Slob - Ellen Potter [6]
My eyes fell on Mason Ragg, who was sitting at our usual table. He was placed in my class a week and half ago. He’d been transferred from one of the other public schools. The word around school was that he’d been transferred because he was “unmanageable.” That was another thing about the Martha Doxie School—they prided themselves in enrolling kids who didn’t fit in at mainstream schools, including bona fide psychopaths, like Mason Ragg. People said that he carried a switchblade knife in his sock. They said in his last school, he had tried to strangle one of the girls in his class with her Molly Wildchild necklace (you’ve probably seen the commercials for the junk, but if you haven’t, it’s this lavender-haired cartoon character that girls just go insane over. Not Jeremy, though, of course). The girl’s older brother threw an M-80 firecracker at Mason’s face in retaliation. That was the story that went around school anyway. It was certainly possible. One whole side of his face was badly scarred. The skin was all bumpy and puckered, twisting up the right side of his lips so that he looked like he was always sneering. He resembled an evil character out of a comic book, no kidding, and he always looked like he was trying to catch someone staring at him.
Now he had.
You know why?
Because sitting on the table in front of him, stacked in a tidy little column, were three Oreo cookies.
“What are you staring at?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Cool scar,” I said. I really did. I do stuff like that when I’m nervous and can’t think of what to say.
I can’t repeat his response, though. Use your imagination, you won’t be wrong.
“Sorry,” I said.
That’s correct, you heard me. I said sorry to the kid who stole my moment of bliss.
You might have too. Did I mention that Mason Ragg’s right eye is a spooky milky blue while his left one is brown?
“Too bad about the cookies, man,” Izzy said after the period buzzer sounded and we had to go our separate ways. “But no use tangling with Ragg. He has a buck knife strapped to his arm.”
“I heard it was a switchblade in his sock,” I said.
“Does it matter? I mean, really?”
“No.”
“Hey. Keep the faith.” Izzy could say things like that, which might sound sort of cool if a non-giant said them. But when he said them, it sounded like one of those deep, garbled voices you hear on the subway speaker system. You know, “Ninety-sixth Street and Broadway. Watch the closing doors. Keep the faith.”
“Thanks, Izzy.”
He squeezed my shoulder. It hurt. I didn’t say “Ow,” though, because he was only trying to be nice, and he couldn’t help being insanely strong.
3
After school I waited for Jeremy and we walked home together, like we always do. I was in a lousy mood, but she was in a very good one. Suspiciously good. She strode along beside me with a small, secretive smile.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing. Just a gwab thing, that’s all.”
“By the way, I think there’s a girl in my class who’s a gwab,” I said.
“Who? Oh, Rachel somebody or other, you mean?” Jeremy said.
“Rachel Lowry.”
“Nah. She looks like a gwab, but she’s not. Anyway, all the gwabs are in sixth grade not seventh. Hey, do people ever get expelled from our school?”
“Why?” I looked at her. She was still smiling a small, secretive smile. I didn’t like it. “What did you do? Is it something about gwab?”
It’s not “gwab,” actually, but GWAB. Girls Who Are Boys. Jeremy joined the club two weeks ago. There are seven other girls in the club and they have all changed their names