Adam Canfield, Watch Your Back!

by Michael Winerip

  One by one they marched up. And then Mr. Devillio said, “A final round of applause for our gold medalists.” There were hoots and whistles, and kids were stomping their feet.

  “And that concludes the 32nd Annual Harris Middle School Science Fair. Thank you for coming. Have a safe trip home.”

  Parents and kids surged to the front of the auditorium, crowding up to congratulate the winners.

  Adam sat in his seat, too shocked to move. He was the only one still sitting in his row. This could not be. Something had gone wrong. His heart was pounding. It was impossible. Obviously they’d made a mistake. This was ridiculous. Come on. He knew what had happened. He jumped to his feet and pushed his way through the crowd.

  As he neared the front, he spotted Jennifer, who’d come down from the stage. “What’s going on?” she asked. “How could you not win? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah,” said Adam, “I’m pretty sure I know what went wrong. I’m getting it straightened out.”

  He crowded past her to Devillio. There were so many important adults around the man that Adam had to wait a long time. Everyone had to tell Devillio what a great job he’d done again this year.

  Finally, there was a break in the brownnosing, and Adam hurried over. “Mr. Devillio,” Adam said, “I think there’s been a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” said Mr. Devillio. “What kind of mistake?”

  Adam said he was pretty sure he’d won an award and asked Mr. Devillio to please look, in case there was an oversight.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mr. Devillio. “We had fifty medals and gave out fifty. But I’d be glad to check. What’s your name?”

  Adam told him and Mr. Devillio said, “Canfield with a C or K?” Mr. Devillio looked through the two sheets with the prize winners. “Don’t see it,” he said. “You can check yourself.”

  Adam tried to read the names, but could not make them out — his eyes were too blurry.

  “Now, everyone does get a certificate of participation,” Mr. Devillio said. “You’ll get yours later this week. They’re quite handsome. They have a raised blue seal . . .”

  Adam had to find this Mr. Buchanan; it was his only chance. Something evil had happened between the time Mr. Buchanan judged the project in the afternoon and the awards ceremony at night, and though Adam didn’t have a clue how it was done, he knew who had done it.

  Adam had to give the Devil his due — if Devillio had left any fingerprints, Adam couldn’t find them.

  Before school, Adam slipped into the main office, checked the teacher mailboxes, and got Mr. Buchanan’s room number. All morning between periods, he rushed to Mr. Buchanan’s room but never got to the man. Five times he tried and failed. Either Mr. Buchanan was in his room speaking to someone or he was in the hallway, hurrying people to class.

  More than once, Adam was sure he’d seen a flicker of recognition on the teacher’s face, but Mr. Buchanan did not give in to it.

  Hunting Mr. Buchanan between periods was awful, and Adam was repeatedly late for class. Two teachers — Devillio was one — gave him detentions. (If Devillio had known the real reason, Adam was sure he would have had to serve those detentions in a maximum security prison.)

  One more detention and Adam would get an in-school suspension. An entire day, sitting in a room, not permitted to go to class. He’d have to make up the work he missed, and worse, they’d call his parents. His mom and dad had been watching him like a hawk. He could tell they were worried that he hadn’t won anything at the science fair. They didn’t talk about it, but he knew they were scared the robbery had changed him.

  And the harder he worked to straighten things out, the deeper he sank.

  At the end of lunch, Adam spotted Mr. Buchanan again. The teacher was leaning against a wall, eating an apple, and joking with boys from the lacrosse team. Adam dumped his lunch and hurried along the back wall so Mr. Buchanan wouldn’t see him approach. He waited for the bell so there’d be plenty of commotion to cover him. As kids rose to leave, Adam stepped into the teacher’s path. “How you doing, Mr. Buchanan?” Adam said. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  Mr. Buchanan leaned forward so close, Adam could see every hair in his buzz cut. The teacher was chomping his apple and smiling between chews. “Listen good,” he said in a barely audible voice. “Don’t approach me again. Every time I turn around, you’re watching me. Stalking a teacher is a serious offense. I’d hate to have to report you to my department chairman.” Then Mr. Buchanan straightened up and in a loud voice called out to no one in particular, “Have a nice day.”

