The Reckless Club

by Beth Vrabel

  Jason leans back, too.

  “And now we’re supposed to comfort you?” Rex says. “Seriously?”

  “Look, she feels bad about it, doesn’t she?” Wes says.

  “Not enough,” Lilith snaps. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do about it?”

  “Did you call her?” Lilith asks. “Did you apologize?”

  “She wouldn’t want to hear from me.” Ally stares at her lap again.

  “Says the person who’s never been targeted,” Lilith snaps. “How would you know?”

  “Targeted?” Ally repeats.

  Lilith and Wes exchange a long look.

  “Uh, I think she’s trying to point out that racism is a bit of an issue in America,” Rex cuts in.

  “From what you hear, you mean,” Wes adds softly.

  Rex turns to Wes. “Yeah, from what I hear.” She shakes her head. “But are you for real right now? Look at me. Look at my life.” She holds up her hands. “None of you would want to be me. Not one of you.”

  “You don’t have it that bad,” Lilith says. “You exaggerate everything.”

  Jason’s mouth pops open, but he doesn’t say anything. Rex laughs. “Sure, I’m the one who exaggerates, Drama Queen.”

  Lilith rolls her eyes. “The point is, you just naturally have an advantage.”

  “Maybe.” Rex snorts, then turns to Wes. “Do you know where you’re going to sleep next week? Know how you’re going to get dinner? Have you, I don’t know, said hi to your mom in the past seven months?”

  She turns to Lilith. “And you—next time you’re on your period, know where you’re going to get some pads? How ’bout a new bag to match your vintage dress? Just have Mom pop over to Target, right?”

  “Are you really comparing access to feminine hygiene products to institutional racism and discrimination?” Lilith sneers.

  “No!” Rex yells. “No. Maybe a little. I don’t know. I’m just saying we all have it rough, okay?”

  Without looking at Rex, Wes adds, “Yeah, you got a bad deal. Crap parents. Not enough money. But have you thought about how much worse it would be for you if you were black?”

  Rex doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Ding, I’m just trying to get through the day. So no, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that.”

  For a minute, none of them speak. Ally feels the weight of guilt pounding against her. You are stone-cold, Ally girl. “How do I fix this?”

  Jason leans a little more into Ally’s side. “Try talking to her?”

  Ally shakes her head. “What would I say?”

  “Sorry, for starts,” Jason says.

  “No way would she forgive me,” Ally whispers. Tears stream down her cheeks, but she isn’t wiping them away anymore.

  “Maybe not. Sometimes you can’t fix something broken,” Rex says, her hand holding her locket. “It stays broken.”

  “But you should still try,” Jason whispers.

  Lilith sighs. “Either way, you’ve got to live with the fact that you were a jerk and try to stop being so much of jerk in the future.”

  Ally swallows. “I guess I’ll see her at school on Monday.”

  Lilith sighs again. “Nope. Her parents are homeschooling now.”

  “For real?” Wes sits next to Lilith but faces Ally. “I can’t believe you didn’t call her or apologize or anything.”

  Jason looks up at Wes. “Did you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Rex asks.

  Wes doesn’t answer. He looks at Ally. Most of her face is covered in her shaking hands, but he can see her lips trembling. Her cheeks hollow and fill with gasping breaths. Shame. It’s a face full of shame.

  It’s a face he knows well.

  “A deal’s a deal, Ding,” Rex says. “You’re up.”

  2:32 p.m.

  WES “The Flirt”

  Wes shrugs. “I didn’t really know what was going on. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Jason stares at him.

  Was Jason in that class? Wes thinks as he rubs at his temples. Truth was, maybe Jason had been and Wes had never noticed. Jason was easy to overlook.

  Leaning back and letting his legs spread out in front of him, Wes says, “It was the thing with Mrs. Wahlberg.”

  “You mean, Whaleberg?” Rex says. “I think that’s what your crew was calling her at the end of the year.”

  “It isn’t funny,” Lilith says. “She’s not coming back this year.”

  “For real?” Jason asks.

