by Beth Vrabel
I glanced at the oven clock. It was almost seven. No way would Mr. Davies still be there. But he was.
“Yes, this is Jeff Convey. My kid, Noah Brickle, is in your class.”
I heard a murmur of Mr. Davies’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words.
Jeff, his eyes still on my face, continued. “He says he slipped in your class today. There are bruises all over my boy’s back. Can you fill me in on what happened?”
Long pause. Why couldn’t he have put it on speakerphone?
“That’s it?”
Longer pause.
“I’m sure I can count on you not turning your back on your students in the future, right? … Yeah. Good night.” Jeff ended the call. He shook his head and then handed it to me to hang back on the receiver. His eyes locked on mine.
“Well?” I asked.
“He says you slipped. That one minute you were fine, the next you were on the floor.”
I bent over and picked up the discarded cigarette. I handed it to him with the lighter. “See?” I said.
The phone rang, and I picked it up without thinking. Without looking at the time. “Hey,” I said into the receiver.
There was a sharp intake of breath, followed by a wobbly, “Noah?”
“Mom,” I breathed. My hand clenched the phone so tightly I thought I might crush it. For a second, my eyes closed and I pictured her. Wild dark hair, wide green eyes, pale round face.
Then her words came in a rush. “Noah! I’m so glad to hear your voice! I love you, Noah. I miss—”
I shoved the phone at Jeff and stormed outside. Again without thinking, I grabbed the football and threw it across the yard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I had a newspaper meeting before school with Rina. She had texted me a half dozen times last night, promising we’d have a mock-up of the issue to review. It seemed pretty official for something that was going to be just one page. The last text from her was at ten thirty: Waiting for your column. C’mon, Noah!
A half hour later, I emailed her a finished column, detailing why I thought saving Bucket Bear was important.
It was strange how fast the words flew out of me. I had spent the whole week dodging writing it for Rina, not sure I wanted to be part of the newspaper at all. But I guessed maybe the whole time I had been kind of writing, too, stringing the words I wanted together in my head even if they weren’t on the page. So when I finally opened my notebook, words poured out onto it. I typed up what I had written and then shared the doc with Rina before I could chicken out. I thought I’d get a text from her in a couple seconds, they way she had been hounding me all night.
But total silence from Rina.
The silent treatment seemed to be an epidemic around me.
Jeff dropped me off at seven thirty, on his way to the Shop. We hadn’t spoken since Mom called last night. As in, not a single word. Even when I sat across from him at the kitchen table, chomping on Frosted Flakes, he kept silent, sipping his coffee. Even when I yelped a little as I sat down in the truck, when my backpack slammed against my bruises. Nothing.
When he pulled up beside school, he put the car in park and still said nothing. I opened the door and hopped out. “Bye.”
He nodded at me. “Hey, Noah,” he said as I was about to shut the door.
“Yeah?”
“Ms. Jacobs saw a bunch of food, looked like our leftovers, behind the yard this morning. Know anything about it?” Jeff’s eyes zeroed in on mine. “She says a bunch of raccoons were noshing on them. She had to shoo them off with one of her high heels.”
“Ah, you know Ms. Jacobs,” I said, “always looking for any excuse to talk to you.”
Ms. Jacobs, who lived across the street from Jeff, was constantly asking me to call her Cathy because “Ms. Jacobs sounds so old.” She and Mom would have coffee once in a while, but lately Ms. Jacobs was always heading out to her car just as Jeff was going to the truck, asking for help changing light bulbs or opening jars, lips glossy and shirt tight. There hasn’t been a Mr. Jacobs for a long time.
I ducked out of the car as Jeff laughed.
“Noah.” He grabbed my sleeve. “You’re not trying to feed that bear, are you?”
“What?” I shook free. I knew it was a stupid idea, but if the food somehow made it to the bear—if I was able to give her some more time—it’d be worth a couple raccoons. “Look, I’ve got to go. Going to be late.”
I didn’t look back, just made my way to the library.
