Everyone thinks this is all part of the play, so nobody's stepping in to stop Billy. And then Marissa starts chanting, “Catch the cod, catch the cod, catch the cod,” and pretty soon the whole room is shouting, “Catch the cod! Catch the cod! Catch the cod!”
But when they make it around to the front, Ms. Pilson comes to Heather's rescue, putting her arms out to block the aisle.
That doesn't stop Billy, though. He grabs Heather's face and lays a big, loud smooch right on her cheek.
Heather screams, “Aaarrrhhh!” then charges for the side door, wiping off her face, screeching, “I am not a codfish!”
Billy just smiles and hops back onstage. Then he throws his arms in the air and shouts, “This laddie's gone amok!”
Everyone in the audience whistles and claps and yips, because even with Ms. Pilson blocking the path, it did seem like it was all just part of this crazy play.
I don't know what was supposed to have happened in the play, but I guess they decided that this was a good way to end, because after a few seconds the whole cast steps forward, links arms, and shouts, “The more we practice, the better we fake it!” then takes a grand bow.
What I do know is, nobody clapped harder than me.
They cleared us out of the cafeteria so they could pull the tables out and set up for lunch. And normally Dot, Holly, and I would have just parked at our patio table with our sack lunches while Marissa went back to the hot-lunch line, but we couldn't stop talking about the play, so we all waited in line with Marissa.
And we were just laughing away, when all of a sudden Marissa's eyes get all big and she gasps, “Ohmygod!”
“What?” I ask her, thinking something's wrong.
“They're serving …”
The rest of us look and cry, “Fish sticks!” then totally bust up.
“So that's where Heather ran off to,” Holly says. “Around back to get caught …”
“Cut …”
“And fried!”
Marissa shakes her head, still laughing. “I think this is what Ms. Pilson calls ‘poetic justice.' ”
But then Dot reels us all in by whispering, “Nuh-uh. It's called wishful thinking … there she is, right there.”
We watch as Heather walks up and takes cuts from Tenille and Monet and then just stands there, glowering at us from twenty feet back.
So. Heather wasn't fried filet after all. She was just hate bait, as usual.
It had been a fun fantasy while it lasted.
And even though I could tell she thought I'd masterminded what had happened to her—even though it was very tempting to start up a chorus of “Codfish! Codfish! Codfish!”—I just turned my back on her.
She'd started it, Billy'd finished it.
I was going to stay out of it.
So I'm just standing in line with my friends, feeling kind of proud of myself for swimming away from temptation, when all at once Holly's face pulls back, Marissa's eyes bug out, and Dot takes a nervous step backward. And from the looks on their faces, I can tell who's coming up behind me.
Heather.
So I whip around, ready to put up a karate block or something, only it's not Heather.
It's her brother.
He's not wearing his hat, and he doesn't have his sword, but he is still mostly in costume. He grins at me, saying, “Hey, take it easy! I was just hoping you'd let me have cuts.”
I was so embarrassed! Then, like a moron, I popped off with, “You gotta ask nice,” and before I know it, he's on one knee, grabbing my hand with both of his, saying in a loud, stage voice, “I beg thee, fair Samantha! This weary traveler's had but a morsel all day. 'Tis a small thing I ask—”
“Okay, okay!” I tell him, trying to pull free.
He doesn't let go, though. He just holds on and grins. And then, very slowly, he brings my hand closer, closer, closer.
Right up to his lips.
Then he jumps up and gets into line, saying, “So, what's for lunch?”
Now, personally, I can find no vocabulary. It's like my hard disk has been demagnetized by my hand.
But Marissa, Holly, and Dot are completely connected. “Fish sticks!” they say together.
“Fish sticks,” he says with a grin and a glance back in line at Heather. “Perfect.”
TWENTY-ONE
We wound up eating lunch in the cafeteria with Casey and a bunch of his eighth-grade actor friends. And the strange thing is, they were all really nice. They were goofy, but not too goofy. Friendly, but not too friendly. And just nice.
