“But this is X-Men.” I point to the color drawing of Rogue. “Don’t I look like her?”
Chad glances at the page and then at me. “Yeah.” I think he’s smiling, as if he really does like me now. Then he says, “She’s kinda hot, though.”
“And me?” The moment I hear my words, I realize what a dumb thing I said.
Chad shakes his head. “You’re just a weird girl who reads comics.”
He doesn’t say it in a mean way, so I move my finger to Gambit. “This is you. Gambit. He’s Rogue’s best friend. I know he has brown hair and yours is blond so you don’t look exactly alike, but he and Rogue come from the same place. She’s from Mississippi and he’s from New Orleans …”
Chad turns his back to me. He unlocks the bikes, fishes the boxes of Sudafed out of my saddlebags, and shoves them into his. “I was born in Iowa,” I hear him mumble. “So unless they got one called Cornfield …”
I giggle even though he’s making fun of the X-Men. “I’m not from Mississippi either. I’m from here. Well, Willingham.” I tuck the comic book in the saddlebag.
But Chad has already jumped onto his bike and is pedaling toward home.
I catch up to him. Mami used to tell me I had to ask questions too so the other person won’t think I’m boring and only want to talk about myself. That’s how you make friends, she said. “So what did you buy? The magazine you were reading?”
“No.” He pedals harder and shouts back at me, “Cigarettes.”
I pull up alongside him again. “They’re not supposed to sell them to you. That’s illegal.”
Chad laughs so hard he almost swerves into me.
I slap my forehead with my palm. Why would a drugstore sell things that cause cancer?
“What did you really get?” I ask.
In the seconds before he pulls ahead of me, Chad answers, “Baby Tylenol. For Brandon.”
• • •
After I get home, I begin to doubt that twenty-four boxes of Sudafed, with twenty capsules each, are all for Brandon. That’s 480 capsules total, enough for sixty people who caught a cold.
That night after dinner, when Dad thinks I’m doing my homework for Ms. Latimer, I ask Mr. Internet, Why would someone buy 24 boxes of Sudafed?
Mr. Internet’s answer comes straight from the government. And it tells me why the drugstores are supposed to keep the boxes behind the pharmacy counter and make us sign for them and show ID: “The United States Congress has recognized the use of pseudoephedrine in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamines.”
CHAPTER 9
THE ELLIOTTS MANUFACTURE METH!
So that’s why Chad and Brandon stand in the park all day, even in the rain, and can’t go home whenever they want. They’re standing lookout in case the police show up.
As I read on, other details fall into place. Mr. Elliott’s stained fingers. His rotting and missing teeth. The weird smells in the hallway.
Mr. Internet also tells me what I did all day long with Chad. It’s called smurfing—going from drugstore to drugstore to collect the medicine that will be turned into meth once you pour a bunch of really nasty chemicals all over it. Muriatic acid. Anhydrous ammonia. Red phosphorus. Sulfuric acid. Stuff you find in Drano, industrial solvents, and fertilizer. Even the names of the chemicals are scary.
My hands shake so badly I can barely type the words into Google.
But I keep reading until I hear a knock at my bedroom door.
I let out a little shriek. It takes a couple of tries before I lock the little arrow onto the close button.
“Come in,” I call to Dad.
“You screamed. Everything okay?”
“I was finishing my homework. You surprised me.” In fact, I’ve done zero homework tonight.
“You look pale. Do you feel all right?”
“I’m kind of tired.” I fake a yawn. “Chad and I rode all the way to College Park.”
“Did you have a good time?”
I nod. I’m glad he didn’t ask me about it at dinner. Instead he talked about jamming with Mr. Elliott, what a good time he had and how maybe they could play some folk festivals together this summer.
Now I don’t know what to tell Dad.
Your friend manufactures drugs.
The New Kid I wanted to be my friend manufactures drugs. He got me to help him—without telling me. And now my name’s in two pharmacies’ logbooks.
But Dad and Mr. Elliott played such happy music together this morning. The music made my feet, my whole body dance. Dad’s guitar and Mr. Elliott’s banjo chatted with each other like friends sharing stories, and I didn’t need the words to understand how they felt. Tonight Dad practiced those same songs, and they made me happy too. I danced all the way upstairs to Mr. Internet.
