The Rule of Won (7 page)

Happiness is one of those things you can spend days trying to describe, weeks wishing for, years trying to find, but when it finally washes over you in one big fat wave, you still have no idea what it is. You just grab on, ride the feeling, and hope to hell it lasts, even though you know deep down things couldn't possibly be this good forever.

In the dizzy days that followed I wore my button proudly, posted my Crave without fear, waved to fellow Cravers in the halls, and pitied any who led a lesser life. And oh, yeah, though Vicky still pulled me into a corner away from everyone whenever we met, now it was for swapping spit.

A little spork, a little chanting, and the world lay at my feet. I daily thanked the ancient Greeks, the gods of Slackerdom, and yes,
The Rule of Won
.

Because, I mean, who
wouldn't
believe after that?

It was Wednesday morning, the day of our first Crave since the announcement. I'd woken up two hours early, all jazzed, so I finished up some homework, then, figuring I'd crash in
school if I didn't get some sleep, decided to snooze on our crappy couch until it was time to leave for the bus. I was feeling great despite the broken spring poking my back, thinking of Vicky's lips against mine, about to slip off, when . . .
wham
!

Something hit me on the side of the head.

“
What?
”

I sprang up and looked around. Joey was next to me, a rolled-up newspaper in his gnarled hands.

“What are you smiling about?” he croaked.

“I'm happy! I'm smiling! What, it's against the law?”

He shook the paper at me like it was a loaded gun. “Since when do you care about the law? Remember when the cops came for you? You're up to something.”

“I'm not! I swear! Things are just going good, you know? And someone's doing an article about how I had nothing to do with the gym. It was crappy construction!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe, but you're smiling too much. Something's bound to go wrong.”

“Like someone smacking me in the head while I'm trying to nap?”

“Worse.”

“Geez, Joey,” I said. “Y'ever stop to think maybe things keep going wrong around here because you
expect
them to?”

He hit me with the paper again. “Ow!”

“You expect that?”

“No, but . . .”

“There you go.”

“I swear, Joey,” I mumbled, shaking my head.

“Fine. Just don't swear in front of me or your mother.”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, it was, thanks. Just remember not to keep your head in the clouds too long or you'll trip and wind up on your butt in an alley with a new tattoo on your arm.”

He wandered into the kitchen, cackling.

I guess he was trying to say, in his special GP Joey way, that I shouldn't get too carried away. Either that or maybe he was going into that second childhood thing and just liked hitting people. Sometimes he's like a wrinkled version of that wise-man mandrill from
The Lion King
, Rafiki. Sometimes he's just nuts.

Speaking of lovable nuts, even the dark Erica had lightened considerably. On the bus that morning, she didn't even quote a poem about death or suicide. When I said hello, she said, Hey, like she was normal.

I was thinking of kidding her about her good mood, but figured that would make me too much like Joey with the newspaper. If she was still happy in a week or so, I'd rib her then. She did seem a little nonplussed when I talked about how well Vicky and I were getting along, but I had no idea why.

Fencing soon went up around the new construction site, and our beloved Dr. Wyatt could be seen spending a lot of QT with muscular dudes in hard hats. Even he didn't glare at me lately. Maybe it was because he'd read that police report
All-den Moore—just Moore now by request—talked about. Oh,
everyone
didn't love me—the school newspaper hadn't come out yet—but with all the excitement, they were forgetting they hated me.

Looking up, you tend to notice more things. For instance, I noticed the aforementioned Moore again between second and third period, and for a change, he wasn't stuffing papers into something, and he wasn't alone. He was with three other people, a girl and two guys. All of them looked sort of familiar, but I couldn't place them. They were all headed out of the student newspaper office, walking in formation, following Moore's lead.

I figured I could use the occasion to ask when the article was coming out, and maybe find out what the hell “Vanuatu” meant without having to lift a finger.

“Moore!” I called.

