The Fourth Stall Part II (13 page)

A
t baseball practice the next evening after school it was hard to focus. Basically we catchers kept trying to catch the pitchers but spent a lot of our time chasing down baseballs that were bouncing all over the junior high gym. I missed way more blocks than usual.

But in my case I had an excuse. Honestly, I was pretty surprised that I was even still a student at that point. Because all day had passed in a blur, with me expecting to get called down to Dr. George's office to get expelled at any minute. But it never happened. The day passed like any other, except for the fact that for the first time I had no business to run. Without an office there wasn't much I could do.

I'd barely even noticed all the kids that came up to me that day asking when we'd be open again and stuff. And plenty of kids were still super happy about the SMART stunt I'd pulled off. They kept trying to pay me, right in the middle of the hall, but I didn't take any of the money. I didn't do business outside my office, and I couldn't change that rule just because I didn't have an office anymore. Anyway, I was more popular than I'd ever been, which was kind of ironic considering I was at my lowest point professionally. Once George read those books or watched the DVR footage, I could kiss the school and all my friends good-bye.

At the end of practice Kjelson announced that he would be bringing in a few batting cages for us next week. It was time to see who could hit. Then we were dismissed. Vince and I decided to stick around to see if we could get a better read on Mr. Kjelson. If nothing else, maybe I could still help Hannah out with her problem.

“So, Coach,” I said as he gathered up baseballs. “Why did you decide to come to our school to teach anyway?”

“Well, I was just looking for a change, that's all,” he said.

“After getting teacher of the year at Oaks Crossing?” Vince prodded.

He looked at us funny but then just sighed. “This school was desperate for a science teacher, and they made an offer I couldn't refuse.”

He'd just used one of my favorite phrases. For a teacher he was definitely one of the coolest adults I'd met. Which is why I was getting more and more convinced that Hannah had to be telling the truth because Mr. K. was almost too good to be true.

I decided to press my luck.

“So it didn't have anything to do with Hannah Carol, then?”

His eyes narrowed instantly. That same odd look came over his face just like the last time I'd asked.

“Why do you keep asking about her? Did she say something to you two about me? Is that it? How do you know Hannah anyway? You're a little young to be friends with her, aren't you?”

“Why would she say something to us about you?” I asked.

“Well, because she—” He stopped, suddenly looking as if he hadn't meant to say even that much. “You still didn't answer my question. Why are you asking me about her?”

It almost seemed like he was getting angry now. Which was uncomfortable, because I'd never seen him like this before. It was like getting to see the dark side of the moon for the first time and discovering that it was covered with a St. Louis Cardinals logo. For a Cubs fan that's a pretty unpleasant thought.

I wanted to press him further because I clearly had him shaken. But I was almost afraid to; it seemed likely that pressing this further might get Hannah in even more trouble. In fact he probably might have already figured out that she'd told us about how he was treating her. Plus, I was pretty sure I'd just seen all I needed to know.

They were both waiting for me in the living room when I walked through the door after getting home from practice. My mom sat in the recliner, her eyes red from crying. My dad stood behind her; his jaw clenched so tightly, it looked like he was trying to crush coal into diamonds with his teeth.

“What's up, Moms and Pops?” I asked with a grin.

I tried to play it off innocently, but I knew this meant something. And I knew what it was. Dr. George wouldn't talk to us first about expulsion. He would contact our parents directly. Of course that was why we hadn't gotten called into his office today. I wanted to punch myself for being so stupid.

“Sit down,” my dad managed to say without unclenching his jaw.

I sat down on the sofa. I tried to smile, to play it cool, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not when my life was basically over. Now I'd have to discontinue my business, find a new school, and who knew if Vince would even get into the same school as me. Plus, I'd probably gotten Joe and Fred and Tyrell expelled, too. It was my fault that their lives would basically be ruined.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” my dad said.

“About what?”

He chortled and shook his head. He almost smiled, he was so angry. That was never a good sign.

“How many times have I told you that school comes first? Huh? I always say you need to stop running off and playing your little games with Vincent, but did you ever listen?” he shouted.

“School does come fir—”

“Don't you dare even say it, Christian!” my dad yelled.

My mom just sat there staring at the floor. She shook her head and held back more tears.

We sat in silence for a while. Then my mom finally spoke.

