by Jim Krieg
He wasn’t going to expel me. Or even suspend me. Not for that kind of infraction. So what was the middle ground? What was between detention and expulsion? What was he . . . ?
No. He couldn’t.
“Know what a loose cannon is, Carver?” he asked. “In the old days of war at sea, those big cannons had to be lashed to the deck. A loose cannon would roll around, smashing everything in its path. Maybe even punch a hole in the hull and sink the whole ship. There’s no room in this school’s Safety Patrol for a loose cannon, kid.”
“Principal Sprangue, you can’t—”
“You’re a loose cannon, Griff,” he said. Sounded like he was passing a sentence. A death sentence. He made eye contact with Delane. His cue.
“Griffin Carver,” said Delane, his official tone reverberating in my head like he was shouting to me from the depths of a bottomless storm drain. “Consider this your official notification that you are hereby relieved of duty and removed from the roster of active Hall Monitors.”
I said something. Maybe “what?” or “no!” I don’t really know. It’s like a half-remembered dream now. The kind of dream you have after a parent-free evening of Heath Bar Crunch and the Horror Channel. The principal broke the spell.
“His badge,” Sprangue said.
I didn’t seem to understand.
“I’m afraid I have to ask you to . . . surrender your badge,” Delane said to the floor.
I couldn’t move. Not sure for how long. But long enough for Delane to have to talk again.
“Don’t make this any harder, Griff.”
I had to command my body to move like it was a remote-controlled car. It moved like it needed new batteries. But it moved.
The badge stuck on the belt momentarily, like it didn’t want to come off. So much for dignity. I yanked and it gave.
I tossed it onto the desk. The belt followed it. My property, but that was a technicality. What was I supposed to do with it? Frame it?
“Well, Carver.” Sprangue grimaced. “How does it feel to be just a regular—”
“Principal Sprangue!” Delane almost shouted. Then, reeling his sympathy in, “Bell’s going to ring any second. I really need to get to class.”
Even in my fog I knew he’d taken a big chance for me. I didn’t waste it. Before Sprangue could open his mouth again, I was out of that broom closet.
Then I had to pass through the squad room. No easy feat. Through the moisture that was accumulating in the corners of my eyes despite my best efforts, I could just make out the distorted faces of my fellow officers.
Former fellow officers.
A whole set of unlearned nicknames and inside jokes fell away from me like a spent rocket stage, ready to burn up in the atmosphere. The stink eye they’d glared at me earlier took on new meaning. I’d glared it myself at disgraced Hall Monitors. I’d know better now.
It was hard to make out their faces through the suspended waterfall, but I did see one.
Tommy.
He tried to look away but couldn’t.
I reached into my pocket.
“You dropped this,” I said.
I flipped it to him and stepped out into the hall, into the great unwashed. Didn’t hear it hit the floor, so he must’ve caught it.
Probably happy to see it. Those Spy Bling coins don’t grow on trees.
CHAPTER NINE
Hello, Journal.
There, I feel better already. Just changing your name to Journal has kept you out of the recycler for another twenty-four. Consider yourself fortunate that my hard drive is smoking and I just reached the last page of my coil-top-lock wire-bound spiral notebook (perforated for easy tear-out). You’re still on death row, but you’ve had a reprieve. And covering your fluorescent pinkness with black Sharpie ink might prolong your use even further.
Anyway, I need to get this all down while it’s still fresh, so you are elected.
Like most things worth reporting, it started with a combination of the typical and the unusual. First, the phone rang. Typical. Then I picked up. Unusual. I never pick up the phone when I’m at home. It’s either a refinancing robot or someone who doesn’t talk to me. If the Apathetic Five need to ask me something about a story, they know to IM me. That way they can’t hear the sarcasm in my voice when I tell them something encouraging. But this time, maybe because my laptop was behind a Genius Bar somewhere and I was on wireless withdrawal, I picked up.
I heard Tiffany’s voice on the other end and told her I’d bellow for my sister.
