Five Times Revenge
Page 3
Perk smiled and handed him the bag. “All reds.”
That night, after Hebrew school and after playing a start-to-finish game of Monopoly with Tommy, Perk hid away in his room and pulled the Anderson Middle School student records up on his computer screen.
Time to find their crew.
CHAPTER 5
Adam
Adam was almost never surprised.
He’d predicted his surprise birthday parties three years in a row. He had an instinct about when Hill Parmar was standing behind him. And his intuition about people had made them almost predictable.
Almost.
But now, looking at everyone’s student file on his computer and finding the scan of the survey that they had all filled out on their first day of eighth grade, Adam was surprised.
The survey was a poor attempt to help teachers “get to know their students better,” but for the purpose of picking their crew, it helped Adam more than Mr. Fritz, who didn’t even seem to know who was in his class, let alone what their favorite food or their least favorite movie was.
Who would’ve thought that Lisa Reynolds wanted to be a chef when she was older or that Jonathon McGee’s real name was Quincy or that Dutch’s legal guardian was his seventy-six-year-old grandpa? But it was Perk, his best friend since second grade, who surprised him the most.
Adam had always assumed that Perk didn’t really have a favorite food—after all, he ate anything set in front of him—but on his survey he’d written “eating grilled salmon, roasted potatoes, and asparagus while sitting in a restaurant with my family by the beach.”
Adam remembered that meal.
It had been he and his parents who had taken Perk and Tommy to the beach with them two summers ago, not Perk’s own parents.
He and Perk and Tommy had spent the week swimming during the day, walking on the boardwalk and eating ice cream in the evenings, and playing games at night until one of them couldn’t keep his eyes open. Then, on that last day, Adam’s parents had taken them out to eat for one final meal.
Grilled salmon, roasted potatoes, and asparagus.
And it had been delicious.
Perk had eaten every particle on his plate, but that wasn’t anything unusual, nor was watching Tommy douse everything on his plate in ketchup.
Sure, Adam and his parents got along better than most kids and their parents, at least from what he always heard. Perk’s parents, on the other hand, were pretty absent. They spent most of their days at their respective offices downtown … and come to think of it, Adam couldn’t even remember what exactly they did. He didn’t see them too often, and for that matter, neither did Perk.
That was why Perk was the way he was with Tommy.
And probably why he’d written “with my family” on the survey. And why Adam had put down that he had “two brothers” on his own.
Maybe both of those things were true.
Adam looked down at his list of people. Even though he had pulled the surveys and records up on his screen, those weren’t really what he looked at. He’d flipped through last year’s yearbook and tried to find people who had two things: motive and talent.
Option one: William Bubert.
Adam knew that he was one of Hill’s main targets at school and he seemed to spend more time locked inside lockers or with his underwear wedged between his buttocks than not, so he had motive. Adam didn’t know what else, but that could be enough.
Option two: Pearl Wagoner.
Talent and motive. Prettiest girl in school and, according to her survey, was second in the state violin competition last year. Adam didn’t care about the violin thing—it wasn’t going to help them. She’d dated Hill just a little bit ago, but they’d broken up. Despite the fact that she still hung out with his crowd at lunch, he suspected from the way she rolled her eyes at him or sat as far away from him as she could that there was no love lost. And no one could resist that smile. She’d be the perfect informant.
Option three: Max Lopez.
He wore cowboy boots to school every single day, making him another target for Hill. And though Adam wouldn’t have guessed it, he had a knack for poetry. He’d filled out his entire survey in poem format, which was pretty impressive. But, of course, that wouldn’t do them any good. Motive would, however, and three bloody noses during the first week back from Christmas break will give you enough motive to last the rest of the school year. Plus he was a cowboy and cowboys are tough, right?
Option four: Ray Richmond.
His round face looked up at Adam from his spot in the yearbook. Ray’s grades weren’t anything to hang on the fridge. And speaking of refrigerators, Ray was about the size of one, in height and width and probably weight. That was good. He’d be able to lift, push, pull, kick, or knock over anything they needed him to. He was also one of those kids that everyone just sort of forgot about. He was in the background—he never did anything special, and it didn’t seem like anything special ever happened to him. Unless you count getting kicked off the wrestling team. He was big, and strong, and overlooked. Most people thought he was dumb, too.
But Adam knew different.
There was that day in science class a few months ago. Their teacher, Mr. Lyman, was lecturing about something that Adam couldn’t remember now. What he did remember was watching Ray, who sat by himself at a table across from Adam, take one of the calculators that sat in a box Mr. Lyman had labeled “broken equipment.” Ray sat at the table and took apart the calculator and then put it back together again.
“What are you doing?” he remembered asking Ray.
Ray grunted, “Nothing,” and kept going.
After class ended, Ray pushed the calculator aside, picked up his pencil—he never brought anything else to class—and left. Adam picked it up, sure that it wouldn’t work.
