The bad news: Lena said she didn’t have the hots for Darryl
or
for Grant Tubman—at least not until the infection in his tongue stud cleared up.
The good news: she didn’t come out and say she was interested in Zach. But how could she not be? He was by far the coolest guy at C Average, totally adorable, and the mastermind behind making Cap Anderson eighth grade president. Although, I have to admit I thought stealing his shoes went a little too far.
Zach didn’t agree. “Come on, what kind of person sits in front of his locker, with his eyes shut, barefoot, and mumbling in some foreign language? He was practically begging for it.”
I consoled myself with the fact that they weren’t even shoes. They were made out of some kind of dried leaves. Technically, we did Cap a favor, because the next day he showed up in real sneakers.
“We’re bringing him into the twenty-first century,” Zach insisted.
His eyes looked so sincere and so
blue
that I just had to go along with it. I couldn’t help myself. I kept on writing love notes from Lorelei Lumley to slip into Cap’s locker.
Dear Capricorn,
I waited all day and was heartbroken when you didn’t come. You must have thought I meant storeroom B-376 of the middle school. Silly me, I
was in storeroom B-376 of the high school. There is no storeroom B-376 at the middle school. But I guess you already know that. Please, please, please give me another chance. Meet me at
—
The rest was a giant tomato soup stain. I don’t know about Cap, but it would have driven
me
crazy.
Another note contained directions to a small courtyard off the library. There was only one door, and it locked as soon as it closed behind you. Poor Cap spent two hours in there, until a custodian found him and set him free. I felt pretty awful about it, but my hands were tied. I was with Zach.
We watched from a spot on the roof, expecting him to go berserk. He never did. He called for help a few times, but mostly he spent the day in the lotus position, with his new sneakers off, meditating.
I could sense Zach was a little frustrated that Cap wasn’t putting on more of a show. “Why isn’t he yelling? Or crying? Or at least banging on the windows, begging for rescue?”
To be honest, I couldn’t explain it either. Cap was weird, but there was more to it than that. There was something inside him that nobody else understood, something mysterious and strong. Not muscle strong or fighting strong—a kind of strength that gave him the self-control to meditate instead of falling apart, or to ignore what other people thought, and find meaning in a dead bird.
I couldn’t say that to Zach, of course, so I tried to be supportive. “Look on the bright side,” I offered from our vantage point on the roof. “He didn’t go nuts, but he was down there a really long time.”
Zach was not consoled. “Yeah, and we were up
here
a really long time! What’s the point of pranking someone if the prank’s on you as much as on him?”
He had a point. Cap Anderson was the ultimate eighth grade president. He fell for every gag, hook, line, and sinker, more than a Luke Simard or a Hugh Winkleman ever would. There was only one problem: he wasn’t reacting. You could harass him; you just couldn’t upset him.
Even when Zach told him that he was expected to plan the entire Halloween dance, he was mellow about it. Last year, that was what had put Luke over the edge.
Cap just said, “I’ve never been to a dance.”
He didn’t even refuse to do it. But we knew he wasn’t going to.
That made Zach mad. “We should have hung
him
off the wires, not just his sandals.”
I only had one class with Cap—Math. He never opened his mouth, yet whenever the teacher called on him, he always came up with the answer. Zach claimed Cap was the dumbest kid in school, but he was really smart.
He had no friends, except maybe Hugh Winkleman, who had to be worse than nobody. Or maybe not—those two ate lunch together every single day. It looked like Hugh did most of the talking, but that made sense. Cap was new, and surely he had questions about everything that was happening to him. He had no way of knowing that the person he was using as a guide was an even bigger outcast than he was.
“So he’s friends with Winkleman, big surprise,” Zach sneered. “Nobody
normal
would ever hang out with him. The stuff he does—what kid in a million years would ever want to do it with him?”
He had a point. Meditation wasn’t big in middle school. When Cap wasn’t in the lotus position in front of his locker, he was usually in the music room, strumming a guitar and singing to himself. It was always sixties music too—I recognized the Beatles and some of the folksier stuff you hear on the classic rock stations. And every morning, he was out in the school yard, performing these slow-motion, dancelike martial arts moves. Zach called it hippie ballet, but I thought it was kind of graceful and athletic.
I asked Cap about it.
“It’s tai chi,” he explained. “It develops balance through a blending of mental and physical energy.”
“Yeah, but why are you doing it
here
, where everybody can see you?” Zach demanded.
“Because if I do it where I live, somebody pours water on me.”
You could depend on that kind of comment from Cap. It might have made sense, but only to him.
The whole thing was really starting to get on Zach’s nerves. “I’m going to break this kid if it’s the last thing I do.”
I had to speak up. “Is this really necessary? Can’t we just switch to Winkleman or something?”