“Actually?” she said. “I called to talk to you?”
Just so you know, everything Tiffany says sounds like a question, but I’ll turn some of those question marks into periods so I don’t go insane when I read this later. She hadn’t tried to talk to me since the unfortunate incident in June when she attempted to highlight my hair. I was actually curious.
“I’m at the Palace,” she said.
From the explosions, bells, and kid noise, I’d pretty much already assumed she was calling from work. Tiffany means the snack bar at the Magical Palace Family Fun and Goony Golf Center. That’s where she is when she isn’t sleeping, doing her nails in class, or at a party with the Blond Amigos, a group that includes my sister, who, like Tiffany, is not blond. In fact, only two of the members are even in the ballpark. The name was a holdover from an earlier incarnation of the group.
“There’s a kid here from your school,” she told me. “He’s got a Rampart Middle backpack.”
“Okay,” I said. Thanks for the update, Tif.
“Yeah, you should come and get him,” she said cryptically. “He’s freaking out.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about and told her so.
“I think Jerome—he’s the assistant manager—is going to call security,” she said by way of explanation.
“Tiffany, I still don’t see what this has to do with—”
“This kid?” She cut me off. “I call him Shooter? Because he only plays the shooting games? He’s nice. I don’t want him to get into trouble. So why don’t you come here and take him home or something.”
“Maybe,” I said, hopefully not sounding too condescending, “you should call his parents.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to get him in trouble?” she told me. “And also, I don’t know his last name, so I can’t call them anyway. I think his real first name is Gritt or Biff or something weird.”
“Griff ?!” I blurted out.
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe. Probably.”
One quick phone call of my own later, I was out the door.
I didn’t really need to take the bus, but it pulled up right when I was passing the bus stop nearest my house. Ten minutes later I was walking over the non-functioning drawbridge that spanned a shallow moat of stagnant dyed-blue water. Magical!
I’ve been to more than my share of parties at the Ye Olde Magical Palace Family Fun and Goony Golf Center, but I’m never quite prepared for the assault of noise, lights, and rancid oil smell from the deep-fat fryer that meets you at the plaster of paris arched gateway.
I was just passing the line of Skee-Ball alleys when I saw Tiffany wave at me from the snack area. This was the most proactive I’ve ever seen her, which isn’t saying much, but I hurried over to her anyway.
“Shooter’s usually really nice,” she said to me immediately instead of “hello” or “thanks for getting here so quickly.” “But not tonight. He’s all ’roid raged out.”
“This thing is broken!” a voice yelled above the clamor of a hundred arcade games.
Using the convex fish-eye mirror mounted to the ceiling, I looked down an aisle of flashing and shrieking video games and saw him pointing at Maginot Line, one of the least popular, according to Tiffany, first-person shooters. There was no mistake. It was Griff, all right.
“The sights are way off and the action is bad and I nailed about two dozen Krauts that aren’t registering!” Griff shouted to no one in particular.
When I say
it was Griff, I mean it looked like him, but it was like it wasn’t him at all. All his cool was gone. I know, not much of a diagnosis, but that was what it seemed like. It was as if his body had been possessed by some hyperactive kid who’d forgotten to take his medication.
“He’s not usually like this,” Tiffany told me, so concerned she could barely apply the top coat to her pinkie nail. She said “Shooter” was different from the noisy, jostling middle schoolers who came in. He didn’t brag or strut. He didn’t even enter his initials when he got top score. He seemed to be playing against himself. Shooter was serious. He treated his arcade time like it was a job. More than Tiffany did, anyway.
“Sir, the Magical Palace has strict guidelines regarding the raising of voices.” This was Jerome, the assistant manager Tiffany had mentioned on the phone. Tiffany didn’t need to tell me. He had the looks of a teenage boy who’d read the Magical Palace handbook cover to cover.
Tiffany hasn’t read the handbook, of course. Working concession in her heinous medieval serf outfit was already more than any rational person would expect of her for minimum wage.
