The Quick Fix

by Jack D. Ferraiolo

  “No?”

  “No. He’s only partially sure.”

  “Hey, thanks for stopping by,” I said. “You’ve really brightened up my day.”

  “Listen, from what I hear, Vinny wants this to go smoothly. And the reason he chose you is because, if something does happen, he figures you’ve got a pretty good chance of finding a way out of it.”

  “Nice to hear.”

  “The other side of the coin is that if something happens and you can’t find a way out, well … let’s just say Vinny won’t exactly be blowing through boxes of tissues.”

  “Not as nice to hear, but not exactly a surprise,” I said. “You think he’s a pro?”

  “The blackmailer?” Kevin asked, then shook his head. “Probably not. How many kids are? I just hope he doesn’t show up at the drop.”

  “He may not be a pro,” I said, “but judging from his note, I don’t think he’s stupid, either. He might be expecting some coverage from Vinny.”

  “He might. He might also show up just to pop you and send a message.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You want me to pray for you?” he asked.

  “Do you know any prayers?”

  “I know a few dirty limericks.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately, I know the same ones.”

  “Seriously, Matt … do you need backup?”

  I smiled. “That’s a dumb question and you know it. Of course I need backup. The problem is, I need my backup backed up too far to do any good.”

  “Well,” he said, standing up, “it was nice knowing you.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it was,” I said. “I wish I could say the same in return.”

  After the bell rang, I sat at my table, waiting for everyone else to file out of the caf. When I was the only kid left, I stood up and walked out into the hallway. Kids with the next lunch period started to trickle in past me. I barely noticed them.

  I walked over to my locker, grabbed the bag, then started making my way to the drop-off point. The hallways were deserted. I could hear the muffled sound of classroom activities behind the closed doors as I passed. The school day was going on without me; I just hoped that wouldn’t be a permanent arrangement.

  Locker 416 was at one end of the main hallway, the longest, widest corrider in the school. Classrooms flanked the locker on both sides, with a couple more across the hall. I stood in front of it, feeling very small and exposed, like a squirrel in the middle of an empty highway. I looked right, then left, to see if anyone was coming. I repeated this motion a few times, but I wasn’t obsessive about it. I’m pretty sure I kept it under fifty.

  Finally, after I had made myself good and nauseated, I stepped closer to the locker. I flicked my finger under the handle. The trigger snapped up immediately. The door swung open. I stepped back and checked the hallway three more times. No one was there. I shoved the bag into the locker, shut the door, and was about to spin the lock when I heard footsteps behind me.

  “Well, what do we have here?” It was Katie Kondo.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “We have a kid … that’s me,” I said, “in front of a locker … that’s this.” I rapped my knuckles on the locker a couple of times. “Any other questions?”

  “Get your hands off that lock,” she said.

  “Why? Afraid you forgot the combination?”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  Katie laughed, but it was an abrasive sound. “You think I’m here to pick up what you’re dropping off?”

  “I think it’s odd that you know I’m dropping something off.”

  “Really. Well, here’s a little newsflash for you: Someone finally got sick of your act, Stevens. Now, hands up, and step away from the locker.”

  I started to put my hands up but then quickly brought them back down and spun the dial, locking it. “Whoops!” I said.

  Katie shoved me aside, then spun the lock back and forth in a purposeful way. The latch went up with no resistance. The door swung open, and the duffel bag fell out at her feet. She picked it up, unzipped it, and looked inside. “Care to explain this?” she asked.

  “I was just about to ask you the same thing,” I replied. “So you just happened to have the combination to this specific locker, huh?”

  “Something on your mind, Stevens?” she snarled.

  “Yeah. I’m just wondering what you’re going to spend the money on.”

  Her face went red. She slammed her forearm against my throat and rammed me against the locker. “Accuse me of being crooked. Go ahead. You might wake up in the nurse’s office, if you wake up at all.”

  She let go of me. I didn’t rub my throat, even though it hurt like hell. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  “Hope you enjoy your week in detention,” she said.

  “Like hell I will. On what charge?”

  “Well, for starters, shouldn’t you be in class? And don’t go trying to use one of those phony hall passes, because it’s not going to work.”

  I looked at the clock behind Katie. The fire alarm was going to ring any second.

  “Who tipped you off?” I asked.

  “That’s the least of your problems.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong on both counts,” I said, trying to keep calm. “I think we have been set up. We have to get out of here.”

  “What’s this ‘we’ stuff, huh? You’re the only one I see in the hot seat, Stevens.”

  “Then you need a better thermometer. Come on, Katie! We have to get out of here!” I scanned the hallway, looking for the most likely spot for an ambush to come from. There were only about a thousand of them.

  “You helped my sister, Matt … no doubt. But your goodwill is all used up.”

  I gave a quick look over Katie’s shoulder. She must have been a little spooked because she turned her head to see what I was looking at. I used that moment to reach down and grab the duffel bag. I was almost able to rip it out of her hand, but she tightened her grip at the last second.

  “Hey!” she yelled.

