It Wasn't Me Page 4

  “Yeah, because it’s too much for you! Probably would be your worst nightmare.”

  Molly slams her hand down, hard. “You have. No. Idea. None. So shut up!”

  Jax shrugs. “Whatever you say.” He adjusts the flat brim of his hat and begins to unpack his lunch. Molly, Erik, and I all watch him unwrapping things like it’s the most interesting show on TV.

  He pulls out what looks like half a baguette with some kind of grilled meat and veggies in it, a container of raspberries, some fancy-looking rice crackers that look like artwork, and two cookies. Noticing us all staring, he raises his eyebrows so high they disappear under his hat.

  “Can I help you?” he asks.

  Molly turns away but not before she exhibits a spectacular nuclear-red blush. “No. Just…nice lunch.”

  Jax snorts. “Yeah. You sound surprised. You thought I’d have some ghetto lunch or something?”

  We all freeze. Jax is African American, and Molly, Erik, and I aren’t. (Andre is, but he doesn’t hang with the pretty small group of black kids at school the way Jax does. Andre, like phytoplankton, doesn’t really hang with anyone.) Jax, with his flattop and his fancy sneakers and his baggy pants, stands out a little. And now he looks at us like we’re judging him. Suddenly all three of us are scrambling and babbling, trying to not sound like racist idiots.

  Jax waits for us to wind down.

  “Losers,” he mumbles around a bite of his sandwich.

  None of us answers.

  My face is hot, and I’m unreasonably embarrassed. For a second I think I’ll say something, but I reconsider, and what comes out is a kind of goat bleat, so I pretend I’m coughing and turn away. Who’s he to get up in my face? I’m the one whose stuff was trashed.

  I’m the victim here.

  I let my hair fall on either side of my face and go back to my book, taking one last look at Jax’s lunch.

  My stomach growls a little, but I don’t want to eat my granola bar or apple yet. Lesson learned: Today I packed a grudge lunch to protest being here. I’m now starving and tempted to bribe Jax or Molly for their food, which of course I won’t do. I have a strict policy of flying solo, and begging for food definitely won’t work. Jax gives a little grunt of pleasure as he bites into his sandwich, and a shower of flaky baguette crumbs rains down. I make myself turn away and look at Alice, who appears to be licking Fun Dip powder out of an open packet for her lunch, and Andre, who’s silently eating from a thermos of soup. Luckily, or not, no one seems to care that my stomach is making an effort to eat itself. Even here, I don’t really matter.

  As I look around, the sheer weirdness of being stuck in a room with this particular group of five kids hits again. Every time I think about getting the phone call at home, being asked to return to school because there had been an “incident,” and walking into the student gallery to the sight of my photographs destroyed feels like a punch to the solar plexus.

  It was bad. It was so…public. All I wanted, then and now, was for the whole thing to disappear, vaporize without a trace, and leave me unscathed in the aftermath. But of course that isn’t how it went down.

  My list of “suspects” (said with an ironic set of air quotes because, really, this isn’t Law & Order): Erik, as discussed, is a person of interest for sure. But next is Jax, probably, just because he’s a loose cannon who’s always getting in trouble. Who knows if he’d trash the art gallery, but I can’t say he wouldn’t. Then maybe Alice, because when you’re that weird, you can’t be counted out. Molly, who has been disgusted with me since kindergarten, is seriously unlikely, but who knows? It’s possible my messy hair and drawn-on Converse and ripped jeans offend her sense of order so cosmically she had to right the wrong. Andre? Honestly, unless he’s got a secret life as a serial killer or something, I can’t see it.

  I shake my hair down in front of my face and stare at the floor. These five people in the room…they either ruined my photographs or saw someone else doing it and don’t care enough to tell the truth. Someone in this room did a lot of work to hurt me. No, not me, my stuff. I’m fine. My self-portraits…not so much.

  Still. It must have taken a while to scribble on every single image, to decide which awful words to write across them, to draw obscene body parts everywhere. Shows real commitment. And whoever did it was rewarded by it being the most dramatic act of vandalism at Shipton Middle School, ensuring everyone would talk about it. Afterward, everywhere I went, either I was immediately swarmed by do-gooder students who had their “somebody died” face going, or else people avoided me like my epic humiliation might be contagious.

  I grab my apple and face the window, taking a huge bite. Whatever. I’m here to try to put this whole thing behind me as fast as I can, and that’s it. Ms. Lewiston might want me to talk all about the hurt, but the fact is, whoever did it already trashed my stuff. I see no reason to let them see the additional damage.

  When Ms. Lewiston comes back, we circle back up and talk about personal responsibility and community. Reasonable topics. Sort of. Except not really.

  Alice: I think an example of community would be the special effects world. Because we all share techniques and post our successes but also are open and share our failures. The failures are so epic sometimes! (She begins to giggle maniacally. We all stare at our desks, avoiding eye contact.)

  Ms. Lewiston: Interesting, Alice. How did you find this community? Do you meet on weekends? Does Shipton Youth Services offer classes?

  Alice: OH! No! I’ve never met any of them! I only know them on YouTube. There are whole channels dedicated to effects. KatherinetheRad is one of my faves. And Grommet—he’s awesome. But I think he lives in Munich or something.

  I can’t tell you what happens next, because my mind is filled with images of an angsty German dude named Dieter who wears a black turtleneck sweater and films endless videos of himself with fake head wounds.