Rina already was in there, bouncing in her seat, when I arrived. “Your column, Noah.”
“I know. It sucked.” I slouched in the seat across from her, only looking up when she didn’t answer for a full minute.
“No, no. It’s … it’s incredible.”
She pushed out the chair beside her and turned the laptop so I could see the layout of the newspaper. “It really is great, Noah,” she said. “But we need, like, five more lines.” She pointed to a gap of white at the end of the column. “Is there anything you can add?”
I winced when I bent over to get my notebook out of my backpack. “Let me check my notes. Maybe there’s something.”
Rina grabbed the notebook. “Let me check your notes. You read over the newspaper. You’re our only copy editor.”
“I thought I was a reporter.”
“Columnist, reporter, copy editor, layout assistant.” Rina flipped open the notebook.
“It’s in the back,” I said.
I read over the whole newspaper. Across the top was an update by Rina on the “Bring Back the Bruins” challenge, including a table with the funds raised. (So far: three hundred dollars.) The article included a paragraph (she called it a “graf”) about why the team fell apart. For about five minutes, my stupid heart hammered too hard to read, the words slamming each other around the page. Then I could finally see what she wrote: Following the arrest of a football player’s mother for drunken driving as she left a party hosted by the coach, and the increase of violence on the field, Coach Abrams resigned. The League opted not to hire a new coach or include Ashtown in its rankings. The aim of the “Bring Back the Bruins” is to show the League that the yearlong hiatus has been long enough and the team is ready to play again.
I made Rina change “hiatus” to “break” but didn’t make any other changes. What she wrote fit the principles of journalism she kept preaching about. It was relevant. And it was true.
Rina had written another story—she called it an exposé—on the cafeteria’s “price gauging” of berry-flavored seltzer water, which ran along two columns on the bottom left side of the paper.
My column on saving the bear ran along the right side. I hated that my picture was in a little box, but Rina said all columnists need to have a headshot. She can make up rules like that, I guess, since she’s editor. So there was my mug, right next to the article about bringing back the Bruins. Rina didn’t change much about what I wrote. She highlighted the first sentence in this graf: When we make a mess, we shouldn’t expect others to clean it up. We’re the ones who messed up the bear. We need to help her.
“Find anything I can add?” I asked, my fingers over the keyboard ready to add to the column.
Rina bit her lip and nodded. She flipped the notebook toward me so I could see the page she had open. It was the stupid sketch of the bear that I had made during science class, just before Landon pummeled me. The bucket wasn’t on the bear in the drawing, her face was a halo of black pen slashes. The bear’s eyes weren’t right, either.
“No.” I shook my head. “First, it’s terrible. Second, she looks too angry. No one would want to help her.”
Rina shook her head. For some reason, her mouth was wobbly, like she couldn’t form the right words. She pressed her lips together, then said, “She doesn’t look angry. She looks …”
“The eyes are messed up. They don’t look right.”
Rina’s mouth twitched again.
“What?”
She shrugged, not
looking at me.
“Rina.”
“Her eyes look … like yours.” Rina’s cheeks were pink. “I like them.”
I swallowed and tried to grab the notebook out of Rina’s hand. She tugged it back, twisting to put the notebook down on the table out of my reach. She snapped a picture of it with her phone, then pulled the laptop toward her. A minute later, my bear drawing was sitting at the bottom of the column, my words floating around it.
“I don’t get a say in this?”
“Nope.” She smiled. I didn’t smile back. Rina’s eyes held mine. “When does your mom get out, Noah?”
I didn’t answer.
A couple hours later, when I was called down to the office, I figured it was because Mr. Anderson found out about the newspaper.
But a police officer was in his office.
My legs froze for a second a few steps outside the room. I felt panic—cold and drowning—pour through me. And then I rushed into the room. “My mom? Is she okay?” I blurted.
“How the hell would I know?” the officer asked. As soon as I heard his annoyed voice I knew this wasn’t a police officer. I mentally cussed at myself for being so dumb. This was Ron, from the Department of Natural Resources, not a police officer.
