The Mighty Odds

by Amy Ignatow

  He’d hoped things would change when he got to middle school, but it was as though everyone from his elementary school had hung out with everyone from the other elementary school in Muellersville over the summer. In the fall, Farshad was Terror Boy again.

  Farshad had spent most of that summer with his cousins in New Jersey. They were in high school, and when he’d told them about the whole “Terror Boy” mess they’d offered to come to Pennsylvania to “show those racists the true meaning of terror.” At the time, he’d declined—the last thing Farshad Rajavi needed was for his brown-skinned, black-haired cousins to come storming up to Izaak and his friends and provide them with evidence of all the horrible things they’d been saying about him.

  But it was tempting. There were days when all Farshad wanted to do was call Mohammed and Sam and have them come over to show everyone that he was a protected man. An important person. A respected guy. But mostly he just wanted to disappear.

  Farshad took one look at the big, shiny Auxano bus, where Ms. Zelle and Mrs. Whitaker were going over their class lists, and quietly stepped onto the yellow minibus. It was just easier. He took out his test prep book and settled in for the long trip to Philadelphia.

  Jay spent the first half of the trip to Philadelphia bleating his outrage to Mr. Friend, who began to look distinctly less friendly as the sun came up. “We were at THE FRONT of the line, and WE SHOULD have been on THE BIGGER BUS.” It was always interesting to Nick to hear which words Jay would emphasize—he was never predictable. “THIS bus doesn’t even have a DVD PLAYER. And I brought ALL THESE DVDS!!! And for what? And why do we even need this second bus if there’s only going to be five people on it! This is a waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars . . .”

  Jay wouldn’t be able to keep up his lamenting for long; he never did. It was a pattern Nick knew well—some injustice, real or imagined, would befall his best friend, and Jay would rage on about it for a while until he realized that nothing could be done to rectify the situation. Then he would deflate and act sulky for about ten minutes, and then remember something from a comic book or a movie or some sparkly part of his crazy Jay brain where aliens rode pirate-treasure-puking unicorns, and then everything would be bright and shiny again. It was exhausting. But Nick was used to it. They had been friends for a long, long time.

  Sometimes Nick wondered what it would be like to not be friends with Jay, but it was kind of unfathomable. Sure, Jay could be annoying and exasperating, and half of the trouble he got into could probably be avoided if he’d ever learn to shut up, but that was Jay. Jay was the kid who would climb a tree and sneak into his best friend’s room to keep Nick company when his dad was sick in the hospital. Jay was the kid who saved the little snack packs from his airplane trip to give to Nick because Nick had never been on a plane before and wanted to know if food that had been at thirty thousand feet tasted different. Jay was the friend who had engineered after-school science tutoring with Ms. Zelle for Nick because he knew Nick had a crush on her. It was incredibly embarrassing and uncomfortable, but still, Jay’s heart was in the right place. So, as annoying as Jay could be, Nick could never picture them not being friends. Friends like Jay Carpenter didn’t come around every day.

  Jay had stopped harassing Mr. Friend and plopped down next to Nick. “This is an INJUSTICE. These windows only open an inch? I CAN’T BREATHE.” He was angry but fizzling out. So predictable.

  “You can breathe,” Nick said, “and this bus is fine. Why would you want to spend two hours with those jerks anyway?”

  “Oh, Nick. Nick, Nick, Nick. The other bus isn’t full of jerks, it’s full of beautiful ladies.” Lately, Jay had been getting more and more interested in the female members of their class, which seemed deeply unwise to Nick. “If we had been on the other bus, we could have shown the ladies Evil Dead Two, and then the ladies would have been so scared that they would have jumped into our laps, because we are big, strong, protective men. Ladies like that.”

  “Say ‘ladies’ one more time.”

  Jay giggled. “Ladies. Layyyyyyydeeeeeeeez.”

  Nick laughed. “Well, they probably wouldn’t have let us watch the movie anyway. I’m sure that Cookie Parker or someone brought some stupid chick flick to watch.”

