What Would Emma Do? Part 13

Considering that before last week I had never been to Mr. Karp's office, I was suddenly starting to earn a lot of frequent visitor points. While I waited for my turn to see him, the secretary took pity on me. She brought me some wet paper towels and a Kleenex before going for her own lunch. I blotted the blood off and gave my nose a big honk. The door to Mr. Karp's inner sanctum was closed. I could hear the murmur of voices through the wood. I wondered if he had already called my mother. Any hope I had of earning my way back onto the track team by keeping my nose clean wasn't going exactly according to plan. I was determined not to cry, though. I wouldn't. I stared straight ahead, focusing on counting how many cement blocks were in the far wall.

"Psst."

I turned around. I didn't see anyone. People wandered by in the halls, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me at all.

"Psst."

Great, now I was hearing voices. I rubbed the side of my head. I wondered if I had some kind of brain injury. Darci had whacked my head pretty good against the floor. Maybe it had resulted in some kind of clot in my skull. While I sat there, my brain tissue could've been dying. I swore if I ended up as a drooling, voice-hearing blob I'd sue that Bible thumper, so help me G.o.d.

"Hey."

I turned around again, and this time I saw him. Colin was just outside the office, pretending to get a drink from the fountain.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Darci attacked me in the cafeteria."

Colin laughed, spraying water back into the fountain.

"It's not funny," I clarified, but he kept laughing.

"We need to talk. Meet me after school?" he asked.

"I can't. I have to go over to the church. My mom has me volunteering."

"How about I meet you there?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"I'll explain later." Colin gave me a nod and then slipped down the hallway. He hadn't said anything to make me feel that way, but I had the sense that it was going to be bad news. Maybe it was just the way the day was going.

26.

G.o.d, I hope when you were a kid you weren't perfect all the time. I mean, you would have been the most annoying cla.s.smate ever. Everyone would be like, "Don't hang with that Jesus kid." It would have been a miracle if you made any friends at all, let alone twelve of them. No one likes someone who's perfect all the time. A couple of nice flaws might round you out. Of course, if you have too many flaws you can end up like me, with no friends at all.

The meeting with Mr. Karp went better than expected. There were no threats of expulsion or d.a.m.nation, which made for a refres.h.i.+ng change. Instead, the focus seemed to be on understanding what was going on with me. I imagine Mr. Karp had been reading up on books that extol the virtues of understanding and reaching today's troubled youth. I suspect he'd been role-playing how to "get down and rap" with teens. No doubt, with the official story being that Todd had been on the cusp of wiping out the student population, Mr. Karp was feeling the need to connect with those of us on the fringes. There were a lot of comments about how it must be hard for me to be from a single-parent home and how he deeply understood how it could be difficult to be outside of the popular group. He included (at no extra cost) a touching story of his own youth, where apparently he was called Mr. Potato. This cruel name appeared to be related to both the general size and shape of his head (frighteningly misshapen once you noticed it) and the fact that his parents were potato farmers. I think this story was meant to bond us, two different generations, both experienced at being losers.

The outcome of my second visit to Karp's office was that I would be let off with nothing more than a reminder that violence doesn't solve anything and a promise to speak directly with him if I found myself having problems in the future. It didn't look like he would call my mom, so if I could avoid developing a black eye, there was a chance she wouldn't find out about the situation at all.

When I left his office, lunch was over and cla.s.ses had started. The halls were empty. I was pulling the things I needed out of my locker when I heard Darci talking about me. She and Kimberly were around the corner, headed in my direction. The last thing I wanted was another confrontation. I looked around, but the bathroom was too far to make a break for it, and there wasn't anywhere in the hallway to hide. This is why more international spy rings aren't based in high schools-no dark corners. I did the only thing that made sense. I stepped into my locker and pulled the door shut.

I had to hunch down a bit to fit in below the shelf, and based on the fact that my a.s.s was wedged in pretty tightly, I needed to step up my training program. I could just make out slivers of Darci's and Kimberly's faces through the vent as I peered out.

"Is my lip swelling?" asked Darci.

"A bit, but it doesn't look bad. Sort of s.e.xy puffy," Kimberly offered.