“Noah,” Mr. Anderson said, his voice low, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
“Nah, it’s okay. I’m sorry,” I mumbled, feeling all that cold panic morph and burn my cheeks with shame, especially once I saw Rina biting her lip where she sat in the other chair.
“Nice to see you in person, Ron,” I said.
But Ron just glared at me as I stared at him. I guess neither of us was too happy with what we saw. Ron was short—maybe about my mom’s height—and wide. His eyebrows curled in one continuous, grayish-black line across his forehead. His cheeks were red and chapped, probably from spending too much time outside without sunscreen or any other protection. His hands, crossed at his chest, seemed too large for his body.
“Wait! Are you here because you found the bear?” I asked him in a rush.
Ron nodded as he sank into the seat across from Mr. Anderson’s desk. “Yep.”
Everything I had been carrying, all the worry I had held on to since I first had seen her, melted away. The bear was free! But then Ron kept talking and all the worry chilled me again.
“She got away. Spotted her on my way here. Been watching that Facebook site and monitoring her movement. Good work with that, kids.”
“Thank you,” Rina said while I jumped out of my skin for him to continue.
“Anyways, I trekked through the woods and saw her, all right. She was brushing the bucket against a tree trunk, trying to knock it loose. Didn’t work. I spooked her, and she took off.”
“Why didn’t you chase her?” I asked.
Ron just tilted his chin toward me and then looked down to his wide middle.
Rina scribbled notes into her reporter’s notebook. “How did she seem?”
Ron shrugged. “Skinny. Too skinny. Winter’s right around the corner. Not much time left for her, I’d guess. It’s been, what? Almost a month?” He said all of this with the same mildly annoyed expression.
“That’s it? Not much time left? What else are you going to do?” I stormed.
“I’m going to ask you to back off, kid. All of you.” He turned and glared at each of us in turn, even Mr. Anderson. “This isn’t the only issue we’ve got to deal with, you know. We’ve got a rabid fox over in Windsor. Bobcat sightings in people’s backyards. Groundhogs charging on dogs. Fisher cats killing house cats. This ain’t the only thing going on. Plenty of other animals need attention, and all we’re doing is fielding calls about a stinkin’ Bucket Bear.”
Ron rubbed at his face with calloused hands. He stared at his lap a second while the rest of us searched for words. This guy, he could out-sigh even Rina. The air seemed to seep out from every part of him. “Look, kid,” he said, “I get it. I’m in this business because I like saving animals. This bear, I want it to live. But this is the time animals about to hibernate should be packing on the pounds. Even if we do get the darn bucket off of it, who’s to say it’s going to survive? It’s so small. Its own mother seems to have given up on it.”
My teeth gnashed while I chewed over his words. Rina pushed her seat back so it was a couple inches closer to me. She leaned back, her hair pouring over her chair. I felt her watching me but didn’t look toward her. Still facing me, she asked Ron, “Does it have a chance? If we do get to her in the next couple of days, does she have a chance?”
Ron sighed again, a little softer. “Yes.”
Mr. Anderson said, “But her time is limited?”
Again Ron said, “Yes.”
“All right then.” Mr. Anderson rolled back on his wheeled office chair and stood up. “Thank you for stopping by, officer.”
All three of our heads swiveled toward the principal. “What do you mean, ‘all right’?” I stormed as Ron awkwardly stood up.
“So you’ll leave me alone, then?” Ron asked at the same time.
The fire inside flamed higher when Mr. Anderson smiled. Then he winked at me! Now I was blazing, a wildfire roaring inside. Just when I was about to explode, Mr. Anderson continued, facing Ron. “What I mean is, while your time is limited, the bear’s is even more so. And so we’ll be checking in with you four times a day now.”
Rina nodded, also standing. “And I’ll double the posts online. Anything we get, I’ll forward to you directly.”
“I’ll call you tonight,” I promised Ron as his sigh pelted us. He threw up his arms and stomped out of the office.