  Lilith raises an eyebrow. “Would I lie?”

  “Yes,” the four of them say in unison.

  Lilith rolls her eyes. “Well, I’m not lying about this. She found a job at a private school. It stinks; she’s a great English teacher, even if she did make us read To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “I love that book,” Jason says.

  “You would,” Lilith counters.

  Wes rubs at his temple again. “I’m sure I’m not why she’s leaving. I mean, there was a lot going on with her this year. She was getting a divorce and…”

  “And… she gained about thirty pounds,” Rex finishes. Wes looks away as Rex adds, “What did you do, Wes?”

  “None of you are going to believe me, but I seriously never meant to be part of what happened to her,” Wes says. “I liked her. I really did.”

  In addition to being the eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Wahlberg had been the student council adviser in seventh grade, so the year before, Wes had spent every Tuesday afternoon in her classroom, hashing out details with the rest of the student council about school dance themes, fund-raisers for local charities, and theme days for the student body. When Mr. Hardy had suggested lame ideas—pajama day even though they were in middle school, as an example—Mrs. Wahlberg had run interference. “How about something new?” She had pointed to Wes, to the Beats headphones around his neck. “How about a day where the kids can listen to music during study hall or homeroom?”

  She had noticed things. That’s what really had set Mrs. Wahlberg apart.

  Like when Wes’s parents had separated for real. “Your smile isn’t as bright as it usually is,” she had said that first week. “Want to talk to me about it?”

  And he did. Wes had stayed after council meetings each Tuesday; he and Mrs. Wahlberg had sat in the back of the classroom at a long table she had set up with a giant jigsaw puzzle. He’d combed through the pieces for the ones that fit together while spilling everything he felt across the table. Things like how even the house smelled different now—too soft and vanilla-like—now that Dad lived in an apartment a few blocks away. And how he didn’t know where to sit in church anymore, now that Dad took a different pew and Mom joined the choir. Should he sit with Dad in the back or where he had always sat up front, but alone? He told Mrs. Wahlberg about the Sunday night dinners, about how they’d all go out for Chinese food together, a family, and how it had been his idea. How even after all of these weeks, he went to each dinner thinking maybe this Sunday would be the day when his parents realized they didn’t want to leave for different homes after the check came. And, in a quieter voice, he had told her about how by the end of dinner each week, he wondered if Sunday dinner should ever happen again, now that fried rice tasted like ash in his mouth.

  She hadn’t told him it’d be okay or that he didn’t need to worry or that he was foolish for wanting his parents to be in love again. She hadn’t talked at all, just found the right puzzle pieces for the right spot and nodded once in a while. The week after they had finished the first puzzle—it had been a rainbow with the words After Every Rain along the bottom—Wes had felt awkward about going to the meeting that day. But when he had looked in the back of the room, on the table was a still-boxed brand-new puzzle, this one just as cheesy as the last—a big flower garden with the phrase Your Mind Is a Garden, Your Thoughts the Seeds forming the border.

  “I don’t get it,” he had told Mrs. Wahlberg as they pieced the new puzzle togethe
r. “Everywhere else, everyone always wants to do what I want. But not my mom and dad. I’m not bragging,” he had added, even as his cheeks had flamed, “it’s just the way it is.”

  “I know,” she had said. “You’re a really charismatic kid.”

  “But it isn’t enough to keep them together,” Wes had said, throwing down a piece that wouldn’t snap into place.

  “That’s not your job,” she had said. It was their last Tuesday before summer break and the puzzle wasn’t close to being finished. “I worry about you, Wes. You draw people to you naturally, but it seems too important to you that they need you, depend on you.”

  “That’s not true,” Wes had said. Mrs. Wahlberg hadn’t spoken all those months while he had prattled on and on, and now she was saying something so dumb. “It’s not my fault that other kids follow my lead on everything.”

  Mrs. Wahlberg had shrugged. “But don’t you use that power sometimes to get what you want? Or to get people to like you? Stacy Stammerson didn’t like you putting her in charge of manning the fund-raising station at the chess tournament; she was angry about it. Until you told her you liked the way her blue shirt made her eyes sparkle.”

