Last night she would’ve played “Melodie” from Orpheus and Eurydice. It was a slow song and her violin sounded like it was crying. She’d been at Sam’s, and Sari noticed she was upset.
“Is everything okay?” she’d asked.
Pearl had shrugged and mentioned that her parents had fought that afternoon.
Since that moment (not quite twenty-four hours ago) she’d gotten five texts from different people telling her that “divorce isn’t so bad” or “hope your parents work it out” and “bummer about your parents’ divorce.” They weren’t getting a divorce. Just because they fought sometimes—okay, more than sometimes—it didn’t mean divorce.
No, there was still reason for her to be hopeful. Her recital was coming up and her dad would be back from his trip and they would—all three—go together. Maybe they’d even go to the diner afterward.
Her hopeful song was “Spiegel im Spiegel.” It wasn’t happy sounding but it wasn’t sad, either, and made her think of when she’d flown in an airplane for the first time. It was storming and rainy and scary, the plane bouncing everywhere. But then they’d pulled above the clouds and it was sunny. She could see the lightning flashing below, but there was nothing but clear blue out her window.
Pearl’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, keeping it tilted just enough that no one could read over her shoulder.
BECCA: heard about parents. Sorry 2 hear it. hugs :-)
Of course everyone knew. She shoved it back into her sweatshirt. Who would be the next to get the news? Adam? Dutch? Maybe it would be broadcasted in the morning announcements? “Pearl Wagoner’s parents are fighting more than usual. Please text her your sympathies and advice.”
“So, let’s get this prank figured out,” Adam said.
Pearl brought her thoughts back to the room. The skipping song had died out and her sad song crescendoed inside her, her fingers on her left hand fluttering silently to the notes she knew by heart.
CHAPTER 20
Dutch
1. Get picked up from Adam’s around eight-thirty
2. Play cards (if Gramps wasn’t too tired)
His grandpa had given him some jokes before he dropped him off. He always had good ones. “Girls like to laugh,” he said. “That’s how I landed your Grammie.”
Dutch didn’t particularly like-like Pearl. Well, every guy did, but at the same time, he knew that she was in a different league, one that he couldn’t cross into. Pearl, the girl with the perfect brown skin who laughed at his jokes and who had played her violin at the Christmas concert and made it sound like it was laughing or crying or hopping. A guy with a tic doesn’t land that kind of girl.
And that was okay.
Dutch told his joke and she’d laughed so hard that tears had pooled in her eyes.
Yeah, she might not ever think of him in the way that he thought of her, but he could make her laugh and that was just as good.
Now, at Adam’s house, he glanced at Pearl and noticed something faraway in her look. It was the look that Gramps had when Dutch knew he was thinking of his grandma, picturing her in his head or remembering something she said. Pearl’s eyes were fixed on Adam, but he could tell that she was inside herself, miles away where no one could go. Was this how Dutch looked when he thought of things? Things like his grandpa and how he seemed to sleep a lot more than he ever did before. And how there were times that he’d forget something that Dutch knew he would never forget if he was his normal self.
Dutch looked back at Adam and squinted.
Adam continued on. “So now let’s talk about the rules.” He looked to Perk, who swallowed down a mouthful of chips.
“One,” Perk said, “no one gets hurt. Two, no property gets destroyed. Three, no one leaks. And four—”
“—It’s gotta be big.” Adam looked around at everyone. “It needs to hit home for Hill and the principal. Any thoughts?”
Silence.
“We should find out what they want. What they love … and hate.” It was Ray that spoke. Ray, who Dutch had only seen flatten players in football, foul players in basketball, and pin guys to the mat in wrestling. Then again, he was also the guy who had just played a chess game with Perk’s brother.
Ray’s voice had mumbled toward the end, and by the way his cheeks turned red, Dutch could tell that he had surprised himself as well.