  She yanked the strap, pulling me toward her, then grabbed my right wrist. I did a little under-and-over move with my hand, breaking her grip and grabbing her wrist all in one smooth motion. Before she could react, I pulled her toward me. I lifted my left forearm, and her face ran right into it. I was getting us out of there, even if I had to knock her unconscious to do it.

  One small problem: My forearm smash hurt my arm much more than it did her face. She looked more surprised than hurt when the blood started trickling out of her nose. Before I knew what was happening, I was slammed chest-first onto the floor, with my right arm shoved painfully into my solar plexus. She was leaning her weight into my face. Through one watery eye, I could see the duffel bag about six feet away from us down the hall.

  “You’re going to feel a lot of pain from this day forward, Matt. And hopefully, in a couple of years, you’ll regain the use of your right arm.”

  The squirt gun blasts came in quick succession: onetwo. Pow pow. I felt the grip on my arm go slack. My face had been squished against the floor, and it took a moment for the wateriness of my eyes to clear up. When they did, I saw Katie Kondo lying there with a giant wet spot on the front of her pants and Tim and Tina Thompson walking toward us, each holding a giant soaker.

  Katie was breathing heavily. Her eyes were glazed, filled with shock and panic. “I’m wet. I’m wet. I’m wet!”

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Tina purred, “you’re about to have a little company.”

  Tim ran over to me and started to pick me up off the floor with one hand; his other hand still gripped the huge soaker.

  I had one shot. I made it count.

  Whap!

  I hit him in the most sensitive of male areas. He went down, hard. His giant soaker clattered across the floor. I picked it up and pointed it at Tina. She started firing at me. I slid out of the way and fired back at her; not aimi
ng, just random shots. I missed. I started pumping the soaker to build up more pressure.

  Tina stopped firing and picked up the duffel bag. “Tim!” she cried. The panic was starting to set in. “Tim! Get up!”

  “Cheap … shot,” Tim said in between gasps and coughs.

  “Yeah,” I yelled as I pumped, “I’m going to have a tough time sleeping tonight.”

  He stumbled to his feet and started running off as best he could. Tina took off with the duffel bag in the other direction. I fired a couple more shots at her, but she was out of range. I thought about chasing them, but I had other things to deal with.

  “Wet!” Katie yelled as she walked quickly down the hall, looking for a place to hide.

  I ran up to her. “Run!” I yelled.

  “I’m wet! I’m WET!”

  “I know! Shut up and ru—!”

  The fire alarm rang.

  Before we could get very far, kids started pouring out of the classrooms. They saw us and froze. We tried to move, but there was nowhere to go. The idea that there might actually be a fire was forgotten; the only thing that mattered was that the great Katie Kondo, chief hall monitor, had a giant wet spot on her pants. And fire or no fire, the kids were going to send her to the Outs in style.

  “PEE-PEE PANTS! PEE-PEE PANTS!” The chant filled the hallway.

  I wanted her to fight. I wanted to help her, even after all the crap she’d put me through. But I had no idea how.

  Then she did something strange. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then pursed her lips and let the air out slowly. She opened her eyes. Her face was calm and expressionless. She gazed straight ahead, not out of fear or panic but in silent defiance. She started walking, and as she did, the still-chanting crowd backed out of her way.

  She was about halfway out when she stopped. She looked around, then made a quick, aggressive move … arms up, like she was going to throw a punch. The crowd flinched, as if everyone hiccuped all at the same time. They tried to chant and yell even louder, to make up some of the intensity they had lost, but you could tell they were forcing it.

  Katie started walking forward again, and the crowd parted to let her through. No one wanted to get too close to her. They were trying to intimidate her, but it wasn’t working … because she was still waaaay too intimidating. At best, it was a draw.

  But she was done as chief hall monitor. As defiant as she was, I was pretty sure she knew it. No one would respect her authority now. She had lost the battle, but watching her stride off, I wondered whether she was actually out of the war.

  Kondo was now in the Outs. On the list of things that I thought were going to happen that day, this ranked right after the Foo Fighters playing a concert in the cafeteria. It was obvious that everyone else in the school felt the same way. Kids were reveling in the news, not because they hated Katie and wanted to see her taken down but because it was the biggest event since Nikki Fingers landed in the Outs.

  I walked the hallways for an hour or so, feeling sick to my stomach, listening to the news bounce off the walls. As usual, most of the stories weren’t even half right. I didn’t intend to end up at Katie’s office, but apparently that’s where my feet directed me. The door was open a crack. I pushed it open wider, but only enough so I could slip in.

  There was someone sitting in Katie’s chair, but the back was turned to the door so I couldn’t see who it was. The chair started to swivel around. I tensed to jump, thinking it might be an assassin. It wasn’t. It was Melanie Kondo, Katie’s little sister. Melanie and I had gotten into a fairly serious scrape a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t seen or talked to her since.

  “Matt,” she said. She hadn’t liked me the last time I saw her, and it didn’t look or sound like her opinion had changed.

  “Mel.”

  “Come to gloat?”

  “No. You?”

