Force Out (12 page)

What if he
aced
Mr. Kratz's test.

Mr. Kratz talked about his test the way a father speaks of a favorite child, now grown and off on his own. No student had ever been worthy of Mr. Kratz's test. That's what he said the very first day of school back in the fall, not as an insult but as a challenge. Joey recalled that first day.

“No one
has
done it, but if anyone ever does, I will become like a tooth fairy.” Mr. Kratz had looked around at the class and given one of his rare smiles so that the kids knew it was okay to chuckle at the joke. “And I will grant that student any wish within my power to give.”

The image of the huge, hairy teacher as a tooth fairy in a pink tutu with little white wings was hilarious. Joey remembered joking with others about it after class and when Zach had said, “Who'd want that guy to grant a wish. What can he give you? A lifetime supply of blackberry jam?”

But, what if?

What if Joey really did ace the test?

There
was
a wish Mr. Kratz could grant, and Joey sure could use it.

Joey was certain Mr. Kratz didn't have a full criminal pardon in mind when he'd said it, but a wish was a wish, and if Joey really met the challenge? Wouldn't that also mesmerize the bearded troll, put him under a spell? Wouldn't he be able to blink and laugh at the pinched fuel line and a sleeping dog if the criminal wasn't really a criminal but a brilliant prankster? A prankster so devoted to science as to prove himself an equal of Mr. Kratz's only child?

This fool's quest kept Joey focused until dinner, when his mother called him down to eat and his father rolled up his sleeves to carve a pork roast. Martin had a finger up his nose. Joey looked away because he knew what came next and he had to push the image of a waggling gob of snot far from his mind if he was going to be able to eat.

“No, no, Marty.” Mercifully, his mother spoke. “Here, wipe that on mommy's napkin, pumpkin.”

Joey dug back into the past, trying to recall the exact point in time he had been transformed from a pumpkin into a soccer ball his mother alternately polished and kicked around. His fifth birthday came to mind, when Joey gleefully planted a handful of chocolate cake onto Emily Harriman's white-blond head. The party was called to an abrupt halt even though the other moms agreed among themselves that kids would be kids. No, Joey couldn't remember a single “pumpkin” after that fiasco.

“How were finals today?” Joey's father delivered a medallion of pork to Joey's plate before meeting his eyes across the table.

“I think, okay.”

“Just okay?” The note of alarm in his mother's voice made him regret it immediately. She rolled right into a prayer for dinner, bowing her head and beginning in a way that demanded everyone else join in, even her pumpkin. She ended with a special addition, asking God to give Joey the strength of character he needed to do well.

Joey allowed a brief silence after grace before he mended his ways. “Anyway, I think I did good.”

His mother looked at his father first, then at him. “That didn't sound encouraging. Okay? Good? You'll have to study tonight. Better you
didn't
make that all-star team.”

The clock over the refrigerator said six thirty and it sickened him that the all-stars team might be out there right now—they probably were—snagging grounders and zipping it around the infield, then blasting practice pitches over the fence.

“I wish I did,” he said, but it offered little comfort from the sting.

“Well, you'll study harder and we'll see if you can't ace that science test tomorrow. Mr. Kratz said you're quite the young scientist.”

“Mr. Kratz?”

His mother slapped a spoonful of mashed potatoes on her plate. “Uh-huh.”

“What? Did you talk to him or something?”

“You knew I was looking into his case.”

“It's hardly a case,” Joey's father said, cutting his food.

Joey wanted to ask him to be quiet because he knew that his mother was like Zach's golden retriever, Bingo. The harder you pulled on a toy Bingo had in his mouth, the harder he pulled back.

“What kind of a sick maniac drugs someone's dog and skulks around outside a home in the middle of the night? That place is buried in the woods. He gets power from a generator.”

“Why do the police have to assume everyone is a vicious criminal, and that everything they do wrong is just the tip of the iceberg?” his father asked.

