Reformed
Page 8
“Nobody is completely innocent,” says Devon. “All of us have been guilty at some point, and we all need a friend to stand up for us sometimes. Someone who isn’t afraid to step in when we’re in trouble—”
The teacher clears his throat. “Devon …”
“—even if that means being a little bit of a bad guy. You know what I mean, Dr. Ginschlaugh?”
Devon matches Ginschlaugh’s gaze. There’s a split-second pause and it seems like he and the doctor are battling on a whole other plane.
Like maybe there are invisible arcs of electricity all around us, and these two are testing the other’s defenses—and for the first time I think that maybe having a villain’s henchman in charge of this discipline is a pretty decent idea …
But then Devon laughs like it was all a joke. “Yeah,” he says, “I know you understand, Ginschlaugh. That’s one of the things I respect about you. You’re not afraid to be a bad guy, if it’s for a good reason.”
Ginschlaugh keeps his eyes on Devon. He smiles in a chilling way. “No. I am not afraid of being a bad guy.”
“Neither am I,” says Devon. He refuses to be the first to break eye contact. And in that one moment, the way I see Devon changes.
As we file out of the classroom, I get the feeling I am not the only one who sees him differently.
At lunch there’s a silence in the air—a danger.
The bullies around us are on edge, like animals before an earthquake, until suddenly a commotion breaks out a few feet away. I turn just in time to see a swarm of girls descending on my table. At the center of the group is Miranda. The biggest bully in the school looks at the four of us and smiles wide enough to swallow us whole.
“Hello, gentlemen!” She puts her tray down on our table. “Mind if we join you?”
When Miranda sits down at our table, the entire dining hall of under-fourteens feels a rumble. I look at Ash and ask a silent question—Was that an earthquake?
But it wasn’t an earthquake. It was just Miranda’s tray hitting the lunch table.
“What’s your deal, Miranda?” says Alva.
“Oh! Amazing Alva is here too?” says Miranda. “What a nice surprise.”
Alva doesn’t bother looking up. She just pushes food around on her plate and grumbles, “Don’t you have some more girls to brainwash or something?”
“We’re actually pretty selective about who we brainwash,” says Miranda, without the slightest irritation. “First thing: They have to have actual brains.”
Miranda turns back to Devon.
“You know, we were very impressed with your confession,” she says with raised eyebrows. “A speech like that, in a school like this? You must be … very brave.”
“I’m glad someone around here appreciates my work,” says Devon.
“Oh. I appreciated every word,” Miranda tells him, like it’s a challenge or something.
“Good,” says Devon. “What’s the point of threatening a room full of people if none of them even know that’s what you’re doing?”
She smiles like a vampire.
“It can get a little lonely, can’t it?” she asks. “Not having someone who understands you.”
“It can,” admits Devon.
“Well. You’re not alone anymore.”
And Miranda’s amusement grows as she and Devon recognize each other as equals. The two of them, completely in tune. Like me and Ash. Only four thousand percent more evil.
Having lunch with Miranda changes some things for the better, if I’m being honest—like how older kids stop “accidentally” splattering milk across our food, or shooting straw wrappers at us when nobody’s looking. But some other changes are less than great—like how Devon shoots me and Ash angry looks when we make bad jokes, or how the clones keep pushing us farther and farther down the table. After a while, I find myself just staring at my Jell-O as it wriggles and thinking that I understand exactly the way it feels.
Sitting with the cool kids is no fun, Tom, and it gets worse every meal. This one fateful breakfast, Ash and Alva and I are the last ones stumbling through the food line, and by the time we get to the table, there’s only a little room left. A sliver of bench that’s barely a butt and a half wide.
“S’cuse me,” says Ash. “Could you guys move down a little?”
Nobody looks up.
“Um, guys?” he says.
“Okay, we know you can hear us, clones,” Alva growls.
The clones still don’t look up.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” I say to Ash.
“On three?” he says.
And so we slam down our trays and squeeze in at the table at the exact same time, elbowing the clones to make space for ourselves.
Their whines move down the table like dominoes:
“Hey!”
“Eew.”
“What’re you doing?”
But now it’s our turn to pretend we don’t notice.
“Can I have some of your syrup, Ash?” Alva asks, dipping a waffle without waiting for an answer.
“Look, why don’t you sit with someone who actually likes you, Alva?” says a clone named Grace.
“This is our table,” says Alva.
“Right,” I agree. “We were here first.”
“Were you?” says another clone on the opposite side. “Doesn’t look like it.”
I look up and see Grace staring back at me from a whole different seat.
“Wait,” I say. “Weren’t you just sitting over there?”
I point back at the first clone and Olivia is there, looking unimpressed. Ah! Clone trickery.
“Get it together, Ian,” Olivia says.
Then the teacher is there.
“All right, kids,” says Ms. Fitz. “What’s this now?”
“Alva pushed us out and took our seat,” says Grace. “She says it’s her table. Like she owns it.”
“Alva?” says Ms. Fitz.
“Come on, Ms. Fitz,” says Alva. “You’re one of us, aren’t you? You know what it’s like dealing with … the herd mentality.”
