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  I think she was shocked to hear me say I missed her. She smiled the sweetest smile I’d ever seen. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “Come back. I’ll be there for you.”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “But you’ll talk to me on the phone, right?”

  “Sure. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been ignoring you.”

  “That’s okay. It’s been a confusing time,” I said. “For all of us.”

  Two weeks went by, and Jerome’s killer had still not been found. Police said they had leads, but that was all. Everyone at school was paranoid. Teachers were really shaken. When any little confrontation occurred, the ever-present hallway cops were right on it. I think, for me, the most unnerving part was that the cops wore bulletproof vests. It was as if they were expecting Jerome’s killer, or someone equally violent, to show up any day.

  Attendance was way down. Many parents were keeping their kids home. My mother suggested that to me. But I said no way. It was a funny thing. I’d never really liked school. I disliked the social games, found many of my classes boring and couldn’t wait for my high school sentence to be over. But it was different now. I wasn’t going to let this thing with Jerome, and the fear it created, stop me from getting an education. I know how lame that sounds, but in some strange way it was true.

  Jerome’s killer finally turned himself in three weeks after the murder. His name was James Gleason. He was nineteen and not in school. He’d been in lots of trouble before, and he’d been dealing drugs on the street and outside our school. And then Jerome moved into his territory. Gleason was charged with first-degree murder. It was all anyone wanted to talk about in school.

  But here’s the thing. Gleason turned himself in. No one had come forward to suggest he might have been the shooter in the school that day, and it was obvious that some students had seen him in the hall. Someone would have known who he was. Even after Jerome was shot, no one spoke up about this dangerous guy who obviously wanted to wipe out the competition. Now everybody just kept saying how happy they were that he was caught and this whole thing was over.

  In my head, it wasn’t over. I kept thinking that if we weren’t watching out for each other, even the Jeromes of the world, then something like this would just happen again. But I kept it to myself. I especially didn’t say it to Emily. She had returned to school right after Gleason’s confession. She, like everyone, was breathing a sigh of relief. But not me. The police were now absent from the hallways, but no one was planning on removing the metal detectors.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I kept mostly to myself except for the time I spent with Emily. She was back in school now and things there had settled down quite a bit. I wasn’t the only one wishing this school year was over and this was all behind us. But I kept my head down and made a point of not getting involved in anyone’s business.

  That was until it became painfully obvious to me that someone had decided to pick up where Gleason and Jerome had left off. There was a vacuum to be filled. Jacob was a friend of Liam and Craig’s. (Surprise, surprise.) He’d dropped out of school awhile back, missed a year, but then dropped back in, so he was older than most kids in our class. Emily told me that she heard he was selling weed.

  But there was more to it than that. I heard he was also selling crystal meth and crack. Some kids said he’d been dealing on the street while he was out of school, that he’d been working with whoever had been supplying Jerome. Others said he’d been with Gleason’s supplier.

  I wasn’t gullible enough to believe everything people said, but I kept an eye on Jacob, and I could see that he had his own little posse of wannabes, including Liam and Craig, who trekked off with him after school. It wasn’t too difficult to watch a couple of deals go down.

  “What if I just confront him?” I asked Emily. “Just tell him flat-out that he’s got to quit or I’ll snitch.”

  Emily looked frightened. “You can’t do that. It doesn’t work that way. You’ll get hurt.”

  “But this is the loop. What if it plays out the same way again? Besides, I’m hearing stories about some kids getting pretty wasted and downright sick on some of the meth he’s dealing. It’s all bad news as far as I can see.”

  “Can’t you just leave it alone?”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t. That’s what I did before.”

  I thought Emily was going to get mad at me. She looked scared. “Tell Miller. Just tell him what you know and walk away from it.”

  She was right. I would have preferred the confrontation with Jacob. I really would. But I’d settle for this. Cowardly, but better than nothing. Miller would listen to me this time.

  I waited until school was over. I told Emily to head home and not wait for me. When the halls were empty, I knocked on Mr. Miller’s door.

