Griff Carver, Hallway Patrol

by Jim Krieg

  “Well, well, well . . .” Sprangue said it so slowly, you’d have thought he had a speech impediment. We were both standing there in his office, looking pretty worse for wear from the fight. I didn’t even know Tommy could be disheveled. At least, I think we were in his office. . . . My peripheral vision was compromised by the swelling from a black eye Tommy lucked into. Principal Sprangue was about as happy as I’d seen him, although kicking me off the force came pretty close.

  “I’m not surprised at all to see Carver here,” he said, “but you, Rodriguez, I must say I’m shocked to find you standing in my office.”

  Tommy looked up at Sprangue. He had a couple dead leaves on him from when I threw him into the hedges by the back fence. I could tell he didn’t like being on the bad side of the law. Odds were he was about to pin the fight on me. I decided I’d back him up on his version. After all, I was certainly going to be expelled anyway. Why take Tommy down as well?

  Finally, Sprangue asked Tommy the question. “Who started it, son?” He didn’t even make it sound like a question. The answer was built into the question.

  “What, sir?” Tommy asked.

  “The fight,” Sprangue continued. “Who started the fight?”

  “Fight, sir?” Tommy asked. “There was no fight, Principal Sprangue.”

  I could see Sprangue tense up. Tommy was going off the script. “Carver is a known troublemaker, Rodriguez. You will certainly not be held accountable for any trouble he caused.”

  It was like offering Tommy a full pardon. And all he had to do was point his finger at me.

  “I understand, sir,” the Camp Scout explained. “But there was no trouble.”

  I glanced over at Tommy. Just my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. He was turning the pardon down. Sprangue couldn’t believe it either.

  “Those eighth graders, Dickens and Green, said they saw you fighting.” Sprangue was getting desperate now. He was building a case, trying to convince Tommy to throw in with him. I knew from Tommy’s steady, resolute voice, Sprangue was wasting his time.

  “They were mistaken, sir,” Tommy shot back. “We were in the part of the yard where the kids clap erasers. It was pretty dusty there. I don’t think those kids can really be sure what they saw. I think my record speaks for itself.”

  “Oh, do you?” Sprangue snapped back. “Then how do you explain those knocked-over trash cans!?”

  “Oh, sorry about that,” I volunteered without being asked. “I tripped.”

  If Sprangue’s eyes were lasers, I’d have been vaporized.

  I don’t think my acting was quite as convincing as Tommy’s. I didn’t have a theater merit badge, remember. But I went on anyway. “I was just about to clean up that mess when those mean eighth grade boys grabbed me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you were,” Sprangue answered me. I don’t know what kind of requirements you need to work in our local school administration, but I suspect sarcasm is one of them.

  “So,” Sprangue said, turning back to Tommy. “You’re suggesting the eyewitnesses who saw you strike Carver here with safety cones were seeing things?”

  I wish. At various points in our little fracas, Tommy turned every innocent playground object he could lay his hands on into some kind of club, shield, or projectile. He was certainly more creative than I gave him credit for.

  “No,” Tommy answered, “they weren’t seeing things.” Was he going to fold now that Sprangue was making him a participant? “I’m just saying they’re wrong about what they thought they saw. See, after Griff fell over those trash cans, I tripped on him and went flying into those cones. I guess I was still holding them when I went to help him up.”

  That was that. There was no turning back from here, not that Tommy showed any signs of being tempted. Sprangue made one last pass.

  “Rodriguez,” he said, very slowly, “are you absolutely sure this is your story?”

  “Yes, sir, Principal Sprangue,” he said, without hesitating, seemingly as respectful of authority as ever.

  “Very well,” Sprangue said after a long silence. “You ought to choose your friends more carefully, Rodriguez. I’m going to be watching you from now on. Closely. Very closely.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HELEN NUTTING GUIDANCE COUNSELOR RAMPART MIDDLE SCHOOL

  Continuation of the RECORDED INTERVIEW with 7th grader Griffin Carver.