  Wes had shrugged. “It was a nice shirt.”

  Mrs. Wahlberg had laughed. “Just be cautious, Wes.” Mrs. Wahlberg had then picked up the same piece he had just tossed down. She had slipped it into the right spot. “If you spend all of your time convincing other people to like you—to be like you—you’re not actually being you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Mrs. Wahlberg laughed and said maybe someday it would. “You’re a sweet boy,” she had added. “You feel things deeply—when you let yourself. Just be careful. Sometimes flattery is a bit like finding a puzzle piece that seems to fit but it never quite does. I’d hate to see those deep feelings turn shallow.”

  In eighth grade, student council had a new adviser but Wes now had Mrs. Wahlberg for English class.

  “I’m working on a new puzzle,” she had said at the beginning of the year.

  But by then, home didn’t smell wrong anymore. He was in the choir, too, so he didn’t wonder where to sit at church. And he took turns having dinner with his parents on Sunday nights—sometimes he started off the week having Italian with Mom; others, he went out for barbecue with Dad. And he knew his parents wouldn’t fall back in love, no matter what he did or how much he still hoped for it to happen.

  Wes had thought about e-mailing Mrs. Wahlberg or lingering in her classroom after the bell rang a few times. Her shallow comment had gnawed at his mind. It had rattled around at inconvenient times, such as when he stopped liking the Broncos because everyone else suddenly did, too. Or when he said Lilith was just okay during the student council’s sneak peek of The Wizard of Oz, when really, she had been amazing.

  Everything was so different now.

  Now it seemed so long ago that he had sat across from Mrs. Wahlberg; it felt like he had been a different person then—a little kid—when now he knew so much more. It had almost hurt to see her now.

  Mrs. Wahlberg was different, too. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring anymore. Sometimes she had dark circles under her eyes. She didn’t smile or laugh as much. And she got big. Like real big. Her clothes were too tight and then, suddenly, too loose. Where the year before she had only worn tailored suits, now she wore shapeless dresses that skimmed her ankles. The same sort of thing had happened to Wes’s mom, only she had gotten thinner and thinner.

  Wes had almost been able to smell the pending divorce on Mrs. Wahlberg that year.

  Some of the kids had started calling her Mrs. Whaleberg. Wes hadn’t. But he hadn’t stopped them, either.

  Maybe he even would’ve done something—brought her a puzzle, maybe, and spread it on the now-empty table in the back—but the guys were always waiting for him after class, and her sadness brought him down.

  Sitting now surrounded by the other four, Wes doesn’t share any of that. He skips ahead. “Our To Kill a Mockingbird essays were due the day after the Spring Fling. Mrs. Wahlberg had been student council adviser the year before. She knew how much work it took to pull that dance off! And we had to do it on a Thursday that year, since the show,” Wes looks at Lilith, “was supposed to be Friday night.”

  He sighs and continues. “Right after school until the dance, I had to help set up. Everyone needed me to okay everything they did for decorations, for song choices, for lighting. For everything, everyone needed me. Then the dance didn’t clear out until nine thirty, and I had to help clean up. I was there until, like, eleven! I didn’t have any time to do the essay. None of us did. I told the other guys she’d give us a pass, let us turn in our papers late.”

  “But,” Jason says, “she had the due date on the white board for, like, a month. For a week, she had said that the Thursday night dance wasn’t an excuse.”

  “Dude, even I turned in the paper on time,” Rex adds.

  “I didn’t, okay? And so the rest of the council didn’t, either. The next day, I told Mrs. Wahlberg we needed an extension. She wouldn’t budge.”

  Rex snorts.

  “That’s not funny,” Lilith snaps.

  Rex shrugs. “Sorry, but she’d be tough to budge.”

  “Apology not accepted.” Lilith fluffs her hair and crosses her hands on her lap.

  “So, what did you do?” Ally asks. It’s the first time she’s spoken since confessing her prank.