  How could Adam prove it without Mr. Buchanan? But then, for all Adam knew, this guy Buchanan was Devillio’s best buddy. Or worse, maybe, Devillio was his uncle. Adam never could tell what was holding adults together.

  He figured that Mr. Buchanan had been excited about the project, then talked to Devillio and was ordered to change the grade.

  Adam knew he should tell Jennifer. But he didn’t have the energy to lay out the whole tangled affair. He hated people who whined about their grades. When kids told him they deserved a better mark, Adam nodded. But what he really thought was they should try harder and bellyache less.

  That afternoon, Jennifer asked if he’d taken care of his science fair score, and all he said was, “Working on it.”

  Adam served one of the detentions after school, which made him late for baseball practice. Each piece of trouble led to more troubles. The coach wouldn’t be interested in excuses; he wasn’t the type. Adam would have to do laps around the field.

  The locker room was empty, always a creepy feeling. When the place was full of kids, there was so much talk, that’s all he thought about. Alone, he realized what a drippy, stinky place it was. He laced his cleats, pulled on his hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap (frontward — he didn’t need any more problems), then grabbed his glove and walked out to the field.

  It was drizzling and cold. Adam needed to break a sweat and started jogging. If at that moment he could have any wish, he’d wish to be home, in bed, taking a nap. Bad news wore him out.

  He passed the tennis courts and was thankful that the fence was covered with a green mesh; the last thing he needed was one of Jennifer’s cheery, yoohooey-Louie, wavey hellos.

  The girls’ softball team was scrimmaging on the near diamond.

  The boys’ team was those dots on the far diamond.

  And then Adam felt it, the voice. He felt it before he heard the words, the breath warm on the back of his neck. “Keep running,” the voice said. “Don’t turn around. I’ll say this once. You can come to my room at exactly 2:55 tomorrow. I won’t be there. You have exactly ten minutes. If I come back and anything is missing — if one paper is out of place — I will notify my department chairman. If I come back and there is a student in my room, I will detain the unauthorized student and notify my chairman.”

  That was it. He hurried past Adam, picking up steam as he raced toward the lacrosse team on the far field. Then he raised his stick and in a voice as loud and shocking as a plane hidden by the clouds breaking the sound barrier, he boomed, “YOU SCREW UP AND YOU’RE DEAD!”

  Adam saw all the lacrosse dots on the far field lift their tiny sticks and heard them roar back, “KILL!”

  The next twenty-four hours dragged unbearably. Adam worried that it might be a trap. He feared he’d be searching the room and Buchanan and Devillio would burst in, accompanied by security guards armed with Palm Pilots flashing Adam’s picture.

  Maybe he should give up. If he went there at 2:55, he’d miss serving his detention, which would earn him a third detention. And an in-school suspension. And a call to his parents.

  It might be time to admit defeat. He’d tried. It wasn’t his job to save the human race. Everyone seemed to agree that it was an unfair world. Outraged Single Mother. Mr. Johnny Stack. Danny. All those great authors Erik Forrest knew who drank themselves into a stupor writing bad movies.

  He wanted to quit, go home, sleep.

/>   But he couldn’t.

  He could not let the Devil get away with it.

  He found his running-club watch in the top drawer buried among his boxers and socks. At breakfast, as his dad listened to NPR, Adam set the watch to the radio time so it would be exact.

  As usual, his dad had a bad case of nose trouble. “What’s going on?” he asked. “A watch? We having our annual spring punctuality drive?”

  “Very funny, Dad,” said Adam. “You’re a riot.”

  “Adam, seriously,” said his dad. “You’re not having late problems again, are you?”

  “Oh no, Dad,” said Adam. “No way. As a percentage of my problems, late problems are way down there. I’d estimate less than two percent of my gross national problems.”

  He grabbed his lunch, kissed his dad, and hurried to catch the bus before his father got to the follow-up questions.

  The moment he entered the room, he planned to activate the stopwatch option for ten minutes.

  The door was closed, the shade drawn, but when he turned the handle, it opened. He stepped in and eased the door shut.