And when Casey made me put some Triscuits and peaches on my peanut butter sandwich—which, by the way, is really good—I told him how Grams agreed that mac 'n' salsa was god-like.
“Your grandmother tried it? Mine won't try anything. She thinks I'm nuts.”
I laughed. “Mine's the greatest.”
He kind of cocked his head and looked at me.
“Well, she is!”
“Okay! I believe you.” He grinned at me, then added, “Does she ride a skateboard, too?”
I busted up. I mean, something about that seemed really funny to me. But then I thought about it a minute and said, “No … but I'm working on it.”
Then Danny Urbanski came over to the table and said, “Hi, guys,” as he scooted in next to Marissa. “Hey, Missy.”
Now, I could tell that Marissa's heart was going all pitter-patter. But she looked right at him and said, “Uh, please don't call me that. Heather calls me that.”
“Oooooh,” he says. “Wouldn't want to be in the same camp as her. Y'all'd probably kill me.”
Well, all of a sudden that's just what I wanted to do. Or at least make him back off a little. I mean, here he is, thinking he's all, you know, suave, and there's my best friend, getting swoonier by the minute. And I can tell that he can tell that she's all blather-brained about him, and to me, there's no doubt about what he's doing.
He's working her.
So I tell him, “You've got nothing to worry about, Danny. Not unless you plan on being a two-faced, back-stabbing, smooth-talking snake.”
His eyebrows go way up, and he says to Casey, “You gonna let her talk about your sister that way?”
Casey shrugs. “I believe that was directed at you.” Then he grins at him and adds, “And man, I wouldn't risk it.”
Now, I thought Marissa might be kind of mad at me, but she wasn't. She actually gave me a little nod. Like she knew she'd been about to spin out of orbit and was glad I'd pulled her back. And then when Danny found out that Marissa hangs out at the mall arcade after school and said, “Well, maybe I'll see you there sometime,” Marissa just shrugged and told him, “You'll need a lot of quarters if you're thinking you'll beat me.”
After lunch, Casey walked with me clear over to science, which wasn't weird or anything. We just, you know, walked and talked. He told me about how he got into acting because his dad was into it and took him to auditions and stuff when he was younger because he didn't want to stick him with a sitter or his wacky mom and sister. And then he started trying out for parts, and pretty soon he and his dad were in plays together.
I almost told him about my mom being an actress, but I bit my tongue in time. Like I need him to know about her!
Anyway, Heather saw us outside of science, but she just sulked into class. Then sulked all through class. Not one word.
Now, that could be a good thing or a very bad thing. I guess time will tell. For now, I'm just enjoying the silence.
Anyway, with all of that going on, art was about the last thing on my mind. Even on my way over to Miss Kuzkowski's classroom, I still wasn't thinking about art. Especially since Billy Pratt ran up to me and whispered, “You still think I'm a stooge?”
I just laughed and said, “What you are, Billy, is a maniac!”
He blew me a kiss and charged off to class.
So my mind still wasn't on art when Miss Kuzkowski told us our reports were due the next day, or that she'd be gone to a conference for part of n
ext week, or that we should come up and get the still-life sketches she'd made us do weeks ago and had finally graded. I just fished my still life from the stack she'd fanned out on the front table and went back to my stool.
But then Tammy Finnial says from up by the front table, “Miss Kuzkowski, mine's not in here,” which sort of brings my head into art class.
See, Tammy has the world's whiniest voice. Everything she says sounds like a complaint, even if what she's saying is that she likes something. She may say, I like your sweatshirt, but what she's really saying is, I like your sweatshirt, and I don't get why my mom didn't buy something like it for me. My mom never buys anything great for me. Why does everyone else have a mom who buys great sweatshirts for them and mine won't do that for me?
The girl's a whining wonder.
Anyway, there's Tammy, up front, whining about not finding her paper. And we're all kind of rolling our eyes while Miss Kuzkowski looks through the few still lifes that are left on the table, comparing who's absent to which papers are left, when she looks up, right at me. “Sammy? Whose sketch is that?”