He punched in two plus two on the keyboard.
Four appeared on the screen.
Yeah, Adam wasn’t usually surprised and he usually didn’t like being surprised.
But there’s a first time for everything.
CHAPTER 6
Perk
This wasn’t the first time that Perk had looked at all the student files, and it certainly wasn’t going to be the last.
When he’d first found a way to access them at the beginning of the school year, it was merely for the challenge of it—though it had proved easier than he had hoped. Then he’d become curious and actually looked at the files of his fellow classmates. And then his curiosity turned into a sort of game. He watched grades roller-coaster and tardies and absences go up as the school year rolled along. A surprising number of eighth graders unfortunately had grandmothers pass away; there were a lot of peanut allergies in the seventh and eighth grades, but the sixth grade had a lot of lactose-intolerant kids. And about seventy-five percent of the students in the entire middle school were either getting braces on, getting braces adjusted, or getting braces off every six weeks or so. He’d never thought of orthodontics as a career choice before, but it was looking like a pretty lucrative business.
In between watching (for the one-millionth time) Finding Nemo with Tommy and looking through the files and searching the surveys, Perk came up with three people.
Ray Richmond: He hardly ever missed school, got really good grades in sixth grade yet was barely passing in eighth. But he was big, and if they needed someone strong, he was their man.
Kate Pell, who Perk had had a crush on since first grade, seemed good at science and her mother was one of Tommy’s teachers. He didn’t really have any other reason to put her name in, but whatever.
Dutch Walker missed school a lot. He was one of Hill’s favorite targets and was one of the students whose grandmother had died. Even though his grades were so-so, it seemed like it was only because he did well on tests, since from the look of it he never turned in any of his homework.
Perk sighed and looked over at Tommy, who was laughing at Dory and Marlin meeting Bruce the shark, a bowl of popcorn in his lap.
It was like the time his parents went to Vegas and came back with five thousand dollars more than they went with. The next time his dad had said, “We’re betting big this time.”
They came back with ten thousand dollars less than they started with.
This was betting big.
And who knew what they were going to get in the end.
CHAPTER 7
Adam and Perk
“Did you pick anyone?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yep. Let’s read off one at a time.”
“Okay.”
“Pearl Wagoner?”
Silence. “The Pearl Wagoner? The beautiful Pearl Wagoner who was named most promising violinist or something like that?”
“Yep, that’s the one.”
“No way. She’s …”
“Just one of the nicest and hottest girls in the middle school? I know. That means she’s the perfect informant.”
“Are you sure? You know how those popular kids are. She might join in at first but then pull a Benedict Arnold on us.”
“I don’t think so. I’m putting her down. Who do you have?”
“Dutch Walker.”
“Dutch? The skinny kid with the face tic who basically lives inside his locker?”
“Yep.”
“That’s good. He’s got motive. But so does William Bubert. He’s on my list.”
“William Bubert ratted on me in third grade for selling lollipops at school. Don’t you remember? I lost forty-five dollars because of him.”
“Dutch Walker it is.”
“I also have Kate Pell.”
“Conflict of interest.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You’ve liked her since the first day of first grade.”
“What about Pearl Wagoner?”
“That’s different. I know when I’m out of my league. Besides, my heart only belongs to one.”
“Still hung up on Hermione Granger?”
“Still. Now who else?”
“Ray Richmond.”
“I picked him, too. I heard Parmar kicked him off the wrestling team.”
“Really? Ray would’ve won the season for them.”
“I know. Not very smart.”
“You have anyone else?”
“I do, but I think three is enough. You?”
“I think three is too many. So who do we have?”
“Pearl, Ray, and Dutch. You good with that?”
“Yep.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 8
Ray
Ray Richmond was big.
In every sense of the word.
His brother and dad were both big. So was his pappy, and his great grandpappy, and probably all the great-great-great-great grandpappies all the way down the line. If he was descended from Adam and Eve, well then, Adam must’ve been big, too.
When it was time for relay races in gym class, he was never picked first or second or even before the kid who licked his hands. But for games like red rover and tug-of-war, Ray Richmond was a solid choice.
He’d never been known for his brain. “Wow, that kid looks really smart” was not the first thing you thought to yourself when he walked toward you, and it was the last thing you thought as he walked away.
He’d stopped trying to convince people he was smart a while ago. Besides, what would being smart get him when he grew up and helped his dad run the mechanics shop? When they’d picked their elective courses for high school a week ago, Ray had just opted to join the CAT program and train to be a mechanic.
Force and Motion or the computer class that taught students how to design houses were probably stupid anyway.
His brother and father and pappy didn’t think too much of engineering or being smart or getting good grades on tests or doing homework. Ray passed all the tests, never did a lick of homework besides a few science projects that he found interesting, and went from one grade to the next.
And being big had its advantages. He was welcome on all the sports teams that needed a “hefty” kid, and they kept him on the team no matter if he did his homework or not.
