“What’s changed?”
“From the minute I applied for the scholarship to go here, she started in on me. Why do I want to go to some snob school? Did I think our public school wasn’t good enough? It’s good enough for her. Maybe I thought she wasn’t good enough, either. Crazy noise like that, you know?”
“Yeah, I do know. A couple of my friends said the same thing when I told them I wasn’t going to North.”
“North? That’s my old school. You weren’t there last year. There’s no way I’d have missed you.”
I’m hoping he means because it would have been love at first sight.
“My old school is the one that closed down and merged into North. My mom saw it as an excuse to get me into Langdon.”
“I’m glad it worked out the way it did. We may not have been friends at North. Angelique could get pretty jealous.”
Hate her. But I can do that later. Right now I need to move the conversation back to us, not his emotionally unstable ex-girlfriend.
“I still hang out with my old friends, but not as often,” I say. “It hasn’t been two weeks at Langdon, but it seems like we’re already in different places. We don’t have the same things to talk about. . . .”
“It’s like they think wanting something better is a bad thing,” Marco says, peeling an orange. Without asking if I want some, which I do, he just hands me half. Is that not the sweetest thing? “And I’m not saying Langdon is better, but it might get me better opportunities—I can’t deny that.”
“It’s the only reason I’m here.” Well, that, and Lana forced me.
“Friends say I have to keep it real. I’m trying not to hear that. I just want to get into a good college, help my parents out. To me, that’s keeping it real.”
“And I can still be an around-the-way girl just because I’m wearing this uniform. I’m still Chanti, just Chanti with more prospects.”
“See, Angelique didn’t get that.” Marco turns to me and smiles. “I’m glad you get it.”
Kiss me. I try to suggest this to him subliminally since this would be the perfect opportunity, but all he does is unwrap his sandwich and tell me how amazing it is that I’m so aware of things. Yeah, but I’m not aware of how to make boys think of me as something more than a friend.
“Well, I’m hoping all this awareness will help me solve the school thefts.”
“Have any ideas yet?”
“No, but I’m working on it.”
Later in the day, I’m sitting in study hall and instead of doing homework, I’m watching Ms. Reeves. The study rooms are set up in a squared-off U-shape, the open end of the U being the front of the room where Ms. Reeves sits. I made sure I got to class early enough to get a study room, otherwise I’d have to share one of the tables inside the U and I don’t want any distractions. In fact, I got here so early—after pretending I was sick at the end of my last class—that I was able to watch the study hall class before mine empty the room. I didn’t see Annette, so I guess I can eliminate her as a suspect for the study-hall thefts.
I don’t know how I’ll get a chance to watch the other study-hall teacher, but I don’t think I need to. I’m pretty sure Ms. Reeves is the one. The other teacher, Ms. Hemphill, fits the Langdon scene perfectly—she’s got that whole I’m a person of culture thing going that all these teachers try to pull off, like they’re better than teachers at other schools just because they teach at Langdon. You get the feeling she can afford to be a teacher because she came from money. That’s the only explanation for her car, a Mercedes so new the temporary tag in the back window still has a month before it expires. Even at Langdon with its trust-fund teachers, that big shiny car stands out in the parking lot. She’s not a woman struggling to understand how these kids have the money they do.
Ms. Reeves, enviro-psycho, is the total opposite. She’s already decorated the study hall with posters of decimated rain forests and endangered seal pups. A jar sits on her desk with a sign next to it that reads: THE CHANGE LEFTOVER FROM YOUR SUPER VALUE COMBO COULD FEED A THIRD WORLD VILLAGE FOR A WEEK. It’s always empty. She drives a tiny hybrid that looks more like a Matchbox car than something made for grown people. It also looks brand new, so I figure Ms. Reeves is another trust-fund teacher, just one with a guilt complex.
Wait a minute. Her car. The tiny hybrid with a tiny trunk. I grab a dollar from my wallet, go up to her desk, and drop it into the jar.
“May I have a hall pass?”
“Thank you for your donation,” she says sweetly, handing me the pass.
I head outside toward the teachers’ parking lot, looking for a brand-new orange Honda, the little car I saw speeding away while I waited for Lana on the first day of school. I find it at the end of the lot, sporting a license plate that reads 431ZTF2. So that was Ms. Reeves at the mall. And I’d bet my Langdon meal plan ticket that she really was running because she stole something. I don’t have a motive yet, but I think I might have my suspect.
Back in study hall, I grab my books and move to one of the shared tables inside the U so I can have a better view of the study rooms. I’m hoping the boy I sit next to doesn’t think I moved because I’m weird or I like him or anything. But he just looks up at me for a second, then goes right back to texting, holding his cell under the table so Ms. Reeves can’t see it.
I watch Ms. Reeves like I’m Lana on a stakeout. She has her back turned to the room while she hangs a poster of endangered snow owls on the wall behind her desk. If the perp was a student, this would be the perfect time for the thief to make her move, but no one even shifts in their chairs. I see Angela from world history pretending to study while she reads the manga mag placed strategically inside her textbook; a few students trying to get next period’s homework done since they didn’t do it last night; one with her study door closed and talking on her phone, violating school policy; a boy named Brad I recognize from English playing a game on his PlayStation Portable; another asleep with his head on the desk.
Brad puts the game into his backpack, leaves the backpack in the room, and goes up to Ms. Reeves’s desk. She hands him a hall pass, and the minute he’s out of the room, she picks up the cardboard box she keeps beside her desk and heads toward the study rooms. It’s one of those boxes with lids that printer paper comes in. She has cut a slot in the top of the box lid and marked on it in big letters SINCE YOU DIDN’T SAVE A TREE, AT LEAST RECYCLE ONE. Ms. Reeves walks slowly, deliberately, as if she’s trying not to look deliberate. She stops in Angela’s room and asks her something. Then the girl hands her a few sheets of paper that Ms. Reeves slips into the slot on the box lid and continues her pass of the study rooms.
Now she smiles at a student as she walks by his room, but he doesn’t smile back because he’s the one asleep and drooling onto one of his textbooks. She keeps smiling, and even nods her head at the boy who doesn’t know she’s there. What study-hall teacher would let a kid get away with sleeping? I think that’s their favorite thing to catch us doing. Teachers live to scare kids out of a good midday nap in study hall. But Ms. Reeves just keeps smiling and moves along, stopping in front of the room where PSP-playing Brad was.
She moves into the room and a few seconds later, exits and heads back to her desk. I notice that she never gets to the bottom of the U, never finishes her search for a tree that might be recycled. Now she carries the box differently, like it’s a little heavier even though she only put a few sheets of paper in it. The clincher is when she puts the box under her desk in the space where her legs should go, where no environmentally conscious student could reach it to recycle a tree.
The second that box goes under Miss Reeves’s desk, I ask for another hall pass. Since I add another dollar to the jar, she doesn’t question the second request. I go straight to the headmistress’s office.
Chapter 17
When I walk into Smythe’s office, she looks as though she’s been expecting me.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to come and see me, Chantal. This will be kept in co
nfidence; the others need not know it was you who confessed.”
“I’m not here to confess. I could have proven yesterday I had nothing to do with it, but I wanted to find out who the real thief is.”
“And you know who the real thief is, then?”
“First I want to make sure you know why it couldn’t possibly be me. The first day of school, from the moment we arrived, someone was with us. First you took us on the tour of the school, followed by the immersion workshop. At lunch, every kid in the place was watching us. Then we went to the registrar’s office to build our schedules. The only time we were anywhere near Percy Hall was when we stood in front of it during your tour. There was never a moment for us to have stolen anything from Percy Hall that day.”
“But the thefts have been occurring for nearly two weeks now, and I know for a fact that all of you have at least one class in Percy Hall.”
“Yeah, along with two hundred other kids. The important clue here is that you told us the thefts began on the first day of school.”
