, as far as Francine could figure out, simply meant that she had to make sure everything was plugged into the wall. It wasn’t a difficult job, but somehow Emma still found a way to make it challenging.
“Oh, man!” Andre called. Andre was in charge of lighting. “One of the bulbs broke!”
Miss Sparks scuttled over to help clean up the mess. “Andre,” she said calmly, “go ask Mr. Paulsen if there’s an extra bulb in the drama room we can borrow.” And Andre scurried out of the room, shooting angry eyes at Emma as he went.
Francine tried to relax, settling herself behind the camera. This was always her favorite part of the morning—just before the rest of her classmates showed up and filed into their seats behind her, in those last few minutes of calm before the bell rang and everything became whisper-quiet all across the school. Everything, that is, except Alicia’s voice as she told the entire school the announcements of the day, courtesy of Francine and her news camera.
And Francine was just letting that warm, fresh, happiness envelop her, when—with only eight minutes left until the bell rang—she heard Emma’s piercing squeal.
“What?” Brendan asked. “What did you break this time?”
But Emma didn’t answer. One hand was clamped over her mouth, and the other was pointing out the window.
From where she was standing in front of Miss Sparks’s desk, Francine had to squint to see it. But she could just make it out—Kansas, standing in front of the flagpole, grinning like an idiot, like he was about to get his picture taken or something. And high atop the flagpole above him, something small and white was swaying in the December breeze.
Francine had never been quite so depressed to see a pair of underwear.
4.
A FUZZY PHOTOGRAPH
“Take the picture!” Kansas called to Ginny. She was standing in front of the school marquee, blocking parts of the words SCHOOL SPIRIT DAY TOMORROW! WEAR GREEN & WHITE! so that all Kansas could see, around her tutu, was SCHOOL MORROW! WE ITE!
It hadn’t been too hard to string his underwear up the flagpole once they’d finally gotten outside. The flagpole was still flagless, so all Kansas had to do was grab the rope, clip the briefs on, and haul them up.
The hard part was getting Ginny to snap a photo before anyone saw them. Kansas hadn’t read Auden Elementary’s official rule book or anything, but he was pretty sure that stringing a pair of underwear up the flagpole would not be considered acceptable behavior.
“You just push the big button!” he shouted.
Ginny wasn’t the greatest photographer, but she’d have to do, since Ricky and Will were back in Oregon. Ginny had taken a photo of the dare he’d done yesterday too—telling Mr. DuPree that he needed to smell his armpit for a science project—and that one had turned out okay. Kansas hadn’t gotten a photo of the lizard-licking dare on Tuesday, which was too bad, because that was pretty much the grossest dare Kansas had ever done. But Ginny had helped him re-create it when they got home, with a lizard from their backyard that Kansas pretend-licked for the camera. It wasn’t quite the same, but it would do for the Wall of Dares in his bedroom, and he knew Ricky and Will would get a kick out of it when they finally checked their e-mails. Now, Kansas was always prepared—carrying around the cheap digital camera his dad had given him in his back pocket at all times.
Ginny snapped the picture.
Kansas hustled Ginny back to Art Club with—he checked the clock on the wall of the art room—twelve minutes until the bell rang. Kids were already starting to trickle into the hallway, and he could hear a few murmurs here and there that sounded quite a bit like “flagpole” and “underwear.”
Kansas was just making his way back to Media Club when he noticed Luis heading out of a classroom two doors away, a stack of papers in his hands.
“Hey, Kansas!” Luis called, stopping so that Kansas had no choice but to talk to him while they walked together.
“Hey,” Kansas said. He was still the tiniest bit mad at Luis for nominating him for news anchor.
Luis grinned at him. “Did you do the dare?”
At that, Kansas couldn’t help but grin back. He pulled the camera out of his back pocket to show him, flipping the On switch as they continued down the hallway. But his grin quickly faded. “Aw, man! Ginny cut my head off!” He brought the camera close to his nose. All you could see was the tip-top of Kansas’s hair, poking out in front of the flagpole.
Luis leaned in to look. “At least she got the underwear, though,” he said. “That’s really the important part.”
“I guess,” Kansas grumbled. The entire image was fuzzy, completely out of focus.
“If you want someone to take pictures for you, you know, I could
do it. I took a photography class this summer. I’ll bring my camera tomorrow. It’s one of the old-fashioned ones. You know, like, with film?”
