League of Strays

by Schulman, L. B.

“My therapist—a condition my parents made in exchange for an extra hundred per month—says if I don’t express my emotions, I could make myself sick. He says it’s dangerous for me to keep things bottled up inside.”

  Kade scaled three more rows of bleachers and sat down. He leaned back, resting his elbows on the row behind him. I twisted around to see him. “We’re going to send a message to the people who need to hear it.” His voice was soft as a purr, like he was sharing a secret with me.

  Nora’s eyes sparked with interest. “What do you have in mind?”

  “For starters, Madame Detroit’s going to learn that it’s not nice to knock down someone’s hard work.”

  “This is really going to happen?” Nora spun a pearl earring in her ear. A tentative smile spread up her face, settling in her eyes. “Really?”

  “Um, what if we get caught?” I asked him.

  “Stupid people get caught. With our combined brainpower, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience, hovering overhead as the others cheered. I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. All I knew was that Kade was part of the package deal, and that was a compelling enough reason to sign on the dotted line. I heard myself agree to meet back, same location, late Sunday night.

  At least it wouldn’t be hard to get out of the house. My parents would be out cold by ten thirty.

  I JOGGED TO KEEP UP WITH KADE’S LONG STRIDES AS HE stomped through the brush behind Kennedy. A massive tree root gripped my foot and I stumbled, falling to my knees. I cried out, feeling a warm trickle of blood down my leg.

  Kade lifted me up as if I weighed nothing. “You’re fine.”

  He was right. With his arm molded to my waist, I felt better than ever.

  The sliver of a moon ducked behind the clouds. I could only make out the rocks and sticks right in front of me. I grasped the back of his jacket. He reached around, unhooked my hand, and twined his fingers through mine. His thumb nestled in the crook of my palm.

  I closed my eyes, allowing him to lead me. I imagined it was the middle of the afternoon and we were walking down the street together. Like normal friends, hanging out.

  We emerged in front of a window at the back of the school.

  The glass was new—the window company’s sticker still on the pane.

  Kade let go of my hand, and the night air swarmed in to take its place, harsh and cold. As I was considering how a hand could feel so lonely, Kade punched his foot through the window. I winced at the explosion of shattering glass, then stared at him. I’d never imagined that we’d actually have to break into the school. With all the hundreds of windows around, I figured there had to be at least one that was open. He hadn’t even bothered to check before he’d sent his foot through it.

  Kade reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of cotton gloves from his pocket. He slipped them on and rooted through his other pocket for a bunch of latex gloves. “Make sure you don’t touch anything unless you have these on,” he instructed, giving each of us a pair. “They’ll check for prints.”

  I stared at the pads on my fingers, tough from nine years of viola practice. Kade thought the police were going to be involved? But of course they were, now that there was a broken window. I imagined them dusting the window frame, searching for clues.

  The gloves were a size too big, but I struggled to slip my sweaty hands inside the rubber. Oh God, why had he broken the window? There was no going back now.

  Kade kicked at the remaining shards of glass until the rim was clean. Then he rapped on the wooden frame. “Hello? Anyone home?” He turned to me. “After you,” he said, as if he were holding the door open at a fancy restaurant.

  “No way,” I protested. “After you.”

  “No problem.” He swung his legs through the opening and dropped from view. A moment later, he called, “All clear!”

  One by one, we shimmied onto the basement floor, glass crunching under our feet. I swept the cobwebs off my jeans.

  “This is so cool!” Nora gushed, sidling up to Kade.

  Zoe laughed. “We’re a bunch of lunatics.”

  We lined up single-file and moved toward a light that fanned out from under a closed door.

  “Wait, what if someone’s there?” I whispered.

  It can’t be the police, I told myself. Not yet. But it could be a janitor. Or a teacher.

  “Don’t worry, Charlotte,” Richie assured me. “They always leave the lights on in the storage room. We have to cut through here to reach the stairwell, and then we’ll be right outside the gym.”

  “How come you guys know so much about breaking into the school?” Zoe asked.

  “I like to be prepared,” Kade said. “We don’t want to stumble around in the dark all night trying to find the gym.”

