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  I smiled the most genuine grin I could muster. “Don’t worry, dude. I’m good with it. All in fun, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said as Craig just kind of scrunched up his brow and didn’t understand why I wasn’t more pissed.

  “Truth is, I found it rather flattering. I’m much skinnier than that guy’s bod. But you’re not doing this because you’re gay, are you?”

  Liam spit some of his pizza onto the paper plate and then looked me in the eye. “We could up the ante,” Liam said. “You know that, don’t you? We’re still pretty disappointed in your intrusion yesterday.”

  “Hey, you can post whatever you want. I won’t be offended.”

  Puzzlement again, this time on the part of both Cave and Lump.

  “But I did take some flak yesterday from Miller,” I added. “He thinks it was me roughing up the old guy.”

  “So you ratted on us instead, right?” Craig asked.

  “What would have been the point?” I shot back. “He wouldn’t believe anything I said. I’m not exactly on Miller’s good list.”

  Craig gave me a smile. “Sweet,” was all he said.

  “But now that we’ve had this little talk,” I continued, sounding a bit too much like a parody of myself, “I do have a favor to ask.”

  Both of them just stared at me like I was about to ask for a date with their mothers.

  “Would you mind,” I said as tactfully as I could, “going easy on Amanda and Marissa?”

  Liam’s eyes widened a bit, and then he smiled at me and spoke in a tone that suggested we were friends, buddies, old allies who understood each other. “Colin, dude, hey, it’s a way to get a girl to do what you want. I’m thinking that if I promise to take down those photos, one or the other might be willing to pay me back for my kindness.”

  I knew I wasn’t about to change his mind on this. I gave him a small laugh—a fake one for sure, but he didn’t know that. I said, “See you guys later,” and I walked away.

  Chapter Four

  I half expected to get called into Miller’s office over the photo thing, but that didn’t happen. But what Liam had said was really bugging me. I arranged to meet Emily downtown at the Brown Bean Coffee House that night, and she showed up looking a bit tired and worried. I told her about my meeting with Cave and Lump. I tried to make the scene sound funny, but she wasn’t taking it that way.

  “I don’t know, Colin. Things are just getting so creepy at school.”

  “Hasn’t it always been that way?” I always expected things at school to suck, but Emily was more the sensitive, idealistic type. I think she expected stuff to get better, not worse.

  “Not really,” she said. “In the last year, it’s gotten worse. The Internet stuff is just part of it. There’s more drugs moving through the school than ever before, more kids stoned in class. More knives in lockers. And guns. I haven’t seen any, but I hear some of the girls talk. I don’t know how much is true, but if Mr. Miller or the principal knew the truth, they’d be freaking.”

  “Come on, it can’t be that bad.” Listen to me, Mr. Smiley Face.

  “Colin, you sometimes have your head in the clouds. You must be able to see how mean some people can be. It’s been that way since elementary school, but now the nasty ones are selling drugs.”

  “You know, it’s not worth getting worked up over a little weed.”

  “I’m not talking about weed. It’s the other stuff. And it’s getting ugly. Dealers trying to stake out territory. In the halls, even. And weapons in the lockers.”

  I’d heard rumors, but I guess I was just shutting most of it out. I still didn’t want to believe her. “Why isn’t somebody doing something to stop it?”

  She gave me an icy look. “Because no one wants to get involved. No one wants to speak the truth or point a finger.”

  I sipped my coffee and watched her. She was visibly shaken. “Look at Liam and Craig, what they get away with, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

  Just then I had an image in my head of a real iceberg. Big, white, magnificent. And I wished Emily and I were somewhere on a sunny shoreline in the Arctic looking at that iceberg instead of here in a downtown coffee shop talking about how screwed up our world was.

  “I’m worried about Amanda,” she continued. “She’s not returning my texts. I can’t get her on her home phone. She’s been away from school all week.”

  “Let’s go talk to her,” I said. I hated the feeling of sitting there doing nothing. If Amanda was hurting, we should go help her.

  “Now?”