  “It’s open.”

  I walked in. He seemed surprised to see me. “Colin, come in.”

  I told him what I knew. Or thought I knew. “Look,” I said, “I know Jacob’s involved in something. Like Jerome was. I don’t know the whole story, and I don’t believe half of what other kids say, but the rat in me says I need to do this.”

  Miller looked puzzled. “How come we don’t know more about this?”

  “’Cause what’s going down is mostly off school grounds. But he’s here every day and making contacts. It’s a problem that won’t go away.”

  Mr. Miller ran his hand across his forehead. “I can’t afford to ignore what you’re telling me.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “If we go after Jacob, is he going to know that it was you who put us on his trail?”

  “Probably. That’s my rep. And if he can’t figure it out, I’m sure Liam will give him a good hint.”

  “Is that what this is about? You still trying to get even with Liam and Craig?”

  “No way,” I said, feeling ticked off at Miller again. It was like he still didn’t trust me.

  He nodded. “Okay, I’ll follow up on this. We’re pretty tight with the police these days, as you might expect. We’ll see what they have to say about Jacob. But, Colin, I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Back before Jerome got shot, someone saw you with him in the park. It was just a person living near there. Someone had made an anonymous phone call to the police saying you were seen buying drugs from Jerome. Is that true?”

  My eyes went a little blurry then. It totally caught me off guard. But if I wanted him to believe me, I knew I couldn’t bullshit him. He’d see right through it. “No,” I said. “He offered me some, but I didn’t take it.”

  What he said next shocked me. “Thanks for being honest with me, Colin. And thanks for coming by.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mr. Miller wasn’t quite as discreet as I thought he’d be when it came to looking into Jacob’s activities. When the time came for the police to question him at school, he was clean. Not only had he stopped dealing (at least temporarily), but his teachers had nothing bad to say about him or his work. He had cleaned up his act.

  But Liam had probably told him that I was the one who had ratted on him. I knew this because a pair of new Photoshopped images of me appeared on GoofFace. Not the real me, of course. And these were pretty disgusting. I didn’t think that was all there was to it though. I knew there’d be more than that.

  But I wasn’t expecting what happened next.

  I met Emily outside school one morning a few days after Jacob was questioned by the police.

  “It’s Amanda,” she said. “More of those pictures surfaced on the Internet. She tried to kill herself with pills and booze. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I think so,” Emily said. “But why is this happening?”

  “It’s Liam trying to get back at me for squealing on Jacob.”

  “I can’t believe she tried to kill herself,” Emily said.

  “Maybe the pictures are their way of trying to get
to me,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d go back to such sick stuff. They haven’t tried to get to you?”

  “No photos,” she said. “But I’ve had a couple of emails.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe you shouldn’t be hanging out with me.”

  “Colin, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. But I’m scared.”

  “I’m going to bypass Miller and go to the cops. I can at least file a complaint about what they’re doing to me. I’ll tell them about Amanda and let them look into it.”

  “If you do that, everyone will know.”

  “I don’t care,” I said angrily.

  “I’ll go with you,” Emily said.

  But I wouldn’t let her do that. I needed to do this on my own.

  I had to stop them before they got to Amanda again. And before they got to Marissa. Or to Emily.

  It wasn’t long before everyone at school knew about my visit to the police. Liam and Craig were questioned but not charged. The pictures of Amanda came down but not mine. I started getting emails from wackos. Worse than that were the nasty emails from other kids. Mostly anonymous. Mostly angry that I would rat on Liam and Craig.

  Emily and I honed our Internet skills and figured out how to delete just about any photo or any posting from any site. I guess you might call it hacking. We could have put up pictures of Liam or Craig if we wanted to. We could have made them appear in whatever ridiculous situation we wanted. But we didn’t. And I left those pictures of me out there. Just to prove I didn’t care.

  Amanda was getting counseling. She was even talking about coming back to school. She said she didn’t like her new school.

