All Good Children - Catherine Austen [29]
We hover nearby when the boys get back from lunch. Dallas records Montgomery shaking and flapping his hands like he’s been assaulted. “Where’s my jacket?” he shrieks. “What’s all this?” He looks at the locker numbers around him, then back at his own. He removes a blue sweatshirt and holds it between two fingers like it’s covered in waste. He sniffs it, cringes, drops it on the tile floor. Then he marches off to find an authority figure.
Washington trips in with Tyler and Jersey, bragging about fourteen-year-old throwaways they’ve molested. The boasting stops when Washington opens his locker. Jersey laughs and says, “That’s some damaged action you’re into.”
A few bystanders peek over their shoulders. Washington burns crimson as their laughter snowballs and more students gather round the handsome carpenter and chorus line. “That’s not mine!” he shouts.
“You have the same jacket as Montgomery?” Jersey cries.
I have to hide around the corner, I’m laughing so hard.
Dallas maintains his composure and keeps recording.
Washington throws everything from his locker onto the floor, shaking and shouting, “This is not mine!”
Dallas zooms in on a vein throbbing in his forehead.
The principal marches over with Montgomery, who gasps and falls to his knees beside his belongings. He seizes a photo of a chorus girl like it’s his dead mother.
“Pick those clothes up,” Mr. Graham tells Washington.
“What were they doing in my locker?” Washington shouts.
Montgomery huffs to his own locker and throws the rest of Washington’s belongings on the floor. He stomps on the snake girl.
“Hey! There’s my stuff!” Washington yells. His eyes light up like he’s made a fantastic discovery. It takes him another five minutes to comprehend that he and Montgomery are victims of a prank.
Tyler crosses his arms and stares across the hall at me and Dallas, smirking.
Mr. Graham shouts, “Whoever did this, I know you’re watching! Let me warn you that your antics have been recorded.” He points to the disabled camera above his head. “This is the last time you’ll be enjoying yourself at someone else’s expense.”
Expense. What a feeb. Like twenty minutes of confusion is such a cost.
“I know it was you,” Pepper whispers in geography class. “The locker switch? Don’t ever pull that joke on me.”
“So I should take my football gear out of your dance locker?”
She laughs, throws her head back and stretches her neck like an invitation. “I’m picturing you catching a ball in my dance clothes.”
“I dream of it.”
She nudges her shoulder into mine. “There might not be many days left for pranks.”
“You think retinal scans are coming this year?”
“I don’t know what’s coming.” She looks me in the eye and whispers, “My parents are talking about moving away.”
“No way! Where?”
She shrugs.
Ms. Reynolds calls us to attention and describes the adolescent initiation practices of extinct indigenous cultures.
It could provide good fodder for jokes, but now I’m too depressed to bother.
“Did Pepper tell you she’s moving?” Dallas asks in science class.
“She told you too?” I whine.
“No talking, Maxwell!” Mr. Thompson shouts. He continues his illustration of the digestive system, step-by-step illumination of a burger turning to shit.
In Communications, we read fairy tales in five languages. Frogs into princes, rags into riches, sweet tongues into sharp teeth. Everything in school today is about transformation, but I’m jammed into place, same day every day, with no way out.
Xavier takes over from Mr. Ames and expounds on the psychological necessity of heroic tales.
Tyler interrupts him. “Why aren’t you in college, Lavigne? You look like an adult. You think like an adult. Why are you here?”
Xavier looks around in confusion. “I need my diploma. Education is the key to freedom.”
“Xavier is fifteen like you, Tyler,” Mr. Ames says. “But he spends his free time studying instead of fighting.”
“That’s not fair,” I say. “Tyler studies and fights in equal amounts.”
Everyone snickers. Tyler gives me the finger.
“I’m serious,” I say. “There