Adam nodded. “That’s good. So that means we need to watch them, listen to them.” He leaned forward in his chair. “We need to split up. Me and Perk will be on the technology—e-mails, their computers, things like that. But we need people to watch what they do, where they go, and then listen in—conversations, phones, things like that.”
“I’ll listen in at lunch and keep an eye on Hill,” Pearl said. “I have a pretty good memory.”
Ray shifted a little on the couch. “Parmar’s supposed to bring his car to the shop this week. I’ll watch and listen.”
They all looked at Dutch. He squinted. “It makes sense for me to listen and watch Hill, too. I get a lot of chances.”
“Is that okay with you?” Adam asked Dutch. Pearl looked over at him. Heat filled his cheeks.
“It’s okay with me. I can take it.”
After that, Perk passed out a stack of hall passes to everyone. “Use these as much as you need.”
Dutch held the hall passes in his hand.
Five out of five days, he usually spent all his time trying to avoid Hill. He’d found different hallways, cut through the library or auditorium, and even started changing into his gym clothes in a bathroom down the hall—that is, when Hill didn’t steal his gym clothes.
Dutch knew what to expect. How long to hold his breath in the toilet. How to get out of a locker, and he had extra pairs of shorts and shirts stored in a maintenance closet. But it was still humiliating. Day after day of humiliating.
It was either reason enough to back out or reason enough to stay in.
Perk offered Dutch a high five. “Don’t worry. If you need anything, just talk to me or Adam.”
“Thanks.” He stuffed the hall passes in his pocket.
He was a part of something.
He was part of a group for the first time.
That was worth a hundred days of humiliation.
CHAPTER 21
Perk
“Mr. Irving,” Mrs. DeCampo said. “If you’ve finished the assignment for today, I hope you’re finding something interesting to work on back there?”
Perk glanced up from the computer screen and smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. DeCampo.”
She smiled back and nodded from her chair at the front of the classroom.
She was one of the few teachers who seemed to take notice of Perk, more than checking to see if his seat was occupied, so he’d always liked her. Besides, her class, computer lab, which he had on Tuesdays and Thursdays, was where he got all of his most important work done: i.e., changing grades, arranging schedules, reworking the cafeteria lunch menu, reordering stock for the vending machines, things like that.
She had something for them to work on every class, but he always finished the lesson first thing or sometimes before the day it was even assigned (it helped to have access to all of Mrs. DeCampo’s homework assignments for the entire year).
He had already finished today’s task and so had the whole period to get more information on Principal Parmar. It also helped that today was Tuesday. Mrs. DeCampo never walked up and down the row of students huddled over computers on Tuesdays. Instead, she’d just randomly call out students’ names and said that “if they were finished with the assignment she hoped they were finding something interesting to work on.” He’d realized this the first month of school. Thursdays were her day to walk up and down the rows for the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of class.
Because of her bad knees (which she was taking medication for), she was like clockwork.
Perk went back to work and ran the cursor over Mr. Parmar’s desktop. The screen was plas
tered with a big picture of himself next to his car, the 1966 Shelby Cobra that he treated like a baby. Parmar could sometimes be seen during the school day wiping the sleek side with a piece of cloth or rushing outside to chase away a group of robins sitting on a wire above the car.
Come to think of it, Perk hadn’t seen that telephone wire recently. That’s probably what the electricians were doing a few months ago.
He shook his head and clicked on Mr. Parmar’s e-mail. There were a few messages back and forth with the director of a place called Camp Beaumont, a few on cars and car shows and taking care of your car and the value of your car and everything else about your car.
Gold.
This was going to be more fun than he had thought.
CHAPTER 22
Adam
Adam grinned as the screen name—Hillisawesome—popped up on his computer. Well, he guessed it was really Hill’s computer … on his computer. It was confusing, but Perk had set it up and all that Adam got was that now he had Hill’s desktop, complete with a picture of Hill flexing his muscles, on his computer. He had to be careful not to make it obvious to Hill that he was being hacked, but he figured he was relatively safe since Hill didn’t notice too much of anything.