No, I can’t tell Dad what the Elliotts are doing. I’ll have to get them to quit doing it all by myself. Even though I couldn’t help Chad with his science homework, I’ll have to try harder. This time, I can’t fail.
I have to be the superhero.
• • •
Ms. Latimer lets me get away with not finishing my homework just this once. And since I’m not paying attention—I couldn’t get to sleep last night, turning over in my mind what I’d say to Chad—she leaves half an hour early. That gives me plenty of time to wait in the park for the middle-school bus.
The park is deserted before the bus arrives. Brandon, I imagine, is inside. Still sick. The Perez twins get off first, but they act like they don’t see me. I stay in the shadow of the bus, not wanting to talk to them either. Chad steps off, waits for the bus to rumble away, and waves good-bye to Mike and Eddie.
Does he already have new friends? He’s been here a week. New Kids don’t hang out with me much longer than that.
He flips his hair from his eyes and walks toward his house, humming a tune and kicking stones on the way. Not noticing me. Yesterday, I was his friend because he could use me, but today I’m invisible.
“Hey, Chad,” I call out.
He turns his head in my direction.
“I have to talk to you.”
“Make it quick. I got stuff to do.”
I meet him halfway, in the grass between the walkway and the sidewalk. Overhead, small, light green, and shiny leaves have started to break free from buds. My words have to break free too, but they’ve flown out of my head, leaving me standing mute like one of the dead branches.
“I … you … you used me yesterday,” I begin. Not the voice, or the words, of a superhero.
“What are you talking about?” He shifts from one foot to another.
“I went online and found out what we were doing.” My mouth is dry, and I can barely get the words out. “They call it smurfing.”
Chad spits onto the ground, inches from my feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You live on your computer. And in your stupid comic books.”
“Were you really going to give Brandon four hundred and eighty pills?” I force myself to look into Chad’s eyes. Pale blue irises, like a hazy sky.
Chad blinks. “What’s it to you? I spent the day with you. My dad let you use our bike and bought you a comic book because your dad’s a dirt-poor loser.”
“No, he’s not!” I scream. Heat rises to my face, to my ears, all the way down my arms to my fingers. My fingernails dig into my palms.
My vision blurs. I’m no longer a superhero. Evil mutant rage has seized me, the same rage that slammed my lunch tray into Melanie Prince-Parker’s nose. My fist strikes Chad’s chest.
He stumbles backward. “You’re crazy!”
“I’m calling the cops.”
“Don’t you dare!” Chad is breathing hard, spit flying from his mouth. “We’ll kill you and your dad. And no one will believe you anyway, ’cause you’re psycho.”
I charge him, head down. He steps to the side, and I trip over his foot and sprawl on the grass. He laughs. I jump up, swinging. My fist lands on his shoulder. His fist catches the side of my head, but
I barely feel it.
I grab a handful of his hair. It’s coarse, like bits of rope in my hand. He grabs my collar and his fingernails dig into the back of my neck. Our feet tangle, and we both fall to the grass, me on top of him. Hot breath whooshes past my face. I try to pin his wrists to the ground, but his skinny arms are stronger than I thought. He pushes me to the side, then rolls on top of me. I smell cinnamon and hear the pop of chewing gum. His body is solid and warm. Underneath it, I can’t move.
I wriggle my right arm free. I lean to the left, pull my arm all the way back so that my elbow touches the grass, ball up my fist. With all my strength, I slam my fist against his bruised ear.
Chad screams and rolls off me. He rocks back and forth, covering his ear with his left hand, his screams turning to whimpers.
I stand and brush myself off, ready to celebrate my victory until I realize that I’m not going to become Chad’s friend by beating him up. Nor will I get him and his parents to stop making meth by beating him up. In fact, his parents and the people they work with will probably come after Dad and me now.
If I don’t make up with Chad right away, I’ll make everything worse.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “I can bring you an ice pack.”
Chad clears his throat. “I told Dad not to have me ride with you.”