  When the heat was off, Jacob must have gone back to his trade.

  And got busted.

  That wasn’t my doing, but I was blamed for it.

  I think I must have attracted quite a following of people who had opinions about me who didn’t even know me. I started wearing my rat shirt to school again. I had created four of them, each more outrageous than the last. I remembered what was said about someone born in the year of the rat: quick-witted, intelligent; can react swiftly to his environment; someone who is highly adaptive. A survivor.

  Graffiti was starting to appear on the walls of the school. Colin the Rat was scrawled, usually alongside a very insulting image. It was just chalk at first. But then spray paint.

  Liam and Craig finally caught up with me one night when I was walking home from Emily’s by myself. They’d been drinking. Maybe doing something else too. Jacob was with them.

  “Hey, Pretty Boy,” Liam said, putting himself directly in front of me.

  “Hey,” I said, trying to stay cool.

  I wasn’t much of a fighter, never was, never will be. I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance against the three of them.

  I don’t know why, but I wasn’t scared. I decided to speak my mind to all three and tell them what I thought. I even owned up to going to the police. But they already knew that. After my little speech, I still stood my ground. I should have done what an honest rat would have done. I should have run. But I didn’t.

  That’s when they beat the crap out of me. Craig held my arms. Liam and Jacob took turns. I kept waiting for a knife blade.

  But they were kind.

  They left me punched up good, bruised and bleeding from the lip and over the eye. I was lying there on the sidewalk until some man out walking his dog came by.

  My parents wanted me to go to the police, but I’d done enough of that. I convinced them I was okay.

  Instead, the next day I put on my most outrageous rat shirt, and I went back to school. I felt terrible. I was sore and aching. And I looked like shit. I looked exactly like I felt. But I didn’t have to explain to anyone what had happened. Anyone who cared already knew. One of the daring threesome had bragged about it. And word spread.

  During school, I started getting some text messages with variations of You got what you deserved. Idiots. Aside from when we were in class, Emily didn’t let me out of her sight. She was there at the door of every one of my classes when the bell rang. She walked me through the halls.

  Mr. Miller stopped me as we passed him, gave me a very concerned look and said, “Do you want to talk?”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing to talk about.”

  I’d talk to him again when I had some important information. Once a rat, always a rat. But this was different.

  So the wounds healed nicely, the bruises faded and school got strangely… well, dull again. All except for the fact that Liam and Craig picked on the wrong girl as their next victim. Lauren’s father was a lawyer, and he went straight to the cops. He had the evidence and the means, and he nailed them.

  But the graffiti was on the increase. On the school walls outside and on some old buildings and construction sites downtown. It used to be just a hasty scrawl with a cheap can of spray paint—Colin the Rat, with a crude ugly rodent with an ugly face.

  But now it was different. The artwork was better. Much better. It was multicolored, and the script was elegant. The rat in the graffiti was more than a little Manga. The rat sometimes looked a lot like the rat on my T-shirts, the rat that I came up with.

  Mr. Miller and the principal were so pissed off about having to sandblast the brick walls that they called me in for a consultation as to how to get the graffiti to stop. Miller even caught on that the artwork was good. “This isn’t just vandalism anymore, Colin. This is serious, premeditated art.” He paused. “But it’s still a nuisance. And it’s costing the school money.”

  Maybe he thought I’d rat on whoever it was. But I couldn’t.

  I started to see variations of the rat image all over town. There were even stenciled versions on sidewalks. There was an article about it in the weekly newspaper, The Coast.

  It had become clear to me that Colin the Rat had at least as many anonymous admirers as he had detractors.

  Emily said, “I think you somehow raised ratting to a whole new level of social acceptance.”

  And I guess I could take that as a compliment.

  Long live the rat.

  Lesley Choyce divides his time between teaching, writing, running Pottersfield Press and surfing the waves of the North Atlantic. He is the author of almost eighty books for youth and adults. Lesley lives in Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia.