by Mimi McCoy
“Where were you at lunchtime?” Dory asked Anna on the bus ride home from school that day.
“I was in the library. I forgot that I had a Spanish quiz, so I had to study.” The lie slipped out so easily, Anna didn’t even have to think about it.
“You could have told me.” Dory sounded miffed. “I saved you a seat.”
“Sorry,” Anna said. “I guess I was so worried about the test I forgot. You know how it is.”
She looked out the window, pretending to be lost in thought so Dory wouldn’t ask more questions. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she felt the need to keep her lunch with Emma a secret. It reminded her of the time she’d found a silver dollar on the sidewalk and hadn’t told anyone about it. She had walked around with it in her pocket for weeks, just enjoying the feeling of having it there.
To Anna, Emma felt a bit like that silver dollar. Like a secret treasure that she had discovered and wasn’t ready to share. Not just yet.
Chapter Four
Anna didn’t see Emma again until the following day, on her way back from science class. That day, Mr. Cooper had moved Anna to Benny’s lab table, and the two of them had agreed that Benny would do the dissection work while Anna took notes. He’d made jokes the whole time, and Anna had been so busy laughing that she’d hardly had time to get grossed out.
Anna was humming happily to herself when she rounded a corner and saw Emma standing at a locker. Her head was down, and she was fiddling with the combination.
“Hey!” Anna said, striding over to her. “I didn’t know your locker was here. Mine’s just around the corner.” She was surprised she hadn’t noticed Emma there before.
“This stupid thing,” Emma snarled, still twirling the lock. “I can’t get it open.” She spun the combination one more time then gave the locker door a hard kick.
“My locker sticks sometimes, too,” said Anna. “Want me to give it a try?”
Emma shoved her hands in her pockets and considered the lock. She was wearing the same black sweatshirt she’d had on the day before, but for some reason it looked bulkier. “Nah, forget it.” She turned to Anna, her face brightening. “You’re not doing anything for lunch, are you? Let’s go somewhere.”
“You mean, off campus?” Anna asked carefully. She’d had fun the day before, but she knew they were lucky they hadn’t been caught. She wasn’t sure she was ready to risk it again.
“No, it’s not ‘Off campus,’” Emma mimicked with a smirk. She plucked at Anna’s sleeve. “Come on, Miss Goody Two-shoes. It’ll be fun.”
Why not? Anna thought. An adventure with Emma sounded better than another dreary lunch in the cafeteria.
She followed Emma to the main stairway that led to the upper floors. The bell for lunch had already rung, and kids were streaming down the stairs, headed for the cafeteria. As she struggled against the tide, Anna felt like a salmon she’d once seen in a nature video, fighting its way upstream.
By the time they got to the third floor, the hallways were mostly empty. Emma glanced around surreptitiously, then darted into the girls’ bathroom.
The bathroom? This wasn’t quite the adventure Anna had been expecting. “You know, we didn’t have to come all the way up here,” she told Emma. “There’s a bathroom on every floor.”
Emma didn’t reply. She was checking under the door of each stall. Finally, satisfied that they were alone, she went over to the frosted-glass window and tugged at the sash. The frame was sticky with paint, and she had to pull it a few times to get it open.
“After you.” Emma gestured at the open window.
Anna was too stunned to reply. Did Emma expect her to jump?
“Fine,” Emma said, with an impatient sigh. “I’ll go first.” Before Anna could say anything, she wriggled through the window and disappeared.
Anna gasped and raced over to look out. She was relieved to see that the window opened onto a fire escape. A set of narrow metal steps hugged the side of the building down to the first floor. But … where was Emma?
Anna heard a noise overhead. Twisting around, she saw Emma clambering up a rusted old ladder that was bolted to the side of the building.
“Better hurry,” Emma called down to her. “Lunch is only forty minutes.”
Anna gulped. She looked down again. Two stories below were the courtyard and basketball courts, both paved in blacktop. If she fell, there wouldn’t be so much as an inch of grass to keep her head from smashing open like a watermelon.
She looked back up toward the roof and saw Emma’s sneakers disappear over the edge.