  “Oh, shut down your tongue. Speak not ill of my darling Daniesha. She is a particularly fine lady.”

  “Cookie Parker would squish you like a bug if you got anywhere near her.”

  “To be squished by Daniesha Parker would be divine. Mark my words, Nick, my old and doubtful friend, one day she shall be mine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, Doubty McDoubtpants. One day, my gorgeous Nubian queen will come to understand the glories of being with me, and we shall fall in love and make coffee-colored babies.”

  “Oh my god, please shut up.”

  Jay sighed. “Can you shut up love, Nick? Can you really?”

  “I will give you a dollar to shut up.” If Nick actually gave Jay a dollar every time he offered him one to shut up, he’d be in debt up to his eyeballs. But Nick knew that it was safe to make the offer, because there was no way Jay would ever actually stop talking.

  Deep down, Cookie just knew that leaving the field trip was a terrible idea. First of all, Claire was quite possibly the world’s worst accomplice. Her inability to keep calm made Cookie suspect that she might have had a latte or something equally caffeinated that morning, which meant that, in addition to being crazy jittery, Claire was going to start complaining about needing to use the bathroom, probably as soon as they slipped away. Another problem that Cookie wasn’t totally willing to admit to herself was that she might not be completely sure about where they were going. She figured she’d kind of sort of recognize things as they got closer to the store. She remembered that it was on a tree-lined block and that there were a lot of cute boutique stores around. And maybe a pizza place across the street? How many places like that could there be in Philly?

  “They’re looking at us, oh god, they’re totally looking at us,” Claire whispered as they made their way to the front entrance of the museum. Unless they had secret eyes in their ears, Ms. Zelle and Yo-Yo Sub were definitely not looking at Cookie and Claire. The friends had spent a solid half hour in the museum with everyone else, waiting until the trip chaperones were nicely distracted by the exhibits. It was the perfect time to leave, as long as you weren’t leaving with a shaking, twitching, sweating Claire Jones. She might as well have been wearing a neon sign over her head that flashed LOOK AT US, WE’RE UP TO NO GOOD!! Cookie tried not to grind her teeth.

  “Did you see what Bella Yoder was wearing today?” Cookie quietly asked Claire.

  “Oh. My. God. YES. What is she, Amish?” Claire launched into a fashion critique. Cookie couldn’t help but smile to herself. So predictable. Claire could probably face down a firing squad without so much as a bead of sweat if she was able to complain about the inherent awfulness of the Farm Kids while doing it. And that’s how they got out without anyone noticing. Well, Emma Lee was watching them, but that didn’t count.

  Finding the jewelry store was another story, though.

  “Seriously, where is this place, I need to pee,” Claire whined. They had been walking down tree-lined blocks for what seemed like forever.

  “Well, you can’t pee in a jewelry store,” Cookie growled, looking around for a chain restaurant where Claire could use the bathroom. “Here,” she said, seeing a coffee shop and pushing an uncomfortable-looking Claire inside. “Go here.”

  The place was kind of dark and there were only a few people sitting at the tables, but they all seemed to turn and stare at the girls as they walked in. Cookie gave Claire a quick shove toward the back and then made her way to the counter, waiting until Claire was safely out of earshot. “Could I have some hot cocoa?” she asked the tattooed barista, whose hair looked like faded rainbow sherbet. Cookie hated coffee, but most of her friends claimed to love it, so she always tried to order something that looked like coffee in order t
o carry the cup around. And of course she had to order something, because this was the city and you couldn’t just go into a coffee shop and pee in their toilet without buying anything. It’s not like Cookie was some sort of ignorant country kid who didn’t know the rules.

  The cocoa was expensive. Cookie sighed and handed the money to Sherbet Head. This was the price of friendship—you had to risk your scholastic career just to drag your hyper friend around Philly and spend all your money on stupid overpriced cocoa so that she could go to the bathroom. Deep down in her heart, Cookie knew that she would probably have been happier just staying with the group and watching Addison flirt with Izaak, but she was Cookie Parker, of whom a certain level of awesomeness was expected.