Ms. Fitz folds her arms. “Alva, if you can’t figure out how to deal with people better, you are going to miss out on a lot of pretty great stuff in life.”
Alva looks shocked at Ms. Fitz. Without another word, she grabs her tray and storms off to a table that’s been abandoned due to spilled fruit punch.
“Alva? Wait up,” says Ash.
And as he gathers up his food to leave too, I catch Devon’s smirk vanishing. He whispers to Miranda, and for a second her expression darkens, but then she waves our way.
“Guys, there’s been a misunderstanding, I think,” she says. “We can still fit you.”
She gestures to the table where there are now two pristine, wide-open spaces for Ash and me.
But Ash just turns away, and I follow, joining Alva at the sticky table. For the rest of breakfast, I can feel my neck prickle under Devon’s furious gaze. I think it’s the most attention I’ve gotten from him in my entire life.
On the bus to the hospital, Mark plops into the seat behind me and Ash.
“So,” he says, like he’s got something on his mind. “I guess we need to talk about what happened this morning.”
“I guess so,” says Ash. “Because I never asked to sit at the cool table.”
“I don’t like it, either,” I agree. “Let’s not do it anymore.”
Mark goes quiet for a second, thinking. “Okay, look. Why don’t you start by telling me what you don’t like about it?”
“Did you see how horrible they were to Alva?” Ash demands.
Mark nods, calm as a grown-up. “That’s why she doesn’t like it. Why don’t you like it?”
The way he says it makes me kinda want to puke, but instead of losing my oatmeal I spew out my complaints. “We can’t make jokes. We can’t be ourselves. We can’t hang out around all those guys.”
“Okay,” says Mark. “Is that all?”
I shrug.
“You’ll talk to Devon?” says Ash with surprise.
Mark nods. “Let the horrible jokes begin.”
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” says Mark. “But I still need to talk to you about the favor I came to ask …”
“And what is this totally unrelated favor?” says Ash.
“I need you two to stop hanging out with Alva.”
Ash and I wait for Mark to make a joke or something—but he just lifts his eyebrows. “Guys, I’m serious,” he says.
“Well, the answer is absolutely not,” says Ash.
“Yeah!” I say. “I mean: Yeah we won’t, not yeah we will.”
“You don’t understand,” says Mark. “This isn’t a debate. You guys have to stop hanging out with Alva, and you’ve got to do it right now.”
“Is this because of Miranda?” I ask.
“No,” says Mark.
“Because Alva was our friend first,” I remind them.
“We met everyone at the same time,” says Mark. “Just because it took longer to get to know Miranda—”
“Devon is out of control,” Ash breaks in. “This is turning into the Max situation all over again.” He stands up, but Mark drags him back into the seat.
“We’re not done talking about this,” says Mark.
“Let go of me. I’m gonna go tell him that he needs to quit all this elementary school stuff.”
I love Ash. I love Ash so much.
But Mark just shakes his head with a weird little laugh. “Oh, Devon’s done with the elementary school stuff,” he says. “He and Miranda are like … feeding off each other or something. This morning, when you guys left? They spent the whole rest of breakfast scheming up ways to get Alva sent to the Village.”
Tires screech in my brain. “What?” I say.
“Yeah,” says Mark.
“No way. They would never …”
Mark looks at me. “You sure about that?”
“Well, Devon wouldn’t,” I say.
He still just looks at me.
“Would he?” I ask.
In the silence that follows, the blood rushes to my ears with a sound like a wolverine gargling, and I glimpse this swirling vision of the future: of Alva being thrown into a jail cell. Of the door going slam! and Devon and Miranda looking on with nightmarish cruelty as they sneak a behind-the-back low five.
I feel the desire for a tiny, locked bathroom stall, but keep it to myself.
“Guys,” says Mark. “I’m fixing it, okay? I just need you to stop hanging out with Alva so I can tell Devon you stopped hanging out with her. Then I can convince him she’s not a threat. Please, just trust me—it’ll all go back to normal soon.”
Ash sighs and I can tell he’s thinking about knuckling under. “This sucks, Mark.”
“I know—you have to do it though. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened to Max, do we?”
“But there’s gotta be another way to get Devon to stop,” I say.
“Sure, okay,” says Mark. “You want to tell the teachers and get him sent to the Village, or should I? Because that’s our other option, Ian.”
“Look,” says Ash, “you don’t have to be—”
“No, you look,” says Mark, as he gets up and climbs down the stairs to the curb. “I’m done arguing with you about this. If you two hadn’t left the table today and sat with her over us, maybe none of this would be happening right now.”
“You’re saying that this is our fault?” says Ash, leaping up to follow Mark.
“Who cares whose fault it is?” says Mark. “We just have to deal with it.”
We push through the employee entrance of the hospital and down a long hall where we have to whisper because everything echoes.
“Devon’s pissed, guys. He’s pissed at Alva and he’s pissed at you for not being pissed at her, and I think he’s even kinda pissed at me for some reason, which isn’t really fair …”
“Yeah,” says Ash. “You’re the real victim here. Life’s so unfair to poor Mark Wheeler.”