"I totally hope Karp kicks her right out of school. She is not TES material."

"Do you think she knows? I mean, why else would she bring up the Barn?"

"There's nothing to know," Darci said, her voice firm. "She's just fis.h.i.+ng around."

"But what about-"

"There is nothing to know. Do you understand me? Todd Seaver is responsible for what happened and that's it."

"But if he gets in real trouble, I mean, if it goes beyond the school or anything, then we would say something, right?"

"If Todd gets himself in the kind of trouble where the police get involved, then I guess he's in trouble. It has nothing to do with me."

"Is that a sin? I mean, to let him take the blame? He didn't really do anything."

"If G.o.d wants him to stay out of trouble, then he will."

"Do you think?"

"Well, of course. So what are you going to wear for the show?"

"Whatever we wear won't show because of the choir robes."

"Well duh, but you'll know what you're wearing. Besides, what if Reverend Teak asks us to sit down and chat with him while the cameras are on? I heard my dad saying they may do a segment with the students affected, and, let's be honest, who are they going to put up there? Kelly? I don't think so. They'll pick us."

I listened to their voices disappear down the hallway. I had the sense not only that Darci was completely capable of letting Todd take the blame, but, even scarier, that she had convinced herself that it had happened the way she imagined it. She wasn't the kind of person to let something pesky like the truth be a barrier to what she wanted.

I pushed on the door. I wanted out of there.

The door didn't move.

I gave it another push. There was no handle on the inside of the door. Clearly, they didn't design lockers for the person who might be on the inside. I rattled the door, but I was getting a sinking feeling. The lock must have clicked shut when I pulled the door closed. I gave the door yet another rattle and shove in case it thought I was just joking around. Maybe the locker needed to be shown who was boss.

s.h.i.+t.

Locked inside my own locker. Never let it be said that G.o.d doesn't have a sense of humor. I heard the bell ring, and the hall filled with everyone rus.h.i.+ng back and forth to cla.s.s. I figured I had two choices: Call out for help and always be known as the girl who locked herself in her own locker.

Slowly starve to death and be found a mummified corpse at the end of the year.

This was going to be a difficult decision. I didn't want to die, but added humiliation wasn't sounding too good either, especially coming on the heels of the lunch brawl. I decided I would wait until the hallways cleared out, and sooner or later a teacher or janitor would walk by. There was no need for me to out myself in front of the entire student body of TES. The bell rang again and the hallways emptied. Any minute now someone would walk by. Any minute.

Okay, ten minutes had gone by and a few problems had come up (or should I say additional problems, since I still had the whole locked-in-the-locker crisis in action): I was developing a nasty kink in my neck from being in this odd crouched position. My muscles could lock up this way and I would be known as Ol' Hunchback for the rest of the year, and you never see hunchbacks winning track meets.

I had an itch on my ankle, which I couldn't reach, and as a result it was driving me insane. I also had this fear that it might be a bug crawling on me, and I couldn't look down to check.

The smell combination of my used gym gear and my lunch sack from yesterday was becoming decidedly unpleasant.

I had to pee.

The last problem was the most pressing and potentially most damaging. It had now occurred to me that there was something worse than having the entire student body of TES know I locked myself in my locker. Having the entire student body of TES know I locked myself in my locker and then peed myself would be much worse. I tried to s.h.i.+ft around, doing the bathroom dance, but it wasn't the easiest maneuver in the s.p.a.ce provided.

"Uh, h.e.l.lo?" I called out through the vent. Nothing. "Little help here?"

I leaned my head back. It was going to be a race between the next bell, which would bring help, and the chance that I would end up peeing in my uniform, in which case I would have to quit school and join the Peace Corps. My lunch sack was hanging right at the side of my face, which also wasn't making the smell situation much better.

Wait a minute! I had a knife in my bag to spread peanut b.u.t.ter on my apple. I could use the knife to pry open the lock. I gave a whoop. I felt very Nancy Drew for coming up with a solution.

