Sleight (25 page)

WHEN THE BUS pulled up to my stop I got off and headed toward the campus. It was a good thirty minutes before the first bell so the student parking lot was almost empty. Forcing myself to focus, I took off for my locker to start putting my plan in motion. There were very few people in the halls, which sported Christmas decorations, posters for the Winter Dance, notices for the chorale, and other announcements for holiday activities. It was my first day back at school since the bombing attempt and lots of students recognized me. I was the surprised recipient of several hugs and a couple of high fives. It made me feel very uncomfortable.

I finished all of my secret tasks and was putting some things in my locker while trying to shake off a serious case of the jitters. What I’d set up was hopefully going to protect me and others.

First bell broke me out of my funk and I headed for homeroom. When I stepped into the room it took me a heartbeat or two to make sense of what I was seeing. The classroom was packed, dozens of balloons were floating in each corner and a huge banner was strung across the room, ‘Welcome Back Benny!’ emblazoned on it in bright blue.

“Welcome Back!” “Benny, Benny, Benny!” were just a few of the screams I could make out amidst the roomful of students hollering at the top of their lungs.

Mrs. Sayles, my Bostonian homeroom teacher stood front and center with a big smile shining at me. Justine was right next to her, clapping her hands for all she was worth. I stood there not knowing what to do and feeling like the proverbial fish out of water, when Justine ran up and threw her arms around me.

“I wasn’t going to miss this,” she whispered loudly in my ear, while the yelling went on around us. I blushed so hard I was surprised I didn’t burst a vein.

Have you been in that kind of moment? People applauding, yelling for you? It felt so strange to me. I had been in a different orbit for so long that I couldn’t relate to it. When I was in the seventh grade I’d been in the sweet spot, at least as far as school and friends were concerned. Good at baseball, lots of friends, great grades and involved in all sorts of popular stuff. Part of the ‘in’ crowd in junior high society. But then the summer had happened. My mom leaving, Dennis crippling me and my running away to Seattle. And I became a kid that the old me wouldn’t have noticed. Shy, awkward and lame. Literally lame. And now, these kids were cheering for me and it felt undeserved somehow. It made me feel ashamed of my past. I didn’t feel different, but I was. The thing in the gym had actually been me screwing up, not talking to the right people when I should have. And then it had played out in a way that made me look heroic. It was just something that had happened, and they thought I was a hero.

I wanted to hide.

The rest of the day wasn’t as intense as that first moment in homeroom but the nonstop back slapping, shoulder punching and high fives were unsettling at first and overwhelming by the time lunch rolled around. The school dress code didn’t allow me to throw my hood over my head so I adopted a head down approach which only slightly reduced the attention on my way to the cafeteria. When I got through the line for food I grabbed a seat near an exit, far from where I usually sat.

It didn’t matter. The first person who found me was the last person I wanted to see.

“Hey stranger, whaddup?” said Baffle as he slid into a seat directly opposite from me. He was wearing ripped jeans, a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a smarmy smile on his freckled face. His hair was an uncombed mass of curls.

Clenching my jaw muscles enough to hurt, I struggled to hold my temper. Engaging into an argument with him wasn’t going to help me.

“Go away…Sampson,” I said, pointedly using his first name.

He grinned at me as he grabbed a hot dog off his plate and took a huge bite. “Oh come on. First day back and you’re gonna be like that?” He said with a full mouth.

“I know the whole story now. I’m not letting you blackmail me or screw with my friends. Leave. Now.”

Taking an equally large swig of apple juice he belched, wiped his hand across his mouth and frowned at me. “Sure. I’ll leave. Just remember, talk to anyone and bad stuff will happen to people you care about.”

My anger got the better of me. “Here’s something for you to think about…one thing, anything goofy or strange, happens to someone I care about and you’ll be sorrier than you can imagine. I’m not the one that tried to blow up a gym full of people.”

He took another giant bite of hotdog, shook his head and acted like he was sorry for me. “You don’t get it. Take Mr. Conroy for example. He sort of made it a point to get in my face when school resumed. Didn’t have much to go on but he suspected something and thought threatening me was a good idea.”

What had he done? I felt myself getting angrier, but managed to hold my tongue. The cafeteria monitor had tuned into our intense conversation and was slowly walking in our direction.

