The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (47 page)

Chapter 18

The next Wednesday, Rachel returned to school wearing her favorite baggy jeans, chain wallet and pitch-black t-shirt. To say the others on the fencing team were relieved is an understatement. I was relieved, too, mainly because I was just happy to see her wearing her favorite clothes. She needed some extra fencing attention, and Chase was more than happy to provide it, staying late with her for the next few days. We felt good. We felt like we could win a few medals in the tournament.

To make things even more exciting, it appeared the world’s Corrupted were lying low for a little while. No terrifying dreams. No horrible wizards flying around and acting like idiots.

My life wasn’t completely idiot-free, though. Not yet, at least.

The previous Friday, the Washington High football team had won a close game. Joey Harrington celebrated by being even more obnoxious during the week, and the tension overflowed in every class he attended. You could feel the difference in classes that were “Joey-free.” Students were more relaxed. They could be who they were without getting bullied. They didn’t have to worry about drawing attention to themselves.

The Mean Girls were temporarily out of commission. Someone had cracked their web site’s password and deleted all of the pictures. I had a funny feeling Seth and Briar had figured it out, with the help of Chase who’d overheard more than a few passwords spoken in his days of hanging out with the “cool” kids.

But Joey. Joey was not so easily beaten. And while he had learned his lesson about going after me, no one else in the school was safe. Not even some of his friends were safe, as they quickly learned in the halls and cafeteria. He was out of control. Absolutely out of control. And through it all, I kept hearing Chase’s voice in my head:

“You’re the
hero
.”

It happened that Friday, in Geometry class. Joey sat in the far back. We had a substitute teacher named Mr. Ahmed who gave us the last fifteen minutes to ourselves after drilling us with some grueling squares and triangles. I huddled close with Rachel and a couple art students who had a binder full of photography that they were entering in a competition.

The photos were good. Like, really good. And we’re not talking about stuff you put together using Photoshop or any of that twenty-first century crud. These three girls were entering photos they’d developed in a darkroom. Photos that took hours and hours to perfect inside a cramped place that was stinking with fumes that burned their nostrils. Oh, and we’re not talking about photos of puddles or sad playground equipment, either. These girls were finding all sorts of weird cracks and corners of Milwaukee and making it all beautiful. There was one of a man reaching into a garbage can in a cramped alley. Another was of a broken window, and sitting on the ledge on the other side of the window was a single rose, three of its petals wilted. Another was a top-down shot of a crabapple tree, the sidewalk underneath it littered with splattered crabapples.

That last one … well, that one Joey didn’t like it too much.

I heard him coming but I kept mum, hoping he might just be wandering around to stretch his legs. He liked sitting still about as much as he liked learning. But our luck wasn’t with us. He stopped beside Rachel, pointed to the picture of the crabapple tree with one grubby finger, startling Rachel and one of the photographer girls named Kayla.

“Is that crap?” he asked. “All over the sidewalk? Why are you taking pictures of crap?”

Kayla looked up at him, terrified.

“Get away from us,” I warned, shifting in my chair. My terrible wizard-inflicted bruise on my left leg screamed for me to sit still and stay out of this.

Joey looked at me, no doubt sizing up my wounds. He was sucking on a sucker, and the white stem poked out between his lips. “I’m just asking a question. That OK? Can I speak freely?”

“You think you’re really smart, don’t you?” I asked. I knew what he was doing. He was playing out the bad guy fantasy from every movie ever made: pretending to be following the law, antagonizing the hero.

He was in for a big surprise if he expected me to go along with
that
tired old script.

Joey turned back to Kayla, sucking loudly on his sucker. “It’s a pretty ugly photo.”

Kayla curled up in her chair. She was already a petite one, her loose red t-shirt and baggy jeans giving making her look more like a freshman than a senior. Now she looked even smaller, as if Joey’s shadow was causing her some sort of bodily harm.

“You’re a bully,” Rachel whispered.

We all looked at her in surprise. Joey’s ears reddened. I looked around—everyone in the class was watching now, even our substitute teacher, who stood behind the teacher’s desk in the front of the room, debating whether to get involved.

“You’re a bully,” Rachel said again, more forceful this time.

Joey pulled the red sucker from his mouth and pointed it at her. “You know what
you
are?”

Full stop. I’m not going to repeat what Joey said next. Let’s just say it was something you say to a homosexual
solely
to hurt her feelings. It doesn’t matter
what
name he called her. What matters is he didn’t even know Rachel. All he did was reduce her to an object of ridicule, and he went out of his way to be as hateful and hurtful as possible.

And all of it was too much.

“That’s it!” I said, pounding the table.

Joey flinched, stepping back. He must have immediately realized what just transpired because he put the sucker back in his mouth and stood straight, doing his best to recover.

But the damage was done. I could see in my classmates’ eyes a look of complete surprise. Joey Harrington had just
flinched
. The stone façade had cracked.

“I’m going outside,” I told the class. “And I’m not coming back inside until Joey Harrington is suspended.”

A few of the students gasped.

Mr. Ahmed held up his hands. “Um, I don’t think you can do that …”

“I’m not coming back in until this school starts dealing with bullies,” I added. “All of them, including the Mean Girls. And anyone who’s sick of the bullying in this school can join me.”

Rachel stood up. Then Anton and Jared from the basketball team. Then Kayla and her photographer friends.

Then everyone else in the class except Joey and his little table of football friends that included Mean Girl Cynthia Blake, who was glaring at me with a sour face. Mr. Ahmed watched in stunned silence. So did Joey.