“Um,” Kansas said. People actually had those still? “Thanks. That’d be cool.”
“No problem.” Luis was riffling through the papers in his arms, last-minute announcements from various teachers. “Hey,” he said, “are you going to be around over winter break?”
“Nah. I’m going camping with Ricky and Will. We go every year with Ricky’s dad, out in Glenyan, for, like, three days. We go rock climbing and ride ATVs, and Ricky’s dog comes too. It’s freezing, but it’s awesome.” He tried to return his camera to his back pocket, but it was too stuffed in there with the underwear. He put it in his front pocket instead. “How come?”
Luis shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just my birthday party. I was going to invite you, if you were around. It’s all Marvel.”
“Marvel?”
“Yeah. Like the comic books? Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk …”
“Oh.” That sounded okay, Kansas thought, but not as fun as camping. “Well, too bad I have to miss it.”
Just as they were about to reach Miss Sparks’s door, Kansas was bumped from behind, hard. He turned around.
It was Andre Jackson, holding a box of lightbulbs. “Look where you’re going, doofus,” he told Kansas. But he was grinning when he said it, and Kansas was pretty sure he’d bumped into him on purpose. Kansas shook his head and opened the door to room 43H.
What Kansas planned on doing, when he stepped into the room, was to pull the underwear out of his pocket, the fake Kansas Blooms, and shove them right in Francine’s face, and tell her, “You can’t get me that easy, Francine!” And then he’d make her add his third point to the board herself.
But he didn’t do that, for two reasons.
The first reason was that Francine Halata was already standing at the chalkboard, changing his two to a three.
And the second reason was that the underwear—the ones with Kansas Bloom written across the waistband—were no longer in Kansas’s pocket.
Somewhere, between the flagpole and his classroom, Kansas had lost them.
Kansas wriggled in the hard wooden library chair. It wasn’t a comfortable chair to begin with, and the fact that there was nothing but a thin pair of khakis between it and his buttocks wasn’t helping matters. Kansas was pretty sure that by the end of the day, his butt was going to be chafing big time. But sometimes that was the price you had to pay to be the King of Dares.
Kansas held his breath as he logged into his e-mail account. And then, he let it out. Finally. An e-mail from Will.
FROM: Tiger44
TO: ksrocks
hey dude! thx 4 the pix. ricky sayz he doesn’t think that lizard 1 is real tho. NEway glad u like ur new school so much. ricky found a 3rd kid for camping, mark h. remember him? too bad you
had to move.
miss you!
later, w.
Kansas felt his stomach sink to his feet. Mark H.? Mark H. was going camping? Ricky and Will hadn’t even asked Kansas if he wanted to go. Like he suddenly wouldn’t like camping anymore, just because he’d moved away.
Kansas felt like a moron. He should’ve told Ricky he still wanted to go this year. He should’ve made sure they knew.
But they hadn’t even asked him.
Kansas logged into his IM account. If Ricky or Will was on right now, he could talk some sense into them. It would be faster than e-mail. He typed in his username, kansas_the_champ, and his password, and opened up his “friends” box. But neither Ricky nor Will was online. They were probably at lunch, hanging out with their new best friend, Mark H.
“Hey, Kansas!”
Kansas jumped with a start. It was Brendan, leaning against the back of his chair, peering over his shoulder at the computer. Next to him was Andre, peering over Kansas’s shoulder too.
“Oh,” Kansas said. “Hey.” He logged out of his e-mail and IM with two quick clicks of the mouse, then turned around in his chair. “What’s up?”
“It took us forever to find you,” Brendan said. “What are you doing in the library during lunch?”
“Yeah,” Andre agreed. “Why are you in the library?”
Kansas shrugged. “Checking e-mail.”
“Well, we were looking for you because we thought of a dare for Francine,” Brendan said. “Everyone’s voted on it but you, and they all think it’s awesome.”
“Yeah,” Andre said. “Awesome.”
“What is it?”
“She has to go inside the boys’ bathroom,” Brendan said, “and write Francine was here on the wall.”
“Won’t she get in trouble?” Kansas asked. “I mean, if someone finds out?”
“Yeah, probably,” Brendan said. “But you probably would’ve gotten in trouble for the flagpole thing if you got caught, and Francine didn’t seem to care about you. So come on. You vote yes or what?”
“Yeah,” Andre said. “Or what?”
Kansas thought about it. “Sure,” he told Brendan. “I vote yes.”