  GRIFF: “What are you looking at?” I asked a little more aggressively than I meant to. We were outside Sprangue’s office and already walking down the hall. Tommy was looking at me, probably wanting some kind of acknowledgment of our journey into Sprangueville.

  Tommy didn’t say anything. He just shrugged. I think maybe that was the first time in his life that he didn’t answer a question with an avalanche of words. That was progress.

  “You waiting for me to thank you?” I barked at him. I’d been ready to throw myself under the school bus for Tommy, figuratively, not literally, and he had to go and jump under those wheels with me. I didn’t like feeling obliged.

  “Thank me for what?” he asked, in a kind of monotone. The kind of monotone people sometimes use when they’re doing impersonations of me. But he wasn’t making fun of me. I think he was trying to be me.

  “Never mind.”

  For all his bluster, Sprangue wasn’t the problem. He was just a nearsighted bureaucrat so desperate to keep his job that he’d never look too closely at what was going on all around him. No, the real problem was much worse. Volger. And his whole secret operation. How far did it reach? Was anyone safe? Clearly, it was only a matter of time before the entire school was contaminated.

  “What do you want me to do about it?!” I realized I was shouting at Tommy. He hadn’t asked me anything, but I knew what he was thinking. He shrugged.

  “I’m not even a hall cop anymore,” I continued. “And with Sprangue breathing down your neck, I wouldn’t count on keeping your badge for long if I were you.”

  Tommy sighed. “Then I guess that’s that.”

  “Don’t like the looks of this,” said a gravelly voice from nowhere. Well, not quite nowhere. Looking around, Tommy and I discovered we weren’t alone.

  It was Solomon Groom, the custodian, of course. He had about six rat traps in a wheelbarrow and, from the smell, I’d say he was baiting them with Gorgonzola and peanut butter. “Seen a lot of bad things go down in my day, but never thought I’d see this . . .”

  Tommy bit. “Rats in the school?”

  “No,” answered Solomon. “but there’s always some kind of vermin that needs taking care of. It’s you. Boys like you giving up. Good boys. Smart boys. Giving up. Don’t like it.”

  “You don’t understand,” whined Tommy, not even believing it himself. “It’s hopeless. What are we supposed to do?”

  “Don’t know. That’s up to you. All I know is, you never regret taking the high road.”

  Tommy and I looked at each other. We didn’t have to say it, but just abandoning the school to Volger put a bad taste in our mouths. He turned back to Solomon. “What if we—”

  Solomon was gone. Not an easy trick with a wheelbarrow full of rat traps. Tommy’s jaw dropped to its usual depth.

  “Like Batman,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “If we were going to do something . . .” He was asking a hypothetical. But not really. “Like, go over Sprangue’s head. The school board, maybe. Or the police.”

  “If we were going to do that,” I explained, “we’d need proof. Without it, my story’s just that. A story.”

  “But there is no proof,” Tommy whined.

  “There’s always proof,” I said without thinking. Something had sparked inside me. I was starting to feel like my old self again. “You’ve just got to know where to look for it.”

  Tommy’s face was an uncomfortable mix of confusion and wariness.

  Amazingly, he was still wearing the same expression forty minutes later when we were walking into the boys’ locker room.

/>   It was empty, but you wouldn’t know it from the smell. Hard to tell which is worse, the BO or the flowery disinfectant they use to cover it up. From the adjacent gym I could hear the unmistakable sounds of floor hockey. There were going to be some bruised shins tonight.

  “How do you even know he’s in there?” a nervous Tommy asked.

  “Only two gym periods. And he’s not in mine.”

  I found Belton’s basket pretty easily. “Alphabetical order,” I reminded Tommy before he could ask.

  Rampart Middle’s gym lockers weren’t actually lockers. We use an old system where the kids store their regular school clothes in these old wire baskets that fit into racks that lock into place. I think the point is to keep your gym uniform from getting too rank. Anyway, I was relieved, but not surprised, to see that Belton used a combination lock on his stuff and not a key. Only paranoid kids put their jeans under lock and key. Not counting myself. It isn’t paranoia if people around you really are out to get you.