“Why didn't you tell us you were having problems, Christian? There are ways we could have helped. There are . . .
ways
.” She said this as if whatever ways she meant were not legal.

I was confused now. What the heck did that mean?

My dad sighed, looking sort of calm for the first time. “What your mother is trying to say is it's not a bad thing to have troubles in school, but you have to tell somebody. There are a lot of . . .
conditions
that can cause these problems. If you were struggling so badly, why didn't you come to us for help?”

Now I was sure I was losing my mind. I always did well in school. School's a piece of cake.

“Okay, Dad, I'm really sorry, but I honestly have no idea what you guys are talking about. What did I do?”

This only made my mom start crying again. I thought I heard her say, “Doesn't even know,” through her sobs.

“Christian, we got your SMART scores back today. You . . . well, you didn't really
meet the standards
.”

“That's what this is about?” I said. I was still in too much shock to realize what that meant because my first reaction was relief.

“Don't you even care?” my dad said, anger seeping back into his voice.

“Of course I do. I just, I thought it was something really bad, you know?”

“This is really bad!” my dad yelled. “You didn't meet graduation standards, Christian. Do you know what that means? It means you failed so badly that you likely will be held back. It means you will have to take sixth grade all over again next year!”

Then it finally hit me how impossible what he was telling me actually was. There was no way. I'd fixed my own answer sheet myself, personally, on Tuesday. I'd given myself a near perfect score. How could this even be possible?

“Are you sure I failed? I mean . . . there's just no way!” I said. “Besides, I have all As in school. How could they fail me for one bad test?”

My dad shook his head like I wouldn't understand. But he tried to explain anyways.

“Yes, we're sure, Christian. There's no mistaking it; you didn't even get a fifty percent. It's a new thing, Christian. The state government thought that our schools needed higher accountability. Do you know what that word means? Too many kids who can't even read have been graduating from high school, and everybody is ignoring it. So now they implemented these new tests to make sure that all kids are getting the education they need to succeed in life. Your grades don't matter so much. All that your As mean is that Mr. Skari is not doing his job well enough. This test proves that.”

“But Mr. Skari is a good teacher,” I said.

“Apparently not. Why else would you fail this test so miserably yet still have decent grades in his class? You didn't even test
close
to your grade level, Christian!”

This made my mom sob again. I guess parents really hate learning that their kid is stupid.

“Yeah, well, that just sucks,” I said. “The test was rigged. Mr. Skari is a good teacher.” Of course I didn't say I
knew
it had to be rigged somehow since I'd had the answer key sitting on my lap when I filled in my scores.

My mom jumped at this, and my dad shook his head.

“Don't use that kind of language in our house, Christian. Now get upstairs. You're grounded for the rest of the year, buddy. You will do homework and study every night from the time you get home till the time you go to bed. Upstairs, now!”

I went upstairs. There was no point arguing this. I lay in bed for a while trying to figure out how this was even possible. I had changed my answers myself; there was just no way. Unless someone, like, broke back into the administration offices later that night and re-changed all of the answers or something. But who would do that?

Then it hit me. There already was someone trying to take down the whole school. We'd figured that out already. There were the lunches and the poop in the lockers. . . . This was just the latest part of their plan. I didn't know how they were doing it and I didn't know why, but that had to be it. And the worst part was that they were succeeding.

I
t became pretty clear quickly the next day that I wasn't the only one who'd failed. As soon as I stepped inside the school, kids had been glaring at me in a way I'd never seen before. And then I got to my locker and found the notes.

I could read only a few of them before I had to stop. I'd gotten plenty of thank-you notes over the years and a few rogue threats and hate notes. But never before at one time had I gotten so many notes with the words “hate you,” and “liar,” and “jerk,” and “backstabber,” and on and on. My locker had been stuffed full of them already, and it wasn't even 8:15 yet. Some of the notes were so vulgar, they'd have made my mom pass out. And some were so bad that they had swearwords on them I'd never even heard of before.

I saw Vince heading over, and he looked pretty sick. Kids weren't looking at him any more kindly than they were at me. In fact one kid tried to trip Vince as he got near me. He didn't quite fall, but he did stumble and drop one of his books. I picked it up.

“What happened, Mac?”

I shook my head.

“Someone had to have shown up after us and messed with the answer sheets,” Vince said.

I nodded. I couldn't even talk to him. I wasn't mad at him of course. I was just too mad in general to even get any words out. I think he must have understood this, because he just patted me on the shoulder in a friendly way.