Mr. Anderson clapped his hands together once. “Great. Back to class, kids.”
Once, when I was a little twerp, I found a pack of matches.
Mom had been dating this jerk who was my best buddy when she was around. But the second she left the house, he’d shove me outside and tell me to get lost. I was too scared to really go far. The only playground nearby was at the primary school where I was in first grade, about five blocks away. I knew I’d get kidnapped like Mom had always warned me about if I tried to go on my own. But this guy—I think his name was Brad—locked the door and wouldn’t let me back in the house.
So I poked around the house, peeking into the windows I could reach. I think maybe that was the first time I felt trapped, even though I was on the outside and he was the one locked inside. For sure, it was the first time I felt fury, white and consuming.
I felt it all over again, just thinking about that moment I spotted Brad, sprawled across the couch, eating mac and cheese (my mac and cheese!) and watching cartoons in my living room. After peeking through two SpongeBobs and half a Price Is Right, I gave up on Brad having a sudden wave of pity and letting me back inside my own house.
Instead, I poked around the backyard, looking for anything I could use to jimmy the lock. I found the pack of matches instead. It took a few tries, but I lit one. The boiling egg smell and smoke quickly gave way to an orange flame that snaked too fast down to my fingertips. I dropped it and lit another one. Then another. The color stuck behind my eyelids after the flame died. I saw it with my eyes shut. This, the fire in my hand, it doused that fury inside just a little. Just enough to breathe. Just enough to make me not think of Brad (and my mac and cheese).
I wanted to make the flames last longer, so I poked around some more. I found a newspaper in the mailbox. I twisted it into a torch I could hold in my hand and held a lit match to it. Just the edges fizzled for a second, then the newspaper flamed. I squealed and dropped it, and it danced a bit and then—whoosh! The newspaper was nothing more than orange and reds. I went to touch it, to put out those flames with my own hands, when someone grabbed me from behind, dumping me behind her.
“Noah! Stop!” Mom stomped out the flames. (And kicked out Brad a few minutes later.)
But all of that, it was nothing.
My opinion piece in the Bruins Gazette ignited fury faster than matches to that old newspaper.<
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I popped open my locker at the end of the day and enough Gazettes poured out to cover my feet. Rina picked one up. “Well, at least they’re reading.” She smoothed the paper out on her locker. “And embellishing.”
Someone had drawn round ears on my photograph, plus added something around my neck that looked like those cones dogs have to wear when they won’t stop biting their butts. I guess it was supposed to be a bucket. On another issue, a person had sketched a huge arrow piercing into the bear’s side, and added a puddle of red ink blood around her body. I gathered an armload of the newspapers and dumped them in the trash can. Rina trailed me.
“Cleaning up your mess, Sneaks?” Mike boomed as he walked by. He slammed his hand down on the pile of papers in my arms, scattering them across the floor. He laughed and kicked them down the hall.
“How bad was it?” asked Rina, helping me to gather them back up. “Class, I mean.”
I rolled my eyes. In math, Miss Peters had called on Brenna to make up a math word problem for the class.
Her response: “If five bears get buckets stuck on their heads, how many times will Noah cry and/or blame it on the football team?”
In science, Mr. Davies once again had focused on the Darwin Awards, writing “TSTL” across the whiteboard. Underneath, he added “To Stupid To Live.” The only highlight was Rina cocking an eyebrow at me, and I knew she also noted that he missed an o in “Too.”
In English, Landon had shared a poem he just started, titled: “People Who Should Shut Up About Cleaning Messes Considering Theirs Cost Us A Foot-ball Team.” It fell ninety-nine words short of Ms. Edwards’s suggested one hundred words. In fact, it was just one word: Noah.
“Look,” Rina said, bending over to pick up a few newspapers that I missed, “you’re just taking heat because of the football thing. Next issue we’ll cover something stupid, like the dress code.”
I pulled the papers from her hand and dumped them in the trash. “Whatever.” I sort-of-by-accident pushed her aside with my shoulder on the way back to my locker.