I squirmed so my hands were faceup at waist level and then, using the side of my head, I knocked my lunch sack off the hook. I caught the bag and fumbled with the Velcro closure. Why is it that in time of great need, Velcro becomes the superglue of adhesives? I finally got the bag open and found the knife, although my bag of pretzels fell to the floor, where I promptly stepped on them. If something had to be sacrificed, I was willing to let the pretzels go. I got the knife into the lock and started to pry open the latch.

G.o.d? If you are there, I know I have prayed for some odd things in my life. If I had known I was wasting valuable prayer time on things like wanting to get b.o.o.bs and hoping for a computer in my room, I wouldn't have done it. This time, G.o.d, I really need you. Now, I know you might be thinking that I don't deserve a miracle. I'm sure there are starving kids in Africa who deserve access to clean water more, or perhaps an old lady who is about to step out in front of a bus or something, but if you could spare me just a touch of miracle magic to get me out of this locker, I promise to try and be a better person. I'll never kiss any of my friends' boyfriends again.

Click.

The locker door swung open, and I fell out into the hallway. A freshman was standing a few lockers down, and I startled him so much he dropped his hall pa.s.s. I'm pretty sure he thought I was going to strap on a Superman cape and fly out of there as if my locker were a telephone booth. I hopped up and brushed myself off, kicking the pretzel crumbs out of my way.

"What are you looking at?" I asked, and he scurried off, looking over his shoulder at me like he was scared I'd go chasing after him. I grabbed my bag and bolted for the girls' room.

Locker 0, G.o.d 1.

27.

G.o.d, I don't get your stand on miracles. There are all these people who claim you've worked miracles, curing them of cancer or waking them from a coma, but it's been pointed out to me that you never help amputees. How hard would it be for you to grow someone a new leg? What do you have against amputees? If it's hard to restore a limb, maybe you could start with something small, like someone who has cut off a pinkie finger. And then there is your choice of who gets a miracle and who doesn't. Is there a complicated application system? Is it random? And if it's random, what's the point of praying in the first place? As long as we're on the topic of miracles, I could use another. Turns out we're having a test in U.S. history. With all that has been going on, it seems to have slipped my mind. It was in there at one point; I've read the chapters. If you could just find out what corner of my brain the answer is in and push it toward the front, it would be greatly appreciated.

I tapped my pen on the side of my leg and glanced around the room. Everyone had their heads down as they worked on their tests. I could hear Joann's pen scribbling away behind me. It was clear she hadn't forgotten to study.

Joann and I were doing our best to ignore what happened at today's lunch. Since Todd was ignoring me by not calling, I was doing my best to pretend the whole kissing thing hadn't happened either. This would be easier if I could simply stop thinking about it, but it was on some kind of weird loop in my head. If my brain was a TiVo, it was stuck permanently on Todd. I looked over at where Todd would normally have been sitting. His desk was empty, and although I know it made no sense at all, I wanted to slide a few rows over and sit in his seat, maybe put my head down on the desk. Of course, at the moment I wanted to be doing anything but this test.

The test was cla.s.sic Mrs. Larramie. While other teachers might give you a nice multiple-choice test (often with one answer being absurdly wrong so you could eliminate it right away, giving you a fighting chance), Mrs. Larramie gave essay exams. There were usually only two or three questions, which meant you also weren't safe with skipping one and counting on hitting the others out of the park.

Mrs. Larramie felt it was her personal mission to prepare us for college. She thought high school kids had become soft and intellectually lazy. Every year she gave her cla.s.ses the same speech at the beginning of the year about how things were when she went to school. She made it sound like she attended some kind of Third World school, where they had to make their own pens by whittling trees down with their teeth and use their own blood as ink. For some reason, she made this sound like it was a good thing. Apparently, in what she called the good old days, kids weren't spoon-fed education. In her day, kids had a pa.s.sion for learning, and if they didn't, then they failed. The ones who failed were cursed to spend the rest of their lives as garbage collectors. In her day, kids did their own thinking, blah, blah, blah.

The first question on the test was, "Please detail the public opinion and level of support toward the Civil War in both the North and South. How did public opinion differ? How did the public reaction shape the government policy, and how does this compare to U.S. policy during the Iraq war?"