They all stopped, like a well-oiled machine. Well, maybe not a
well-oiled
machine, heck, maybe not even a machine, but they all stopped.

“Got yourself a posse?” I said cheerfully. I was saying everything cheerfully these days.

Seeing my pin, one of them, a square kind of guy built sort of like a short door, except with more fat than muscle, moved to block me from getting closer. He was wearing a trench coat.

“It's okay,” Moore told him, raising his hand like he might have to hold him back.

“You sure?” he said.

Moore nodded and the square man relaxed a bit, but the
other two—a lean, anxious, lanky guy in a dirty white T-shirt and denim vest who was crouching as if the ceiling were right above him, and a well-dressed brunette girl with braces, freckles, and a predatory look—kept giving me the evil eye.

“My staff: Guy, Drik, and Mason,” Moore said, pointing, in turn, to Square Man, the lanky scared kid, and the mean-looking girl.

That's when I recognized them. I'd known them all since grade school. All three were kids everyone had picked on, only now they were better dressed, almost cool looking, and they were together, like they were getting organized. Despite the mouth breathing and the braces, Mason's hair, for instance, cupped her face nicely, making her look kind of pretty.

I'd never gone in big for the picking-on thing myself. That jock Dylan from the Crave and a couple of his pals used to, but I think even they grew out of it.

“So when's the
Weekly Screech
coming out? And, if I may be so bold, the article that clears me?”

“We changed the name,” Guy said curtly, as if I should know. “It's
The Otus
now.”

“
Otus
is the genus that the screech owl belongs to,” Mason, the girl, chimed in.

“Changed some other things, too,” the tall guy, Drik, said in a quiet voice. He seemed to be talking more to my pin than me. “We're getting serious. For starters we're doing a big exposé of
The Rule of Won.
”

I laughed. “What are you going to expose? You have to admit we've had pretty good results.”

Moore laughed back, through his nose. “You really think your club got the school that grant by wishing for it really hard?”

“Well . . .yeah,” I said. Moore had a way of talking sometimes that was so arrogant, if he'd said, “You really think your name's Caleb?” I'd have to wonder about that, too.

He snapped his fingers. Mason slapped a sheet of paper into his hands, which Moore held out to me for inspection. It was a photocopy of an article from the local paper, with the headline “Screech Neck High Up for Grant.”

Moore pointed at the date. “Printed last month. The National Zetetic Foundation had to award a substantial sum of money to some school, or they'd be in danger of losing their tax-exempt status. The chairman is an SNH graduate. Dana Krull probably read the same article, which made her think of her Crave. Ethan Skinson may have read it, too, which made him pick it. Not really so magic when the odds are stacked like that, is it?”

“Oh, please,” I said. “You're just trying to . . . hey, how did you know it was Dana's Crave or that Ethan picked it?”

While his posse looked around nervously, Moore blinked. “We're reporters.”

“Well, big deal.” I tossed the paper back at him. “The final decision wasn't made yet, so we still could have had something to do with that.”

Also on the plus side for
The Rule
was the fact that Moore himself was going to clear me, people liked me again, and Vicky and I were back together.

Moore shook his head like he felt sorry for me. “You know what circular reasoning is, Caleb? Begging the question?”

“Of course I do. Uh . . . is it like Vanuatu?”

Sour-faced Mason stepped up again. “No, it means once you assume something is true, you can't use reason to disprove it. As long as you believe you caused the school to get the grant, you'll take any data and twist it around to match that assumption.”

I puffed my chest up defensively. “Ha! I will
not
take any assumption and . . . and . . . do what you said with it.”

“Right,” Moore said. He waved his little gang forward. They fell back into their marching order.

“Hey,” I called after them. “Still doing that article about the construction, right?”

They didn't answer. My heart sank a little. If Moore was anything like the previous editors, there might not even be an issue until the week before summer vacation.

Still, I wasn't going to let their snippy cracks about
The Rule
shake my new faith, especially since I didn't particularly understand them.