  “My English class was after lunch. Mrs. Wahlberg always ate in the classroom. When we came in, she always closed her laptop but not before we could see that she was on Facebook. Like, every day, she was on Facebook during her lunch break.”

  Ally shifts. “My dad’s obsessed with Facebook. He’s on it all of the time.”

  “My parents aren’t. They’re too busy reading books and being boring,” Lilith says.

  “Anyway,” Wes continues, “the guys and I sort of found her page one day. All she posted were these stupid inspirational memes about coming out on the other side of things and seeing rainbows and all that crap.”

  Wes glances at Jason, who’s watching him, and Wes knows Jason sees right through him. Maybe even knows how much those stupid sayings meant to him when Mrs. Wahlberg was sharing them with him a year earlier. He forces out the next sticky-as-tar words: “And her profile picture? She hadn’t changed that in months. I mean, in about a thirty pounds.”

  No one laughs, not even Rex.

  “What’d you do, Wes?” Ally asks again.

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t know what the guys were planning to do, okay?”

  Rex raises an eyebrow at him.

  “Ashley had this idea,” Wes continues, “to get back at Mrs. Wahlberg by using her Facebook page. I didn’t know the details. For real, I didn’t.” In fact, when the guys had come to him, busting up and saying they had an idea, Wes had held up his hands and told them not to tell him—that he didn’t want to know. “They just said they needed her to be distracted, for like, a couple minutes after class. Just enough time for them to grab the laptop.” Wes rubs at his temples then the back of his neck. “So I brought her a gift—a jigsaw puzzle of a kitten. I told her it was, like, a sorry or whatever for the late assignment.”

  He swallows, remembering Mrs. Wahlberg’s face. She had smiled and her eyes had filled with tears. “There’s the Wes I knew,” she had said, even as Wes had shifted so her back would be at the front of the room, where Ashley was nabbing the laptop. “I can’t change your grade, you know.”

  “You sure?” Wes had asked and smiled in that way he knew usually got people to smile back.

  Mrs. Wahlberg had smiled, but it was in her now-usual small, sad way. “It’s a tough lesson, I know. But you and I, we’re not new to tough lessons, are we?”

  Wes clears his throat now, figuring out how to own up to what he had done to the others.

  Lilith asks, “What did Ashley do with the laptop?”

  Wes sighs again. “He changed her prof
ile picture. Posted a few fake things.”

  “To what? What kind of fake things?” Rex asks.

  “To a whale,” Wes whispers. “He changed her profile picture to a whale. He changed her status to something about being beached and alone.” Wes stares at his lap.

  “What was it exactly?” Jason asks, and Wes both hates and is grateful to him for asking.

  “It said, ‘This lonely beached whale would be better off dead. I should just kill myself.’”

  Rex sucks in her breath. She jumps to her feet. “How could you do that?” she gasps.

  Wes shakes his head. His voice isn’t a whisper anymore when he says, “I didn’t! Remember? I didn’t do it! Ashley did.”

  “So why isn’t he here?” Lilith asks.

  “He snuck the laptop into the teachers’ lounge. No one knew who did it. All Hardy and Mrs. Wahlberg knew was that I distracted her. I was going to be expelled over it, but Ashley came forward. I didn’t tell on him. He came forward. So I have to be here today, and he gets in-school suspension for the first month of school.”

  “So you let Ashley fat shame her? Let him tell her she should die? But you think we should care that you weren’t the one who told on him. You’re as disgusting as Ally,” Lilith says, her eyes wide.

  Ally’s face flames, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “Come on,” Jason says. “That’s not—”

  “No, she’s right,” Wes says. “Mrs. Wahlberg was—is—a good person. She didn’t deserve that.” He suddenly can’t block out the sound of Mrs. Wahlberg crying in Mr. Hardy’s office.

  “No one does,” says Rex, leaning against the wall.

  “We’ve all made mistakes. We’re all going to do better.” Ally’s eyes dart to the rest of them. “Wes and I told you what we did. It’s only fair for you guys do the same.”