“Winkleman isn’t president,” Zach insisted. “It’s too late to go back and change that.”
Anger didn’t suit Zach. His jaw was stuck out, his skin flushed and taut. This wasn’t the future boyfriend I’d always envisioned.
“We’re eighth graders,” he went on. “This is supposed to be
our year.
I’m not going to give that up because some hairy Sasquatch stepped through a time warp from the sixties!”
We went to see Lena. She was the authority when it came to spreading the word. And what Zach had in mind amounted to calling the entire eighth grade down on Cap.
He was not to walk through a crowded hall without his feet being kicked out from under him. The cafeteria line was to become an obstacle course of tripping legs. He would be a living, breathing bull’s-eye for spitballs, rubber bands, apple cores, and flying soup. It was open season on the eighth grade president, especially on the school bus, where there were no teachers, and the only rule is anything goes.
Cap’s reaction? He floated through it all like he didn’t even notice anyone was messing with him. No, it went beyond that—he
didn’t
notice anyone was messing with him! He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t look unhappy either.
And here’s the part I’d never admit to anyone, certainly not Zach: deep, deep down, I was rooting for Cap to stick it back in all our faces. For sure we deserved it.
Especially me, because I was starting to know better.
This was shaping up into the greatest school year ever. True, my grades were no better than usual (straight A’s), and I still couldn’t climb the ropes in the gym. I was laying waste to the competition in the chess club, but that always happened. I wasn’t popular, or even borderline acceptable.
But I had something going for me that was pure gold.
I was anonymous.
That may not sound like much. But to me, it was my birthday, Christmas, and the Fourth of July all wrapped into one.
No longer did I feel the ridiculing eyes boring into me as I walked the halls of C Average. Those eyes bored elsewhere. No longer did I have to watch my step for the feet that would trip or kick me. Those feet were otherwise engaged. I could barely remember my last wedgie.
And it was all thanks to Cap Anderson.
I liked Cap. Really, I did. But I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that the best thing about him was the fact that he took the heat off me. I was allowed to live because the pack was in full cry after him.
So I was happy, but also guilty for being happy. And the happier I got, the more the guilt spoiled my happiness.
Of all the guff I’d taken from Zach Powers over the years, this had to be the worst—that
I
was feeling bad for something
he
was doing. My only crime was
benefiting
from it. It wasn’t like I could have helped Cap. If I had the power to control Zach, Lena, Darryl, and those vipers, then I wouldn’t be a victim. Victims have no power. That’s what makes us victims.
Anyway, this had gone far beyond just Zach’s crew. It was the Luke Simard thing all over again. A wide-scale war of little attacks on Cap.
The school bus was the bloodiest battlefield. In the building itself, there was a degree of order because there were teachers around. But on the bus the only authority was the driver, Mr. Rodrigo, and he wasn’t exactly the kind of deputy you listen to. He was older, and standoffish. He kept his eyes on the road, because if he checked the mirror, he might see something. We could have held a luau on that bus, with a roast pig and hula dancers, and he would have been none the wiser.
The first projectile came sailing up the aisle, spinning like a miniature torch. The Winkleman Encyclopedia of Bullying Techniques identified it instantly. A bunch of jerks at the back were flicking lit matches at Cap.
I brushed it from the seat, genuinely alarmed. This may have been business as usual in my life, but I had short hair. Cap’s flyaway mop was a forest fire waiting to happen.
Another flickering shot bounced off the armrest and extinguished itself on the floor. “Cap,” I whispered urgently. “Duck.”
He looked up, mystified. “Why?”
And at that very instant, Mr. Rodrigo let out a loud groan, clutched his chest, and toppled out of his seat.
The raucous clamor of the bus died as if someone had pulled the plug. Was Mr. Rodrigo having a heart attack?
We were so frozen with shock, nobody noticed that the bus was
moving
, inching forward into oncoming traffic.
“Hey!” Cap shoved me out of the way and hit the floor running. He leaped over Mr. Rodrigo’s still form and landed in the driver’s seat, stomping on the accelerator. With a roar of the big motor, the bus lurched through the intersection, missing a dump truck by inches.
“Where’s the hospital?” Cap barked over his shoulder.
We all sat there like dummies, scared out of our wits.
“The hospital!” Cap repeated. “Now!”
Suddenly, Naomi was sprinting up the aisle. “Turn here!”
It took all Cap’s wingspan to move the huge steering wheel, swinging the bus into a tight right and speeding off down the street.
I found my voice at last. “But, Cap—you can’t drive a bus!” Which was maybe the stupidest remark that could have been made. Because that’s exactly what he was doing.
He shifted gears and we picked up speed. What a sight we must have been—a giant, speeding yellow school bus, weaving in and out of traffic, horn blasting.
