Reformed

by Justin Weinberger

  “Hello, Miranda,” says Alva.

  Miranda and the other girls are clones now that they’re head to toe in pink. Miranda’s the head clone, though. That much is clear. And she’s got her pant legs rolled up in a certain way and her sleeves cuffed cleverly, and on anyone else it’d look goofy, but on Miranda it looks cool.

  As they come closer, I can see a tiny fuzzy head poke out of a jacket pocket … and I realize that one of Miranda’s clones is that girl from the bus with the guinea pig. I watch the fuzzball grab a giant grape from its owner’s hand and snake it into the pocket again, and I smile at the girl.

  This time she scowls back at me.

  “For your information,” says the girl, “if your class hamster peed on you every day, he was probably scared to death of you. Did you ever even think about how he must’ve felt?”

  She turns her back on us and I burn with embarrassment as I wonder if she’s right. Louie didn’t hate us, did he?

  Alva sees my reaction and gives me a little shrug. “Don’t let her get to you, Ian. Carrie’s great with animals but she assumes that anything that walks on two legs is a total monster.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “I mean, she’s probably right,” says Alva, “but don’t worry about her right now. Keep your eyes on the cheerleader. Miranda is the most dangerous kid in this whole place.”

  “Is she?” Devon asks with interest as he flicks his eyes toward Miranda’s little gang of mean girls.

  Alva glowers darkly at Devon. “That girl is evil and she’s building an army of conquest. Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”

  “An army?” says Devon, very interested now. “Like, to take over the school or something?”

  “Mean-girl problems, huh?” Ash comforts Alva.

  Devon snorts. “If we’re talking about guys and girls? Let’s talk about how unfair these stupid pink uniforms are …”

  “Meaning what exactly?” says Ash, preening in his jacket.

  Devon rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s not fair making dudes wear pink.”

  “But pink’s totally okay for me because I’m a girl?” Alva demands. “Does it look like I’m any happier than you are about this situation?”

  He stares blankly. “I really can’t tell, Alva. Are you?”

  “Ugh, never mind.”

  “What’s even grosser?” I say. “Have you seen all the weird graffiti scrawled inside?”

  Messages from kids long gone, back to normal school or the Village—their words in permanent marker are all that remain of them now. Curses and insults and other stuff I can’t repeat in front of a famous inventor’s ghost …

  “I kinda like the weird graffiti,” says Alva. “Like: Right here inside my left armpit I found an amazing message from some girl whom I’ll never meet, telling me I gotta keep going. You know? It’ll be okay, just keep going no matter how hard it gets. And—well, it’s a little private after that. Some things are just between a girl and her left armpit.”

  “I kinda wish you had more things that were just between you and your armpit, Alva,” says Devon.

  Alva looks him up and down. “Seven point four,” she says. “Keep working on those insults, kid. You really want to be at an eight or nine around here.” She turns back to me and Ash. “Sometimes you get a little look at people sharing tiny pieces of themselves, you know? This girl could be in college right now, or in jail, or maybe dead. But she was here, and she had a story and a life. That’s pretty cool. You’re missing some pretty cool graffiti, dude. You should probably be a little more open-minded about stuff.”

  And with that, she pushes her garbage into her milk carton and shoots it into the trash can on her way out the door. She’s so smooth that nobody notices her swipe a handful of grapes with her other hand and sneak them into her pocket. A snack that would be perfect for befriending a certain furry mascot.

  The lawn behind the school has that fresh-cut–grass smell, and when the tree branches above it shift and flutter, sunlight and shadows play across the field like a swarm of butterflies. The smell of hot asphalt in the parking lot burns in my nose in a nice sort of way, and my lungs fill with this feeling of hope. I close my eyes and concentrate on breathing in and out, and for exactly thirteen seconds I can almost imagine that I’m back in my old elementary school.

  But then this crazy music blares from out of nowhere—a trumpet and a full orchestra.

  “Okay. What is happening right now?” Devon asks, even more confused than I am.