We marched to Mr. Feinman’s classroom. I opened the door, knowing full well the students would be in groups doing some wild activity related to history.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Chase was there, sitting with Clyde and a couple others, working on a big colorful poster that I think was supposed to represent Napolean’s battle at Waterloo.

“Alice?” Mr. Feinman said, weaving his way around the tables. The rest of the class stopped what they were doing to stare, peering over my shoulder to see how many students were with me.

“We’re going on strike,” I announced. “And we’re not coming back inside until Joey Harrington is suspended. I don’t know what else because I’m too angry to think!”

Mr. Feinman stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Huh.” He looked at the other students. “Is that what you all want?”

“Man!” Clyde exclaimed, shaking his head. “I’ve got some demands, all right.”

“Are we going to get in trouble for missing class?” asked Samantha Klinger, one of the gamers who kept pink streaks in her hair.

Mr. Feinman shrugged. “I’d say yes. The real question is what if you win?”

“We need an anti-bully committee,” said Bryce Smith, a theater kid with thick glasses. “Made up of students and teachers so bullies have to answer to someone other than the principal. So there’s no favorites.”

The class murmured an agreement. The students behind me seconded the motion.

“So go,” Mr. Feinman said. “Go and fight for your education, then.”

I felt a heavy hand squeeze my shoulder. I spun around, nearly karate-chopping Mr. Ahmed right in the ear. The tall man pushed past me.

“Mr. Feinman,” he said, “Mr. Feinman, I’m so sorry. There was an altercation with another student. He said something he shouldn’t have.”

“What did he say?” Chase asked.

When Mr. Ahmed didn’t answer, Mr. Feinman urged him, “Go on, it’s OK.”

Mr. Ahmed’s brown skin turned a crimson red. Bless his heart, he repeated Joey’s verbal assault verbatim. The class nearly gasped in unison. “But it’s OK,” Mr. Ahmed said. “I’ll send him down to the principal’s office and everything will be right as rain.”

“Oh maaaaaan,” Clyde said, slumping in his chair. “This guy’s totally out of the loop.”

“Joey won’t get punished at all!” Samantha Klinger yelled. She stood up, knocking over her chair. “There’s a football game next weekend!”

The class shouted an angry agreement. Mr. Ahmed looked totally confused. He looked to Mr. Feinman for help.

Mr. Feinman turned to his class. “I’d recommend making signs.”

And then, just like that, we doubled our strength. We took markers and poster board outside, not bothering with jackets or backpacks.

By the time the principal got wind, three more classes had evacuated the building. He stepped outside, standing on concrete staircase and glaring at us. We held up our signs so he could read them. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and went back inside.

I ran across the parking lot to Seth’s car to get extra markers and extra poster board, which I’d just so happened to have stored safely inside his trunk.

“You know,” Briar said, lounging on the top of Seth’s car, “I could very well help you. If I wasn’t mortally wounded.” He held up his bandaged paws.

“You’re being a baby,” I murmured, glancing around to make sure we were alone. “And it was your own fault for grabbing my saber.”

He sat up. “Do you have any idea how much it
burns
to touch a weapon crafted by the hero?”

I held up my finger that had been burned by Agnim’s fireball of death. There were still a few blisters. The burning sensation hadn’t left for
days
. “I think I have an idea.” I chuckled. “You know, this probably would have healed already, except Clyde has this weird fascination with poking the skin bubbles while we’re at lunch.”

“That’s positively disgusting.”

“It really, really is.”

“So what’s all this then? A nefarious goings-on at the learning institution?”

I smiled, shutting the trunk. “Call it a little real-world heroics.”

“Ah, splendid! There is no greater hero than the one who can do good without the magic pen. You’d be amazed how many of your contemporaries forgot that.”

I glanced around again, making sure the parking lot was still empty. “How’s your … um, vacation?”

Briar swooned, nearly falling off the car. “More relaxing than you can
possibly
imagine. Although I
am
itching to get back into it. Nothing like the thrill of dragon slaying, I always say. Any dreams yet?”

“No. Thank
gawd
. The fencing tournament is next week. You’re going to come, right?”

The rabbit nodded. “I shan’t miss it.”

“Good. And your arm?”

He held it out, proudly displaying his glossy brownish fur. “No lasting harm. That isn’t to say being bitten by a dragon was painless, though …”

I smiled. “I’ll leave you a plate of cookies on the kitchen counter tonight.”

His long ears perked up.

Back at the front of the building, more students had joined us, congregating on the sidewalk and grass mall in front of the school. We made more signs. Signs like this:

NO MORE BULLYING.

WE WANT A BULLY-FREE EDUCATION.

NO MORE FEAR.

OUR SCHOOL IS INFESTED (WITH BULLIES)

Cars honked. Other students watched from the windows.

“O. M. G.” Jasmine made her way through the crowd, Margaret in tow. She grabbed Rachel by the shoulders. “Can you believe this? You totally started this, girl!”

“Well …” Rachel shrugged. “Alice was the one who …”

“Oh, whatevs,” Margaret brushed me aside with a wave of the hand. “Alice is, like,
Wonder Woman
or something. But you? You’re just a normal person. Like the rest of us.”

“Normal,” Rachel said, tasting the word on her tongue. Tears welled up in her eyes. She looked at me.

“Just like us,” Margaret said, putting an arm around our fencing teammate.

Jasmine put her head on Rachel’s shoulder. It was comical, given Jasmine was a good head shorter. She glanced over the crowd at the school and her eyes widened. “Uh oh.”

Principal Sanders was walking down the front steps of the school, carefully unbuttoning his brown suit coat. The crowd of students went silent. Principal Sanders’ brown dress shoes tapped on the concrete. He was looking right at me.