“Mine,” I call back. But then I look at the name on the sketch and it's not mine—it's Tammy's.
“Oh, wait!” I say, jumping up. “I took the wrong one. Here, Tammy. Sorry.”
Tammy rolls her eyes and tisks and snatches her lopsided fruit out of my hand. “No biggie,” she says, and huffs back to her seat.
So, fine. Now I've got my own ugly still life of the fruit bowl, not hers. And it really was no big deal. A simple mistake. Tammy's T had been covered up by the paper on top of it, so all I'd seen was ammy.
Still. Something about it felt strange to me. I mean, Tammy and I are so different. She wears fashion clogs and pink nail polish and velvet hip huggers. No kidding. They're sort of a maroon red and the velvet on the butt is all crushed or worn off from sitting, but she wears them all the time anyway. I guess she figures if she can't see the bald patches, neither can we.
Anyway, the point is, Tammy's nothing like me. And I'd never made the connection before that our names were exactly the same except for the first letter, because to me Tammy and Sammy are as different as worn jeans and balding velvet pants.
But knowing my mom, she could very easily have named me Tammy instead of Sammy. And then what? Would it have made any difference in how I turned out? Would I be into nail polish and velvet pants?
Could a single letter have such power?
Then I started thinking about Marissa's name and why didn't she like to be called Missy?
Well okay. It rhymes with sissy and prissy, so scratch that. It'd be like Henry Regulski going by Ichabod, which is his real first name. And maybe he actually went by Ichabod for the first five years of his life, but the minute he hit school, kids probably started calling him Icky.
How are you supposed to survive school with a name like that?
Anyway, there I was, just sitting on my stool, obsessing over names, when this little thought sort of fluttered through my brain. It felt like a dandelion seed spinning up, up, up, into the sky. I'd lose sight of it for a second, then see it again. Drifting. Spinning. Disappearing. Reappearing …
And something about trying to follow this thought was making my heart beat faster. Sort of taking my breath away. Pretty soon it felt like I was spinning. Faster and faster. Higher and higher.
Emma shook me back to earth. “Sammy? Sammy, are you all right?”
“Huh?”
“You look like you're going to fall over. You're all pale.”
“Huh?”
“Miss Kuzkowski?” Emma calls, flagging her hand through the air. “Sammy's all …” She kind of crinkles her face up at me and says, “Are you contagious?”
All of a sudden Miss Kuzkowski's right in front of me. “Sammy? Are you all right?”
I almost said, Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. But really, I wasn't. My heart was bouncing all over the place, I could barely breathe, and my head was spinning.
Then all of a sudden I broke through. Just sailed through the wall in my head, into the light.
I could see.
“Sammy?” Miss Kuzkowski asked. “What?” I whispered. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I … I need to go home, okay?”
“By all means, go!” She hands me my backpack and says, “Emma will help you to the office.”
“No!” I tell her. “I'll … I'll be fine.”
“Are you sure … ? I think I should send Emma with you.”
“No, really. I'll be fine. I just need to get home.”
“Okay, then. If you're sure.”
Now maybe it would've been easier to wait for school to let out, but I felt like this thought—this idea—was going to burst inside me if I stayed at school. So I headed straight for Mrs. Ambler's classroom. Straight for my skateboard.
Trouble is, the room was locked up tight. So I raced around campus until I found Cisco, the head custodian, working on fixing a water fountain. “Mr. Diaz?” I called. “I've got to go home. Can you let me into my home-room?”
So he followed me back and let me in, and while he waited at the door, I dug up my skateboard, then went over to Mrs. Ambler's desk and left her a I-hope-youdon't-mind-I'll-return-it-tomorrow note where her magnifying glass used to be. Then I went to the office.
Mrs. Tweeter took one look at me over the tops of her reading glasses and said, “Are you sick, dear? You look like you're running a fever.”
I nodded. “Can I call home?”
She reached for the phone, saying, “I'll have to do that for you, dear.”