He went on. “So the way I see it, if it were to come out that someone has been messing with students’ grades, and hacking other faculty members’ emails he really should just mind his own business. Whether it’s true or not. If it looks legit, it is. You know, glass houses and all.” He tore open a bag of potato chips and crammed a handful into his mouth. “I’ve been looking into other stuff too.” He winked at me and a feeling of dread welled up inside of me. What had he been up to?

“Yeah, I’ve like gotten really into looking up family history.” He smirked at me. “Did you know that people move and change their names? And here’s something else that I’ve learned that’s amazing: some people have figured out how to rent an apartment and when you look into their employment history they don’t have any income! Isn’t that amazing?”

“I’m warning you Baffle, just walk away. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. We’re done,” I said, but my heart was racing. How much of my fabricated living situation had he uncovered?

He looked up from his plate with a demented grin. “Hey, if you don’t have haters you must not be poppin’.”

“Seriously? You’re such an—“

“Hey, is this seat taken?” We both looked up at Justine, a bunch of her friends crowding behind her.

Baffle looked back at me and leered. “Maddy wouldn’t be happy you’re hanging with this one.” He jerked a thumb at Justine, grabbed his tray and stood up.

Justine jabbed a finger into his chest. “You know what Sam? Nobody likes you. You screwed up your relationship with the one person in the
whole school
that cared about you. You’re so worried about what you think people might be doing to you that you can’t even tell what’s real any more. Why don’t you crawl back under whatever pile of garbage you woke up under.” Once again I was confronted with how different she was.

Baffle’s face took on a pinched look, and he clenched his free hand into a fist. He took a step back from Justine; it looked like he was going to take a swing at her. I reached out with my knack influence. Knocking him off balance was easy. It caused him to bobble his tray and he dropped it. A round of applause sprang up.

He left the tray on the ground and scowled at me.

And then part of my plan slipped into gear.

The PA crackled and an authoritative female voice blared from the speakers set high on the cafeteria walls.

“Sampson Baffle please report to the principal’s office immediately.”

Several people at the table broke out in a chorus of ‘oohs’ and giggles. Baffle’s frown evaporated and he looked around, confused.

The faculty member who had been doing a slow stroll toward us arrived just as the PA went silent. It was one of the few times I had witnessed perfect timing in the lunch room.

“Sampson? Come with me.” She wiggled an index finger at him. He started to walk in her direction but she held up a hand, and pointed at the floor where his tray and its contents had fallen. “Clean that up first.”

At that point it would have been best for Justine to count it all good and leave it alone.

She decided not to.

“Oh Sam, you’re so clumsy. You should be more careful,” she said.

I groaned inwardly as the teacher frowned at Justine while Baffle slammed silverware and dishes onto his tray.

Some people have to poke the bear.

AFTER A SMALL celebration on Baffle’s comeuppance, I said goodbye to Justine and hustled out of the Caf without getting a chance to eat. I made a quick phone call to put a piece of my plan in motion, and then I texted Trey Canty a one word message.

He was waiting for me on the stairs in front of the gym looking really unhappy and out of place. Looking over his shoulder and glancing around guiltily didn’t help to make him look any less conspicuous.

“What if he sees us?” he asked, tiny beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Whether from worry or the running around he’d been doing for me was hard to say. He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his red and white letterman’s jacket, trying to keep warm in the cold. Standing on the balls of his feet and swaying back and forth made it seem like he was ready to run a race.

“He won’t,” I said, puffs of my breath visible in the chilly air. “He’s in the office right now dealing with phase one. The stuff you got me should work fine. You just need to make sure your girlfriend knows what to expect.”

Bobbing his head and craning his neck to see over me, he said, “Yeah, yeah. She knows.”

“Good.”

“Why couldn’t you have just texted me? I could have just texted all of this to you,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, you’re forgetting. If this blows up our phones will get looked at. You and I meeting might be suspicious, but texts would mess up the whole thing.”

“Yeah, right,” he mumbled. “Are we good then? We’re done?”

“Yeah, we’re good, but I have one question.”

He didn’t say anything he just gave me a chin nod.

“What did your girlfriend do that pissed him off?”

Trey’s face twisted into a look of disgust. “She laughed at him. He did something stupid, clumsy, and she laughed. Then I told him to back off when he got in her face. That’s when it all started.”

“And the blackmail?”

He turned bright red. “Sexting. The photos I told you about. They were shots she’d sent me. He got ahold of them. He was going to put them everywhere. It would have totally ruined her life.”