  Probably half of the class had seen Cookie Parker and Claire Jones sneak off, yet somehow Mr. Friend, who was right there, had missed it entirely. Of course no one would say anything about it to him or Mrs. Whitaker. Farshad certainly wasn’t going to. It was bad enough being called “Terror Boy.” If he told on the girls, he knew he’d probably be called “Snitch Terror Boy” or something stupid like that.

  The problem for Farshad, as far as he could see, was not that everyone hated him for no good reason. Okay, that was a problem, sure, a pretty big problem, but it wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was that, if something were to happen to make people like him again, he would never be able to forget what rotten jerks they had been.

  Farshad had been friends with Izaak once, sort of. If someone had asked Farshad a few years ago, “Are you friends with Izaak?” he probably would have said, “Sure,” without having to think too hard about it. They’d been classmates forever, and were more often than not on the same after-school soccer team. Farshad’s mother and Izaak’s dad both worked for Auxano, so the boys would see each other at the company club and hang out at every company picnic, eating hot dogs and playing Frisbee with the other Company Kids. They used to have a good time. It was one of the advantages of being a Company Kid: Even if you didn’t know everyone, Company Kids understood one another and had each other’s backs. Or so Farshad had thought.

  For the past few years, Farshad had stopped going to the club altogether and worked to come up with new elaborate excuses for not going to the Auxano picnic. He fervently hoped each year that his mother would just stop asking if he wanted to go, but she persisted—the picnic was in a month, and already she was questioning his need to stay home to study for finals that wouldn’t take place for another month after that. But his grades were exemplary, and even when his mom worried about why his friends never came over or why he was no longer interested in after-school sports, she couldn’t deny that he was doing very well academically and was well on his way to becoming the class valedictorian. A completely loathed valedictorian, but she didn’t know that.

  The girls had been gone for a half hour and the teachers still didn’t seem to notice that they were missing. Ridiculous. Maybe one day Farshad would stop being so surprised at how the adults at school kept failing him.

  Farshad spotted Jay Carpenter standing among the bronze sculptures of the signers of the Constitution and was struck by a terrible idea. Before he could think too hard about it, he found himself sidling up next to the school’s resident oddball. Farshad purposely dropped his test prep book on the floor.

  “Hello there, butterfingers!” Jay said, bending down to scoop up the book. He was probably one of the few kids at school who was still clueless enough to talk to Farshad. He was also really loud. Conveniently loud.

  Farshad took the book. “Thanks,” he said, looking around the room. “Hey, have you seen Claire Jones? She wanted to tell me something,” he added somewhat weakly.

  “Wasn’t she with Daniesha?” Jay asked his friend, and started scanning the room.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Farshad muttered, and backed away. Jay Carpenter was like an incredibly predictable explosive and Farshad knew very well that he’d just lit the fuse.

  “Where is Daniesha?” Jay bleated. Nick had noticed her sneaking out with Claire Jones but hadn’t mentioned it to Jay because—“Where is my beautiful black pearl?” Jay swiveled his head around Signers’ Hall. He was being too loud again.

  “She probably just went to the bathroom,” Nick mumbled.

  “No. No no no, impossible, because she went to the bathroom right when we got here,” Jay said, showing off his creepy awareness of when people went potty.

  “Well, maybe she had to go again. She’s a girl. Girls maybe can’t hold it in as well as guys can.”

  “Nicholas. Now don’t let me hear you making false and sexist statements. Daniesha Parker is a strong woman, and if she wants to hold it in, rest assured, she can hold it in.” Jay began darting from statue to statue to see if Cookie was hiding behind any of them. He was making a scene. “Do you think we should tell Ms. Zelle or Mr. Friend?”

  “No!” Nick blurted, and immediately felt embarrassed by his own volume. “No, no, we shouldn’t . . .”

  “Did I hear my name?” Mr. Friend sidled up to them. The guy was sneakier than your average yo-yo enthusiast (not that Nick actually knew any of those).

  “No,” Nick said.