Anna took a deep breath then hoisted herself out the window. As an afterthought she lowered it, just in case anyone came into the bathroom. Then she turned to the ladder.
The first rung was over her head. Anna pulled herself up by her arms, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the brick wall. When she managed to get onto the ladder, she clung there for a moment, shaking. Her hands were gripping the rungs so tightly she didn’t see how she could possibly move them.
This is crazy, she thought. I could get killed! Or worse — I could get detention!
Emma’s head popped over the side of the roof, her hair hanging down on either side of her face. Anna suddenly had a crazy vision of Emma pulling her up by her hair, like Rapunzel.
“Hurry. It’s awesome up here,” Emma said.
Anna took a deep breath. Slowly, she pried one hand off and quickly grasped the rung above. Then the other hand. Then one foot. And the other foot.
She worried that someone might spot her from below, but the ladder was hidden from the courtyard by an edge of the building that jutted out. Only someone standing directly below would have been able to see her.
Just keep going. Anna told herself. Hand. Hand. Foot. Foot. Don’t look down!
Slowly, in this way, she made it to the roof. At the top of the ladder, Emma grasped her hands and pulled her over the edge.
The roof was surrounded by a low wall, and Anna leaned against it, gasping. “That … was … the scariest thing I’ve ever done!”
“But worth it. Take a look.” Emma pointed behind Anna.
Anna turned around and sucked in her breath. The entire school yard spread out below them. They could see kids eating lunch at the outdoor tables and scrimmaging on the basketball courts. Beyond, the roofs of neighboring houses seemed to float in a sea of orange-and-gold-tipped trees. Farther still, Anna could see a glimmer of blue in the distance — the river that ran through town.
“Wow!” Anna breathed. “You can see the whole world from up here. How did you know about this?”
“It wasn’t that hard to figure out,” Emma told her. “I noticed the fire escape and just followed it all the way up. Look” — she pointed to one of the tables in the courtyard — “it’s the Jackals.”
Anna followed her finger and realized she was pointing at Jessamyn and her friends. “Jackals?”
“JKL. Jessamyn, Kima, Lauren,” Emma explained. “They’re vicious, and they travel in a pack, so I call them the Jackals.”
“Jackals!” Anna howled. “That’s perfect.” She was both surprised and relieved to know that Emma didn’t like Jessamyn. After all, practically everyone else at school did.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Anna asked, suddenly feeling she could confide in her new friend. She told Emma about Jessamyn’s note, and explained how the other girls had tricked her into the old girls’ bathroom so they could humiliate her. Anna left out the part about how much she’d once hoped to be like them.
Emma’s eyes flashed with anger. “She’s just trying to intimidate you. You can’t let her.”
“What can I do?” Anna said.
“We should get her back!” Emma declared.
“Yeah, right. That’ll work,” Anna said sarcastically. “She’d just turn the whole school against me.” She sighed and looked down at the courtyard again. “Sometimes I hate this school. Nobody really cares to find out who you really are. You’re either popular … or you do
n’t exist.”
“Like you’re invisible?” said Emma.
“Yeah,” Anna nodded.
“I know how that feels,” Emma replied grimly. Anna waited for her to explain, but Emma scowled and fell silent.
Just then, Anna’s stomach growled loudly. She put a hand on it and giggled, embarrassed. “I guess I’m hungry. I wish we had lunch.”
“I almost forgot!” Emma cried, her expression brightening. She reached into the deep front pockets of her sweatshirt and began to pull out snacks. A snack-size bag of corn chips, a chocolate bar, sunflower seeds, bubblegum …
Anna’s eyes widened. “You’ve got a whole convenience store in there!”
Emma shrugged. “So? I like junk food.” She unzipped her sweatshirt and laid it on the roof like a picnic blanket, then spread out the snacks on top of it.
They spent the rest of the lunch period feasting on junk food and spying on the kids in the school yard below. Anna didn’t see Dory, and she wondered if she had spent another day sitting alone in the cafeteria.
“Last chip?” Emma asked, interrupting her thoughts. She held out the bag.