The crazy Griff impersonator didn’t seem overly concerned with the prohibition on voice-raising at the Magical Palace. He was really getting into it with Jerome. Yelling. The game wasn’t just broken, it was “fixed.” The Magic Palace was clearly illegally squeezing its clientele for everything they could, one token at a time.
Griff was really raving now. Come to think of it, he didn’t think anyone here had the intelligence to rig a sophisticated shoot-’em-up (or “shmup”) to kill the player off early. The Palace must be part of some vast, corrupt family fun center conspiracy, exchanging high-tech gimmicking of the games in exchange for “protection” and, of course, the lion’s share of ill-gotten pickings.
At that very moment I saw Tommy walking by the giant fiberglass fake winches that were designed to look like they hoisted up the drawbridge but were really trash cans.
Griff would’ve seen him if he hadn’t been busy raving at the assistant manager. I darted behind Griff, grabbed Tommy by the arm, and circled back to Tiffany’s snack bar dragging him behind me.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jerome, who was clearly required to call the patrons “sir” or “miss” despite the fact that, even at his diminutive size, he could, generally speaking, toss them over his undernourished shoulder. “But one more outburst and I’m going to have to require you to leave the premises. We don’t want any trouble here.”
“Well, you GOT trouble, pal!” Griff screamed, drawing every eye in the place.
The volume of his own voice and the gaping stares of a couple dozen kids were enough to shock Griff back into a semblance of self-control. He mumbled something like an apology to Jerome and skulked away from him and from the reproachful eyes of Klaw Krane addicts and redemption gamers.
And headed right for Tiffany’s counter! I pulled Tommy down to the floor and covered his mouth before he could say anything. Right above us, Griff plunked his extra-jumbo drink container down. It made a loud, exaggerated TOK sound.
“Large Coke,” he said. “Easy on that ice lever.”
“Sorry, kid,” Tiffany started. “No refills.”
“I’m not asking for a freebie,” Griff said, his voice starting to rise. “I’m just ordering another Coke.”
From beneath the counter, we watched as Tiffany went to the soda dispenser and filled a large cup. She plopped it down in front of Griff, who ripped open a new straw, plunged it through the plastic to-go lid, and sucked up the beverage greedily.
A sour look crossed his face. “What’s the big idea?! This is soda water! You left the Coke out of my Coke!”
“It’s on the house,” Tiffany said.
“I don’t want free bubbly water,” he growled, “I want what I ordered!”
“You’ve had enough sugar and caffeine for one day, kid,” Tiffany told him. She’d cut off enough middle schoolers to know this went down one of two ways. But Griff wasn’t about to break out the sob story. Not even on a soda rampage.
He started emptying his pockets, and I could hear the change hit the counter. A purple string of prize tickets landed on the floor right next to Tommy. Evidently, this day even had Shooter straying into Skee-Ball territory.
“I can pay!” Griff barked. “See? All I want is another Coke!”
“Your money’s no good here, Shooter,” Tiffany said flatly. I don’t think she’d meant to use her nickname for him.
“I SAID GIMME A COKE!”
This was a real shout. Every eye in the place was on him for a moment, and in a place where kids are paying real money for the privilege of keeping their eyes glued to a game screen, that’s really saying something. I looked up at the security mirror and saw Jerome put down his Dustpan Pro and make his way toward the bar, ready for a kick out.
“Don’t make this ugly, kid,” Tiffany pleaded. But she couldn’t see any other way this could play out. Tommy looked at me, still totally confused, not knowing what he was supposed to do. I gestured for him to stay put.
“Griff!” a woman’s voice called.
Griff looked up, and some of the rage and confusion melted from his face. Even though the ceiling mirror made everything in it look tiny, I could see self-awareness was seeping back into Griff’s brain from the corners of his skull. He was coming to his senses. And he couldn’t have been very happy about the situation he was finding himself in.
