by Rachel Shane
“You can’t expel her.” Whitney’s knees parted in a fighting stance but the delivery of her words was calm and collected, like it was just another sentence and not a life sentence.
Principal Dodgson tapped her fingers to her coral lips. “Actually, you’re right. The school board thinks this is a democracy and I’m not sole leader.”
My dress clung to me, fabric sticking to my sweaty skin. My armpits chose that moment to broadcast their scent.
“You know, Principal Dodgson,” Whitney directed her words at our fearless leader but pointed her face at Quinn “be what you seem to be.”
Quinn stomped her foot. “What the hell does that mean?”
Principal Dodgson’s head volleyed back and forth between the two girls.
“If you’d like it more simply.” Whitney smirked. “Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
Several weeks of being Whitney’s friend and I still couldn’t speak her language fluently.
“Translation.” Chess stepped between Whitney and Quinn. “You don’t have proof that Alice did anything, whereas the pictures of you and the roses have already gone viral.”
Quinn looked like she wanted to murder Whitney and Chess. “That’s where you’re wrong.” She turned to Principal Dodgson, skirt swishing as she rotated. “I can get proof.”
“Fine.” Principal Dodgson swiped her hands in the air in a cease gesture. “We have a mock-trial program at this school for a reason. We’ll let them handle the he said/she said.”
I swallowed hard. My peers would be the jury. There were only three people in the whole school who would have my back, and one of them was in jail while another didn’t even go here anymore.
Expulsion wouldn’t exactly patch things up with Lorina.
I sat downstairs in the dark, curled up in a chair, eyelids drifting downward and threatening to connect. My hand caught stray yawns. The TV turned my face an eerie blue, blasting but still failing to keep me awake.
The sound of keys jingling startled me. Glowing green numbers showed 3:13 A.M., a time I was not normally acquainted with. I hopped off the couch and cut Lorina off by the door. Her hand flew to her chest.
“You scared me.” She set her keys down on the table in the foyer. Her hand stayed pressed on top of them for a few seconds. She kept her back to me.
Fear bottled up the words I wanted to ask in my throat, but I dislodged them anyway. “What happened?”
Her breathing grew rapid and more pronounced. I must have fallen asleep at some point because I felt disoriented and it sounded like she was . . . crying.
She turned to me, knocking her keys to the ground with a harsh sound. Tears dripped from her eyes and she struggled to suck in a gasping breath. I wrapped my arms around her. She had to bend at the knees to rest her head on my shoulder. I tried to meet her halfway, balancing unwieldily on tiptoes like an ungraceful ballerina.
“Your friend . . . he’s . . . ” A sniffle separated each word.
“Is he okay?”
“Dying,” she finished. “And . . . Chess. Homeless.”
I squeezed her tight, if only to comfort myself. She was crying for my friends? Or because she felt guilty for turning them in?
“You . . . should have . . . told me.”
She pulled away from me, shielding her face with her tilted body.
“Um, I have something you should see. I was hoping you could maybe give it to Kingston?” I bit my lip at my absurd request. Asking her to give stolen files back to the same fugitive who’d turned himself in for stealing them. She followed me into the living room where I peeled the folder off the couch. “In the hallway at school, he mentioned he was looking for a file with soil samples and had picked up the wrong one?” I held the folder out to her. “I think this is the one he was looking for.”
Her gaze was so intense, I had to look away. She snatched the files from my hands and just as abruptly as she’d started crying, she whirled around and headed upstairs, her gait strong and determined.
I stood there in the hallway, feeling worse than before. I’d stayed up to get peace of mind about Kingston taking the fall. Instead, I ended up with more guilt, more questions. What had happened to make Lorina so upset? And had I just made everything worse?
