Slob - Ellen Potter [54]
“I found my lunch sack in the boys’ bathroom today,” I blurted out. “It was hung up on a piece of wire that was so high off the ground only a really tall person could have reached it.”
Not very subtle, I know. But I was upset.
I watched Izzy’s face go through some interesting changes. It was such a big face that all the little twitches were magnified—his eyebrows dipped down, his nostrils pushed out, his lips spread into a grimace, then contracted into a pucker.
“So you think I put it up there?” he said finally.
Faced with accusing him directly, I hedged a little bit. “Well, I certainly think it’s a possibility.”
“Okay,” he said. “I did.”
I felt a surge of dismay. There was a little piece of me that was hoping I was totally wrong.
“But,” he added quickly, “that doesn’t mean that I’m the thief.”
My dismay moved directly to self-righteous anger. “Oh no? You knew I was upset about the whole Oreo thing! You knew I was trying to catch Mason in the act! If you saw my lunch sack and you didn’t steal it, why on earth wouldn’t you just give it back to me? Why would you hang it up in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t steal it,” he said. “I wanted you to find it. But I didn’t steal it.”
I grabbed my lunch and stood up.
It would have been a pretty dramatic moment. I was just about to call him a liar and find another table to sit at, but one of the hall monitors came into the lunchroom and told me that I was to report to the principal’s office ASAP.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Surprised and mortified. I had never in my life been sent to the principal’s office. I didn’t even know what a principal’s office looked like.
Mason was already sitting in a chair outside the office when I arrived.
“Ms. DeRosa will be with you shortly,” the secretary told me.
“Hey,” I said to Mason, sitting next to him.
“Hey.”
I felt weirdly awkward with him suddenly. I now knew more about him than I was sure he wanted me to know. I started to ask him if he was okay, but I had a feeling he might not like that, so instead I asked, “Are we in trouble?”
He shrugged. “Hard to tell.”
“Hmm.” I said.
There was a squirmish silence during which I heard Wooly’s booming voice on the other side of the door, talking to the principal.
“I wasn’t running away because of the race thing, you know,” Mason said.
“I know.”
“I mean, I didn’t run away, then have a seizure. I ran away because I knew the seizure was coming.”
“I figured,” I said.
“Ok,” he said. There was another silence.
“How did you know it was coming?” I suddenly wondered out loud, then wished I hadn’t.
Still he answered me and didn’t seem offended.
“I hear a train,” he said.
“Really?”
“It’s nothing weird,” he said quickly. “It’s my aura. A lot of people with seizures get auras right before they seize. Some of them see lights or hear music. Mine’s a train.”
“So when you get the hall pass and leave the classroom,” I said, “it’s because you’re hearing the train?”
He nodded. “There’s usually enough time for me to find my aide before I start seizing. I heard the train when those girls walked in the gym today, but I kept ignoring it, hoping it would go away. That was stupid. I waited too long.” He paused, then tapped the evil genius side of his face. “Got this from waiting too long.”
“How?” I asked, and once again instantly could have kicked myself for asking.
Still, I was really, really curious.
“I was taking a shower,” he said. “I heard the train, but I thought I had time. When I started seizing, my hand hit the cold water tap and turned it off. This side of my face got a full blast of boiling hot water the whole time I seized. Burned it bad.”
“Oh.”
It was not quite like an M-80 firecracker being thrown at you in revenge for strangling a girl with her Molly Wildchild necklace.
“Can I ask you something else?” I said. I thought I was probably pushing my luck but everything was turned upside down and inside out today.
“Maybe,” he said cagily.
“Do you really carry a switchblade in your sock?” I asked.
To my surprise, he instantly