  “Oops!” We hear a woman’s voice. “Sorry, everyone! Hold on …”

  The teacher with the blue shimmer to her hair cuts right through the middle of our circle without looking up from the remote in her hand.

  The music gets louder.

  “Just—one moment,” she says. “Or two.”

  Clanging sounds come through the ancient, blown-out loudspeakers in the pavilion—flutes and oboes and xylophones and violins. It’s like something you’d hear at a carnival, if that carnival was taking place in a sewage treatment plant.

  “Okay! Think I’ve got it now,” she says, and aims the remote like she means it. “Cease this madness!”

  The music changes to a mariachi band.

  Everyone laughs, but Deadeyes takes pity and sighs. “You want me to try?”

  The teacher gives him the remote and when her sleeve lifts I can see those tattooed feathers running up her forearm. Almost as soon as the kid touches it, the music squawks and stops, with one last echo in the silent morning air.

  “Whew!” she says. “Much better. Thank you, Mr…. ?”

  “Jeremy,” says Deadeyes.

  “Thank you, Jeremy.” She smiles and sees us all in a circle around her, staring back at her. “Good morning, everyone! I am Ms. Fitzkopf—Ms. Fitz for short—and I will be your instructor for your first rotation in the discipline.”

  She continues across the lawn.

  “Don’t be shy now!” She summons us toward the big wood-planked pavilion and smiles. “We’re gonna have fun today.”

  “This is some weird new definition of fun that nobody else is familiar with, isn’t it?” Ash asks me.

  I take in the scene at the pavilion, which is pretty alarming. There are girls traipsing up and down the length of the planks in rhythm with each other. “You see that?” I ask.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know,” says Ash, “but it’s pretty alarming.”

  This is why we’re friends.

  Mark is the first to figure out what’s about to happen. Because Mark has a sister who takes ballet lessons. “Hey, guys? You’re not gonna like it.”

  “No,” says Devon. “They can’t do this to us.”

  “Devon, don’t panic,” says Mark. “We’ll get through this.”

  “She can’t be serious,” Devon repeats, not really hearing Mark’s words. “They’re already embarrassing us with these!” He holds his pink arms out at his sides, straight as airplane wings, like they’ll contaminate anything he touches.

  Ash and I look at each other uncertainly, and turn back to see that Ms. Fitz’s eyes have become very bright—filled with a fierce joy that she has stolen right out of our hearts.

  “Welcome to the first day of dance class, m’dears!” she says.

  “How many of you are old pros at this?” Ms. Fitz asks. “Hands up if you’ve ever taken a dance class before.”

  One hand shoots way up—a kid called Razan who’s so tiny and stick-thin that no uniform could possibly fit her. Several other hands follow less eagerly into the air.

  “Well,” says Ms. Fitz. “That is about to change, m’dears.”

  And so it comes to pass that I learn what a plié is, and a Lindy Hop, and the Charleston, and a whole lot of stuff that I’m not gonna list here because I’m starting to freak out thinking about it all at once, but the point is: I know things. I can never unknow them. And when the demonstration is over and it’s our
turn to practice, Ash turns to me.

  “There’s something bothering me, Ian …”

  “Tell me about it. What part is bothering you?”

  “Trying to figure out—what’s the difference between a ballerina in third position … and a superhero who’s gotta pee?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “I have no clue. What’s the difference?”

  His face breaks into a grin. “There isn’t one.”

  “What?” I ask. “How’s that?”

  And so he starts to paint me a picture of Batman in his superhero tights, standing in line for the bathroom, waiting and waiting. And he’s gotta go bad, so he’s crossing his legs and bouncing around on tiptoe, in his tights. Exactly like a ballerina.

  Suddenly I can see it, and I turn to Ash in complete awe. “You ruined Batman forever.”

  “Nope. Made ballet awesomer.”

  But then another idea hits me. “You’re right, Ash. It’s not a very big leap between the Bat and the ballerina. It’s only a tiny jeté …”

  “A tiny jeté?” says Ash, with a groan. “Why, Ian? Why?”

  “Because a jeté is ballerina speak for a leap.”