This time at the meeting, everyone came back. We even had a few new faces, making our trailer feel a little crowded. A few of the quieter kids like Landon seemed livelier. Some had even bought themselves “1” pins. The mood was so good, I soon found myself thinking that Moore and his pals were just losers.

Vicky sat next to me, hot red and orange flames adorning her fingernails. I pulled her chair closer and wrapped my arm
around her waist. I think Erica picked her head up for a second from her writing to watch, but it was hard to tell.

Ethan was bubbly himself, clapping his hands together even more than last time. Before he could get the Crave started, Vicky applauded. Everyone joined in. A few of us, myself among them, hooted.

“So far so good, right?” he said.

The applause grew louder. Ethan got that mad scientist twinkle in his eyes. Before the clapping faded, he raised his voice. “We're just getting warmed up. Now we're going to do some heavy-duty imanifesting for our basketball team so they break their losing streak and kick the Regis High Hurricanes' asses next week!”

Mike clenched his right hand, swiped it in the air, and said, “Yes!”

Everyone applauded again. Good times.

Then Ethan went into his thing about mesmories and imanifesting to catch up the newcomers, and we all chanted about how the Basket Cases would win their next game. I don't know if it was the breathing or just the overall high feeling, but I conjured my spork easily and kept seeing it fly into a basket.

When we chanted, pretty much everyone put something into it, and it really did feel like we all shared one great big Voice.

I wondered if I should tell anyone about that article Moore was planning, but I decided, the same way I decided to leave Erica's new smile alone, to let it sit. I wanted to ask Vicky out
after the meeting, and I had a feeling that if I didn't do anything stupid, she'd say yes. So I didn't do anything stupid. Besides, the Hurricanes were a great team and our guys didn't even have a gym. If we could pull that off, what question could there be in
anyone's
mind?

When Ethan was finished and everyone rose from their seats, I turned to Vicky, nonchalant as could be, and said, “Coffee?”

“Great!” she said, smiling. “Mind if we ask Ethan to come along?”

I felt like Joey's newspaper had whacked me again.

“Him? Mr. Skinson?”

“Yeah, wouldn't it be nice? He runs the club and everything, but no one hangs out with him. He could use some friends.”

“Uh . . .”

Before I could make up some reason to say no, she called out, “Ethan!”

And of course he turned around, Ethan being his name and all.

“I'm sure he's busy,” I mumbled to her, but she ignored me.

“Caleb and I are going to Java Jive for some coffee. Want to come with?”

I conjured my spork and thought, “Make him say no, make him say no.”

But I guess I wasn't fast enough, because the smile on his face widened.

“Thanks,” he said. “That'd be great.”

Perfect. A dream come true. Sharing my first date with my girl in ages with the school's brand-new alpha male.

I noticed Erica snickering as she left the trailer, and made a mental note to severely mock her newfound joy the next time I saw her.

The three of us, Ethan, Vicky, and yours truly, headed out across the beautiful asphalt parking lot together, me trying to figure out who the third wheel was, Ethan or me. He and I being guys, we didn't have much to say to each other, but Vicky walked between us, chattering like crazy.

“I just figured that we all know you, but we don't really know you, you know?” she said.

Ethan nodded like he understood, which put him one up on me.

“Maybe next time we should ask the rest of the Crave along,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, hoping I didn't sound too stiff. “A crowd would be much better.”

I casually put my arm around Vicky's waist, but by the time we reached the street, she had managed to quietly shake it free.

As we approached the storefront with the hand-painted sign, Ethan asked, “So how is this place?”

“It's called Java Jive for a reason,” Vicky said. “Because the java is, well . . . jive, as in bogus.”

“It's not that bad,” I said, feeling kind of offended for the poor little store. But Ethan's smile vanished when he saw the vending machine that dished out the coffee. I think he'd pictured more a Starbucks kind of deal.

“Crappacino,” he said.