“Turn left!” bawled Naomi.
Cap heaved on the wheel. The front tires bounced over a low concrete median, jostling passengers and rattling windows. A painful screech of metal on cement raked our ears as the chassis bottomed out. I thought we were hung up for sure, but the bus sprang forward and jolted back onto the road.
I scrambled on all fours down the aisle, maneuvering around kids who had been tossed out of their seats. Mr. Rodrigo’s face was pale, but his chest was moving up and down. “He’s still breathing!” I called to Cap.
All at once, the radio burst to life. “Base to forty-one,” crackled the dispatcher’s voice. “Come in, forty-one.”
Cap looked at the set as if he’d never seen one in his life—which he probably hadn’t. I reached around him and took hold of the microphone. “Hello?”
“Rodrigo, is that you? We just got a report that you’re way off course and driving erratically. What’s going on?”
“Uh—Mr. Rodrigo can’t come to the phone—” I began.
“Who is this?” the dispatcher demanded.
“Hugh Winkleman.”
“Who?”
“A passenger! Mr. Rodrigo’s unconscious! We think he might be having a heart attack.”
“Who’s driving the bus?”
I hesitated. “Capricorn Anderson.”
“Stop right there!” the voice ordered. “We’ll send an ambulance for the driver.”
“No,” Cap told me.
“But the dispatcher said—”
“We have to get to the hospital,” he interrupted. “There’s no time to wait for an ambulance.”
I spoke into the microphone. “He says no.”
“He can’t say no!” the man exploded. “He’s endangering the lives of everybody on board!”
Cap glanced at the radio in annoyance. “Does this have an off button? It’s very distracting.”
“Uh—gotta go. Bye.” I cut power to the set. To Cap I wheezed, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Rain says you always know what you’re doing when you’re doing the right thing.”
About sixty seconds later, we heard the sirens.
Some kid in the last row made the identification. “Cops!”
By the time I got back there, two police cruisers were on our tail, lights flashing.
One of them activated the outside speaker. “Pull over to the side of the road!”
“You better do it, Cap!” I called. “The cops are chasing us!”
His expression was hidden behind all that hair, but he crouched lower over the wheel. It was a wordless statement—it would take an M1 tank to stop us now. I hoped this “Rain” was a reliable source. If Cap was just talking about wet weather, we were all up the creek without a paddle.
As we barreled across town in the direction of the hospital, the line of police cars continued to grow until we were leading a parade of seven black-and-whites and at least a couple of unmarked vehicles. The kids on board were totally cowed. Except for the engine noise and Naomi’s shouted directions, there was utter silence. We had to be the best-behaved busload of kids in the history of C Average Middle School. I would have enjoyed the sight of so many people who had terrorized me being terrorized themselves, except that I was twice as scared as they were.
By the time we pulled into the entrance of Metro East Medical Center, we looked like a scene from
Thelma and Louise
, with half the police department strung out in back of us in pursuit, sirens blaring. I could see nurses and paramedics diving out of the way as the big bus rocketed up the drive to Emergency. Cap stomped on the brakes, and we squealed to a halt behind a parked ambulance. A whole lot of cruisers surrounded us on all sides.
The hospital guys were angry at first, but as soon as they caught a glimpse of Mr. Rodrigo, they were all business. The fallen driver was rushed into the building on a stretcher.
No sooner had the automatic doors swallowed him up than the first officer stomped up the stairs of the bus.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, kid!”
The police made Cap lie facedown in the aisle while they cuffed his hands behind his back. It was like something out of an episode of
Cops.
They were treating him like a criminal—which I guess a school bus hijacker technically was.
We watched in awe as they hauled him roughly to his feet and marched him out to a squad car.
Naomi was the first to speak up. “Cap didn’t do anything wrong! He was just trying to save Mr. Rodrigo!”
The stunned passengers came alive at last. It started off as a rumbling of discontent, bubbling over into a chorus of outrage on Cap’s behalf.
“Quit pushing the guy around!”
“He’s a hero!”
“He didn’t hit anything!”
The arresting officer wasn’t buying it.
“Qui-et!!”
he bellowed. “Now, listen—I’m sending a patrolman in to drive this bus back to school. I don’t want to hear a peep out of any of you in the meantime.”
A door slammed as Cap was locked in the back of a cruiser. It was a terrible moment—and doubly terrible for me. Because I wasn’t proud of what was going on in my head just then.
Cap had just been arrested at gunpoint; Mr. Rodrigo was in danger of his life. And what was I thinking about? That if Cap went to jail,
I
would be back in business as the number-one punching bag at C Average Middle School.
I was a worm, but at least I had the strength of character to be ashamed of it.