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Authors: Doug Wilhelm

The Revealers (13 page)

BOOK: The Revealers
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In detention, Elliot passed me a note.
I can't believe you talked back to the principal,
he wrote.
I wrote back,
I didn't. I was talking to you.
Right.
Anyway, that's so stupid. Visually seeing.
Elliot quickly scribbled back.
THIS is the kind of thinking that creates a Trouble Center!
I gave him a thumbs-up. The teacher looked our way, and we both studiously scrutinized our scrap-torn notebook pages.
 
We split up outside. I cut across the parking lot and walked to Convenience Farms. It was high time for a root beer.
While I was in there closing the cooler door and holding my bottle, Richie came in. He went to the counter.
I went up and put the plastic bottle on the counter, beside his pack of Winstons. We both paid. He turned and pushed open the door with his back, looking at me and lifting his eyebrows. I put the root beer in my backpack and zipped it up quick.
Outside, Richie was zipping open his cigarettes.
“So,” he said. “Let me ask you something.”
I waited. He looked out at the street. Put a cigarette in his mouth.
“I hear you're publicizing the bad guys in school,” he said, lighting up. “That's what I hear.”
“Yeah, kind of,” I said. “Like you said, remember? Put the squids in their place?”
Richie took a drag. “What are you doing, exactly?” he said, letting the smoke come out and drift away.
“Well, we're putting kids' stories on SchoolStream.”
“On what?”
“You know. KidNet.”
“Oh. Yeah. What kind of stories?”
“Well, mainly about kids getting picked on. And stuff.”
“And stuff,”
he said. He flicked his cigarette. “So,” he said. “What about me?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?
Huh?
What are you, stupid? What'd you say about me?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
“That's what I heard,” he said.
“Nothing.
So what do you think you're doing?”
“What?”
He cocked his head.
“Huuh? Whuut?
Listen, kid, I know you're not retarded, but I'll try to say this nice and slowly. You start telling the whole school about the bad kids—ooh, the
mean
kids—and you don't say anything about me?
Nothing?”
I blinked. “You
want
us to say something about you?”
He shrugged, smiling a little. “Well, hey. Who's the most feared person in this school?”
“I guess you?”
“You guess. You
guess
. You were scared half to death.”
“Well …”
“Of course you were. So why don't you put that on your KidNet?” He took a drag, crossed his arms, and waited.
I remembered what Elliot had said. I wondered.
“You said I could ask you questions.”
“Yeah.”
“So what if I did?”
“What if you did what?”
“Well, I could ask you questions—like, how do you get kids to be so scared? I mean, really. How do you do it?”
Richie nodded, with a half smile. “Not a bad question.”
“And what you say, I mean your answers, I could put them on the Net. Like a profile. You
are
good at that stuff.”
“The
best.”
“Sure. So will you do it?”
He shrugged. “Okay. But no questions I don't like.”
“No questions you don't
like?
What questions won't you like?”
Richie smiled. “Maybe you'll find out.”
“Oh. Great.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. He dropped his cigarette and ground his boot heel on it. “Activities block. In the boiler room.”
“The boiler room?”
He started walking. He was past the gas pumps.
“Be there,” he said, without looking back.
“O … kay,” I whispered to myself. I watched him go. I unzipped the backpack, reaching for my root beer.
My hands were shaking.
 
When my mom got home she said, “How was your day?”
“Pretty interesting.”
That night I got a message from Elliot:
Did you read in the paper that they've found a little dinosaur fossil with feathers? It's so cool! They found it in China. It's like a small fast dinosaur only it has feathers all over its body. It finally proves that small fast dinos evolved into birds.
I think we should have a slogan on
The Revealer:
EVOLUTION HAPPENS
Well, I wasn't sure what that had to do with anything. But Elliot had his own way of seeing things.
Catalina got an e-mail answer from her mom. She called that night to tell me. She was really happy. I asked her about the Cat and the Rats thing. She said she didn't care.
I said, “She's trying to put us in our place.”
“Who is?”
“Bethany. Don't you think she was behind it?”
“Oh, I guess so. Probably.”
“Sure. She wants people to see us as rats, or losers, so they won't pay us any more attention. I bet she hates that we're getting attention in the first place.”
“But does it really matter that much? I mean, next week people will be talking about something else.”
“Bethany'll still hate you, though.”
For a second, Catalina didn't answer.
“I used to think it meant something bad about me, that she acts that way,” she said. “Now I think a person like that just needs someone to plot against. She needs enemies. But really, so what? The whole world is not Parkland School.”
“Some people think it is.”
“Well, it isn't.”
“Yeah.” And then I told her about Richie—about the boiler room.
“He says I can't ask him any questions he doesn't like.”
“What questions doesn't he like?”
“I don't know! What should I do?”
She chuckled. “Well, I don't know. Ask about his home life. Ask about his friends.”
“I'm pretty sure Richie Tucker has no friends.”
“Well, what do you want to know about him?”
“I just want to know what's
with
him. How come he terrorizes people in the first place? I mean, why do that?”
Another pause.
“That might not be the best way to start,” Catalina said.
“I know. I'm dead.”
“No, don't think that way. My dad works in sales and marketing. He says you can talk to anybody—you just have to find something you have in common.”
“Something in common? Me and Richie?”
“Yes. Why not? There must be something.”
“We have him beating me up in common.”
“Well, there you go!” She started laughing, then she stopped. “But really. There must be something. I mean, more than that.”
“I don't know. Maybe I'll find out. If I live.”
 