  Now what? He did not know what he was looking for but was hoping it would be obvious. He glanced around. Nothing stuck out. He looked at the front board. It appeared to be a normal lesson on genetics. He thought of crazy stuff — like the first letter of each line might be a secret code. But even mixing up letters, he couldn’t think of anything that MGDHHPL spelled.

  The computer was off. The tables where students sat were empty, except one on the far side by the windows; a notebook was leaning against the gas jet. He hurried over, but it was just some kid’s lab book.

  In the front behind Mr. Buchanan’s desk were two filing cabinets. He figured he’d start with S for science fair. But when he tugged, the drawers were all locked, except the bottom ones, which were full of lacrosse balls and duct tape.

  He glanced at his watch. What an idiot! He’d forgotten to set the stopwatch option. Some behaved with grace under pressure; Adam got stupid. It was 2:56, so he set the stopwatch for nine minutes, but when he flicked back, the time said 2:57. Idiot! The stopwatch wasn’t exactly coordinated with the time.

  He checked the top of Mr. Buchanan’s desk. In the center was a binder of lesson plans that he flipped through quickly. There was a file of notices from the main office, a file for lockdown procedures, a file of lab safety guidelines, a file of takeout restaurant menus, a file of the middle-school sports team schedules.

  There was a file of photos, including one of Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Lummus, a pretty English teacher, which would have made a nice item if the Slash had a gossip column.

  There was another photo of the science department staff that made Adam’s eyes bug out. Someone had drawn horns and a pointed tail on Mr. Devillio.

  This was hopeful, but it made Adam even more desperate to find whatever he was looking for.

  The stopwatch option said 7:58 left.

  It wasn’t exact.

  He was going through stuff on top of the desk with one hand and trying desk drawers with the other. The middle one was locked, as were all three on the left.

  So he wasn’t looking down when he felt the bottom right drawer respond to his tug. He expected to see mouthpieces and jockstraps — this Mr. Buchanan definitely was no Gregor Mendel. But to Adam’s surprise, there was a stack of manila folders.

  Please be it, he said to himself before yanking out a folder.

  It said SCIENCE FAIR JUDGING. Adam’s heart was pounding. Inside were all Mr. Buchanan’s pink sheets, the triplicate forms judges saved for their records. They weren’t alphabetical, and Adam frantically searched, finding his form near the bottom.

  His eyes raced down the scoring sheet.

  The rubric had over a dozen categories to be graded: abstract, summation, poster display, originality, verbal presentation, research technique. All Adam’s scores were 70s. He strained to see if any of those 70s might have started as 90s, but they hadn’t.

  Rifling through the sheets, he noticed the aquifer project.

  The kid got an 82, better than Adam.

  That was it. This was too crazy. He had to get out of there. He closed the folder and put it back in the drawer.

  That’s when he noticed. There was a second folder, a skinny one. He could see pink inside, and when he opened it, there was one score sheet.

  Adam’s.

  Every score was high 90s.

  The final grade was 98.

  He knew it. He knew it!

  The stopwatch option said 4:48 left.

  It wasn’t exact.

  He grabbed the two pink sheets and raced for the door. He had to find a copy machine. Where? The main office! Too many people, too many questions. The Slash copy machine? No one had refilled the toner for months. Adam had tried to make that Phoebe’s job. He’d explained to Phoebe that because she was a cub reporter, to earn a place on the staff, certain menial jobs were expected of her.

  Phoebe had called Adam a blatant sexist and stomped out, and nobody had refilled the toner since November.

  Never in his life had Adam so desperately needed a copy machine. Mr. Brooks! His world history teacher. Mr. Brooks loved Adam. He had stood by Adam during the Marris investigation. He was the social studies chairman. He’d let Adam use the department copy machine in a second.

  Adam raced to Mr. Brooks’s room, stopping in the doorway to catch his breath.

  The stopwatch option said 3:21 left.

  It wasn’t exact.

  Mr. Brooks was at his desk, correcting papers. Adam loved this man. Even sitting alone after school, his suit coat was buttoned. And he was writing comments in the margins; no rubrics for Mr. Brooks.