I was screwed, and then I got a miracle.

There was a knock at the cla.s.sroom door, and the cla.s.s spun around to face it. Mr. Karp was there, with Officer Ryan standing next to him like his personal bodyguard, ready to take any of us down in case we rushed him.

"Hi, Daddy!" Kimberly said with a small wave. Officer Ryan gave a big smile and one of those little-kid bye-bye waves by opening and closing his fist.

I slunk down in my chair. Just when I thought the day couldn't get any worse, I was about to be dragged away to the gulag. On the upside, any jail cell would be larger than my locker.

"Can we see Dwight Handle, please?" Mr. Karp asked. I sat up straighter. They weren't there for me.

Everyone turned to face Dwight, who looked as surprised as we did. Dwight is one of those kids where it's surprising he's survived high school up to this point. He is painfully thin. He looks like the Olsen twins' long-lost brother. He's always reading one of those eight-inch-thick fantasy novels with covers that have dragons and women with huge hooters holding giant phallic swords. Dwight also has an acne issue. I'm being nice; it's more than an issue. I'm not sure he has an inch of clear skin. I'm sure someday he will grow up to be some kind of brilliant computer scientist and make a zillion dollars a year, and most likely his skin will clear up too, but for now he's a loser. Acne-the leprosy of high school.

Throughout our years at TES, Dwight has been the guy the jocks picked up and carried by the back of his underwear. Once they somehow managed to throw him up into the basketball hoop, and he was stuck there until the janitor could get him down. They used to shove him into his locker. (I have new sympathy for this problem.) Basically, Dwight is one of those kids who scurries around the corners of the hallways and no doubt is counting the days until the end of school. Now suddenly the school administration was coming for him.

Dwight stood up. I could see his Adam's apple bounce up and down as he swallowed. He gathered his things and shuffled out of the cla.s.sroom. The room broke into whispers and Mrs. Larramie tried to get us back under control, but everyone was in gossip overdrive.

"All right! Everyone, pencils down," Mrs. Larramie bellowed. Pencils down? Did she think anyone was still working on the exam? "Pa.s.s your papers to the front. We'll reschedule the exam for tomorrow, but mark my words: I'll be making it harder, to reflect the fact that you'll have an additional night to study."

The exam was being rescheduled? Oh, beautiful miracle.

"I want everyone to pull out their books and start reading the next chapter. I'll be right back." Mrs. Larramie stood up and tugged her industrial gray cardigan down (she had boxy dressing perfected and always looked vaguely square shaped to me.) With one final disapproving glare, she marched into the hallway. Four seconds pa.s.sed when everyone pretended to read about the carpetbaggers and the difficulty with the postwar restoration, and then the room erupted in whispers. I spun around to face Joann.

"Holy s.h.i.+t! Why would Karp take Dwight away?" I asked.

"It's not just Dwight. Joe Schneider's in trouble too," Joann said.

"And Carla Gangon," added Paula, joining our conversation. She was sitting on the edge of her chair, her eyes wide and her face flushed with excitement.

"Carla?" I asked. Her name didn't ring any bells to me.

"Everyone calls her 'Carla Gag-on,'" Paula clarified. "The really fat soph.o.m.ore girl?"

Suddenly I knew exactly who she was talking about. I'd never talked to her, but Carla either had some kind of really unfortunate gland issue or consumed enough food for a family of four. She moved through the hallways like a giant ocean tanker.

"I didn't know about Carla," Joann whispered. "I never imagined."

"Imagined what?" I asked.

"You paying attention, Proctor? Gag-on must have been part of the group that was planning to bring down the school," Paula said. "I heard the parent advisory board did a full investigation and are hunting down all the people who could have been involved."

"They think Dwight was involved?" I asked.

"I heard they're looking at all the losers who have, like, no friends and hate it here."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Do you think they're just going to let these people stay in cla.s.s? What if they go postal like Todd?"

"So, what...? They're going to take them off and shoot them instead?"

"Maybe they'll go to some kind of loser re-education camp," Paula offered.

"What makes them think these guys are a threat?" I asked.

"You seem awfully concerned about what happens to them," Paula noted.