  Something scampered across my sneakers. I hopped back. “I, for one, appreciate that. The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

  We hadn’t actually discussed what we were going to do to the gym teacher’s office. I hoped it would be quick. Maybe throw a few files around. Empty some drawers. Spill a rack of basketballs on the ground. Then get out.

  “Come on, you chickens,” Nora called over her shoulder. She pulled the door open.

  “No more Miss Perfect,” Zoe mumbled under her breath.

  “Here’s to the new-and-improved Nora,” Kade said, taking her hand as they entered the storage room. I stared at their braided fingers. My heart felt squeezed like a stress ball.

  The room was stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes of vending-machine food. Kade ripped one open and lobbed snack-size bags of Oreos to each of us. Under the buzz of fluorescent lights, I took a moment to examine myself. My clothes were covered in dust bunnies. Dirt under my fingernails. The blood from my injured knee had soaked through my jeans. I was sure that the damp air outside had turned my curly hair into a web of frizz. I hoped Kade wouldn’t look too closely.

  I followed behind everyone, groping my way up the dark stairwell, until Kade opened a door, sending welcome shafts of fluorescent light at my feet. “We’re here.” He stepped into the familiar school hallway.

  “Time for fun!” Richie called, his normally meek voice reverberating against the concrete walls. I shrank at the volume. Without the usual bodies in the hallway, there was nothing to soak up the sound.

  “It’s all right,” Kade said, noticing my terrified expression. “Reid’s always the last one to leave, and he never works past six. Trust me.”

  I wondered if he ever missed anything. “My mother says never trust anyone who says ‘Trust me,’” I told him.

  His hand wound up my arm like a snake. “What do you think, Charlie?”

  I frowned, but it was just an act. Secretly, I was thrilled. Charlie.

  A few times, people had tried to shorten Charlotte that way. I’d always corrected them, but not this time. The way it rolled off Kade’s tongue, the nickname took on new luster.

  Richie slammed his small frame against the lockers, calling out every bad word in the book. Coming from him, they sounded like endearments. I couldn’t help but laugh. One by one, we all started screaming obscenities at everyone we’d ever hated. Or rather, they did. I hadn’t been at Kennedy long enough to hate that many people, but their list was longer than the hallway. “I hate you, Tiffany Miller!” I finally screamed.

  I turned around to find Kade. His eyes latched on to mine, and he gave a slow, determined nod.

  When we reached the double doors of the gymnasium, we collapsed on the floor from post-adrenaline exhaustion. Maybe it was the thrill of breaking and entering, or the power of belonging, or the release of pent-up anger. Whatever. It felt amazing.

  Richie offered me a hand, lifting me to my feet as Kade rattled the gym door. It didn’t budge. He turned to Richie, who flashed a shiny key in his palm. Kade punched him lightly on the shoulder.

  “I borrowed it,” Richie told the rest of us, beaming. “It’s from Reid’s office.”

/>   “Oh, great,” Zoe muttered. “The cops will be waiting for us on the other side.”

  I pictured Richie in his red-and-white striped Grant’s Drugstore uniform. Two months ago, I’d gone to make a copy of our house key. When I’d seen Kennedy High’s drug dealer behind the register, I changed lines.

  “He made a copy at Grant’s,” I guessed. “He probably put the original back.”

  Kade drew a finger down my back. “Can’t pull one past Charlie.” He lowered his voice, for my ears only. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  Nora wiggled her way between us. “What are we waiting for, Harlin, a formal invitation?”

  Richie inserted the key. After some jiggling, the door clicked open.

  ONCE WE GOT STARTED, IT WAS LIKE RIDING A ROLLER coaster with no way to slow down.

  Nora took a thick black marker off a cluttered desk and flicked the top across the room. On the whiteboard, she scrawled, MA DAMN IS A BITCH!

  My mouth dropped open. For my seventh-grade science project, I’d analyzed the effectiveness of various solvents in removing different kinds of ink stains. Nothing had worked on a Sharpie. How much would it cost to replace a whiteboard, anyway? Five hundred? A thousand? Money the school didn’t have.