  He stares at me with an odd look, so I put my arms in a circle over my head and leap as far as my legs can stretch—demonstrating the dance move called a jeté. But I don’t quite make it.

  Tumbling to the ground, I groan.

  “No, Ian. No. I got the joke,” he says. “It’s gonna be part of my brain forever.”

  “Aww, come on,” I complain. “It’s a good joke. Work with me, here! I’m trying to make the best of this ‘discipline.’”

  And so we make the best of it. But our best is very, very bad. It’s more like some sort of comedy routine from an old-time black-and-white movie. You know, the kind where people injure themselves in funny ways—where we tell our band leader to “Play us off, Lou!” while we haul our battered bodies offstage to the jangle of ragtime piano, with our boater hats and our red-and-white-striped canes—

  In real life we don’t have the budget for a full band, though, or canes, or easy access to professional medical care.

  “I give up,” says Ash. “I don’t think we have a future in dancing.”

  “Yeah. Let’s never speak of this again.”

  “Deal. Never.”

  “Deny all knowledge.”

  “Done.”

  But then we hear a slow, sarcastic clap. Alva Anonymous has been watching us the whole time. “Oh my god, you guys are terrible,” she says.

  “Thanks,” says Ash, like it’s a huge compliment.

  “That looked pretty painful,” she tells us. “You want me to get the nurse?”

  “No way,” says Ash. “We’re cool.”

  “We’re totally cool,” I agree.

  “Not the word I’d use, dude,” she says with a slightly amused expression.

  “Ian? Ash?” It’s Ms. Fitz. “What are you guys doing over there? You’re supposed to be practicing the box step.”

  “Dancing is hard, Ms. Fitzkopf.”

  She smiles kindly. “Really, Ian, it’s not. It’s just, you have to be comfortable being you. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “And you can call me Ms. Fitz.”

  “Is dancing really a requirement for bully school, Ms. Fitz?” I ask.

  “No, Ian, dancing is not a requirement. Dancing is a privilege.”

  “Can’t I just write a report or something?”

  Before she can respond, we all turn at the sound of whoas—the whole discipline is focused on that movie-star guy with his hair like a helmet. He’s doing a break-dance or something, moving like waves crashing on the beach. He’s pretty intense, Tom.

  And Ms. Fitz is delighted. She claps, loud and proudly. “Oh, we have another star!” she says. “Well done, Mr…. ?”

  “Rembrandt,” says Razan, with absolute loathing.

  She scowls at him for all she’s worth, and she’s an Olympic-class scowler.

  “What do you call that dance?” Cole asks Rembrandt.

  Ms. Fitz shoves them together and says, “Cole and Rembrandt. Why don’t you two partner up, and you can discuss it while we learn.”

  “Partner up?” says Cole. “No way, I—”

  “It’s settled, Cole,” says Ms. Fitz. “Everyone else, find a partner!”

  When we all freeze, she adds, “If you don’t pick a partner fast, I’ll happily pick for you!”

  With that, the class rushes to find partners, except for Ash and me. We stay totally calm.

  “Cool,” we say at the same time. Because we’re always partners. For everything.

  But then I hear a bunch of mean-girl laughter, and I look up to see Miranda’s clones smirking as Alva slumps away with a burning blush. Miranda’s proud, toothy smile looks like it could swallow any one of us whole—but it’s Alva who she’s chosen to devour.

  “Hey. Do me a favor?” Alva comes toward Ash and me and stops a couple steps away. She takes us in and sighs. “Let me partner up with one of you for this dance thing, okay?”

  I can’t help but feel bad for her, Tom. Not having a friend here to partner with.

  “Come on, please?” she presses.

  Ash and I look at each other, and we’re in total agreement: We turn back to Alva and tell her that we’ve already got partners. Except that’s not exactly what happens. What happens is that Ash says, “Sure, why don’t you and Ian be partners?”

  I swivel my head back toward him.

  “It’s cool,” he says. “You two go ahead, all right?” He nudges me toward Alva.

