Slob - Ellen Potter [14]
When I got back to the classroom, I automatically searched out Mason. He had planted himself in the global studies workstation and was tattooing his forearm with a green felt-tip marker.
I usually just suck things up. I don’t complain, I don’t start trouble. I’m good at that. Lots of practice.
But when people steal things from me, I have to do something about it. Two years ago something was stolen from me—the biggest thing you could possibly steal from a person, really, apart from their life—and Nemesis was hopefully going to help me make things right on that account.
Now Mason Ragg had stolen from me too. Three times. I couldn’t suck it up. I walked right up to Mason and stood over him with my hands on my hips.
“Give them back,” I hissed.
He looked up from his tattooing. Unfortunately, I was standing by the messed-up side of his face, so that when he looked up I was staring full on at the misshapen sneer and the milky blue eye. It actually made me gulp, which is one of those things that characters do in books but that never happen in real life. Except when Mason Ragg looks at you with the messed-up side of his face. Then all those things that you read about in books but never happen in real life— like hair standing up on the back of your neck or shaking in your boots or gulping—are suddenly entirely possible.
“Give what back?” he snarled.
“You know what.” I was trying to avoid saying it because it sounded sort of ridiculous, but Mason just kept staring me down with that lunar blue eyeball, so I was forced to say, “Give me back my cookies.”
“Your cookies?” he snorted. “What would I want with your cookies?”
If you say the word cookie in a sneering way, it can sound an awful lot like a preschool term—like binky or blankey.
“Look,” I said, “I know it was you. You took them yesterday and the day before and, though I don’t know how you managed it, you took them again today. Just give them back, all right . . . just . . .”—I thrust my open palm out toward him—“give them back and I won’t tell on you.”
Then Mason said something that I can’t repeat.
I stood there for a minute feeling especially fat. I mean, I always feel fat, but sometimes I feel like a boulder. A huge fat boulder that people write curse words on or pee on. And I just stand there, letting it happen, because I’m a boulder and that’s what boulders do.
Boulders also turn around and walk away from people who terrify them, which is also exactly what I did.
Jeremy would have stood her ground even if it meant getting thrashed. Even if it meant a switchblade in the gut. I winced at the thought.
Behind my back, I heard Mason hiss at me, “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”
That stopped me cold. I felt a sickening, swirling feeling in my stomach. Remember when you were a little kid and you wouldn’t let your feet dangle from the bed because you were afraid a monster might grab your ankle, pull you under the bed, and eat your intestines? Logically, you knew it probably would never happen, but still, there was that little speck of doubt.
Hearing Mason Ragg say, “You’re not as smart as you think you are,” was like being pulled under the bed by the monster. And having my intestines eaten. “Not being as smart as I think I am” was something that I often worried about as I worked on Nemesis. It nagged at me when I measured trajectories, when I was splicing wires or soldering parts. Could I really do this? Was I really as smart as I thought I was? Then I’d think logically. My IQ is . . . well, I’m not allowed to tell you what it is, but believe me, it’s impressive. I could do it. I had to do it.
Then along comes Mason Ragg, evil comic-book character/bogyman who figures out a way to bypass the Jaws of Anguish and then tells me that I’m not as smart as I think I am.
“I don’t feel well.”
Ms. Bussle looked at me from her desk in that squinty, nearsighted way she has.
“What’s wrong, Owen?”
“Nauseous,” I mumbled.