  Kade was standing under the doorjamb. I saw him wink at Nora. She leaned against the whiteboard, ankles crossed, and smiled.

  Zoe found a penknife in one of the desk drawers and was systematically stabbing some footballs from the supply closet. When she was done mutilating them, she pressed her clunky black boots down until they each exhaled a last breath. Then she flung the rubber pancakes across the room. They whizzed by Richie’s head like flying saucers.

  As I watched them, Kade snuck up behind me, his body flush against my backside. Manipulating my hands, he plunged them into the recycling bin and tossed the shredded paper into the air. I felt like a rag doll.

  Richie launched into “Auld Lang Syne” while confetti streamed down on our heads. After the first line, he la-la-la’d through the rest.

  “What a lame song,” Zoe said.

  “New year, new start.” Nora glowed. I’d never seen her look so happy.

  “It’s February already,” I said.

  Nora grabbed a book and threw it at me. I ducked. Techniques for Better Volleyball slammed against the rear window and slid to the floor.

  “You’re not even strong enough to crack a window,” Zoe teased.

  “I am!” Richie hollered. He lifted a postage meter over his head and hurled it across the room. The machine shattered on impact, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the glass. With a light tap from Kade’s fist, the pane crashed to the ground. Glass skittered across the floor.

  I froze, fascinated and horrified at the same time. My eyes swept over the room, cataloging the damage. It looked like a twister had swallowed everything up, then spit it back out. Hockey sticks snapped in two. A punctured exercise ball drooped over the arm of an office chair. A torn soccer uniform hung from a coat hook like a flag of defeat.

  I picked up a small trophy, a sixth-place finish for our less-than-stellar swim team. My eyes drifted up to find Kade in front of me. I started to shake my head, or maybe I imagined I did. No, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do any of this. But I stopped, trapped in Kade’s smile. My arm pulled back and suddenly the trophy was released, flying through the air. It hit a vase of dying flowers, which seemed to tumble in slow motion to the floor. The glass split open and water seeped out into a heart-shaped puddle.

  Kade leaned in. “Nice job, Charlie.”

  I smiled back, relishing the tickle of his breath on my ear.

  Zoe waved a navy-blue binder over her head. “Hey, everyone, look at this!”

  Nora glanced at the dates on the cover. “Oh my God, this thing goes back three years!” She yanked it from Zoe’s hands. After a quick check, she began ripping out pages from the middle.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Kade hissed.

  The others stopped, mid-destruction.

  “When they look at the torn pages, the suspect list will go from a few hundred to twenty-five,” Kade said. “All they have to do is check out the C’s and below, and your name will be on a short list.”

  Nora fanned an arm across the room. “You think someone’s going to notice a few missing pages in all this mess?”

  “We can’t leave any clues.” Kade’s voice was steely.

  “Come on, guys. It’s OK,” Richie said, palms up.

  “Why don’t you just destroy the whole book?” Zoe asked.

  Kade stepped toward Nora, holding out a hand in what I assumed was a peace offering. She turned her back to him.

  Zoe pulled a lighter out of her purse. The wavy blue flame danced under the grade book. A minute later, smoke turned to flame. She dropped it on the floor, and I watched the crisp pages curl to ash. She stomped out the smoldering embers with her boots, leaving a melted hole in the linoleum. “Problem solved,” she said.

  Richie’s snort broke the tension. We fell into fits of laughter until our lungs begged for air. My own laughter had the forced quality of an actor onstage delivering a bad performance. The room looked terrible, worse than I’d imagined. I’d thought we’d throw a few papers around, maybe knock some books off a shelf—nothing like this.

  I rested against the wall, spent from the manic act of destruction. A piercing alarm delivered a new dose of adrenaline.

  Zoe threw her hands over her ears. “Oh damn, the fire alarm!”

  “Let’s go,” I cried. I was already out the door, the others on my heels. I flew through the gym, down the hallway, and into the stairwell. The alarm caught its breath, then screamed again.