We had a project due for social studies that day, the rough draft of a personal essay on the subject “What I Think Anne Frank Was Really Like As a Person.” In class Ms. Hogeboom paired us up to conference on the drafts. Bethany DeMere got me.
She was outraged. After we pulled our desks together—actually, I pulled mine over to hers—she scraped her desk around so that it was angled away from me. Then, as she sat there, she caught the glance of one of her friends and rolled
her eyes at the ceiling, and shook her hair. Her mouth was shut tight.
I liked that. Two weeks ago Bethany did not even know I existed. I guess she did now.
While I read her rough draft she gazed at the ceiling, sighed, and tapped her fingernails on her desk.
I'm very sorry but I do think Anne Frank was actually a fairly annoying person. I mean, she thought she was so much smarter than everyone else in that Annex, and she thought she was so attractive to all the boys when she was still in the school, even though in the pictures she has plain dark hair and looks very ordinary, if you ask me. But the main thing is she thought she was above everyone else.
She was writing about how cruel the Nazis were, which everyone knows they were, but she also kept writing how nasty and small-minded everyone was who was stuck living with Anne, too. I mean, I think the Nazis were terrible just like everyone else. But why does that have to make Anne Frank so wonderful? Just because she wrote all about herself and how sensitive she was. I do not think Anne Frank had the most attractive personality. Maybe you think I am terrible for thinking that. But I kind of do.
I took a deep breath. It wasn't every day that a person got to comment on the deep personal thoughts of Bethany DeMere. My heart was thumping a little, but I was also psyched.
“Well … it's interesting,” I said.
Bethany sighed. Without looking at me she held out her hand, palm up, like:
Give it back, you paramecium
.
But not yet.
“How come you say the most annoying thing about Anne was how she … let me see … ‘She thought she was above everyone else'? I mean, Bethany, nobody acts that way more than you do.”
“
Excuse
me?”
“Oh, come on. Everybody knows it. You have to be number one, and if anybody threatens that, you make them pay.”
She looked away.
I said, “You know who I'm talking about.”
She glanced at me quickly. I smiled. She crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling. “We're supposed to be conferencing,” she said. “I don't have to talk about anything else besides that.”
“Okay. If you'd been in that attic with Anne, and that boy was paying more attention to her than you, what would you have done to her?”
Bethany's face flared.
“Ms. Hogeboom,”
she said.
“Bethany? Russell? Are you conferencing?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,”
said Bethany.
“Well … keep trying.”
Bethany snorted. “It's not fair,” she said to me fiercely. “You're a nobody who suddenly thinks you're somebody. You and your friends. But that doesn't give you the right to say nasty things about me or anybody else.”
She actually looked hurt.
“Huh,” I said. “So what gives you that right?”
She shook her head. “If you're not going to talk about my draft, I don't care what happens. I'm not talking to you.”
“All right.” I was reading the paper again. “Here, you say how Anne ‘wrote all about herself and how sensitive she was.'”
Bethany looked at me uncertainly. “So?”
“So do you think it's so wrong if somebody writes the
truth about who they really are? Do you think it's so bad when other people read it?”
Bethany flushed a deep red. She grabbed her notebook, opened it, and scribbled furiously. She ripped out the page and slapped it on my desk.
I'm not talking to you ANYMORE,
the paper said.
I don't care WHAT
happens.
“Okay,” I said. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket. Then I leaned over and whispered, “But this isn't over.”
She glared at me.
“You bet it's not,”
she replied.
 
In the lunchroom line Elliot was picking up his tray with one hand while he leaned on both crutches held together. I caught up to him at the cash register.
“Hey,” I said, “I'll take the tray.”
“No. Not today.”
“Why not?”
“Here,” he said, handing me one crutch. “Just take this.”
“Why?”
But he just leaned over and picked at his milk carton till it was open on top. Then he took off, poling himself across the floor toward the tables, holding his tray by one edge. I followed.
Among the center tables, Elliot came up to where Burke and Blanchette were sitting side by side. Blanchette glanced up and opened his big, half-mocking smile just as Elliot suddenly stumbled and his tray launched forward, tipping as the milk sloshed out. Everything landed and splashed all over Burke.
Blanchette grinned even wider. “Why,
Geek
owitz!” he said.
Burke stood up. He had milk, spaghetti, and butterscotch pudding all over his shirt and his pants. His face was turning very, very red.
“You slimy disgusting little jerkoff—I swear you'll pay for this.”
“Hey, man, it was an accident,” Elliot said. “See, I'm hurt. I have to use these crutches. I have a lot of accidents.”
He turned and poled back expertly toward me. He had a bright look of pure delight. I handed him his crutch.
“Excellent menu today,” he said.
“They're going to kill you.”
He shrugged. “They already tried that.”
The Darkland Revealer
The kid who's after me has spit in my food in the lunchroom, stuffed me in a garbage can in the bathroom, stolin my clothes in the locker room, whipped iceballs at me on the playground, and thrown my backpack out the window of the bus. I don't want to come to this school anymore. Every day I don't want to come. I get stomickaches and headaches. But I have to come anyway.
The worst part is the kid always gets out of it. When he gets caught he's such a good lier. The other day he was going to the shower in the locker room to throw my clothes in there and the jim teacher stopped him. He said he thought they were his clothes and he was only looking for a place to change with privissy, because the other kids were picking on him. He actually almost started to cry. The jim teacher believed him. The teachers always believe him. I know he will always get out of trouble, and he knows it too. So he knows he can do anything. And so do I.
 
There was this girl last year who just did everything wrong. I mean she wore really wrong clothes, like Disney sweatshirts that were dirty anyway and patent leather shoes, and she said really ridiculous things trying to fit in. She just
was awkward in everything, like some kids are if you know what I mean. So right away a certain group of girls especially started harassing her.
On the playground when this girl would come out this group would make sure nobody did anything with her, so she would sit there by herself. Then that got boring for them so they started saying things, like that the girl lived in a trailer (I don't know if that was true) and she had cat hair all over her clothes and she was stupid. Then other kids would join in making fun of this girl. I joined in too.
One time there was a whole group of us making fun of her and saying she dressed like a Salvation Army reject and she slept with her cats and stuff like that (and I was doing it too) when the girl picked up a rock and threw it. She hit one of the leaders of the group that had started it in the head, and she was bleeding all over the place. Everybody ran away. The girl who threw the rock was crying and so was the girl she hit, who went running into the school. She had to have stitches and the girl who threw the rock was suspended for three days and had to see a counselor. So as soon as she came back to the playground ALL the girls surrounded her and said she belonged in a cave and she was crazy and had to see a sickologist. I was in that group again. I felt really bad because I knew what really happened. But I didn't say anything about it and I didn't stop.
 
You should say more about what girls do. They can really be more vicious. I should know. I am a girl, and this is what I did to someone.
Last year when I was in seventh grade, this girl was new and I didn't like her, I didn't want her to be popular. At first I just told people she had no friends and was weird. But I knew she would start to get friends eventually. So I became the girl's friend myself. I acted really friendly with her. I told
her people wanted to be friends with her, and she should have a party at her house and everyone would come. She got excited and we worked on the invitations together. She sent them out to a bunch of girls. Then I went to all the girls and said we were playing a joke, and not to come to the party. So on the day of the party, I know the girl was really excited and she had rented movies and she had all this food and stuff because she told me she was going to. And absolutely nobody showed up. Not one person. including me.
That girl never came back to our school. She went to a private school I heard. I know I did a terrible thing, but at the time I didn't care. Now I do care. I wish I had not done it. I do feel terrible about it. I read these stories and think about it.
So I just want people to know that girls can be the worst. But we should think about what we do sometimes.
BOOK: The Revealers
6.33Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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