The woman rushed over to him and knelt down, quickly assessing his physical condition. Although Mr. Button would chafe at my making unconfirmed assumptions, she was clearly Griff’s mom, but unlike my mom, she didn’t automatically go for the hysterics. First, she gave him a once-over, a quick examination like a paramedic. All limbs intact, no broken bones, no swelling. Who knows, maybe she worked in an ER.
“I’ve been looking for you in every arcade in town,” said Mrs. Carver, roughly wrestling him into a jacket. Noting the mildness of the early evening, I couldn’t help thinking that the dressing was more of a power play.
“I was right here,” replied Griff, clinging to some tiny vestige of attitude. The woman let it pass and then, putting the pieces together, she glanced up at the counter and saw the extra-jumbo cup. Her eyes flashed with understanding and trained directly onto Tiffany like a cobra’s.
“How many of these did you give him?” Mrs. Carver asked accusingly.
Tiffany later told me she’d served him at least five.
“I dunno,” Tiffany said flatly. But she could tell from Mrs. Carver’s face that she wasn’t buying it.
“How many?” she repeated. “Or do I need to call the manager?”
Mrs. Carver’s challenge just hung in the air for a moment.
“How should I know?” Tiffany said. “All these brats look the same to me. I just work here, lady.”
I have to admit that I was impressed. I always thought Tiffany was the most useless of the Blond Amigos, which is really saying something. But evidently, there’s a little bit of steel under all that makeup and hair spray.
In the mirror I saw Griff’s mom shoot Tiffany “the look,” but she was clearly posturing. It’s no secret that the Mom Look is only effective on the actual children, biological or otherwise, of the mother.
Nevertheless, she kept her eyes on Tiffany as she grabbed Griff by the wrist and announced to no one in particular, “We’re going.”
For a moment I was afraid that Tiffany was going to close with the company mandated “Thanks for making the Magical Palace your home away from home,” but she knew better.
She threw away the boy’s cup and dropped the straw and lid into the recycle bin that had a sticker on it that said GREEN IS MAGICAL! Then Tiffany gave the counter a wipe down and said, “They’re gone.”
As we climbed to our feet, I could tell Tommy was stunned. Anyone would be. It was a highly charged emotional scene.
“Is that what you called me down here to see?” he asked accusingly. “Why? What was the big idea?
”
The real reason probably had something to do with Tommy going to Delane with the story instead of coming to me. But seeing Griff like that was even more dramatic than I’d imagined when Tiffany called me.
“You needed to see that before I asked you a question,” I told him.
“What?” he asked.
“Theoretically,” I began, “would you say Griff’s reaction to getting booted off Safety Patrol is what you might expect from a tough, hardened criminal who was looking out for himself?”
I hadn’t seen Tommy think so hard since . . . well, ever. I couldn’t help pushing him a little farther.
“Well? Is it?”
CHAPTER TEN
RAMPART MIDDLE SCHOOL SAFETY PATROL Incident Report
TO:
Delane Owens, Divisional CO
FROM:
Thomas Rodriguez, HP 2nd Class
DATE:
Friday, September 25, 3:18 p.m.
INCIDENT:
Where Do I Begin?
Delane, if you are reading this, and it only stands to reason that you are, one of two things has happened. Either somehow everything has turned out fine. Or, more likely, everything has gone very, very badly and you’re trying to make some sense of everything.
As you’ve probably come to expect from me, I have thought ahead and am prepared. I have given this IR to Guidance Councelor Nutting, with instructions that if anything should happen to me, this report should be safely delivered into your hands.
As you know, the last time we talked, I reported to you my suspicions about Hall Monitor Carver. Based on his behavior and, I’m ashamed to admit this, hearsay, I just couldn’t believe that Griff was anything less than 100 percent guilty.
Anyone would think so. He was kicked out of his old school! Okay, maybe the charges were dropped and the records were sealed, but whatever went down back at his old school was weird.
Then for various reasons that I won’t go into now, Verity showed me several articles she dug up on Griff, which you’ll find attached.
TWEEN HERO TAMES INTERSECTION
