Alice in Wonderland High (7 page)

One by one, I lifted the rocks and heaved them into the forest. Birds fluttered their wings in response. I wiped sweat from my brow, probably leaving a giant streak of dirt behind. Excellent. I'd neglected to put on makeup this morning and the dirt really completed my outfit.

If only my parents could see me now. They might even be proud.

Rain dripped from fat, gray clouds—sporadic at first, but then coming faster and more fervently. My windshield-wiper eyelids couldn't clear my vision fast enough, but it was too late to stop now. The meteorologists had a warped sense of humor if they classified this as
mist.
I lugged rock after rock, each one growing heavier in my tired arms. Mild chatter from the students hanging out near the side of the school marked an hourglass of time running out.

I slid my shaky fingers beneath another average-size rock and couldn't budge it. My hands felt useless, like decorative bathroom soap, there only for show. Tears broke through and streamed down my face. I sagged, breathing hard.

This was stupid. Crying wouldn't move the rocks, and giving up definitely wouldn't. Picturing Chess's impressed smile if I completed their test, I lunged for another rock. My muscles screamed, and the ache triggered another stream of tears. I yanked with all my strength, freeing the rock. Several more teetered. I hopped back farther into the creek right before all the rocks tumbled to the ground in a desperate escape from their tight-knit clique. I sympathized with their bid for freedom from the status quo.

The water shot out at me, and I lost my balance, falling on my butt into the mud. I didn't have time to react—the water pulled me under and covered my head.
Goodbye, feet
, I thought when the water swallowed them. My first instinct wasn't survival—it was embarrassment.

How lame would it be to drown in a five-foot creek?

My head burst through the surface and my lungs gulped oxygen. I grabbed a nearby branch, but the current protested, pushing against me. One finger slipped, then another. I gave in, flipping onto my back and floating down the creek, in control now that I wasn't panicking.

The scenery blurred by, trees becoming streaks of green. Then I saw the school rushing at me like a car accident I couldn't swerve away from. The water had overflowed the banks and was rising up the side of the building. Something liquid this way comes.

“Oh my God! Someone fell in!” a voice yelled.

“Anyone a lifeguard?”

I reached for the edge of the creek and tried to pull myself up, but the current was too strong. I kept slipping. So I raised my arms in the air and did my best drowning-victim impression.

“Move over, lametards.” Whitney sloshed through the flooded grass to reach me.

Her hand gripped my wrist. The water pooled around her ankles. She tugged so hard, I thought she might take my arm and leave the rest of my body. That would certainly put an end to my environmental endeavors. And my homework, except for French oral pronunciation. Soon both of us crashed into the shallow water covering the grass, panting.

Yet, I couldn't help smiling. The grass was wet, wasn't it?

“Nice outfit,” Whitney said, releasing my wrist and hopping to her feet. Her black leggings hid the water stains.

“Thanks.” I stood up and crossed one ankle over the other, concealing my boots as best I could to prevent them from drawing any more attention. “I mean, for saving me.”

I wiped water away from my eyes and scanned around for my bag. Crap. I'd have to double back to the dam once the commotion was over. A crowd of students watched us, umbrellas shielding them. Thank God I'd left the boring white T-shirt at home and opted for something colorful. “This is not a museum attraction.” Whitney gave the crowd a dirty look.

Most scattered, heading for the entrance, while a few lingered, pulling out cell phones and turning into amateur paparazzi.

“So, what? Figured it was a good time to practice your crawl stroke?” Whitney forked her fingers through her straggly hair.

“No, I was auditioning to become a lifeguard. I think I failed.” My teeth chattered and goosebumps embossed my skin. I rubbed my shoulders.

“Really, because I think you had a different agenda,” a male voice said. I turned around to find Kingston stepping toward me, the forest behind him as though he'd come from the opposite direction of the school. He carried an umbrella, but his jeans were soaked through, like he'd been standing outside for a while. His bright-yellow rain hat matched my boots. Well, if Di had an outfit twin, I guess I could have one, too. “Wasn't necessary with the weather forecast, huh?”

