League of Strays (9 page)

ONCE WE GOT STARTED, IT WAS LIKE RIDING A ROLLER
coaster with no way to slow down.

Nora took a thick black marker off a cluttered desk and flicked the top across the room. On the whiteboard, she scrawled,
MA DAMN IS A BITCH!

My mouth dropped open. For my seventh-grade science project, I’d analyzed the effectiveness of various solvents in removing different kinds of ink stains. Nothing had worked on a Sharpie. How much would it cost to replace a whiteboard, anyway? Five hundred? A thousand? Money the school didn’t have.

Kade was standing under the doorjamb. I saw him wink at Nora. She leaned against the whiteboard, ankles crossed, and smiled.

Zoe found a penknife in one of the desk drawers and was systematically stabbing some footballs from the supply closet. When she was done mutilating them, she pressed her clunky
black boots down until they each exhaled a last breath. Then she flung the rubber pancakes across the room. They whizzed by Richie’s head like flying saucers.

As I watched them, Kade snuck up behind me, his body flush against my backside. Manipulating my hands, he plunged them into the recycling bin and tossed the shredded paper into the air. I felt like a rag doll.

Richie launched into “Auld Lang Syne” while confetti streamed down on our heads. After the first line, he la-la-la’d through the rest.

“What a lame song,” Zoe said.

“New year, new start.” Nora glowed. I’d never seen her look so happy.

“It’s February already,” I said.

Nora grabbed a book and threw it at me. I ducked.
Techniques for Better Volleyball
slammed against the rear window and slid to the floor.

“You’re not even strong enough to crack a window,” Zoe teased.

“I am!” Richie hollered. He lifted a postage meter over his head and hurled it across the room. The machine shattered on impact, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the glass. With a light tap from Kade’s fist, the pane crashed to the ground. Glass skittered across the floor.

I froze, fascinated and horrified at the same time. My eyes swept over the room, cataloging the damage. It looked like a twister had swallowed everything up, then spit it back out. Hockey sticks snapped in two. A punctured exercise ball drooped
over the arm of an office chair. A torn soccer uniform hung from a coat hook like a flag of defeat.

I picked up a small trophy, a sixth-place finish for our less-than-stellar swim team. My eyes drifted up to find Kade in front of me. I started to shake my head, or maybe I imagined I did. No, I didn’t do this. I didn’t do any of this. But I stopped, trapped in Kade’s smile. My arm pulled back and suddenly the trophy was released, flying through the air. It hit a vase of dying flowers, which seemed to tumble in slow motion to the floor. The glass split open and water seeped out into a heart-shaped puddle.

Kade leaned in. “Nice job, Charlie.”

I smiled back, relishing the tickle of his breath on my ear.

Zoe waved a navy-blue binder over her head. “Hey, everyone, look at this!”

Nora glanced at the dates on the cover. “Oh my God, this thing goes back three years!” She yanked it from Zoe’s hands. After a quick check, she began ripping out pages from the middle.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Kade hissed.

The others stopped, mid-destruction.

“When they look at the torn pages, the suspect list will go from a few hundred to twenty-five,” Kade said. “All they have to do is check out the C’s and below, and your name will be on a short list.”

Nora fanned an arm across the room. “You think someone’s going to notice a few missing pages in all this mess?”

“We can’t leave any clues.” Kade’s voice was steely.

“Come on, guys. It’s OK,” Richie said, palms up.

“Why don’t you just destroy the whole book?” Zoe asked.

Kade stepped toward Nora, holding out a hand in what I assumed was a peace offering. She turned her back to him.

Zoe pulled a lighter out of her purse. The wavy blue flame danced under the grade book. A minute later, smoke turned to flame. She dropped it on the floor, and I watched the crisp pages curl to ash. She stomped out the smoldering embers with her boots, leaving a melted hole in the linoleum. “Problem solved,” she said.

Richie’s snort broke the tension. We fell into fits of laughter until our lungs begged for air. My own laughter had the forced quality of an actor onstage delivering a bad performance. The room looked terrible, worse than I’d imagined. I’d thought we’d throw a few papers around, maybe knock some books off a shelf—nothing like this.

I rested against the wall, spent from the manic act of destruction. A piercing alarm delivered a new dose of adrenaline.

Zoe threw her hands over her ears. “Oh damn, the fire alarm!”

“Let’s go,” I cried. I was already out the door, the others on my heels. I flew through the gym, down the hallway, and into the stairwell. The alarm caught its breath, then screamed again.

Back in the basement, I dashed to the window and stepped into the cradle of Kade’s hands. He launched me through, and I tumbled, arms flailing, onto the dirt path. I managed to roll out of the way a second before Richie, Zoe, and Nora catapulted outside.

“Come on!” I screamed to Kade as the lights from the fire truck flashed in the distance.

He wriggled out the opening. We scrambled across the unkempt field, not stopping until we were hidden behind a wall of pine trees.

“Holy shit,” Zoe said breathlessly as we watched the firemen pry open a door.

“I can’t get caught. I can’t!” Nora said.

“You won’t,” Kade told her. The worse things got, the more confident he became. It was comforting to know he wasn’t worried, kind of like the moment when the pilot comes on the intercom to tell you that the safety belt light is off.

My eyes drifted down to a bare hand.
Oh, no.

“My glove!” I cried. “It was just here.” I had no idea where I’d lost it. In the field? In the stockroom?
In the gym office?
My fingerprints were in that glove.

“Oh, crap, Charlotte,” Nora said, as if I’d done it on purpose.