  I turned the combo dial counterclockwise three times to clear it before landing it on zero.

  “What are you doing?” Tommy yelped. “That’s private property. Illegal search, man!”

  “Tommy,” I told him, “sometimes, for the greater good, you gotta bend the rules.”

  “Sorry,” he shot back. “Tommy don’t play that.”

  “Did you just say ‘Tommy don’t play that’?” I asked, wondering if Tommy’s parents kept the TV glued on the History Channel or something. Regardless, I needed a ploy.

  I suddenly cocked my head. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?” asked Tommy.

  “I thought I heard a cell phone ringing. Didn’t you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Tommy said.

  “No, I’m pretty sure I heard a ring tone. And it came from Belton’s locker. That’s weird, huh?”

  “You mean because the school has a strict policy against cells on campus?”

  “We do?” I asked innocently. “Huh. Who knew? Well, you know what that makes this?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “Probable cause.” I grinned at him. Then I cupped a hand around my ear. “Hey, there it is again.”

  I didn’t bother to look at Tommy’s face for his reaction. I just went back to work on the combo.

  Applying pressure to the shackle, I turned the dial until I felt the first sticking point. I made a mental note of the number and turned to the left. Finding the second number is just as easy. After finding the other sticking points and narrowing them down to whole numbers, you’ll find all the numbers share the same digit in the 1’s position. All except for one. And that’s your magic number. Then you’ve got to divide that number by four and . . . Well, a few simple math moves and some trial and error later and . . .

  Click.

  And you thought it was all talking tough and keeping it together in a tight spot. Some long division is required.

  I dropped Belton’s lock and slid out the basket. If the point of the baskets is to air out the gym clothes, the experiment has failed. The stench of ancient sneakers clung to that metal like mud to a wet dog.

  His clothes quickly joined his lock on the locker room floor. I checked the pockets.

  “What do you know?” I smiled at Tommy. “No cell after all. I guess that was just a ringing in my ears.” Tommy shot me a look.

  “But what have we here?” I asked, pulling out the sneakers. Not his gym sneakers. His hall sneakers, obviously. I pressed the button and the little wheels popped out. I noticed Tommy rub his shin involuntarily, reminded of the hallway chase and trash can collision.

  “You want to bust him for sneaker skates?” Tommy asked.

  “That won’t even get him a detention,” I said. “We’re looking for a bigger haul.”

  “What are you saying? That we look the other way? A demerit is a demerit.” Tommy looked outraged.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll nail him for the skates and a lot more besides. But not yet.”

  I held the sneaker skates up to the window for better light. I turned the wheel around slowly. I saw something. Jammed in between the wheel and the hollow of the shoe was a clumpy granulated substance. Almost like sand. But not sand. I extracted some with the business end of my pencil and showed it to Tommy.

  “Looks like he rolled through this stuff.”

  “What is it?” Tommy asked.

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe . . . everything. That’s what we need to find out.”

  I pulled a Ziploc out of my back pocket and tapped my pencil against the lip, dumping the mystery substance inside.

  “Where’d you get that?” Tommy asked, eyeing the bag.

  “Mom gives them to me every day,” I answered, sealing the bag. “It’s why I always insist on brown-bagging it. Do you know anyone in the Science Club?”

  “The what?” asked Tommy.

  “You know, the Über-Geek Society,” I explained. “The kids who enter stuff in the science fair. The brainiacs.”

  “You mean the Omicron League?” asked Tommy.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  The Omicron League, turns out, is a competitive science organization established in 1926 by Dr. Noah Wortham with the goal of encouraging scientific excellence, high-level problem solving, and good citizenship in junior and senior high school students. At Rampart Middle, the collective test scores of the Omicrons so improve the academic performance index that they are given a great deal more latitude than most clubs.

  For example, when we found them after school, the Omicrons were in the science lab. No big surprise there. But the fact that they had blacked out the windows, hung a DO NOT DISTURB—GENIUSES AT WORK! sign on the door, and weren’t required to have a faculty adviser . . . that was an eye-opener.

  I knocked on the door.

  “Griff!” Tommy whisper-shouted, pointing at the sign.

  I ignored him and knocked again. Not so polite this time. I was rewarded by the appearance of a face at the door.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t you read?” the girl asked. Then she looked us over and added, “Oh, you’re with Tommy Rodriguez. I suppose that answers that question.”

  I shoved my foot in the door before she could slam it shut. That wiped the smirk off her face.

  “Hi, Kyoko,” said Tommy, wisely jumping in before I could say something inappropriate. “Sorry to bother you. Griff here just has a quick question for you guys.”

  “Griff Carver?” Kyoko asked. She looked at me again. I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or amused. “You better come in.”

  I’d been in the lab before, of course, dissecting fake latex worms. So I thought I knew what to expect. Not quite. Evidently, many of the Omicron League’s experiments require the cloak of darkness. Stepping in there was like stepping into a cave. A cave full of lasers, bubbling beakers, and computer desktops projected onto the walls. It was a mad scientist’s dream. Or nightmare.

  “Elias,” the science girl called to a lab-coated kid, “we have a visitor. Griff Carver.” I won’t waste your time describing this kid. I’m confident you’ve seen one just like him at your school.

  Elias put down the laser pointer and looked me up and down like a specimen. “Interesting.” He didn’t introduce himself or shake my hand or anything. In retrospect, maybe Dr. Noah Wortham should’ve included basic social skills in the Omicron League’s goals.

  “We can’t help you,” Elias said.

  “What makes you think I came here for help?” I asked.

  “Process of elimination,” he said. “Why else would you come?”

  “Maybe I came to give you something,” I suggested.

  “Like what?!” whined the silhouette of a chubby boy lurking in the shadows.

  “Neal!” snapped Kyoko. “Elias is handling this.”

  “Like a challenge,” I continued, holding up the plastic bag from the locker room. “I’ve got a mystery substance here. I don’t think you’ve got what it
takes to identify it.”

  Suddenly, all the Omicrons, the ones I could see and the ones in the darkness, broke out laughing. It was a horrible sound. Some of them laughed through their noses. Some wheezed and then quickly inhaled asthma medicine through inhalers.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Tommy. I was kind of sorry he asked.

  “Your friend here was trying to use reverse psychology,” Elias explained with relish, more to me than Tommy, “on us. I think you’ll find it somewhat difficult to outsmart the Omicrons, Carver.”

  “Of course,” I responded. “I’m just not in your . . . League.”

  It was a weak pun, but it got a chuckle. Science geeks have a notorious weakness for puns. It broke the ice. A little.

  “We find you interesting,” Kyoko said. “Not only did you immediately ascertain the hidden social dynamics of the school, but you refused to be bullied into acquiescence.”

  “Thanks. I think. I’ll check my dictionary to make sure that was a compliment.” A joke at the expense of my own smarts. They ought to love that.

  “Look.” I started up my big play. “You big brains have got to know that some bad junk has been going down here, on the down low, for some time. All I’m asking is a few minutes of your hive mind power to analyze a clue and help win the good fight.”

  Neal, the chubby shadow, snorted. “We’re not your crime lab, Carver.”

  “And even if we were,” added another voice in the darkness, “didn’t you lose something? Like your badge, for instance?”

  “Fac taceas!” shouted Elias. I may be no Omicron, but I can recognize “shut up” when I hear it. My best guess was Latin. When the league settled down, Elias smiled at me in that way people do just before they’re going to tell you the facts of life.

  “You see, Griff,” Elias started, “good, bad, right, wrong. These are not scientific absolutes. They’re imaginary values, societal rules that have very little meaning in here.”

  “So, you don’t care if there’s a criminal element taking over your own school? What would Dr. Wortham say about that, I wonder?”