I rub my neck, where Chad scratched me. “I’m not stupid. I can figure things out.”
“I know. But your dad told my dad you don’t have any friends. So my dad thought …”
“I’d do anything to have a friend?” I clench my fists and Chad cringes, though the person I wish I could punch is my own father. Or Chad’s father. Both of them got me into this. And anyway, both of them are right.
CHAPTER 10
AFTER BEATING CHAD UP, I EXPECT NEVER TO SEE HIM AGAIN, but he rings my doorbell the next day after school. Both bikes lean against the tree in my front yard. And Chad has a bigger purple mark on his cheek where my fist landed.
“I’m not smurfing anymore,” I say.
“We’re only riding today. I wanna see that bike trail you told me about.”
I stand in the doorway, speechless, my eyes fixed on the two shiny bikes in my yard.
Chad shifts from one foot to the other. “I’ll be your friend, okay.”
“For real?” My voice comes out as a squeak. “You’re not just … using me?”
“Yeah.” He waves me toward the yard. “Let’s go.”
One of Dad’s happy songs plays in my head, fast-picked notes racing along with the major chords. The kind of song that makes me want to dance.
Gambit’s back. For real.
I lock the door and roll the girl’s bike away from the tree. It feels heavier than it did on Sunday, but once it’s moving, I can’t tell the difference. That’s because of inertia, Newton’s first law of motion. An object in motion will stay in motion. An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by a force.
On the way to the trail, I tell Chad, “You really are like Gambit. From the X-Men. Even if you don’t come from New Orleans and don’t have brown hair.” Now that Chad has promised to be my friend, my mind and mouth are in unstoppable motion as I tell him everything about my heroes. He rides a little ahead of me, but I almost touch his saddlebag with my front wheel, close enough for him to hear me as we ride. “Gambit was adopted by a family of thieves who named him Remy LeBeau. They made him do stuff that was wrong and dangerous and against the law. Their bad stuff was stealing and gambling.”
I pause to catch my breath. Chad twists his head back. “You done?”
I’m not. Chad needs to see where he fits in. “Gambit ended up running away from his family. Like Rogue ran away from home because her family wouldn’t accept her, you know, being … different. Back before she took the name Rogue, when she was Anna Marie …”
Chad stands on his pedals, pumping hard, pulling farther ahead of me. I do the same to catch up to him. I’m about to tell him how Rogue and Gambit met when he says, “You want to be friends, right?”
“Yeah.” I thought he already said he’d be my friend.
“I’m gonna give you some rules. Like you tutored me, I’m gonna tutor you.” He slows down, out of breath from riding hard and talking at the same time. His bike wobbles a little. “Rule One. You don’t beat up people you want to be your friend.”
“I know.” I lower my gaze to the cracked pavement of the shoulder.
“Rule Two. Nobody cares about the X-Men.” He pauses. “Well, maybe other weird people like you.”
I correct him. “Mutants. We’re mutants. From exposure to toxic chemicals.”
“Whatever. I’m not a mutant. I just want to …” His voice trails off. He swallows. “Grow up. Have fun.”
I think about one of the things Rogue and Gambit had in common. “Have you ever thought about running away?”
“Can’t,” he says. “Can’t leave Brandon.”
Chad waves for me to pass. I don’t want to get too far ahead of him, but it’s also hard for me to ride as slowly as he rides on the uphill. Defying Newton’s first law of motion, my bike drags and wobbles, and I have to pedal faster to keep it straight. I tell Chad to meet me at the right-hand corner with the Beresford Estates sign.
As I ride, I calculate how much older Chad is than Brandon. Seven years. The same as my oldest brother, Eli, and me. Eli’s a crappy brother who’s always called me the accident and thinks I shouldn’t have been born, on account of what he learned in that premed class. Max is an okay brother—really into music and bikes. Sometimes he let me help him sample sounds for his keyboards when he played with the band. But he never looked out for me the way Chad seems to look out for Brandon.