Until two days ago, when he was cut from the wrestling team.
Up until then Hill Parmar had stayed clear of Ray Richmond, and Ray had really never noticed Hill except for his loud mouth.
When Hill Parmar joined the wrestling team, Ray found out that in addition to having a loud mouth he was also a bragging, cheating, bullying whiner.
At practice two days ago, they all stood along the mats waiting for their turn to take the center of the ring. Hill laughed and knocked his best friend, Seth, on the arm. “Dude, we missed you the other day after school. You should’ve seen the look on that retard’s face when he couldn’t find us.” He imitated someone starting to cry.
“So you asked him to play hide-and-seek and then ditched him?”
“Yeah, and it was hilarious, man. Locked him in a room. He started crying. Probably peed his pants. Priceless.”
Ray had been to the high school’s rundown classrooms where the special education program was held. He’d helped move some of the old furniture around and stayed to play chess with some of the students.
“You were picking on a disabled kid?” Ray asked Hill.
Hill’s eyes shifted and he shrugged. “Yeah, so? You like retards, Ray? Maybe because they’re so much like you?”
Like a rubber band, Ray snapped. He twisted Hill’s arm behind him, swept his leg, and flattened Hill onto the mat like a pancake on his pappy’s ten-inch griddle. Afterward, Ray wondered if he’d set a new record on the amount of time it took him to pin his opponent.
“How’s that for priceless?” he whispered in Hill’s ear.
Mr. Franco pulled him off.
And then Ray was cut from the team.
“Abusing innocent students in addition to abusing your place in our prestigious sports program is not something that I will tolerate.” Mr. Parmar had leaned forward on his desk. “You are no longer a part of the team, Mr. Richmond. In fact, I know the high school coach personally and after I talk to him, you’ll be lucky if you ever see a wrestling mat again.”
Ray hadn’t doubted what he said. He’d heard what Principal Parmar could do. How a few years ago he kept one kid from joining the high school football team and another girl lost a scholarship because of him. Ray didn’t know how he did it, but everyone knew that Parmar didn’t just hand out detentions, he handed out futures—good and bad.
The principal had stood. “And don’t forget about detention. I’ll be checking the attendance list, and if you don’t show, it’ll be an automatic suspension.”
Maybe he could’ve said something. Or maybe he should’ve said something. But in the end, Ray said nothing. He got up and left, not bothering to stop by his gym locker for his clothes.
He wasn’t sorry.
His dad would be mad, of course. But he was mad about most things. And Ray figured that if he was really so smart he should’ve remembered that, if you want to make it through middle school and hopefully high school, you don’t mess with Mr. Parmar or Mr. Parmar’s son.
Ray had temporarily forgotten.
Now Ray opened his locker, and a note fluttered to the ground. He picked it up.
Sick of being bullied by the Parmars? Please come to detention after school today. Room 207. Food provided. Just come in, sit down, and you’ll find out why.
Ray turned the paper over in his hands and then back again.
He knew that handwriting. At the beginning of the year, Ray had made a game of analyzing other kids’ writing. He’d been terrible at it at first (who would have guessed that Lisa had horrible handwri
ting or that Foster had the best cursive he’d ever seen, including his fifth grade teacher’s?) But after a while he was able to pick their handwriting out anywhere, whether it was on a bathroom stall, the lunchroom table, a note, or their anonymous votes for eighth-grade class president.
This one was pretty simple: skinny letters and a mixture of print and messy cursive.
But what did Adam Baker want with him?
He was headed for detention anyway.
Only one way to find out.
CHAPTER 9
Pearl
Pearl Wagoner was pretty.
And smart.
And funny.
And kind.
And talented.
Yeah, she had it all.
Pearl didn’t remember how she had started going out with Hill Parmar. Of course she’d noticed him because he was good-looking as far as eighth-grade boys go. But he didn’t wow her or anything. It just sort of … happened.
It must have been in science class, when Hill made her laugh. It was something silly, about a movie that they both had seen and liked. He had imitated one of the characters perfectly. And well, soon after that, she was going out with him.
He’d smiled at her, made her laugh, and seemed to like her, which was more than any of the other boys had done. Heaven forbid a white guy or a black guy like the biracial girl. It was either her friends telling her that so-and-so “isn’t allowed to date black girls” or he wasn’t asking her out because she was “only half black.”
So was she just excited someone finally did like her and that’s why she said yes? Sure. It felt good to be liked. Since she’d broken up with Hill, she’d heard a number of boys complain about girls only going out with the cute guys who were jerks. She had gone out with a jerk, she knew that. Besides, she didn’t see any guys asking Katie Pell or Andrea Michaels out on a date, and they were both really nice girls with great personalities.
She and Hill had been going out for a week when she’d gone over to his house and had dinner.
Mrs. Parmar petted Pearl’s hair. “Wow,” she said. “Is the curl natural?”