  Back in the basement, I dashed to the window and stepped into the cradle of Kade’s hands. He launched me through, and I tumbled, arms flailing, onto the dirt path. I managed to roll out of the way a second before Richie, Zoe, and Nora catapulted outside.

  “Come on!” I screamed to Kade as the lights from the fire truck flashed in the distance.

  He wriggled out the opening. We scrambled across the unkempt field, not stopping until we were hidden behind a wall of pine trees.

  “Holy shit,” Zoe said breathlessly as we watched the firemen pry open a door.

  “I can’t get caught. I can’t!” Nora said.

  “You won’t,” Kade told her. The worse things got, the more confident he became. It was comforting to know he wasn’t worried, kind of like the moment when the pilot comes on the intercom to tell you that the safety belt light is off.

  My eyes drifted down to a bare hand. Oh, no.

  “My glove!” I cried. “It was just here.” I had no idea where I’d lost it. In the field? In the stockroom? In the gym office? My fingerprints were in that glove.

  “Oh, crap, Charlotte,” Nora said, as if I’d done it on purpose.

  Kade extracted the missing glove from his pocket and snapped one of its fingers. “No worries, Charlie. I had you covered. I have all of you covered.”

  I exhaled, relieved, but my heart kept up its double-time tempo.

  “Everything went according to plan,” he said. “The alarm part was unexpected, but what a finish. Congratulations, everyone!” His smile lit up the night, wrapping me in its warmth.

  Richie took the glove from Kade and pressed the opening to his mouth. He blew, expanding the rubber until it looked like a bloated king with a crown on his head. He waved it at us, then let it go. We all laughed.

  Kade kneeled down to retrieve the glove. “It was a new moon a few days ago. That was part of the plan, too. Those firemen couldn’t spot us with binoculars.”

  Nora thought about it, then nodded. “Did you know that in astrology, the new moon means the sun and the moon are aligned in the same sign? Supposedly, an energy portal is opened, or something like that. Anyway, it’s a great time for new beginnings.”

  Kade raised his fist to the moon. “To new beginnings.”

  We joined ours with his. “To new beginnings,” we ech
oed.

  When the distant fire alarm, which had faded into background music, gave a strangled hiccup and cut out, Kade turned his back on the school and strolled away. I took one last look at Kennedy High, bathed in red strobe lights, before going after him.

  I COULDN’T WAIT TO SEE EVERYONE’S REACTION TO THE news, which would probably be all over the school by the time I got there. I hadn’t even made it through the parking lot when it started. Kenny York, under the hood of his ‘74 Camaro, had a cell phone pressed to his ear with one shoulder while fiddling with his engine.

  “They did what? In the gym?” He pulled out a screw, studied it, then dropped it into his back pocket. “Christ, dude, for real? Damn, that takes balls.”

  I turned my head and smiled. I liked being part of the action for once.

  My pride came crashing down when I saw the row of teachers lined up like soldiers at the school entrance. They parted to let a few kids in, then moved back into formation. It was a scare tactic—I knew that—but it worked. As soon as I made it through, hall monitors ushered me into the auditorium.

  Nora sat in the last row, observing the commotion around her. Her eyes were big and bright as they swept past me, taking in the crowd. They latched onto Mr. Reid as he moved down the aisle to the stage. He pulled a pencil from his blazer and tapped three times on the microphone. Feedback shrieked through the room. The crowd fell silent, as if someone had hit the mute button. Nora’s lips curled into a half-smile.

  “Can everyone hear me?” Mr. Reid yelled into the microphone. The first two rows covered their ears. “I’m sure by now many of you know that a serious act of vandalism occurred last night. The damage was extensive. A great deal of athletic equipment was destroyed. For those of you taking gym this week, you’ll meet in the auditorium for an extra study period until further notice.”

  Groans erupted from the jock section.

  “I can assure you that we’ll find the perpetrators,” Mr. Reid added, causing the same jocks to cheer.

  I swallowed, hoping to dislodge the rock in my throat. Next to the principal, a couple of teachers scanned the crowd, alert for unusual reactions. I wanted to check out Nora again, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the stage.