  “Now,” I said. I took Emily’s hand as I stood up. She smiled. She seemed a little shocked at me touching her, but it was my way of trying to take charge. Something had to be done.

  We walked through the cool dark night, and it felt good to be outside, even in this dingy part of the city. “I used to spend a lot of time walking around alone down here at night,” I told Emily. “That was back when I was a smoker.”

  “You smoked cigarettes?” Emily seemed both surprised and appalled.

  “Yeah. I used to smoke. How stupid is that? I have no excuses. Young and stupid, I guess.”

  “How’d you stop?”

  “Cold turkey. That, and avoiding all smokers. When I used to walk around, I’d run into other kids smoking, and I’d stop and bum a cigarette or offer one to somebody I met. All very social. We’d stand around on the street and talk about one of two things. We always talked about smoking or how screwed up the world was. Sometimes both.”

  “Sounds like tons of fun.”

  I shrugged. “Sort of. But bad habits die hard.”

  “But you did it.”

  “One night I stayed home and read first-person accounts of lung cancer from smoking—hundreds of them on the Internet—for three straight hours. Then I looked in the mirror. Then I flushed my last pack—one at a time.”

  Em gave me one of her funny vegan looks. “Not very enviro-friendly. Kind of a waste of water.” She was messing with me.

  “It was a ritual. A necessary one. I promise to make it up to the environment.”

  Amanda’s house looked dark except for one light on the second floor. There was no car in the driveway. Emily sent her a text telling her we were here. There was no response. So she called Amanda’s cell phone. Once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth time, she answered.

  “We need to talk,” Emily insisted. “Colin is with me.”

  I could hear Amanda protesting, saying she was sleeping and telling us to leave.

  “No,” Emily insisted. “Let us in.”

  Amanda said something and then hung up.

  “What,” I asked.

  “She said the door is unlocked. Let’s go. I don’t like the way she sounded.”

  So we walked in, turned a light on and found our way upstairs. I felt a little like a thief, a home invader. Her parents must have been out. Emily knew her way to Amanda’s bedroom. When we opened the door, Amanda was sitting up in bed. At first I thought she was just really sleepy, but then I smelled the booze. Amanda was drunk.

  “Amanda,” Emily said, “what’s going on? How come you haven’t been in school?”

  “I’ve been sick,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” Emily said. “Colin talked to Liam. He’s the one who posted those pictures. We can’t let him get away with it.”

  “Forget it,” Amanda said. “It’s hopeless. They’re out there now. You wouldn’t believe the creepy emails I’m getting from guys.”

  “He did the same thing to me,” I said. “I’m getting creepy emails from guys too. I just ignore them.”

  “But that’s different for you. You’re not me.”

  “But you have to do something,” Emily said. “You can’t just hole up in your room and get drunk.”

  “Why not?” Amanda asked. She sounded defeated. Hopeless.

  “It was Liam, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Craig is in on it too, I think.”

  “Of course,”
I said. “I don’t think you were the first victim.”

  “Or the last,” Emily added. “You need to blow the whistle on them. You need to make a stand.”

  “Not me, “Amanda said angrily. “I’m not like that.” And then she lay back down in bed and pulled the covers over her head.

  Emily and I just looked at each other. After about ten minutes, Amanda was asleep. She seemed okay, and we knew we should leave before her parents got home and started asking us questions.

  As I walked Emily back to her house, I really craved a smoke. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. After I said goodbye to Emily, I walked back toward downtown on my own way home. Outside the Brown Bean, some kids from school were smoking. I bummed a cigarette from one of the girls, and she lit it, then smiled at me—kind of cute, kind of like we had this immediate bond because of the damn cigarette. I thought, maybe I should stay there and get to know her. But I felt the nicotine kick in, and I knew I needed to walk. I said thanks and walked on.

  I smoked the cigarette down to the filter and even then took one last long draw. Then flicked it into the street the way I used to. I felt good. I felt stronger. But as I walked on, it occurred to me that I was losing ground.