CHAPTER 31
On Monday morning, purple crescent moons hung below my eyes after two sleepless nights. By the time I’d gotten out of bed Sunday, Lorina was already gone. I’d spent the day dialing and redialing Whitney and Chess with no answer. Their punishments were probably a lot stricter than mine, abandonment. A faint hint of coffee wafted from the kitchen, and fresh water lined the bottom of Lorina’s shower—my only clues she’d come home at all Saturday night.
In English, I glanced up to see Whitney hovering over my desk. Her face was porcelain-doll perfect, and I guessed she hadn’t lost any sleep over Kingston’s decision.
“Heard anything?” The end of my question rose with hope.
“Only the sounds of silence from Kingston’s empty room. They haven’t formally charged him yet, and they have until today to decide.”
If they didn’t charge him, did that mean they would charge us? Maybe that was Kingston’s plan all along. Name names and receive immunity. Like the witch trials.
That was the problem with trusting an enemy: you could never fully trust his motives.
When I arrived at the mock trial—held in the music room—Quinn Hart was relaxing at the music teacher’s desk, leaning all the way back. She shot me a triumphant smile. Nausea swirled in the pit of my stomach. She was probably the star witness, with her photographic evidence against me. Evidence I futilely hoped was peacock bravado and not, you know, real.
Rows of chairs covered each level of three platforms carpeted in gray. Music stands in the back fenced off all of the instruments from the visiting students. Not very courtroom-like.
I tried my best to keep my posture straight and my face blank, like this was just another school assembly. Students stood between the filled seats while some occupied others’ laps, all watching me with curious expressions. Do something shocking enough and everyone wants to pay attention to you. But then again, D-list celebrities had already figured out that particular key to popularity long ago. Everyone wanted to watch a fuck-up; it made them feel better about their own mistakes.
“Looks like the queen is on her throne.” Whitney rolled her eyes at Quinn.
“What if . . . what if she gets me expelled?” I twisted my hands together.
“An eye for an eye.” Whitney grinned.
Principal Dodgson stood by the grand piano next to the teacher’s desk tapping her pen impatiently against a notebook. I approached her. “Where should I go?”
“Nowhere yet. We don’t have a verdict.” She uncapped her pen and scribbled on the page. No ink came out. She lifted the pen and shook it against her ear. Her eyes met Whitney’s. “Are you acting as her lawyer? Otherwise, I’m going to have to ask you to take a seat in the—”
“I’m a witness.”
I loved the way Whitney spoke with such confidence; it was almost impossible to question her, even when she was making up her own rules.
“Witness?” Principal Dodgson clucked her tongue. “Fine.” She dug the pen into the page and etched the name like a bas-relief. “Why don’t you sit behind Quinn Hart on the floor and wait for her to call you to the stand?”
“Wait, is she the . . . judge?” The blood drained from my face. I’d always thought school would benefit my future, but I was starting to wonder if maybe they didn’t have my best interests at heart.
“I certainly can’t be the judge. Mock trial is a student-run organization,” Principal Dodgson said, like that made any sense.
“Quinn can’t be impartial. She’s the one accusing me.”
“Well, she’s the leader of mock trial.” Princip
al Dodgson smiled and then strode—or perhaps fled—over to Quinn.
If only I were naked; then I could have written this off as a nightmare.
“This is ridiculous!” My voice was so loud most of the students turned to me. I paced a two-foot tread in the carpet. “It’s nonsense! I should—”
“Calm down.” Whitney lowered herself to the floor behind Quinn’s desk and tugged me down with her.
I pressed my back stiff against the wall, using it like a stretcher, anything to keep me supported and steady and not jittery. Tears made a grand attempt to break through my eyes. Awesome. Crybabies only got sympathy when they were still young enough to actually deserve the term.
“This is good,” Whitney said. “We can use this to our advantage.”
I took a deep breath and decided to trust Whitney. After all, I had no other option right now. At least Quinn’s desk kept me hidden from the swelling audience. My future of gliding-through-high-school-undetected was fading under the cold gaze of my classmates.