“Well, that may well be an isolated incident. Perhaps that first student thinks her property was stolen and it was really lost, but the rest of the missing items are truly stolen.”
Even Smythe must know that explanation is weak, because she adds, “What about my pen? That was stolen the first day, when I left it in the classroom during lunch. You’d been in there just minutes before. Alone.”
“Bethanie found it in the library, remember?”
“She found someone’s pen, but it wasn’t mine.”
So that’s why Smythe was giving the pen such a hard look the day Bethanie said she found it. She knew then that it wasn’t hers, but let us go on thinking we were off the hook for it.
“In fact, I don’t even think it was found. It appeared brand new to me, as though someone bought one just like mine.”
“Why would Bethanie do that?”
“To end my suspicions that it was stolen, perhaps to protect a friend.”
“I’m telling you it wasn’t me. Just like the Percy Hall thefts weren’t me, and now I have proof.”
In spite of herself, Mrs. Smythe moves forward in her chair and lays her palms flat on her mahogany desk.
“It’s a teacher.”
“A teacher committing the thefts? That’s ridiculous.”
Little does she know that until a few minutes ago, Smythe herself was on my suspect list, even if Lana thought the idea of Smythe setting us up to get us out of Langdon was farfetched.
“No, that’s a fact,” I say. “But you won’t know if you don’t check it out before sixth period ends and she has a chance to get rid of the evidence.”
“You’ve got some imagination, and you know all the police lingo, don’t you?”
This isn’t a question. She says it as though she’s insinuating something.
“I’m well-acquainted with all of our teachers, and there is no way one of them is the thief. Why should I believe you over any of our faculty?”
“Because I have proof. And you probably don’t know this teacher very well at all. She’s new to Langdon.”
I’m about to remind her she’s also the teacher who wants to replace her precious garden with gravel and ragweed, but I don’t need to. Smythe’s eyes grow wide.
“Mrs. Smythe, I promise if you go down to Ms. Reeves’s room right this minute, you’ll find a box under her desk with a PlayStation game in it that belongs to a boy in study hall who probably doesn’t even know it’s missing yet.”
“I’m going to look into this. I want you to stay right here, because we’re going to have a discussion about this if you’re wrong.”
When Smythe turns to leave, I roll my eyes at the back of her dyed-auburn head and give her thirty seconds, then follow her down to Ms. Reeves’s room. There’s no way I’m going to trust her to do the right thing. Even when she finds the PSP, I wouldn’t put it past her to deny it. As much as she wants to save her garden, she may want to kick me out of Langdon even more. Or she might figure out a way to do both.
I feel like I’m in a bad detective movie, dodging behind a bush as we cross the quad to Percy Hall, and once there, walking softly so Smythe doesn’t hear my shoes against the floor, ready to duck into a bathroom if she should turn around. But I guess Smythe is so confident in her command for me to stay put that she doesn’t notice I’m following her. She goes into Ms. Reeves’s room and I wait outside the door to watch through the window. I want to crack the door a bit so I can hear, but I’m afraid Smythe will notice. She looks down at Ms. Reeves—which she does to everyone she talks to whether they’re sitting or at eye level—and says something. Ms. Reeves suddenly looks terrified. Now Smythe moves to look under the desk. She takes the box and nods her head toward the door, motioning Ms. Reeves to follow.
I consider running, but why would I punk out when I’ve come this far?
“Chantal, I thought I asked you to stay in my office.”
“Did you? I must have misunderstood.”
“I bet you did. Well, both of you follow me.”
We do, into an empty classroom next door. Ms. Reeves looks like a woman on her way to the gallows. She doesn’t look at me, and I’m glad because I feel like a snitch, which everyone knows is the lowest kind of low. But I had no choice. Better her than me. Smythe puts the box on a desk.
“What’s this box for, Ms. Reeves?”
“Recycling . . . I ask the students to recycle paper. We’re ruining the rain forests.”
Smythe opens the box and looks surprised and disappointed at the same time—disappointed in Ms. Reeves or because she can’t expel me now, I don’t know.