“It's all right, Mac. We'll figure this out. We always do,” he said before heading off toward his classroom.

I nodded as I started toward my own, but I didn't feel much better. Nor did I agree with him. I was pretty sure that this time we really were screwed.

As the day went on, it became clear that this was a big deal. Mr. Skari looked like a hollow piece of wood rather than a teacher, or even a live human being. He just gave us a really long reading assignment and then slumped behind his desk. It kind of broke me to see him so defeated. Because I knew this wasn't his fault. He didn't deserve this; none of us did.

By morning recess I'd heard plenty of rumors. It sounded like pretty much the whole school had failed. And a lot of kids seemed to think that the whole school was going to be shut down soon. Others didn't think that was possible; they said that the school would simply bring in more administrators or make us all stay until four o'clock every day for the rest of the year.

I met up with Joe and Fred and Vince down by the new playground, where I knew we'd be able to talk business mostly undisturbed. But kids kept coming down there to yell at us for ruining their lives and call me a snake and all kinds of other horrible stuff. I'd never felt lower or more embarrassed in my life. Or more angry.

So that's how our meeting started, with me stomping around throwing a fit, basically.

After I'd stomped around enough to calm down to the point where I could actually get words out of my mouth without cursing, I faced the others.

“We're not just going to give up. We're not just going to roll over and die. We need to make a plan. We need to take control back. First let's get ourselves a new office. Not to take customers just yet but merely a place where we can brainstorm, figure out what to do, and take care of any outstanding business. So at lunch meet me by the old truck tires. We're going to set up shop right where it all started. Are you all sticking with me?”

“Count me in,” Vince said.

Joe hesitated but only for a second or two. “Me, too.”

Fred nodded.

At this point it would have been appropriate for us to all group into a circle, put our hands together, and then say, “Go team!” while throwing our arms into the air. But I decided that would be really lame, so instead we just headed back to class.

We found more resistance than I'd expected when we met at the truck tires after lunch. One of the two huge tires buried in the gravel on the grade school side of the playground had been my office years ago, but most of the younger kids didn't know that. And they weren't all that willing to give up their favorite play spot. Not to me, the kid who had just supposedly screwed over everybody.

“We'll tell on you,” one of them said with his chest jutted out like he was Superman or something. He was a little first grader with dirt-filled boogers running down his face.

“I'll just move him,” Joe said, stepping forward.

“Wait,” I said, blocking him with my arm, “if we do that, he'll just tell on us. Kids these days don't follow the same code of ethics that we used to. They're all squealers.”

I moved closer to the snot-nosed first grader. I reached into my pocket, and he flinched, looking intimidated for the first time. I pulled out a dollar bill and waved it in front of his face.

“If I give you this, will you agree to play somewhere else for a while?”

“A dollar?” he said.

I nodded. Little kids loved money; you could always count on that much.

“What the heck am I supposed to do with a crappy dollar? I can't buy anything for a buck,” he sneered. His little pack of buddies laughed.

“Get out of here, geeks,” one of them said.

At his age I would have done just about anything for a buck. I'm pretty sure I once ate a live spider the size of a nickel for fifty cents. Yet here this little kid was, laughing at me, his snot-encrusted face disrespecting me at my school.

“Don't you know who I am?” I asked.

The kid thought it over. “Some loser who likes to play in tires.”

Joe made a move as if he was going to pound the kid into the ground, but I stopped him.

“I'm the one who took down Staples,” I said. “Remember when that all happened? That was me. I took him down.”

The kid's eyes widened. He looked impressed and scared for the first time. But then his little punk smirk returned. “No you're not. You're a liar. You're too small and dumb to take out Staples. And my sister failed her SMART because of you.”

I shook my head and backed up to whisper some instructions to Joe. He ran off, and we waited, watching the little first-grade punk and his buddies climb all over my new/old office.

After a few minutes Joe returned with a small kid in Dockers khaki slacks and a sweater vest with reindeer on it. His hair was combed neatly and tightly across his skull, leaving a perfectly straight part-line running across his head like from the blade of a knife. He calmly approached us, and the little first graders dismounted the tires, looking truly terrified for the first time.

Even these little kids weren't too young to know who Kitten was. Kitten was easily the most notoriously dangerous bully in school history. Which was pretty impressive considering that he had only gone to this school for a few years. Everybody, young and old—even you at this point—knew the dangers of crossing Kitten.