Kade extracted the missing glove from his pocket and snapped one of its fingers. “No worries, Charlie. I had you covered. I have all of you covered.”

I exhaled, relieved, but my heart kept up its double-time tempo.

“Everything went according to plan,” he said. “The alarm part was unexpected, but what a finish. Congratulations, everyone!” His smile lit up the night, wrapping me in its warmth.

Richie took the glove from Kade and pressed the opening to his mouth. He blew, expanding the rubber until it looked like a bloated king with a crown on his head. He waved it at us, then let it go. We all laughed.

Kade kneeled down to retrieve the glove. “It was a new moon
a few days ago. That was part of the plan, too. Those firemen couldn’t spot us with binoculars.”

Nora thought about it, then nodded. “Did you know that in astrology, the new moon means the sun and the moon are aligned in the same sign? Supposedly, an energy portal is opened, or something like that. Anyway, it’s a great time for new beginnings.”

Kade raised his fist to the moon. “To new beginnings.”

We joined ours with his. “To new beginnings,” we echoed.

When the distant fire alarm, which had faded into background music, gave a strangled hiccup and cut out, Kade turned his back on the school and strolled away. I took one last look at Kennedy High, bathed in red strobe lights, before going after him.

I COULDN’T WAIT TO SEE EVERYONE’S REACTION TO THE
news, which would probably be all over the school by the time I got there. I hadn’t even made it through the parking lot when it started. Kenny York, under the hood of his ‘74 Camaro, had a cell phone pressed to his ear with one shoulder while fiddling with his engine.

“They did what? In the gym?” He pulled out a screw, studied it, then dropped it into his back pocket. “Christ, dude, for real? Damn, that takes balls.”

I turned my head and smiled. I liked being part of the action for once.

My pride came crashing down when I saw the row of teachers lined up like soldiers at the school entrance. They parted to let a few kids in, then moved back into formation. It was a scare tactic—I knew that—but it worked. As soon as I made it through, hall monitors ushered me into the auditorium.

Nora sat in the last row, observing the commotion around her. Her eyes were big and bright as they swept past me, taking in the crowd. They latched onto Mr. Reid as he moved down the aisle to the stage. He pulled a pencil from his blazer and tapped three times on the microphone. Feedback shrieked through the room. The crowd fell silent, as if someone had hit the mute button. Nora’s lips curled into a half-smile.

“Can everyone hear me?” Mr. Reid yelled into the microphone. The first two rows covered their ears. “I’m sure by now many of you know that a serious act of vandalism occurred last night. The damage was extensive. A great deal of athletic equipment was destroyed. For those of you taking gym this week, you’ll meet in the auditorium for an extra study period until further notice.”

Groans erupted from the jock section.

“I can assure you that we’ll find the perpetrators,” Mr. Reid added, causing the same jocks to cheer.

I swallowed, hoping to dislodge the rock in my throat. Next to the principal, a couple of teachers scanned the crowd, alert for unusual reactions. I wanted to check out Nora again, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the stage.

“I’m asking for your help. If anyone has heard or seen anything suspicious, please report it to me at once. For those responsible, I urge you to turn yourselves in.” He gestured toward the back of the room.

Everyone twisted in their seats to gape at the two policemen looking back. Someone dropped a pen. It gathered speed as it rolled down the sloped auditorium. I tried to focus on my
breathing. In-out. In-out. In-out. Now would be a bad time to pass out.

“The extent of your punishment will increase with each hour that Officer Price and Officer Henderson spend on this crime.” Each cop waved stiffly when Mr. Reid mentioned his name.

Seniors were supposed to do these kinds of things before graduation, I told myself. It was a prank. This would all blow over by the afternoon.

Mr. Reid muttered “Thank you,” walked up the aisle, and exited the auditorium, the cops behind him. The noise swelled to a roar as kids pushed out of their rows.

What kind of punishment was he talking about, anyway? Suspension? Payment for damages? Would the cops actually
arrest
us?

Stupid people get caught
, Kade had said.

We aren’t stupid, I thought to myself, repeating it like a mantra.

A few heads in front of me, slick black spikes bobbed up and down. I wanted to push everyone aside to get to Kade. His disregard for Mr. Reid’s dramatics might help me get some perspective.

Behind me, Greg Jacobs, football god of Kennedy High, said, “If I get my hands on those jerks, I’ll kick them right through the goalposts.”

I tried to muster some anger. If the orchestra room had been vandalized, the jocks would have yawned.

But it was a lot more than a few footballs. I couldn’t kid myself.

Greg’s sneakers scraped against the back of my heels. I twisted around. “Stop it!”

He and his jock friends looked at me like I’d materialized out of nowhere.

Behind them, Zoe moved up the aisle, her face three shades lighter than the honey-colored skin on her arms.

One thing was certain: we’d found something in common besides our loneliness. The fear of getting caught.

EXCEPT FOR THE OCCASIONAL COP IN THE HALLWAY AND
jocks grumbling because they had nothing to do, life returned to normal. Or at least I hoped so.

Mr. Reid said that the punishment would increase with each hour, and now days had gone by since the assembly. My fear festered and spread, invading my brain. I couldn’t think of anything else. If the police questioned us, who would dissolve under pressure and start talking? Not me, that much I knew. My parents would go ballistic if they found out. Kade wasn’t going to spill anything; the League had been his brainchild in the first place. Richie didn’t sneeze without Kade’s permission. But what about Nora? Miss Perfect might crawl into her parents’ arms to dump her guilt. She seemed desperate for their attention. Zoe was an unknown, too. She might have a hard outer shell, but inside I suspected she was soft as room-temperature butter.