Adam could’ve waited until the evening to open up his laptop and get to work, but he was too excited. Instead, he brought his computer to the restaurant so that he could look at it during his break. He’d waited for a lull in the rush, and when his mom gave him the go-ahead, he stepped into his parents’ office.
“Fifteen minutes,” she’d said.
Adam laughed again at the screen in front of him. In addition to the picture of Hill and the screen name, which were priceless, Adam found a few stories Hill had written about a squirrel named Bing Bing who tricks the other squirrels out of their acorns and eventually makes his way to the top of the tree and becomes squirrel president.
Then there were the papers.
An English paper due next week that still had Philip Tan’s name at the top.
A social studies paper on propaganda during the Hitler regime written by Dutch. Adam could tell because of the lists. It had probably taken Hill longer to turn the lists into an actual paper than if he had just written it himself.
He thought about Dutch and the way he had looked at Pearl the other night. It was obvious that he liked her. And it almost seemed, with the way she blushed, that she liked him, too.
Adam’s mom popped her head inside the office. “You have about five more minutes, okay? It’s starting to pick up out here.”
Adam nodded. “Sure thing.”
Five minutes was enough.
When the door closed, Adam clicked on a file labeled Book Reports. Inside were written book reports on pretty much every book that the students had to read in eighth grade.
Adam dragged all the files into the trash and hit Empty.
It was the right thing to do.
He clicked on another file that had information on a camp called Camp Beaumont, “a camp for only the most prestigious students who excel in academics, deportment, chivalry, and athletics.”
Adam smiled and left the brochure open. He went to Hill’s e-mail and emailed himself the file, then covered his tracks by deleting the message from the Sent box. You never knew when Hill’s camp on chivalry, deportment, and excellence in academics would come in handy.
Adam scrolled through the e-mails just as a new message arrived in Hill’s in-box from Devin Howell—a kid Adam had found stuffed inside a locker once. It was a book report.
To delete or not to delete? That was the question.
Adam was just about to drag the file into the trash when he realized that Devin might be spending more time stuffed inside his locker tomorrow if Hill didn’t get the report.
He let it go.
Three minutes.
One of Adam’s favorite discoveries was a love e-mail that Hill had sent to three different girls he had apparently met at a Camp Beaumont informational meeting a month ago. It included things like “I can’t get you out of my mind,” “I’m hoping to help out with my local animal shelter this summer,” and “I can’t wait to see you.”
The only thing that he’d bothered to change were their names.
Priceless.
Adam glanced up at the clock. His break was over.
But before he closed down, he forwarded the e-mail to himself and then onto Michelle, Natalie, and Gigi so that they could all see what Hill was doing.
It was the right thing to do.
CHAPTER 23
Ray
Wax on.
Wax off.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t that old Karate Kid movie he’d seen on TV, and he wasn’t being taught by a Japanese karate expert, and he wasn’t going to get the car in the end or the girl. But, he supposed, in a way, he was learning how to get back at Parmar and Hill one swipe at a time.
Ray didn’t mind waxing the cars that went through his dad’s shop. It gave him time to think about stuff and he was good at it. The bonus was that for a few hours his dad, his pappy, and his brother left him alone.
“Make sure you’re thorough,” Mr. Parmar had said. “I don’t want a spot on it.”
Ray nodded and swiped at a panel that he’d already wiped five times already.
He had Mr. Parmar’s precious 1966 Shelby Cobra under the rag in his hand, and it was taking everything in him to keep himself from scratching off some of that shiny red paint.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t learned too much about Parmar by waxing his car. The principal loved his car, but Ray had known that for a while; everyone did. You could hardly walk by the car and breathe without Mr. Parmar rushing out and yelling at you for getting too close or swiping off the carbon dioxide that you dared to emit around the car. From the looks of the inside, he kept it pretty immaculate, too, except for a few Snickers bar wrappers.