“You know who this is, right?” I said.

The little first-grade ringleader nodded slowly.

“We're taking these tires for my new office. And if you tattle on us, then you'll have to deal with my good pal Kitten here. Understand?”

The little kids stood there staring with wide, white eyes.

I gave a nod to Kitten. He took a few steps forward, and the flock of first graders scrambled. They ran off in all directions, some of them so frantically that they fell several times before making their actual getaway.

I shook Kitten's hand, pressing a five-dollar bill into it.

He nodded and wandered off without saying a word.

“Nice work,” Vince said.

“It was all Kitten,” I said.

Vince shrugged.

We decided to set up my office in the far tire, which was actually just fifteen feet or so from the sidewalk and the edge of school property. It was a much tighter fit than before because I was almost a foot taller, but it still worked. It would hopefully only be temporary anyways.

The first thing I did was have Joe fetch Tyrell for me. I asked him to trail Dr. George, to see if he could figure out why we hadn't been expelled yet. There was at least a chance that he hadn't gotten around to reviewing all the stuff he'd confiscated from my office, due to the SMART mess, which I'm sure was creating a bunch of extra work for him.

What I didn't expect, though, was for Tyrell to show up with news so quickly. He stopped by the truck tire at the start of late recess.

“Tyrell, you have news already?”

“That I do, Mac.” He grinned at me. I knew already that this would be a good visit. This kid was amazing.

“Let's have it, then.”

“It's all in Dr. George's office. Every last one of your and Vince's Books and the cashbox and the DVRs. He's still got it all stashed in his office.”

“Do you know where in his office?”

“Yeah, he keeps it all in his desk drawer. I don't think there's any way we can get the stuff during school hours, but after hours . . .”

“What about tonight? Can we get it tonight?” I asked.

“We?” Tyrell said, and then shook his head. “Mac, I got this. You don't even need to be there. Plus, I thought you were grounded?”

“I am, but that's never stopped me from getting out in the past. My parents aren't the issue. No, I'm going with. If you get caught, I can't let you take the fall for this alone. Besides, I like a little fieldwork from time to time.”

“Sure thing, Mac. Can you meet me in the parking lot here around eight o'clock?”

“No problem. Thanks, Tyrell. Seriously.” I held out my hand.

He shook it and then pocketed the twenty-dollar bill that I had handed him. He nodded at me and was gone before I could even blink.

Word must have spread that I'd been hanging out in the truck tire that day because Hannah came to see me not long after Tyrell left.

“Wow, moving up in the world, I see,” she said as she looked around the inside of the tire.

“Hey, we take what we can get, okay?”

“Wow, relax. I'm just joking with you,” she said with that one grin she has. It's like only half of her mouth is smiling and the other half doesn't move at all, like she's hiding something.

“I'm still working on your problem, if that's why you're here. We've had some complications. But it's on my agenda. You can understand we've been a little busy lately.”

She nodded. She seemed more complacent than usual. “Okay. I suppose I can handle one more day of detention and inhumane cruelty. But do you think you could do another favor for me?”

I wanted to say, “No, you're more trouble than you're worth.” But at the same time I didn't want her to leave. I liked this calmer version of Hannah, like in gym class the other day. Besides, what kind of business owner would say something like that?

“Depends,” I said.

She laughed. Her rattlesnake laugh was growing on me; I hated to admit that to myself.

“Well, obviously you know that I failed my SMART, being that I heard you were supposedly fixing the test for us. But whatever went wrong there, I know you probably tried your best. Anyway, I was just wondering, you know, like when you do whatever it is that you do to solve something like that, that you could keep me in mind, too.”

“Yeah, no problem. I can do that,” I said, even though I wasn't so sure I could fix this one for anybody.

“Well, I guess that came out wrong. What I meant to say was if you need my help, just ask,” she said, smiling her half smile.

“Okay, I will,” I said. “Thanks, Hannah.”

That I had not been expecting. But it was nice to know that she at least, of all people, still had my back.

I watched her leave. On her way out I saw her stop and visit with Vince. He said something, and she laughed much harder than she had when she was in here with me. She even reached out and squeezed his arm. I wanted to run outside and yell at Vince to get back to work. Seriously, what was with him? This was business time not social hour.