As Anna took it, a breeze suddenly yanked the bag from her hand and sent it floating over the edge of the roof. Emma turned to Anna, her eyes wide. “I know how we can get the Jackals back! And they’ll never even know who did it.” “How?” Anna asked.
“Meet me here same time tomorrow,” Emma told her. She smiled her devilish smile, adding, “And bring a bottle of ketchup.”
Chapter Five
When Anna climbed up the ladder the next day at lunch, Emma was already on the roof. She was sitting with her legs crossed and her eyes closed, as peaceful as a statue. Anna had the funny feeling that Emma had been there for hours, just waiting for her.
As if she felt Anna watching, Emma opened her eyes. “Did you bring it?” she asked.
Anna clambered over the edge of the roof and pulled the bottle of ketchup from her backpack. “I almost didn’t get it. I thought my parents were never going to leave the kitchen this morning.”
Emma fumbled in the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out a small package of balloons. Suddenly, Anna understood Emma’s plan.
“You’re kidding,” she said.
“I’m not kidding at all,” Emma replied, her expression dead serious.
“We can’t do it. It’s too … evil,” Anna said.
“Oh, please.” Emma rolled her eyes. “Think of who we’re talking about. If you looked up evil in the dictionary, you’d find Jessamyn’s name.”
The ketchup was in a squeeze bottle, which made filling the balloons easier. Unfortunately, the bottle was only half full. In the end, they only had enough ketchup to fill three small balloons.
“Well, we have one for each Jackal. We just can’t miss,” Emma said, weighing a ketchup-filled balloon in her hand.
They went over to the edge of the roof and peered down. Plenty of kids were eating at the outdoor tables and milling around in the courtyard below. But there was no sign of the Jackals.
“What if they don’t come outside today?” Anna asked.
“Then there’s always tomorrow,” Emma said. She paused then added, “But I hope we get a shot at them today. I noticed Jessamyn happens to be wearing white.”
They waited for several minutes, splitting the peanut butter sandwich Anna had brought in her backpack. Lunch was almost over when the Jackals finally emerged from the cafeteria.
“On your mark,” Emma said.
“But they’re all the way over on the other side of the courtyard!” Anna wailed. “We’ll never hit them.”
“Patience.” Emma’s gaze never wavered from the scene below.
They watched as the Jackals strolled around the courtyard. As usual, Jessamyn walked in the center of the pack. As Emma had mentioned, she had on a pair of white jeans along with a turquoise top. Her glossy hair was piled up in a ponytail on top of her head. Just seeing Jessamyn made Anna’s blood boil, and her fingers tightened on the balloon. But the Jackals weren’t coming anywhere close to the edge of the roof.
Anna’s legs were beginning to cramp from crouching for so long. “Let’s forget it,” she said. “We’ll try again tomorrow….”
Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Dory. She was sitting alone at one of the outdoor tables, watching a pickup game of basketball with an empty expression on her face.
Anna knew that her old friend had zero interest in sports. She’s pretending to watch the game, she realized. She doesn’t have anyone else to sit with. Anna was surprised at how detached she felt, watching this scene, almost as if Dory were a stranger.
“Anna! Now!” Emma’s urgent cry broke through her thoughts. “Now!”
Anna barely had time to register that Jessamyn was standing below them before her hand opened and the ketchup-filled balloon was plummeting through the air toward its target.
A second later, a chorus of horrified squeals rang out from the courtyard below.
“Bull’s-eye!” Emma crowed as they ducked below the edge of the roof.
“I wish I could have seen her face when she got hit,” Anna said.
Just then, they heard Jessamyn’s unmistakable squawk. “My white jeans! These are designer!”
“But,” Anna added with a smile, “that was almost as good.”
There was a lot of commotion at Wilson in the hours that followed. Several kids, including the entire eighth grade debate team (who’d been meeting in a room right above the scene of the crime), were yanked into the dean’s office for questioning. But no one thought to look on the roof, and Anna and Emma made it down without a hitch.