The last few stragglers came in, struggling to find seats in the crowd. I wished I had brought a paper bag to help control my breathing, or at least some anesthesia to help me get through this with sedation and memory loss. And only a minimal scar. Everything about me felt squeezed into limbo: between freedom and captivity, being with Chess but not being able to be with him, staying calm and throwing up.
Principal Dodgson called the room to order by blowing three blasts on a whistle. She unrolled a sheet of crumpled paper and read, “We are gathered here today in the presence of—”
The door to the room swung open and banged against the concrete wall. My already-rattled nerves almost splintered completely.
“Sorry. We’re. Late.”
The code. I snapped my head up to see Chess striding into the room, craning his neck to locate me. Kingston hung back behind him, hands shoved in pockets and a bowler hat on his head, looking almost meek compared to his usual show of bravado. Either they were both free of their respective jails . . . or they’d mastered the art of escape.
I sat up straighter, a smile so wide it hurt my cheeks.
“Someone, please stand outside the doors and make sure no one else interrupts.” Principal Dodgson pointed to a boy close to the door. He scrambled to get up. The commotion triggered an eruption of whispers.
Whitney waved the boys over. Chess stepped over my legs to secure the spot next to me, and Kingston dropped next to Whitney. Quinn stared at Kingston with her mouth parted. For a moment her face stayed suspended like that, like she couldn’t decide if she should be seething or excited. Seething won out and her lips descended into a scowl. He blew a kiss at her, and she folded her arms over her chest.
“You’re back!” I slid my fingers between Chess’s. “Illegally?” It came out harsher than I’d meant, but I was on edge, my toes curled over the side of a cliff. It was a miracle I could even speak at all.
“Long story.” Chess squeezed my hand.
I blinked at him, waiting.
“Oh no. I’m keeping you in suspense just like you’ve been keeping me. At least until after the trial.”
I knew he meant me not saying “I love you” back to him. And I would say it, but not when prompted. As Principal Dodgson continued her speech, I sank into Chess, and his hand held onto mine tightly, anchoring me.
“As I was saying, we are gathered here today in the presence of these witnesses to determine whether Alice Liddell committed several crimes against the school.”
Quinn cleared her throat. “Alice broke into the teacher’s lounge and stole the paper, then snuck back in later and glued sheets to every desk, making it impossible to learn anything important the teachers were saying. That was only a few days before she flooded the school, causing severe damage to both property and your education.” She pointed at the audience, her arm sweeping across the room like a bad rendition of “Y.M.C.A.” “Consider your verdict.”
“Not yet, not yet!” Principal Dodgson flashed the notebook she’d been lugging around. “There’s a great deal to come before that.”
“Fine, I call the first witness.” Quinn opened a folder on her desk.
Whitney pressed her palm against the carpeted floor and pushed herself up.
Before she could take the stand, Quinn sang, “And the first witness is me.” Quinn pushed her chair behind her and stood, as if it would make her more authoritative. “Alice has a history of crime. She tried to get the students drunk one morning.”
“Scratch that from the record,” Principal Dodgson said. “We analyzed the contents, and it was clean.”
Quinn tsked angrily. “Okay, but Alice forced—” She yelled the word so loudly they could have recorded it in the soundproof studio across town. “—my friends to help with her paper prank, threatening them if they didn’t.”
Principal Dodgson pursed her lips. “What friends?”
“Dru and Di, but don’t worry, they didn’t have a hand in decoupaging the school. They managed to escape.”
Yeah, only because I took the fall for them when Principal Dodgson showed up. Whitney rolled her eyes as well.
“And—” Quinn rummaged through the papers on the table and yanked one from underneath a pile. “I have proof that she flooded the school!”
Quinn held a photo of me at the dam up to the jury, one of the same ones Kingston had shown me. Hushed whispers filled the room. A dull sense of dread welled up inside me. I doubted crying “Photoshopped!” would suffice, since Quinn could barely even draw a stick figure.