  “I haven’t seen Daniesha Parker and I’m worried that something untoward might have befallen her,” Jay explained.

  “Jay, I’m sure Cookie is fine,” Mr. Friend said, quickly scanning the room. Nick’s heart sank. The hall was full of their classmates, and the fact that Jay just outright told one of the teachers that Cookie and Claire had left the Constitution Center was not going to go unnoticed. Or unpunished. Already he could see Emma Lee watching them, and Addison Gesualdo reaching for her phone to send a text that was probably telling Cookie to get back immediately because Jay had blown their cover. Nick’s mind raced desperately for a way to get out of the situation.

  “I . . . I think they went to the bathroom,” he said. Immediately Nick felt the heat rising up his neck to his cheeks. Thanks, face, you pink jerk.

  “They?” Mr. Friend asked. “Cookie and who else?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” Nick had recently seen an article about sinkholes, which are a sort of natural phenomenon where the ground opens up and swallows everything within a large radius. He found himself desperately wishing that he had actually read the article instead of just looking at the photos so he could understand what exactly the chances were of one swallowing him up right at that moment. Mr. Friend excused himself and walked over to Ms. Zelle. “Oh god,” Nick whispered to Jay, “she’s going to check the bathroom.”

  “Good,” Jay said loudly. “I for one will have a lot more fun on this field trip knowing that everyone is safe and accounted for.”

  Nick stared at Jay, and he wasn’t the only one staring.

  The text was in all caps.

  “We have to go,” Cookie told Claire as she came out of the bathroom, showing her what Addison had written.

  “Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god, what are we going to do???” Claire was squeaking and everyone was watching. Cookie grabbed her arm and steered her out of the café and back onto the sidewalk. “We are in so, so much trouble,” Claire moaned. “So so so so so so so so much trouble!”

  “Just shut up. Chill. Chill and shut up. We just have to go back to the Constitution Center, find the group, and pretend like we were there the entire time. If we act natural enough and really believe that what we’re saying is the truth then everyone else will believe it as well.” Cookie liked to think of herself as a generally good person, but sometimes even generally good people have to lie, and she knew that the best way to do it was to convince yourself that it wasn’t really a lie. After all, they hadn’t even made it to the jewelry store, so it was pretty much as if they hadn’t left the field trip.

  “They’re looking for us right now! There’s no way we’re going to get back in time!!!”

  Should I slap her? Cookie wondered. This calmed people down in movies. But Cookie had never actually slapped anyone before and, like with most thin
gs, thinking about it too much made her reconsider. What if someone saw me do it? What if it made the situation worse? She imagined Claire clutching her red right cheek, screaming and sobbing, and throwing herself into oncoming traffic. That would probably be worse.

  Cookie looked down the street. “Okay, shut up, we’ll get a cab.”

  “That’s brilliant!” Claire looked anxiously hopeful. “There’s one!” she squealed, waving her arms in the air. “Taxi!”

  “That’s just a yellow car,” Cookie growled. The Slapping Option was looking sweeter and sweeter. She spotted a cab a block away. “There,” Cookie said, pointing to it and taking a step back, “you hail that one.”

  The cab came to a halt in front of them and they scrambled in. It smelled weirdly of fake cherries. “Take us to the Constitution Center,” Cookie said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. “Please.”

  The taxi zipped through the city. Claire gripped her purse, her pale knuckles turning even whiter while Cookie went over the plan. “We’re just going to tell them that we went to the bathroom and then got turned around, right?” Claire nodded silently as Cookie read Addison’s text again. If they somehow managed to get through this, Cookie vowed to destroy that stupid Jay Carpenter. Actually, she was going to find a way to destroy Jay Carpenter even if they didn’t get through this. Especially if they didn’t get through this.

  The teachers had formed a group and were talking worriedly among themselves. Clearly, if all of the bathrooms had not yet been checked, they would be soon. Nick could feel the storm of gossip starting to gain power.

  “Dude,” Izaak told his crew, “they are So. Screwed.”

  “So screwed!” Emma chimed in.