“That's human nature,” his mother shot back. “What should we think? That everyone is good, and the crimes people commit are just little breakdowns that won't happen again? Ha! How come ninety percent of juvenile offenders end up back in jail as adults?
That's
human nature. Criminals are
born
that way. They're people who just can't accept the rules and spend all their time trying to get around them.”

“I can turn your own statistics on their head. The reason anyone who ends up in detention goes back to jail is because we
teach
them to be criminals and we
expect
that kind of behavior from them for the rest of their lives. They make one little mistake and that's it—they're branded forever. They never get out from under it.”

“Good,” his mom said, ending it.

“Fine,” his dad said, to get the last word in.

“Then we won't talk about it anymore and ruin this fabulous meal.” His mom never let his dad really get the last word in.

They ate the rest of their dinner in silence. Joey had to force himself to chew and swallow, chew and swallow; otherwise he wouldn't have been able to eat a thing.

He couldn't stop himself from wondering what the food was like in jail.

The pile of science notes and the textbook weighed down his desk. Mr. Kratz had given them a “study sheet,” twelve pages of single-spaced notes. Mr. Kratz assured them that all they had to do was know everything on it and they could ace his test. Mr. Kratz said it wouldn't be easy, but that it could be done. Joey looked at his phone. He had nearly a dozen new text messages, mostly from Zach, but two from Leah. He looked from his phone to the pile of work and back again.

Joey shut down his phone without opening a single text, knowing that reading his messages would unleash a series of dramatic texting and phone calls likely to last the night. He sat down, instead, to the pile of biology and began again.

The strange thing was that the longer he studied, the more he lost himself in the biology of cells, anatomy of frogs, and the causes of global warming. When his mother rapped her knuckles on his bedroom door, he looked up and blinked, meeting her eyes as she entered, but lost in the fog of science.

“Studying hard?” she asked.

“Yeah.” The mist cleared and her hard face softened.

She put a hand on his head, looking over his shoulder. “You're a good boy, Joey. I'm proud of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She kissed him on the head, then considered him for a moment. “Do you think Zach's dad would do something like that?”

His stomach clenched. “Like what?”

“Drug a dog. Vandalize a truck, just so Zach could play in that game? I know how crazy his dad is about Zach being a baseball player, but he could have killed that animal.”

Joey stared at the science in front of him. “I don't know, Mom.”

He kept his eyes down until he heard her feet shuffle away. As she closed the door, she said, “Not much longer. You need your sleep, too. That's just as important as studying, sleep.”

“Okay, Mom.”

She peeked back in through the doorway. “If he did it, I'm not going to let him get away with it.”

Joey looked at her hard and determined face. A voice inside him screamed to tell her the truth, right then and there, that it would be the best thing to do. Stop the nonsense, the suspense, the brutal anxiety.

He opened his mouth to speak.

Before he could say anything, his mom shut the door. He stared at the brass knob and the dark metal that showed through where the shiny coating had been chipped away, giving the knob a haggard, shabby, and weary appearance. He sighed and dove back into the sea of science. He stayed there until he woke sometime in the middle of the night with his head on his desk. He stumbled to the bathroom and used it before creeping into bed and falling asleep for the rest of the night, mercifully exhausted.

When he woke, Joey felt better.

He had a plan.

A different voice from the one he'd heard last night pushing him to confess his crimes told him his situation wasn't unlike a baseball game. He was behind, yes. The odds were against him, true. But when that happened to a great team and a great player, they didn't give up. It would take a spectacular performance to pull off a win, but he was capable of it.

The performance was the science final exam. He had the ability to ace it. If he did, his wish would be a pardon from Mr. Kratz. What if Mr. Kratz didn't hold up his end of the bargain, though? What would Joey do then?

He'd throw himself at the teacher's mercy as a fellow science buff. He'd say he'd used science itself—a sedative drug for Daisy and a clamp to diminish the fuel in his line—to effect a change in the natural world to benefit his best friend.

If Mr. Kratz was a man of his word—and Joey really thought he was—the teacher would grant his wish without hesitation, call off the investigation, and life could go on.

Joey went downstairs for breakfast. In the flurry of oatmeal and activity of both parents getting ready for work and dropping Martin at day care, Joey tried to review the material he'd studied in his mind. He was thinking about bacteria and white blood cells as he spooned up the last bit of cereal.

“Okay, Joey.” His mom had Martin on her hip as she went out the door. “Good luck.”

“Good luck, buddy.” His dad was close behind her.

Joey cleaned up a bit, loaded his backpack, stuck his cell phone in the outside pocket without turning it on, and pedaled to school. He locked up his bike and entered the gymnasium for the science final, ignoring Zach and Leah, both of whom already sat waiting for the test to begin. He needed to focus. The only glance he took was at Butch Barrett, who was whispering to the girl beside him. Joey sat down and pushed everything from his mind except the study sheet and the things he had learned that were on it.

Mr. Kratz gave the instructions, and the entire sixth grade went quiet. Mr. Vidich, the principal, insisted that all his students take tests in a very formal and pressurized way to better prepare them for the finals and standardized tests to come in junior high, high school, and college. Joey wondered why they couldn't just do it the way they had in fifth grade, where they took finals in their own classrooms. Mr. Vidich, however, like so many other adults, seemed bent on ending childhood at the first possible moment.

Joey had the test in front of him already, but didn't open it until Mr. Kratz gave the word.

“You'll have three hours.” The enormous science teacher rumbled like a thunderstorm promising trouble. “Good luck.”

Joey flipped the cover page and began, confident, and wondering if it was even possible for there to be a question whose answer he didn't know.

There were only three.

Three questions he put a mark by on his answer sheet. When he finished, there were still twenty minutes left. He flipped back through and studied each question, racking his brain. For the first two he was able to dig the information out of the depths of his mind. They were subtle points, details about genetic karyotypes no one should be held accountable for remembering, but which Joey did remember.

The last of the three was the real problem. Number 112. It had two correct answers. The question asked what process transformed amino acids into proteins. Joey knew it was “dehydration synthesis,” answer A. The trouble was that answer C said, “removing water to join molecules.” Removing water to join molecules was the definition of dehydration synthesis. He screwed up his face and ground his teeth. What was he missing?

Over and over he read it, muttering to himself. Finally, Joey raised his hand. Mr. Kratz's eyebrows shot up beneath the brim of his droopy hat and he shuffled slowly down Joey's aisle.

Joey kept his voice as low as he could while still expressing his urgency. “Mr. Kratz, for problem one twelve, both these answers are correct.”

The big teacher leaned over Joey's desk and placed a slab of finger on the question Joey pointed to. “Use your best guess.”

Joey looked at him, agonizing. “But—”

“Uh-uh.” Mr. Kratz wagged his finger in Joey's face like a sausage. “One is better than the other. You choose.”

Mr. Kratz hitched up his enormous pants as he walked away, giving a brief rest to his leather belt. The outside edges of his shoes had been broken down to accommodate his duck-footed walk long ago.

Joey hated the man.

He looked at the clock. Three minutes to go. He looked around. The rest of the gym was filled with students bent over their tests, pencils in their mouths, heads in their hands, gnawing on knuckles, just hoping to finish the monster test. Joey shook his head in utter disgust and circled C, since he knew removing water to combine molecules was correct and maybe there was some slight problem with the spelling of dehydration synthesis that he was missing, although he didn't think so.

“Time!” Mr. Kratz glowered at them from the front of the gym. “Pencils down. Anyone without their pencil on their desk after this time gets an automatic zero.”

A slew of other teachers acting as proctors scurried up and down the aisles, collecting the tests. Joey watched his disappear into the pile and then up the aisle to the stack on the front table. Fifty-fifty, those were his odds. He bit the inside of his lip. The last time he was given those odds it was from Coach Barrett. He looked toward Leah. She didn't look at him. Instead, she hung her head and hurried out of the gym.