“So why is this video game in here?”
“They just have so much, these brats.” Ms. Reeves caves like they have her on surveillance tape. “You wouldn’t let me do the fundraiser for the orphans in Africa, and they’re running out of time. I needed to find a way to make money. These Langdon kids—it’s just disgusting how much they have that they don’t appreciate. They don’t even notice when they lose things. Mommy and Daddy will just go out and buy another, doesn’t matter if a seven-year-old’s fingers are bleeding in some Chinese sweatshop!”
“I thought the orphans were in Africa,” I say, because I really am trying to follow along.
“Oh, shut up! You’re just as bad as they are, polluting Mother Earth, and you of all people should know better.”
I want to ask her why, because broke people pollute, too. But I don’t because that might just send her over the edge.
“Chantal, who does this game belong too?” Smythe asks.
“Brad somebody . . .”
“You’re in on this?” Ms. Reeves yells at me. “You should understand better than anyone in this school about the tyranny of oppression. I never thought you’d be the one to help the man.”
“Uh, I never thought the man would accuse me of stealing the stuff you’ve been stealing, and threaten to have me arrested.”
“I never threatened that,” Smythe says.
“Whatever.”
Now Ms. Reeves looks like she’s about to cry. “Oh, Chanti, I never thought they’d blame this on you. I should have known. And now I’m as unjust as the rest. I’m an unjust! I’m one of the unjust!”
This chick has lost it.
“Chantal, get the owner of this game and bring him here.”
Smythe didn’t finish her sentence before I was out of there. Anything not to see Ms. Reeves reveal another personality. By the time I return with Brad, my teacher is in full-on tears, the kind that make you snot your nose.
“Hey, how’d that get in here?” the boy says. As if to prove Ms. Reeves’s point, he hadn’t noticed it missing.
This time, it’s my turn to be smug when I look at the headmistress, but I can’t pull it off with the sobbing Ms. Reeves standing between us. Turns out she’s crazy for real.
Chapter 18
It’s the second morning in a row since I started Langdon that I didn’t dread what w
aited for me at the end of my long walk from the bus stop. Knowing Marco would be there always made it better, but until today, I felt like I was walking around with a scarlet letter on my blazer—a big red O for Outsider. I still feel like that, but at least now I’m a victorious outsider, and I won’t have Smythe on my back.
It all makes sense now. When I was looking into Ms. Reeves as a suspect, I found out her planning period was the same period as my PE class. That means she had an opportunity to take the tennis bracelet from that girl’s locker. Zoë wasn’t in any of Ms. Reeves’s classes, but she could have easily cruised the bracelet during lunch, or maybe during a day when she had hall duty. Those diamonds have a whole lot of sparkle; you can’t miss ’em. She could have easily walked into the immersion workshop room during her lunch break, especially if she was scoping out stuff to steal. What she expected to steal from the scholarship kids I don’t know. But then she is crazy.
Today is a good day. Not only am I free, but I proved to Lana that I’ve got detective skills of my own and can handle my business. I’m a minor hero at school because I got Ms. Reeves, confiscator of all things good, ousted from Langdon. I may have even scored points with Smythe—with Ms. Reeves gone, her botanical garden may live to see another season. So I’m feeling pretty sweet about the whole thing.
“We should celebrate,” Bethanie says when I find her at her locker. “Let’s do something after school.”
“As happy as I am to be out of Smythe’s grip, maybe I should just go home and get as far away from Langdon as I can for a couple of days.”
“Come on. It’s Friday. You solved the case and the good guys won. Isn’t that reason to celebrate?”
“I suppose,” I say, trying to think of a way out. “But I have to drop by my job and finish some paperwork. The boss says I have to do it today.”
It isn’t a complete lie—I really do owe Paulette a copy of my nonexistent driver’s license, but I plan on delaying that conversation with Paulette for as long as possible, or until I actually turn sixteen, whichever comes first.
My Own Worst Frenemy Page 12