Then again, when I was Brandon’s age, it didn’t matter. Mami was home. The band was together. Mr. and Mrs. Mac took care of me whenever my parents toured, and I went to school then. Even though the kids in kindergarten teased me for not talking or for talking funny, I didn’t need a big brother to protect me. If I came home crying, Mami would sing to me. Or Dad would play a happy song. And if they weren’t around, Mr. or Mrs. Mac would read me a story.
The Beresford Estates sign sits in a grassy patch that splits the street. When Chad gets to the corner, his face is bright red and beaded with sweat. “This it?” He points to the street of two-story houses, all with white siding and gray stone facades. “Look at those houses.”
They’re at least three times the size of my house.
“How many bedrooms you think they got?” Chad wipes his face with the front of his Patriots T-shirt.
“About two to a person,” I answer. “My brother Max has friends from this neighborhood.”
Three winding blocks from the entrance, the suburban street ends in a dirt road that slopes slightly downhill. I upshift, pedal hard, and feel the wind slap my face and the tires’ bump-bump-bump through my entire body. Soon the open trail gives way to woods, and pine needles and rotting leaves cover the dirt. The leaves have a sickly odor, but I like the coolness of the woods after the long ride under the bare sun.
“Whee!” Chad sticks his legs out as he cruises. “This is fun!”
But then I see something at the end of the path. A fallen tree. A bicycle with a helmet dangling from one handlebar. And a guy with a chain saw. I squeeze the brake handles. “Slow down, Chad,” I say. “We might have to go back.”
Chad blows by me but comes to an abrupt stop in front of Chain Saw Guy. I slide off my seat and walk my bike toward him.
“Trail’s blocked,” he says. “Tree came down in the storm last week.”
He looks about my brother Max’s age, maybe a year or two younger, still in high school. His voice is deep, but his cheeks and chin are smooth, except for a few pimples above his jawbone. His wavy brown hair sticks up in spots and falls to the middle of his forehead. His skin is slightly tanned, a shade between Chad’s pale skin and mine, which has the same color naturally that Dad has to go to the beach to get. The kid wears cargo shorts and a plai
d shirt with the sleeves cut off, and on one of his muscular upper arms I see the tattoo of a guy on a bike and underneath it the word LIVESTRONG inside a yellow rectangle, made to resemble the bracelet. Black bicycle gloves cover his hands.
“Can we go around it?” Chad asks.
“You can help me clear it.” The boy raises the chain saw.
“Sure.” I lean my bike against a tree.
Chad reaches for my arm, but I pull away. “No. We have to keep riding. If we stop, we’ll mess everything up,” he whispers hoarsely.
“Mess what up?” I say out loud. Chad hadn’t said he was in a hurry to get anywhere.
The older kid spins around, still holding the chain saw. “Yeah, what?”
“Nothing. We’re leaving,” Chad says. “Let’s go.”
My eyes lock on the older kid’s tattoo and his muscles underneath. I came all the way over here and I want to help. I want to see the trail. “You asked me to show you here,” I tell Chad.
“Yeah, but we can’t stop riding. I … I have to get back.” Chad shifts from one foot to the other, back and forth, like he has to pee.
“Go in the woods. We won’t watch,” I say.
He groans and glances up at the sky.
I lean toward him. “Do you have diarrhea?” I whisper. Despite all his fidgeting, he doesn’t look like he has cramps.
“Yeah, diarrhea.” He glances at the older kid and then turns away. Grabbing the handlebars, I roll my bike away from the tree. It would be embarrassing if Chad pooped his pants in front of this kid. When Chad flips his bike around, the back tire hits a root. I hear sloshing, a pop, and a sizzling sound. Not from Chad’s innards. From a saddlebag. Chad swears. The kid jerks up straight.
“Wait a minute.” The kid grabs the plastic shelf on the back of Chad’s bike and pulls the bike toward him. He’s a lot bigger and stronger than Chad is, and as long as Chad is giving me rules, Number Three should be, Don’t mess with the guy holding the chain saw. “What’s in those saddlebags?”
Chad struggles to keep his bike upright as it slides on the rotting leaves. “N-n-none of your b-b-business. I g-g-gotta take a d-dump.”
Rogue Page 5