  “Uh, all right …”

  But Alva folds her arms and takes a step back. “I’m nobody’s second choice,” she says.

  Oops. “Umm … but I didn’t—”

  And without waiting for me to finish, she adds, “How about it, then, Ash? Wanna dance with me?”

  She offers him a hand, and Ash’s gaze darts toward her with a smile. “Well …”

  “Later, Ian,” she says. “We’ll start over again next time.”

  “Yeah, all right.” Start over? What does that mean? I smile even though nothing about this is funny, and then I realize I’m standing there alone. Like the bad old days of being picked last in gym class.

  “Ian and Jeremy!” says the teacher when she sees us standing all by ourselves at the edge of the group. “Go on, partner up.”

  I look over at Deadeyes and feel a flood of anxiousness. He looks back at me with his awful, fiery eyes.

  “So …” he says.

  It looks like he’d rather spontaneously combust than dance a single box step—which is one thing we can agree on, I guess. Maybe there are more things we can agree on, Tom? Probably not.

  “Earth to Ian,” says Deadeyes. “Anybody home?”

  “Not me,” I say. “My home is very far from here.”

  “You got that right, man. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “And if you tell anyone about this,” he adds, “I will destroy you.”

  Just at that moment, Miranda screams in pain and that tiny girl, Razan, points right at Rembrandt. “He did it! It was Remy, I saw everything, Remy stepped on Miranda on purpose.”

  Everyone looks at Remy.

  “No way. She who blames it claims it,” he says right back. “Tell me somebody saw her!”

  Nobody answers. Miranda’s angry clones gather around, buzzing like bees and shielding her from Remy and Razan. The battle of wills has been waged—Remy’s glance could splinter glass. Razan’s glare could blister metal.

  “All right,” says Ms. Fitz. “Well, we were going pretty good there for a while, at least. You know what? This is a perfect segue into our next session.”

  “Our next session?” Ash asks.

  “Group therapy, m’dear!”

  “Oh,” he says. “Um, next question: What’s a segue?”

  She smirks and gestures for us to follow. “Come on and I’ll show you.”

/>   “They’re all yours now, Dr. Ginschlaugh,” says Ms. Fitz after dropping us in a classroom where all the chairs have been arranged in a big circle.

  “Thank you, Ms. Fitz!” booms a voice from inside an adjoining office.

  It’s that guy who looks like a discount bad guy. Only this time he’s wearing a shirt and tie. He drinks us all in and smiles.

  “Well then,” he says. “Who’s ready to talk about feelings?”

  It doesn’t take long to figure out that group therapy is going to be the most exquisite torture we’ll find here at reform school—it’s actually people bragging about their bullying—but I’m skipping ahead.

  “So welcome to group therapy!” our hairless leader announces. “Here, you can say anything you like. The most important rule is to be honest. This is a place for you to be totally honest. Brutally honest.”

  We fidget in our seats.

  “Who would like to begin?” he asks with a look around the circle. When he meets my eye, I break out in a cold sweat.

  And then he waits, like he’s expecting us to read his mind about what happens next. But that’s not how classes are supposed to work, Tom—it’s the teacher’s job to tell us about what we need to know for the test. That’s why they call them “teachers” instead of, like, “inquisitors.”

  And still? Much like the Spanish Inquisition, in group therapy the right answers are kept secret. You’re supposed to just know them, like by magic, and you’re punished with more torturous therapy if you do not.

  “Okay, fine,” Razan calls out. “I’ll go first. You know what the weirdest part of this whole ‘discipline’ is?” She’s pretty dramatic, Tom. “The very first thing they tell us to do here at reform school is the exact thing I did to get sent to reform school.”

  “Hold on,” says the girl next to her. “You got sent to reform school for talking about feelings?”

  “No.” Razan pauses for effect. “I got sent here for dancing.”

  “Oh,” says the girl. Then she frowns. “Wait. You got sent to reform school for what?”

  Razan fires a devilish smile at Rembrandt. He’s as far across the circle from her as he can get, I see. And something tells me that’s not an accident. “You want to tell the story, Remy?”