“Cool. We gotta make her do it before lunch is over. You should come with us.” And Brendan walked toward the door, snatching a thick black marker off the librarian’s desk as he went. Andre walked right behind him.
Kansas thought, but he wasn’t certain, that he could just make out a suspicious bulge in the back pocket of Andre’s jeans—a bulge that looked a whole heck of a lot like a wadded-up pair of underwear. He even thought he maybe saw the hint of a waistband sticking out, with what might just be the letter K on it. But Kansas didn’t say anything about it. What was he supposed to say? “Hey, Andre! Do you have a pair of underwear with my name on them in your pocket?” Uh, no. So, without another word about anything, Kansas followed Brendan and Andre out of the library to find Francine.
5.
A black permanent marker
Not that Francine had ever spent any time thinking about it, but if she had, she would have assumed that a boys’ bathroom would smell pretty similar to a girls’ bathroom—soap and floor cleaner and just a little of that classic bathroom stink.
It did not. The boys’ bathroom smelled quite a bit like the inside of one of her dad’s gym socks. She could smell it even from the hallway, with the door partially open.
Kansas finished checking underneath the last stall door for feet and gave Francine the all clear. Andre held the door open for her, then handed her the black permanent marker. Brendan grinned his sinister grin. “Good luck,” he told her. But Francine could tell he didn’t really mean it.
“Don’t worry,” Natalie assured her. “If any boys are about to come in, I’ll pound on the door so you can hide.”
“Thanks,” Francine said with a gulp. The last thing she wanted to see that afternoon was boys peeing. She stepped inside, and the door shut firmly behind her.
Francine uncapped the marker and looked around for a good place to write her message. She didn’t want to do it anyplace obvious, where the janitor would see it and she’d get in trouble.
A faucet dripped.
Settling on the tile wall beneath the sink, Francine crouched down, head below a rusty pipe, and began to scribble.
Francine was here
She’d just finished the last letter when she heard it.
Pound, pound, pound.
Natalie was knocking on the door! Francine’s head shot up—smack!—into the bathroom sink. “Ouch!” she cried, then slapped a hand over her mouth. This was no time for sissies.
Tossing the marker quickly in the garbage can, Francine raced to the farthest stall against the wall and locked herself inside. Then she stood up on the rim of the toilet bowl, crouching slightly so her head wouldn’t show over the door. She could hear the main door to the bathroom creak open. Francine hoped that whoever had come in would pee and leave quickly. She didn’t want to spend one more second in that nasty stall than she had to.
But the person did not pee. The person shouted
.
“Francine Halata!”
Francine’s legs began to tremble underneath her. The voice on the other side of the door was unmistakable. It belonged to none other than Mrs. Weinmore, Auden Elementary’s bulldog of a principal.
“Francine HALATA!”
That fink Kansas had tricked her, Francine realized. He and Brendan and Andre must’ve raced for the principal the second she walked through the bathroom door. That was probably their plan all along.
“I know you’re in here, Miss Halata!”
Maybe, Francine thought, if she could stay perfectly quiet, she’d be okay. Mrs. Weinmore wouldn’t know for sure she was in the boys’ bathroom unless she saw her. Even if she suspected, she’d never be able to prove—
Ka-POP! The stall closest to the door was swung open, then the next one. Ka-WHACK! Mrs. Weinmore was making her way down the row, checking inside every one. Ka-FLING! Ka-THUD! Ka—
“Miss Halata!” The door of the stall Francine was hiding inside began to shake, the lock banging against the frame. “You come out of there this instant!”
Francine’s legs trembled more wildly on top of the toilet seat, and her head was throbbing so badly she thought her brain might burst from her skull. Still, she remained silent. Mrs. Weinmore could jiggle that door all she wanted. Francine was never coming out. She’d stay there all night if she had to. All week. Sooner or later, Mrs. Weinmore would have to go home, and until then, Francine would just—
SPLASH!
Before Francine knew what had happened, her trembling legs had quivered right out from underneath her, and she found herself tumbled onto the bathroom floor, flat on her back, with one foot ankle-deep in toilet water.
But worse than any of that was the sight of Mrs. Weinmore’s beet-red face, glaring at her from underneath the stall door.
“Oh, um, hey, Mrs. Weinmore,” Francine said as casually as she could manage, as if she hung out with her feet in toilets every day. Francine could feel the toilet water seeping through her sock. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Mrs. Weinmore did not look amused.