  “Are you trying to tick me off?” she growled.

  “No, but apparently I don’t have to try. It just comes naturally.”

  She smiled a little, then seemed to regret it. She paused before she spoke again. “You were there when Katie went down,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I was there on a job. She showed up unannounced.”

  “What job?”

  “That’s not something I feel like talking about right now,” I said.

  Melanie made an unhappy face that I was well familiar with. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  I told her everything about the scene: the Thompsons’ well-timed appearance, the fire alarm, the rush of kids, and her sister’s response as she went into the Outs. She listened without interrupting; her expression remained neutral, as if I were giving her an oral report about Denmark instead of a blow-by-blow description of how her sister met her end. When I was finished, she stared at me for a moment, then swiveled her chair around so she could look out the window.

  “So what do you want?” she asked. “Why’d you come here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Listen, Katie and I almost never saw eye to eye. Neither have you and I—”

  “But?”

  “But Katie was a good hall monitor. With her out of the picture, I wonder how this whole school is going to hold together.”

  “Yeah, you and me both. So, why did you say you were there again?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She eyed me suspiciously, then sighed. “And I don’t have the authority to make you.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but no … no, you don’t.”

  “What if I did?”

  “Is this a possibility or a hypothetical?”

  “Both. There’s a void that needs filling,” she said, “and the principal is eyeing me for the ‘honor.’”

  She didn’t look happy about it.

  “Your sister’s pants aren’t even dry yet, and you’re taking her place?”

  “If the school administration has their way, yes. We Kondos have a legacy as hall monitors.”

  “Uh-huh. Isn’t that going be a little tough, in light of the events from a couple of weeks ago?” I asked.

  “You mean the fact that I popped Nikki Fingers?”

  “And then gave her sister, Jenny, a black eye and a fat lip. Yup. That’d be what I meant.”

  She smiled a little, as if she knew she shouldn’t enjoy the memory of messing up Jenny’s face but just couldn’t help herself. “They don’t know about it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The administration. Katie never told them. It was her last gift to me.”

  I sat down. I was having a hard time following the conversation and standing at the same time.

  “Katie cooked the books,” she continued. “Made it look like Jenny got in with the wrong crowd and picked a fight with the nearest hall monitor.”

  “You.”

  “Me.”

  “So you didn’t get suspension?”

  She shook her head. “Sick days. That’s what’s on record. Katie spread the word that I was suspended. Nobody knows.”

  “And now nobody cares … I didn’t think she had it in her.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “And you were okay with it?”

  “Did I have a choice?” she said. “Katie just did it. Maybe she wanted to keep me from tarnishing the Kondo name. Or maybe she just felt an obligation to me … I’ve been looking through her books. She broke a lot of ‘laws’ as chief, just to give some kids a second chance, sometimes a third.”

  My mind immediately went to Pete Kuhn, but I wasn’t sure if it was my place to talk about him. “Doesn’t seem possible,” I said.

  “But she didn’t like you.”

  “That sounds more like her. So, what are you going to do?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want the job?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Gerry Tinsdale is pretty excited about it.”

  “Tinsdale? Oh boy …”r />
  “You don’t think he’s up for it?”

  “I think he thinks he’s up for it. I also think he thinks he’s doing a good job now. Gerry needs to be introduced to the concept of reality.”

  She smiled again, as if she were glad to hear confirmation of what she already suspected.

  “I see now what she was trying to do,” she said. “I see why this was so important to her. I know what her plans were, why she lived the way she did, made the decisions that she made. She was unsure of herself, unsure of her beliefs, but only in private. In public, she was always decisive, always sure. I don’t know if I could be that.” She paused. “I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

  Her words hung there. I wasn’t an expert on Melanie Kondo, so there was no way for me to tell her what tasks she was or wasn’t up to. All I knew was that in one little conversation, my opinion of her had done a complete one-eighty.

  Just then the door opened, and Gerry Tinsdale walked in. He was sixty-five pounds of sneering petulance, and, by my estimate, twenty of those pounds were his badge and clothes.

  “Matt Stevens,” he said, as if my name tasted like cough syrup. “What are you doing dirtying up one of my chairs?”

  “From what I understand,” I said, “they’re not your chairs yet.”

  His ears started to turn a nice shade of crimson, like a ripe pomegranate. “This is the hall monitors’ office. In here, if I say it’s my chair, then you damn well—”

  “He’s here because I asked him to be,” Melanie said, interrupting him.

  “Great,” he said, trying to recover. “Now he can leave because I asked him to leave.”

  “I’m not finished with him,” Melanie said.

  “Tell me why that’s even a factor in this discussion,” he said, a fat smile planted on his skinny face. “Maybe you should take a sick day—you know, to think it over.”

  Melanie’s jaw tightened, and her eyes narrowed in a way that looked instantly familiar to me. Normally, her resemblance to Katie was hard to see, but it appeared as if Gerry had just found the recipe for bringing the Katie out of her. He must have seen it, too, because he took a step back.

  “So, you think you have what it takes to take over my sister’s job?” she growled.