“Perfect cover?” I tried.

“Maybe if you didn't almost get caught.”

“I'll get better next time, I promise.” I directed my words at Whitney.

“There won't be a next time.” For emphasis, Kingston tapped on his watch. “It's broken, remember? No time but right now.”

“Let me just observe or something.” Beggars couldn't be choosers, but they could still be beggars. “Or send me on another mission! I don't care what or where—”

“If you don't care where, then it doesn't matter which way you go.” Kingston kicked his leg, spraying water at me. “And my advice is to go whichever way we're not.” He pointed in one direction with one arm and the other direction with the other arm, then switched them so his arms folded awkwardly. “What are you waiting for? You're sure to get somewhere if you walk long enough.”

“I want to go with you guys,” I said in a small voice.

Whitney studied me for a moment. “The keeper of secrets will never leave the trail.”

“No, Whit.” Kingston shook his head.

“What does that mean?” I asked Whitney, knowing she wouldn't actually tell me.

“It means a few things.” She left it at that.

Kingston's head shaking grew more frantic. “It's a terrible idea.”

“What is?” I eyed Kingston. Whitney might not tell me, but I hadn't yet tested him.

“
It
,” he replied with an eye roll. “You do know what
it
means?”

“I wouldn't be asking if I did.”

“What, did you cheat your way through English class?”

Oh, he meant that
it
, as in the pronoun. Well, at least I cleared up
that
confusion. “I wish I could just prove my—”

Kingston reached into his pocket and tossed a handful of pennies at me. They ricocheted off my wet clothes. “Here, wish on them. Find a penny, fuck a penny. Because wishes are useless. Just like you.”

“What's going on here?” Our principal sludged through the mud, clapping her hands in warning. Her eyes turned to the new moat surrounding the school. “Which one of you fell in?”

“Alice did.” Whitney stood up. “The rain must have caused the creek to overflow. I rescued her.”

I nodded to corroborate her story, grateful that at least we were in this together. Sort of.

“This is the second time you're on the front lines of a recent incident.” Principal Dodgson studied me with squinted eyes. She seemed sober now. Too bad.

Kingston snickered and backed away from our little powwow.

Mr. Hargreaves came running out, his pants dripping water onto the ground. “The English wing is flooding!”

“Get the students away from it. Send them home!” Principal Dodgson turned to me. “Alice, you go to the nurse and wait there for me.”

“But I . . . ” needed to go back to the creek. My eyes pleaded with Whitney, but unfortunately my gesture was as difficult to decipher as her riddles.

Principal Dodgson grabbed my hand. “We don't want you tripping again, now do we?” I stifled a cringe. Just what I needed after my embarrassing fall, to be seen engaging in a public display of affection with my principal.

My foot slipped on a muddy area, and Principal Dodgson tightened her grip. When I stood on solid concrete, she let go and watched me take a few teetering steps. After a minute, she rushed off toward the English wing.

I turned back toward the creek to call out to Whitney, but she and Kingston were already gone.

In the nurse's office, I shivered under a cotton blanket and tried to coax my body temperature back up. As each second passed on the clock I grew more and more antsy, practically ripping the paper covering the exam table into shreds with my shifting. Principal Dodgson came back about a half-hour later. Her wet pantsuit clung to her in a way that would never pass the school dress code. “You're not dry yet.”

“We have that in common.”

“Nothing gets you drier than a dry confession.” She shook her finger at me. “You don't normally hang out behind the school.” She said the words
behind the school
like they included a one-way ticket to detention. “And this is twice now you've been connected to school vandalism.”

“I swear. Last time I was just trying to make flyers and—”

“I know you couldn't have stolen the paper because you were with me at the time.”

I nodded. “And this time, I went out there because I heard the commotion and slipped on the mud.” I made my eyes wide and innocent. “I was trying to help.”

She pursed her lips. “Well, that does seem like something you would do.” She balled her hands into fists. “That's it, I don't care how much energy it uses up, I'm turning the security cameras back on. We could have caught them by—never mind.” She waved her hand away. “Did you see anything suspicious?”

A blast of air conditioning made me shiver. “Suspicious?”

“Anyone else out around the creek before you got there?” Principal Dodgson undid her bun and wrung the water out of her short, brown locks. “Come to think of it, how did Whitney rescue you? Was she already there?”

“No, of course not,” I said. Her question sounded like an accusation, and the last thing I needed was Whitney taking the fall for my mistake. “She came afterward. Why?”

“The English wing is flooded. We can't hold a school day if the students need life vests to swim to their classes. And I don't believe it's the rain. Someone tried to get school canceled the other day with the vandalism. And I bet that same someone was fooling around with the dam today. Probably to get classes shut down.”

“Nonsense. Have you checked the dam?” I held my breath.

“That's my next order of business.” Mascara ran down her face, making her look more like a sweaty circus clown than a school principal. “Well, this isn't your problem. Whoever did this will be punished. But I am keeping my eye on you.”

My skin prickled. I could only hope the rain and the overflowing creek had washed away my backpack with my neatly-typed homework inside, the telltale evidence linking me to the crime.

It took three days for the utility department to declare the school arid and no longer prime for surfing thanks to my little stunt. Students dusted off their alarm clocks and treaded into the halls, whispering that Mother Nature hadn't caused the flood.

My eyes darted from classmate to classmate, desperate to catch any indication that anyone suspected my involvement in the act of environmental-social suicide. I hoped no one would notice my missing trademark backpack or the lame excuse that I'd forgotten my textbooks at home. I tried to wear the Model Student skin suit, but it didn't fit as snugly as it used to.

I wasn't sure whether to be grateful or not that Di and Dru ignored the fight we had in English and acted like nothing—including helping me out with my environmental goal—had happened. Selective memory loss comes in handy when you're unpopular. I'd failed with Whitney, and unless I wanted to eat lunch alone in a bathroom stall, I had no choice but to keep up the same pretense.

The gym locker-room door burst open and smacked into the wall. “I know who did it!” Quinn Hart rushed toward the girls still lingering by the lockers. Anything to get people to listen to her and stretch out her fifteen minutes of high-school notoriety.

She did have a great sense of rumor.

I dropped the sneaker I'd been holding, fingers going from still to earthquake before Quinn even finished speaking.
Please let her be talking about two people having sex in the janitor's closet or something.

“Did what?” Dru piped up before anyone else could play the “Who's there?” role to Quinn's knock-knock joke.

Di's eyes flitted toward Dru, then Quinn. “Yeah, I want to know!” Quinn wasn't speaking specifically to us, so I eyed Di sidelong.

Quinn flicked her long, red curls out of her face. “The creek, silly! They found evidence.”

She rushed over to her eager audience of Di, Dru, and me. The girls across the way inched closer.

“Wh . . . who was it?” I managed to get out of my dry throat. I thought of my abandoned backpack.

“Whitney Lapin, right?” Di asked, turning pure speculation into the hottest rumor. Her tone was competitive, like she could one-up me with a better question.

Dru nodded. “She complained about the dry grass in English the other day.”

“She didn't!” I blurted. It sounded like a counterattack, but I had no desire to win the role of Quinn Hart's new minion.

“I don't get why you keep sticking up for her.” Dru brushed her sandy hair into a quick ponytail.

“Contrariwise, why you keep talking to her.” Di used her fingers to pull her loose strands into an almost identical hairstyle.

“I don't.” Not by choice.

“Whitney Lapin?” Quinn's brows knitted together. “As in Kingston Hatter's sister?”

How did everyone else know that info but me?

“Yeah. She pulled Alice out of the creek,” Dru said. “Seemed like a forced alibi.”

“Which, by the way, is so weird that you were out there.” Di shook her head at me.

“Oh, well, it wasn't her,” Quinn said. I let out a breath. “But speaking of her, I heard Kingston went to jail!” Quinn's eyes widened like camera lenses as she turned to me.