For the rest of the day, Anna was careful not to call attention to herself. In her afternoon classes, she discussed the attack with the same amazement as her classmates, but inside she was gloating. When she spied Jessamyn walking down the hall, dressed in her PE uniform and shooting murderous glares in every direction, Anna couldn’t help giggling to herself.
From that point on, Anna and Emma were together every day. The fine weather continued, so they always met on the roof for lunch. Once she got over her fear of the ladder, Anna loved being up there. They ate and talked and spied on the kids in the courtyard below. One day, Emma asked Anna to teach her how to braid her hair, and after that she always wore her hair into two long pigtails, just like Anna’s. Anna was flattered that Emma wanted to imitate her style.
They started hanging out together after school, too. Every day Emma would come up with new adventures for them. One day they climbed trees in the park, where they made up crazy birdcalls to startle people passing by. They scared one man so much that he dropped his briefcase, which popped open, sending papers flying. Anna almost fell out of the tree laughing at him. Another day, they took a bus to the Cineplex and snuck into a movie theater through the exit door, which had been left propped open.
As fun as Emma was, she could also be strangely secretive. Once, when Anna invited her to her house, Emma rolled her eyes and came up with something else for them to do instead. She never e-mailed or IMed, and when Anna asked for her cell phone number, she gave it with the warning, “But don’t bother to call. I don’t have any minutes on it, anyway.” She never replied to the texts Anna sent her.
But these things hardly mattered to Anna. Emma was by far the most exciting person she’d ever met. Anna had never had a friend like her.
“What are we doing today?” Anna asked. It was a Thursday afternoon, a week after they’d started hanging out. Emma had asked her to meet her outside the art room after school.
“Stay here by the door, and tell me if anyone’s coming,” Emma instructed. She tried the knob then slipped into the art room.
Anna waited in the hallway, growing more impatient as the minutes ticked by. Finally, she cracked open the door and peeked inside to see what Emma was doing.
Emma was at the teacher’s desk, digging through a lower drawer. Anna’s heart skipped a beat. Messing around in a teacher�
��s desk? What was Emma thinking?
A minute later, Emma emerged from the room with two cylindrical cans. “Put these in your backpack,” she told Anna.
Anna eyed the cans. “Is that spray paint?”
“No, it’s canned cheese,” Emma sniped, rolling her eyes. “Yes, of course, it’s spray paint. Now, hurry. Before someone comes.”
“You stole it,” Anna said accusingly.
“I borrowed it,” Emma corrected.
“Fine, you ‘borrowed’ it. But why take it at all? Why don’t we just buy some?”
“Duh, you can’t buy spray paint if you’re a kid. Everyone knows that. In stores, they lock this stuff up like it’s plutonium. I think they even make you show ID to buy it,” Emma said. “Stop looking at me like that. It’s just a couple cans.”
“Then why don’t you carry it?” Anna asked.
“Because someone might notice if I’m walking out of school with my arms full of spray paint,” said Emma.
For the first time, Anna realized Emma didn’t have a backpack. In fact, she’d never even seen Emma with any schoolbooks. How does she do her homework? Anna wondered suddenly.
“Look,” Emma said, her face softening. “Tell you what. I’ll carry the bag.”
With a sigh, Anna unzipped her backpack. Emma put the two cans inside, then zipped it back up and swung it over one shoulder.
“Let’s go!” she said.
Just as they started away from the art room, the janitor came around the corner, the keys on his belt jingling. Emma kept right on walking, her chin held high, but Anna glanced back over her shoulder. She saw the janitor step into the room where Emma had been just moments before. Anna felt her scalp tingle at how close they’d come to being caught.
Once they were on the sidewalk, Emma began walking quickly, like a soldier setting out on a mission. Anna wanted to ask where they were going, but Emma’s mind seemed to be in another place, so she kept quiet.
They passed houses with pumpkins sitting on the front porch and Halloween decorations taped in the windows. Emma kept up a brisk pace, and sometimes Anna matched her stride exactly, so they were walking in lockstep. At those moments, it really did seem to Anna like they were soldiers — an army of two, just them against the world.