  Chapter Five

  Part of me wanted to come up with a sneaky way to get back at Liam and Craig. Maybe do the same thing to them that they were doing to me and Emily’s friends. I kept thinking maybe Emily would be next. If so, I’d slam those suckers somehow. As I walked to school the next morning, I called Emily and told her what I was thinking.

  “Colin, it’s so not you,” she said. “It’s not your style. Besides, I think it will backfire.”

  “But we need to do something—at least for Amanda and Marissa.”

  “Go to Mr. Miller. Tell him what’s going on.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. “He already thinks I’m the troublemaker. And he thinks I’m a liar as well. Why don’t you go talk to him?”

  Emily was silent. She didn’t have to say it. If she got involved, everyone would know one way or the other. That’s the way it worked at school. And then if it wasn’t Lump and Cave getting revenge, it would be someone else on her case for ratting.

  “Damn,” I said. “Miller hates my guts. I hate his guts. He’ll think I’ve made up the whole thing and throw it back in my face. Who knows what will happen?”

  “Colin?” I heard the pleading in her voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “If you don’t speak up, no one will. Please?” The pleading again.

  I sighed and wished I had another cigarette. Then I wished I hadn’t smoked the one the night before. I also wished I wasn’t going to school at all today and that I was asleep back home in bed. Then I sucked it up and said, “Yeah, I’ll talk to Miller. But it’s not going to be pretty.” So right before class started, I politely asked my French teacher, Mademoiselle Leblanc, if I could go down to the office. A handful of kids coming into the classroom heard me. Word would be out. Damn.

  I shuffled out of the classroom and hurried down the hall. The secretary asked me if Mr. Miller had called for me. I said no. She said he was busy. I said it was important. She talked to him on the phone. A door opened.

  “Colin? What brings you here?” he asked.

  “We need to talk.”

  He gave me a puzzled look. The look also said he didn’t trust whatever I was up to. He waved me into his office, and I slumped down into the hard wooden chair in front of his desk as he straightened his tie and returned to his throne. He didn’t say anything but spread his hands and waited for me to speak.

  I explained about the photo of me first.

  “I’d gotten wind of it. But the word was you posted that photo yourself. Just trying to get attention. Not a particularly brilliant thing to do, but if it was done outside school, and it was, we decided we wouldn’t touch it.”

  “But it wasn’t me. That’s not my body. Just my face. If you want me to prove it, I’ll take my clothes off right here.” Leave it to me to push all the wrong buttons.

  Miller gave me a look of disgust. “Spare me, please. But, for the sake of argument, who is it you think is behind this prank?”

  “Liam’s the mastermind. Craig is along for the ride, I think.”

  “Same two boys you claimed were harassing the old man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have some kind of grudge match going on with each other?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Can’t you just keep it outside the school grounds?”

  That’s when I explained about Amanda. “And she’s not the only girl being harassed,” I added.

  “What would motivate anyone to do that?” he asked, still skeptical.

  “It’s like blackmail. A way to get some girl to do what they want.”

  Miller looked even more disgusted. “Like sexual favors?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  Miller looked doubtful. I could tell that he just wanted me to go away. And I knew he still didn’t believe I was telling the truth. “So if this is really the case, Amanda should go to the police.”

  “She’d never do that.”

  “Then you should go to the police.”

  What a cop-out. “Right,” I said. “Then have half the student body hate me.”

  “Hey, you’ve already ratted to me on your friends.”

  “They’re not my friends,” I said flatly. “And they deserve to be ratted out, but I came here hoping you might help me. And you’re not willing to do that, are you?”

  Miller was closing down. This meeting was coming to an end. “I don’t know what else I can say,” he concluded, which led me to understand that he didn’t truly believe that this thing was playing out the way I described it.

  I got up to go.

  When my hand was on the doorknob, Mr. Miller suddenly added, “I’m going to ask around, see what I can find out about this sort of thing.”

  There wasn’t any conviction in his voice. I figured it was just a brush-off so he could get on with his paperwork.