“Guys, come on,” Mark says. “I’m trying to help her. I’m trying to help everyone.”
Ash just shakes his head. “I have to go deliver the mail now,” he says.
“Wait,” I say. “We gotta figure out a plan …”
Ash doesn’t even turn around. He just calls back as he walks away. “Yeah, let’s definitely keep talking about this!”
Mark and I watch him round the corner. “You need to talk some sense into that guy,” he warns me.
“Can’t you come up with a better way to fix this?” I ask.
“I don’t have any other ideas,” he says as he starts walking away too.
“But it’s what you do … ,” I call after him.
He stops for a second and turns back to me with his arms spread wide. “Do the right thing, Ian! Alva doesn’t need you. We do.”
And when I’m standing alone in the hospital hallway, I hear a squeaking sound—it’s the saddest sound in the entire universe, and it makes me want to start laughing. I turn to see a kid emerge from his room, pushing a cart ahead of him with a bunch of cables dangling from it. For a second I think it’s some big medical contraption, but then I realize it’s his movie projector.
“Viet?” I say.
“Ian!” He powers on, heaving with exertion just from walking.
“What’re we doing today?” I ask as I help him steer the cart down the hall.
“I wasn’t gonna bother you with it. I overheard what you and your friends were arguing about.”
“I could deal with being bothered,” I tell him.
He brightens. “Well. I’m heading to the dayroom. And I’m attempting to hack together a home-brew 3-D screening of Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder.”
“Seriously?” I say. “That’s awesome.”
“You have no idea what that is, do you?”
“No.”
I help him set up the dayroom like a theater, with all the chairs in rows, and all the sunshine sealed out so it’s pitch-black when the lights go down—which is a little confusing to the half-dozen other kids who are in there with us. Viet promises they’re in for a treat and they ignore him, like this isn’t the first time they’ve heard that promise.
“So, before—you heard everything?” I ask him.
“Couldn’t help it,” he says. “It seems … pretty screwed up.”
I just laugh. “I can’t deal with it anymore, Viet.”
“The only thing you can’t do is drink an entire gallon of milk at once.”
“Or eat a whole teaspoon of cinnamon,” I say back.
“Or stay awake through an entire Hitchcock movie,” he teases me.
“Hey, I woke up for the end of that one.”
“Which one?”
“Where the guy’s hanging from the end of President Lincoln’s nose.”
“You mean from Mount Rushmore? North by Northwest?”
“Yeah, that.”
“You didn’t even get the ending,” he scoffs. “I had to explain it to you.”
“Whatever, it was dumb the way it ended.”
“Dude!” says Viet. “Hitchcock was making a comment—wait, you’re messing with me now, aren’t you?”
I grin. “It’s fun when you get all worked up.”
He drops his head and mumbles, “Hitchcock is a genius.”
“You’ll be way better one day, Viet,” I say. “Your movies will actually make sense. Or at least they’ll all be in color, anyway.”
“It’s time to go, Ian,” Nurse Norse calls before I know it.
“Already?”
“Ash, you too,” the nurse motions across the room.
And that’s when I see Ash hiding in the corner, playing this card game the older kids taught us at JANUS. It’s a game called slap where you have to slap a pile of cards really fast, and sometimes it get
s kinda intense.
This game isn’t intense, though. Ash is just showing a younger girl the ropes.
“Aw, man!” she says when Ash points out that she forgot to slap the double sevens.
“Well, let’s go ahead and slap on the count of three,” he says.
Her face turns into a huge grin. “One,” she says. “Two—” And before she gets to three, she slaps. “Mine!” She scoops up all the cards.
“Nice one!” says Ash.
She scowls. “Are you going easy on me?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Don’t go easy!” she complains.
“You just find some more kids and practice while I’m gone,” says Ash. “And tomorrow, when I come back …”
“Sweet vengeance!” she roars.
Ash looks up at me with a big grin. “I taught her that,” he says.
“It’s pretty great,” I reply.
And then, as we’re walking back, I feel my feet getting heavier. And heavier. And maybe I slow down a little …
“I know,” says Ash. “Is it weird that I want to stay in the hospital instead of going back?”
“No,” I say. “Wanna see if we can hide out?”
“What about Alva though?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Ian. What’re we gonna do?”
“Do you think Devon would really get a kid sent to the Village?” I ask.
We walk toward the bus in silence, and Devon and Mark come up from behind and hurry past, joking like everything’s fine.
That’s when Ash makes his decision: “Listen. I’m not letting anybody bully me into not sitting with my friend. Let alone someone who’s also supposed to be my friend.”
“Well,” I say after a moment, “then this is going to be fun, isn’t it?”
“Mmm, looks great tonight, right, guys?” says Mark as he follows way too closely behind Ash and me through the food line in the dining hall. He sticks to us like glue, hurrying us over to our still-empty table.
“And here we are,” Ash says drily.
“Safe and sound,” I agree.
Ash and I look at each other, and at the same time, we move apart to save a place for Alva in between us.