Maybe that could come in handy.
Mr. Parmar, who had insisted on watching him wax the car in case Ray “treated his car like he did his wrestling teammates,” now reached for his phone.
Wax on.
Wax off.
He dialed a number.
Ray listened in.
“Hello, this is Bill Parmar. Can I speak with Mike please? Yes. Oh, hello, Cheryl.” He rolled his eyes and listened for a moment or two. “Well, the classroom isn’t that bad. I know you’re underfunded, but aren’t we all? Besides, I don’t have anything to do with the budget, that’s Mike and the other board members. Sure, it could use some renovations, but really, I think our money is best spent on the students who actually—”
Pause.
“Now, I didn’t say your students aren’t important. But they’re different, and maybe we can help them in different ways.”
Pause.
“I know my budget requests for the sports teams weren’t originally in the plan, but I can’t help it if the board decided—”
Pause.
“I didn’t persuade anyone. Well, we can talk about this later. I’m on a tight schedule, so if you would please just get Mike. I will. Why don’t you stop by my office this time.”
Mr. Parmar heaved a sigh. “Hi, Mike. Cheryl’s on a roll today. Her contract isn’t up yet, is it?” Pause. “I know. Well, look. I called because Hill is going to a camp this summer. It would be great for his application if he could have some volunteer hours logged in. Helping out at the special needs program would look great. Yes, I know it’s late in the year, but I—”
Mr. Parmar glanced over at Ray, pointed, and whispered, “It looks like you missed a spot” before continuing. “I was hoping that we could make another arrangement. Yes. I see that your daughter Amanda is doing well in school. That’s wonderful. But I’m sure you’d like her to do better, and you certainly wouldn’t want her to do worse, especially when we’re arranging high school placement classes right now? Yeah. No. English? I think that could happen. Hey, I appreciate it. Why don’t you send it to my office. Thanks, Mike, and congra
tulations to Amanda.”
Click.
His phone immediately began ringing.
“Hello, this is Bill Parmar.” Pause. “Oh, Mr. Braynard. Very nice to hear from you.”
The difference in his voice was obvious and Ray swiped across the side of the door, stepping closer to where Parmar stood so that he could hear better.
“No, we have not finished the application for Camp Beaumont yet, though I know that Hill is working on it. Taking his time, wanting everything to be perfect. You know how it can be with these overachieving kids.” Pause. “I understand. We will get that sent out by the end of this week. When would you like the video interview completed?” Pause. “I’ll have him start working on it right away.” Pause. “I understand. Thank you. We look forward to this summer as well. Good-bye.”
Mr. Parmar shoved his phone into his pocket, turning to Ray. “You done yet?” He looked up at the clouds gathering in the sky. “I don’t like to drive this beauty in the rain.”
Ray swiped, pretended he saw a speck, and swiped one more time. He stood up. “Done.”
Mr. Parmar inspected the sleek body of the car. He looked it all over, trying to find something wrong, but he wouldn’t. Ray was good at waxing, better than his brother and almost as good as his dad. He’d practically grown up with a rag in his hand and knew how to change oil before he could walk. Mr. Parmar grunted and then walked inside to pay.
Ray’s pappy limped out with the keys and eased himself into the front seat. “Good job,” he said, his voice raspy and his bottom lip stuffed with chew. “Almost as good as your dad, though not quite.”
Ray nodded his thanks at the rare sort-of compliment and tucked the rag inside his jeans pocket as his pappy drove the car to the front of the shop.
A minute later, there was the screech of tires as Parmar pulled out and zoomed to the intersection.
Ray pulled out a small spiral notebook and wrote four things down: Parmar’s obsession with his car, Hill volunteering with the special education class at the high school, budget and funding, and Hill having to fill out some application and creating a video to get into some sort of … something.
Five Times Revenge Page 7