“If that’s not enough for you, here’s Alice vandalizing my house, proving that she has it in for me. That’s motive for framing me with the roses.” Quinn held up another photo of me on the roof of her house.
“Bitch,” Kingston mumbled under his breath but loud enough for Quinn to hear. She eyed him like she was trying to cast a love spell on him. Or a binding spell. “You stole that off my phone.”
She grinned at him. “Guess we both used each other.”
“Let me see those.” Principal Dodgson yanked the photos out of Quinn’s hand.
Chess whispered in my ear, “We won’t let you get expelled. School won’t be any fun for me without you.”
“Likewise,” I said.
“Are we speaking in adverbs? Okay, my turn. Moreover, I’m back.”
“Back in school?” My heart thudded in my chest, brain too tightly wound to come up with possible explanations for his sudden return. “How?”
Chess gestured with his chin for me to pay attention. What a tease! Principal Dodgson peered at the photo, and all the lines on her face became more defined. “Well, this is certainly more evidence than I expected.”
“Off with her head!” Quinn drew her finger across her neck and pointed at me.
“Not yet. Let’s hear from Alice.”
Quinn dropped back into her seat. “Alice. Now.” She twirled her hand in the air. Well, it was more like a stabbing motion.
I scrambled to push myself off the ground and gulped in a long breath of air. Fresh air. Probably the last I’d breathe for a while because the air at my house would be stifling after my expulsion. Kingston’s photos certainly ensured that.
“Why’d you flood the school?” Quinn asked me, eyes narrowed to almost the same degree as the venom in her voice. “It was all some giant environmental demonstration, right? Like, say, the ones your parents used to do?” Quinn turned to face the audience. “And I know none of us have forgotten her parents’ Adam-and-Eve incident,” she said, referring to the time they dressed up as the famous duo as part of a protest against the school.
“I didn’t flood the school.” Lying under fake school oath wasn’t any worse than the other crimes I’d committed. I was becoming desensitized to felonies.
“Okay. Tell me, then, why were you all wet right as the flood hit? Why didn’t anyone see you fall in?”
Principal Dodgson made a sound like hmm, this is starting to fit together.
“I fell
in because I slipped. Whitney pulled me out.”
“And you were behind the school because . . . ?”
“Um . . . I . . . ” I fiddled with my hands in my lap, my heart beating fast. Brain, you’re usually very good about making words come out of my mouth, even when they sound stupid. Why are you failing me now?
“Stumped you, haven’t I?”
“No. I . . . I love Chess.” Okay, those were not the words I was looking for. But they’d been on the tip of my tongue for weeks; they were bound to come out sometime. I knew I should probably look at him and smile or something, but I wasn’t making great decisions today. As the students in the room snickered, I fumbled for a way to bring it back to the trial. “And I was . . . meeting him behind the school.” Sort of true. If by “meeting him” I meant “doing a pledge task as a way to get into his group of eco-vigilantes.” They were practically synonyms.
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Oh please. If that were true, he would have pulled you out of the creek like a knight in shining armor. No, you were causing the flood.” She stood up and paced the floor in front of the audience like a lawyer about to reveal irrefutable evidence. “Because you were pissed because your friends wouldn’t help you paper the school. This was your way to get us back for being good and wholesome. Damage the school enough and you damage our transcripts.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. It’s ridiculous,” I spat. “In fact, this whole trial is a sham.”
“A sham? The facts are simple: you vandalized the school with the flood and the paper. So you should be punished.”
Principal Dodgson chewed on her pen. “I’m afraid the evidence here is hard to deny.”
My skin was on fire, and I fanned my hand in front of my face to cool it down.
“Expulsion is the only solution.” Quinn slammed her hand onto the desk. “Court’s adjourned!”
“Might not want to be so quick on that trigger.” Whitney jumped up before the students could start packing their bags. “Because what I’m about to say will change your mind.”