  Mr. Brooks looked up, smiled, and welcomed Adam in his favorite dead language. “Salve, amicus!”

  Adam quickly explained that he needed a huge favor fast and asked to use the copy machine.

  “Salve, amicus,” Mr. Brooks repeated.

  “Salve, amicus,” Adam mumbled. “Please, Mr. Brooks.”

  “It’s not anything . . . you know . . . ?”

  “Nothing dirty,” said Adam. “I swear. It’s for the Slash. Please, Mr. Brooks, I’m on a tight deadline.”

  “Tight deadline?” said Mr. Brooks. “Isn’t the Slash a monthly?” He got up, and they headed to the social studies office down the hall. Adam knew it had to be his imagination, but Mr. Brooks seemed to be taking baby steps. “Please hurry,” Adam said.

  “Festina lente,” said Mr. Brooks. “Haste makes waste.”

  “He who hesitates is lost,” said Adam.

  “Maxima enim, patientia virtus,” said Mr. Brooks. “Patience is a virtue.”

  “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” said Adam.

  “Oh, Adam,” said Mr. Brooks. “Non uno die Roma aedificata est — Rome wasn’t built in a day.” He lay the first pink sheet on the glass, pulled down the cover, and pressed PRINT.

  A yellow light flashed. “Out of 8½-by-11 paper,” said Mr. Brooks. “It’ll take a minute to replace.”

  “Please, Mr. Brooks,” said Adam, “can’t we just use 8½-by-14 legal size?”

  “Adam, I’m surprised,” said Mr. Brooks. “Such a waste of trees. I thought from the story on the three-hundred-year-old tree that the Slash was pro-tree.”

  “Mr. Brooks, remember you taught us about Magellan and how he had to go to that dopey teenage king and beg him for a fleet of boats to go around the world?”

  “Very good, Adam. King Charles I of Spain.”

  “Remember you told us how desperate Magellan was to restore his good name after his troubles in Morocco and how he’d do anything to get his reputation back? Well, I’m begging you, Mr. Brooks. Give me the boats. I need the boats!”

  “All right,” said Mr. Brooks. “I get the message. Two 8½-by-14 boats coming up.”

  Adam grabbed the copies, shouted his thanks, then raced back to Mr. Buchanan’s room.

  The stopwatch option said 53 seconds.

  It wasn�
�t exact.

  He raced to Mr Buchanan’s desk, opened the bottom drawer, put the pink sheets back, closed the drawer, and raced to the door.

  The stopwatch option said 28 seconds.

  It wasn’t exact.

  A miracle — he’d done it.

  And then he heard Mr. Buchanan’s voice in the hallway; the teacher was talking to someone. Devillio?

  The stopwatch option said 20 seconds.

  Why wasn’t it exact?

  Adam frantically looked around the room. He could hide under a table. That was stupid. There was a supply closet in back, but if the door was locked, he’d be done; they’d be in the room. The buzzer on his stopwatch sounded.

  The knob was turning.

  He hopped on top of the built-in bookcases that lined the far wall. He lay flat. And then he rolled out the window.

  The phone rang at seven thirty the next morning as they rushed to get ready for work and school. With a call that early, Adam’s parents feared someone was ill.

  Adam feared the call would make him ill.

  His mother took it, and Adam could tell she definitely had not won the Publishers Sweepstakes grand prize.

  “We are breaking new ground,” she said, hanging up. “That was the dean of discipline. Seems you’re in big trouble, young man. One of us has to go with you to get you back into school. Adam, this is unbelievable. Were you going to say anything?”

  Adam was trying to think fast. He didn’t want to say a word until he found out what they had on him. There were lots of possibilites. Fortunately, he was catching a cold. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose hard. Maybe it’d generate some sympathy.

  Right.

  “Suspended!” yelled his mother. “You, Adam Canfield. Honors student. Four-pluser. Don’t you have anything to say? Aren’t you sorry?”

  Adam was delighted to be sorry; he just needed to know exactly what to be sorry for. He hated manipulating his parents but had no choice. He dropped to one knee, lifted his arms high, and hollered, “What did I do? I didn’t do anything. Just tell me one single thing I did.”