Slob - Ellen Potter [47]
That wasn’t one of my finer moments.
It worked, though. Ms. Bussle handed me the hall pass right away, and I hurried out before she could change her mind. I went directly through the hall and to the stairwell, but then I stopped. I was beginning to have second thoughts about this being the best-possible course of action.
I heard heels clicking down the hall, so I slipped inside the boys’ bathroom. Thankfully it just smelled like disinfectant and nothing worse. I sat on the shallow tiled windowsill, leaned my head against the thick frosted glass, and sorted through my thoughts.
Here’s what they were:
If both Mason and I missed gym class today, Wooly was going to be a raving monster on Friday.
Friday was only two days away.
On the other hand, anything could happen to Wooly in two days. A freak accident, debilitating illness, short-term memory loss, a change of heart.
None of which were statistically likely.
On the other hand—
I checked my watch. It was 11: 35.
Decide, decide. I groaned. The water pipes above me groaned back. They really did. I glanced up at them, and that’s when I saw the grayish white thing hanging from a piece of hooked wire on one of the ceiling pipes. At first I thought it was someone’s old underwear. Then I looked more carefully. I sucked in my breath. It was my lunch sack. My recycled sock lunch sack. Just hanging on that wire by its small cloth loop, like a dead cat. It felt so personal, like someone had hung me up there for everyone to see, drooping and helpless. Look, it seemed to say! This is what you can do to Owen Birnbaum. He’ll let you do it. He won’t make a stink. He won’t fight back.
Then I had a thought that was more horrible yet.
The wire was really high up. Definitely more than six feet off the ground. There were no chairs to stand on in the bathroom. It would be nearly impossible to throw the sack in the air and have the wire hook catch the tiny little loop on the outside of the sack by pure chance. Someone had hung the sack up there deliberately. Someone very tall.
Someone who had free access to all the hallways this past week while he was taping up murals for the parent show.
Someone who could have rifled through the lunch closet, no problem.
I suddenly remembered what Jeremy had said to me: I’ve heard people laugh at you. They make you the butt of their jokes in front of everybody, even though they’re friends.
I had thought she meant that they were her friends. But maybe she meant that they were mine. My only friend, as a matter of fact, besides Nima.
Something came out of my mouth then that can only be described as a yowl. It rebounded off the bathroom’s tiled walls and sounded so much like an animal in some sort of anguish that I listened to its echo in shock.
That was me, I thought in amazement.
“What was that?” A kid had poked his head into the bathroom and was staring at me. I knew him. He was in my gym class. He must be on his way there now.
A breeze came in from the hallway, and I saw my lunch sack flutter slightly like a flag.
Owen Birnbaum’s flag. The Republic of the Big Fat Boulder. Long may it wave.
I jumped off the windowsill, pushed past the kid in the doorway, and headed to gym class.
14
I felt pretty brave until I started pulling on my gym shorts. Then I started trembling. It was the sort of trembling that I’m not sure you can see from the outside. It was deep, deep inside. The kind you can hear in your breath.
As usual I was the last one in to the gym. All the kids were in a state of confusion. No one was standing on their spots for the simple reason that 80 percent of the gym was covered with gym equipment. Wooly must have pulled out everything in the equipment storage room—trampoline, mats, hurdles, tires set up on their sides, tires set up as a tunnel.
Faced with this buffet of torture, you can see why it took me a few moments to realize that everyone was watching me. Word must have gotten around about Wooly’s plans.
Thanks, Andre.
“Oh, man, Flapjack.” Andre sidled