Unbelievable. Baffle’s sociopathic behavior knew no bounds. Sawyer had gotten rid of the photos. I hadn’t asked what they were.

“Well she can relax. That’s not going to happen,” I said. “See you around.”

Trey shook his head. “No. We’re done. You’re too good at this. Too much like him. I did you this solid and you did one for me. End of story.”

He walked away, his head bowed. His comment surprised me. How was what I’d done like Baffle? Had I crossed some invisible line? I didn’t have the luxury of reconsidering my plan. It had a life of its own now.

Trey wasn’t privy to what was happening in the principal’s office, but I had a real good guess. Baffle had been implicated in some underhanded behavior in an anonymous email sent to the vice principal, Mr. Conroy. It was part of what Sawyer had agreed to do for me.

A second email had been sent to Baffle. It informed him that this was just the beginning of pay back for framing Munger and Witkowski in the failed demolition of the gym. If it worked the way I hoped it would, Baffle would assume the person that had ratted him out to the school was a member of Munger’s old posse.

To prevent Baffle from using the email to show that he was being framed, Sawyer had set it up so that right after Baffle opened the email it would delete itself from his system and the server where it had originated. Sawyer had declared all of these computer shenanigans to be child’s play. There was no way I could have engineered it on my own which I hoped would throw Baffle even further off the scent. Baffle would probably be suspended, hopefully expelled and looking at Munger’s old gang as the architects of his undoing.

If it all worked the way I hoped I had just removed a psychopathic monster from the school population and spared Trey and his girlfriend from being blackmailed. I had it all tied up in a bow and the only people who got hurt were the bad guys.

Of course that’s what I
thought
.

When I was leaving my last class I ran into Justine and we walked outside together. We paused on the stairs at the front of the school, when we heard a car horn blast. Twice. Her folks’ Lexus was idling at the curb. They were both waiting, her mother outside of the car. I saw her body language change when she saw me. Her shoulders squared and her chin went high. A frown flickered over her face when Justine gave me a quick hug, planted a kiss on my cheek and sauntered slowly over to the waiting car.

As their car pulled out of the lot someone plucked at the sleeve of my jacket. When I turned to see who it was my heart sank.

“Well, Benjamin how was your first day back?” asked Mr. Conroy.

“Fine, thanks,” I said, trying to remain calm. “I was just headed home.”

“Just a moment. I heard there was some sort of a ruckus in the cafeteria today. Between you and Sampson Baffle.” It was all a statement of fact. He seemed to be warming up for something.

“No, no. Not really. He dropped a tray and some kids laughed. No big deal.” I thought it was a better idea to downplay any tension between me and Baffle.

He nodded. “Hmm. Not exactly the way I heard it. You and he don’t have any problem do you?”

And there it was. “No sir. We’ve been friends since junior high.”

“
Been
friends? Did you have a falling out?” Mr. Conroy was one of the good guys and being evasive didn’t make me feel great, but what I’d done would help a lot of people, probably including him.

I decided to take a different angle on the conversation. “We hadn’t seen each other since the mess in the gym. We haven’t had any time to talk at all.” Totally true, and neatly skirting the fact that I wanted nothing to do with Baffle.

The nod was exchanged for a frown. “That didn’t really answer my question did it?”

Being on the wrong end of a conversation with a man I respected made me anxious. “Why are you asking me all these questions Mr. Conroy?”

His eyebrows arched. “Sampson has been accused of some pretty serious things today. I just want to know if there is anyone in school who might have a bone to pick with him. Maybe someone who thought he was doing a favor for people in trouble.”

More than you know I thought, but I saw my chance to change the direction of the interrogation. “Oh, well there’s the kids that used to hang out with Munger and Witkowski. They all probably have a problem with Baffle. You know.”

The lines in his face smoothed out and he stared at me with a blank expression. “Hmm. Well we’ll see. You know I count you as a friend, Benny. Don’t start fighting other people’s battles. No matter what the justification might appear to be.” He flashed a small smile and went back into the building. First day back and I had put myself on the radar with Mr. Conroy. Not good.

I managed to get through the parking lot without getting stopped again and was on my bus back home in a few minutes. As the bus chugged away, leaning into the turn I looked at the oversized gold and silver garlands strung on the eves of the school roof, and the multi-colored lights wrapping the light poles.

It still didn’t feel like Christmas.