  When I got back to class and found my seat, everyone was looking at me as if they knew where I’d been and what I was up to.

  Chapter Six

  Back in the hall, I had that craving again for a smoke. I was going to have to bust that one. No way was I going to go back to smoking. But it was an indicator that I was weak. That this was getting to me. Other kids were looking at me. A hint of a smile here and there. They probably liked the idea that maybe I was in trouble again. Maybe I was just paranoid. I wished that I was older—out of school and away from here. I wished I was on a pilgrimage, hiking through the Himalayas. I blinked and waited for it to come true. But nothing changed. Same old school, same old halls, same old me.

  And the same old rules.

  I guess I wasn’t paying much attention to where I was going. Someone opened a locker right in front of me. I smacked into it.

  “Whoa, sorry, man,” a voice said as I took a step back. It was Jerome. He was new this year. Word had it that he’d been transferred because of some kind of trouble at his other school.

  I laughed. “No. My fault. Head in the clouds.”

  He smiled a kind of crooked smile. “It’s cool. You’re Colin, right?”

  “Yep.” I shrugged and started to walk away.

  “Chill,” Jerome said. “Wait till the crowd thins so we can talk.” Jerome was one of those white-kid gangsta wannabes that I never understood. He had the look down and the body language, but it just didn’t all come together as anything but a pose. But I was curious, so I hung back and waited for the crowds to thin.

  “Too bad about that photo thing of you on the Internet. Dirty trick, whoever did it. Hey, I know what it feels like when people make fun of me. You know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded. I’d always steered clear of Jerome because of his attitude, but here he was trying to show me a little concern. Weird.

  “I always found ways to get back,” Jerome sai
d. “Check this out.” From inside his locker, he took out a leather case of some sort, looked over his shoulder once, then opened it. Inside was a deadly-looking knife and a set of brass knuckles. “We all need to have some kind of self-defense these days, don’t you think? And some way to get back at whoever is dogging you… if you have to.”

  Jerome closed the case and put it behind some textbooks in his locker. “If you’re interested, I can set you up with whatever tools you might be needing. It’ll cost you, but not that much.”

  I felt a little freaked at this. I’d seen Jerome himself hassling some younger kids at school. He was no saint. But was this part of his mission? Selling weapons on school property? Maybe Emily was right. Things were getting pretty nasty. Maybe I didn’t have a clue. How had it come to this? “No thanks,” I said. “Not my style.”

  Jerome gave me that crooked smile, and I couldn’t quite guess what it meant. “Just trying to help a brother out,” he said, closing his locker. “Later.” And he snapped the lock in place and walked off.

  I sat with Emily in the cafeteria and told her about my meeting with Miller. I didn’t say anything about Jerome. Emily seemed to be kind of moody. Maybe she was worried about Amanda and Marissa. Maybe she had other worries. Or it could have been me. In my head, I was still hiking the Himalayas, trying to make the whole school thing vanish.

  Just then, a fight broke out. I’d noticed these two guys, Matthew and Tyler, arguing when I walked into the caf. Tyler was no saint, but Matthew was much worse. I’d known them both since elementary school. Matthew had been pushing little Tyler around plenty of times, but now Tyler was beginning to kick back. It was obvious from where I was watching that Matthew was the one who started this and the first one to throw a punch. Tyler just weaved out of the way for the first swipe. And the second. But Matthew landed a third on Tyler. Tyler went down but came up swinging.

  Everyone else had already backed off and given them room to fight. People were shouting and cheering. No one moved to break it up. Miss Leblanc was the first teacher on the scene, and she bravely pushed through the mob and made a good effort to get them to stop. Matthew had Tyler down on the floor, using his advantage of weight and brute force. I couldn’t see what was happening to poor Tyler, but, happily, I saw him pop back up onto his feet. Maybe he’d been taking self-defense classes or something. He got one good punch into Matthew’s jaw just as Mr. Miller walked into the room and the crowd opened like the Red Sea to let him through. Everyone knew better than to get in Miller’s way.