I gave her the number, and I could tell when Grams picked up because Mrs. Tweeter's face fluttered into a smile as she said, “Mrs. Keyes? Yes, this is Mrs. Tweeter calling from William Rose? Samantha's ill and needs to come home. Can you pick her up?”
I shook my head and whispered, “She doesn't have a car. I'll just walk. Can I talk to her?”
“Hold on a moment, Mrs. Keyes,” Mrs. Tweeter said, and handed me the phone.
So I said, “Hi,” into it, and when Grams asked me if I was okay, I just talked right over her, saying, “No … no … that's okay … I can make it.”
At this point Grams knows something's up. And I can practically hear the wheels in her brain coming up to speed as she says, “Are you in trouble again?”
“No, Mom,” I tell her, because as far as the school knows, I live with my mother.
“Do you need my help?” Grams asks.
“I'd like that.”
“How?”
Mrs. Tweeter's back at her desk, digging something out of it, so I turn my back on the counter and whisper, “Meet me at the Vault.”
“The Vault? Now?”
I face the counter again and say in a louder voice, “That's right. And don't worry. I'll be fine … bye.” Then I hand the phone back to Mrs. Tweeter, saying, “Do you need to talk to her some more?”
“Thank you, dear,” she says, and wipes down the whole receiver with a Sani-Wipe before putting it up to her ear. “I have your permission to send her home, then? … very well … good-bye.”
So I left school, and the minute I hit the sidewalk I felt better. Riding my board helped clear my head. And the closer I got to the Vault, the more sure I was that I'd found a tiny opening into something deep and dark and complex. Like a termite hole bored into a windowsill, drilling through two-by-fours and crossbeams, chewing out a maze of destruction. Maybe things looked fine on the outside, but inside was a world full of sawdust. Sawdust and rot.
When I got to the Vault, I popped up my board and pushed through the door thinking I was there to uncover the truth—there to fumigate. But halfway across the Bean Goddess, I knew something was wrong. Jojo had his back up against the Vault gate, looking like a cornered peacock in his green and purple clothes. Austin Zuni was looming over him, his arms crossed, his cowboy hat pulled down hard. And Tess was slashing her claws through the air, hissing at Jojo like an angry cat.
I edged closer and
heard Jojo say, “But I can't—she's changed the locks!”
“She can't just do that,” Austin says. “I know for a fact that renters got rights.”
“I told her that exactly, and she said fine, go on and sue her if I want.”
“Why don't you just pay her!” Tess snaps.
“I don't have the money!”
“Where's the three G's I fronted you?” Austin asks.
Jojo gives him a helpless shrug. “Gone?” Then he punches his hands onto his hips and says to Tess, “I was counting on a sale … ?”
Tess shoves him. “Well, maybe if you'd quit buying all these tacky clothes and those stupid mirrors for that ridiculous Vespa—”
“Maybe if you didn't want a kingdom for cra—”
He buttons his lips. Hard. So Tess puts her hands on her hips and says, “For what?”
“For… creations … creations that moved much better at their former, lower price,” Jojo says, cowering away from her.
“Oh, for cryin' out loud,” Austin says. “Just call a locksmith and let's be done with this.”
Jojo straightens a little. “Don't think for a minute that you can just take your work with you—we have a contract.”
All of a sudden Austin's looking about seven feet tall. “You're crazy as an outhouse rat if you think—”
“Down boy, down boy!” Jojo says. “As soon as I get some money together, this gate will open and we'll be back in business.”
“I want my paintings, and I want them now,” Tess tells him.
“So you can what? Cut me out of the equation? Pay Neddy boy another bribe?”
Tess freezes, and after a second of nobody saying anything, Austin nods and says, “Uh-huh. I had my suspicions.” He shakes his head. “You went too far with that one, Tessy.”
“Me? What about that robbery she staged?”
Austin shrugs. “Seemed like a legit holdup to me.”
“Yeah!” Jojo says. “I don't think she had a thing to do with that!”