  Anyway, by the time the day wraps up, even Ms. Lewiston looks a little worn out. I realize that I literally can’t remember if Andre has said a word since he told us his family has moved five times. And I also realize that Molly hasn’t spoken since lunch. As Ms. Lewiston tells us to get packed up, I look over and Molly hasn’t moved.

  I kick the leg of her chair. “Hey. Are you listening? We can pack up.” I don’t know why I care, except that her face…There’s a poem my mom read me (she’s always reading me poetry…she says it’s better out loud) about some old-fashioned damsel who’s under a curse. It’s called “The Lady of Shalott,” and there’s this line in it:

  The mirror crack’d from side to side

  “The curse has come upon me!” cried

  The Lady of Shalott.

  Molly looks like that. Like she just got cursed or something. But as soon as the quote pops into my mind, her face dissolves into a far more typical Everything Is Disgusting expression, and I think I imagined the whole thing. Except that her hands are trembling a little as she packs up her bag and jams a wool hat with a giant pom-pom onto her head.

  I stand up. I file Molly under Not My Problem. Maybe she’s thinking about all the extra-credit work she can’t get done this week. Maybe she’s worried that she doesn’t have coordinated socks for the outfit she planned tomorrow. Who knows? Who cares?

  We all shuffle out of the room and down the hallway toward the front exit. My mom swore that she’d try to be here on time, but…yeah. Her definition of “on time” is within a cool twenty-minute window of the target.

  Sure enough, when we get out there, there’s a shiny black Volvo SUV, a newish but filthy silver minivan, and a sleek gold Lexus waiting on the curb. Molly slides into the SUV, which has windows tinted so dark I can’t even see who’s driving. Jax climbs into the back of the minivan, which has loud kids’ music and some cheerful bellowing going on inside. A white dude is driving, and he seems to be attempting to talk on the phone, pass the loud ki
d a snack cup, and greet Jax simultaneously. Jax ignores him and hits the button to close the door. Alice, who removed her black eye during lunch, gets into the Lexus, which pulls away almost before she closes the door.

  Andre and Erik both look at me, then at each other.

  “Well, gotta dip. Going to see if I can make the last hour of camp, then hit the gym. You know what they say, ‘You can’t win the game if you’re not in the game!’ ”

  I actually didn’t know they said that. I don’t even know who they are. I don’t care either. The last thing I need is Erik’s fake friendliness. It’s like having a hyena wanting to hang out, chat, while you, an impala, sit there, nursing a broken leg. As we’re talking, Andre slips away and is halfway down the block before Erik finishes yapping. The boy is STEALTH. I spend a productive few minutes imagining Andre as some kind of spy assassin who hides his mad skill beneath ironed jeans and plaid shirts. But then I get bored.

  Fifteen minutes after everyone else leaves, there’s still no sign of my mom. I love her, I really do. We have an awesome relationship, especially considering that it’s just the two of us these days. She’s funny and talks to me like a real human and not a tweenbot, and she tells hilarious stories, and she laughs at my jokes—serious SNORT-LAUGH laughing, not pity laughing—and she’s a librarian, so we always have awesome books, including advance copies. But the woman is not exactly watching the clock.

  My brain spins backward in time, like those old-school movies where newspapers flip back to a date in the past. Given my mom’s track record, I probably have enough time to go back to my conception. But that’s (1) disgusting and (2) not really relevant here.

  I do go back as far as the last week of summer vacation before sixth grade, because…REASONS. Family reasons. And even though it’s only vaguely related to the whole Justice Circle disaster, compared with staring at the same suspicious brown stain on the pavement, it seems like the lesser of two evils.

  Events Leading Up to This Mildly Tragic Justice Circle (In Reverse Order)

  Ms. Lewiston thought suspending five students who may or may not have been involved in an act of vandalism and destruction was not cool.

  Due to the school policy of zero tolerance for vandalism, Ms. Davis wanted to suspend the five students found in the art gallery in the wake of the epic destruction there, especially after my pinhole cameras were subsequently ruined in the darkroom. There’s zero tolerance for a lot of things at our school. Ms. Davis is big on zero tolerance.

  None of the five who were in the gallery had an alibi for when the darkroom door was opened.

  No one was caught.

  Two days ago, one day after the gallery debacle, someone opened the door to the darkroom, where my long-exposure pinhole cameras were, and ruined them.

  No one admitted to doing anything, seeing anything, or knowing anything.

  At 5:50 p.m. Molly Claremont walked into the gallery and started screaming that it had been vandalized. She was joined almost immediately by Alice Shu, who had just walked in; Erik Estrale, who was right outside the door that leads to the cafeteria; Jax Fletcher, who was walking by the other door toward the gym; and (maybe) Andre Hall, whose bag was in the gallery but who swears he was in the bathroom until after Ms. Davis showed up.

  Three days ago my large-form self-portraits, hung elegantly (if unwillingly) in the student gallery space, were “defaced,” which is a polite word for “someone scribbled military-grade nastiness all over them.”

  Three weeks ago, with the encouragement of Mr. Smith (photography teacher) and Ms. Lewiston (future Justice Circle leader), I somewhat reluctantly agreed to hang my large-form self-portraits in the student gallery the week before February break.

  Last spring my photographs won an honorable mention in our town’s “Winter Imagery” contest.

  Last year for Christmachanukah (Jewish mom, Christian dad) I got my first serious camera.

  At the start of sixth grade I reallyreallyreally didn’t want to come to school, so my mom and Ms. Lewiston came up with the idea of my being the school archivist, which was a nice way of giving me a reason to stand on the sidelines of everything and take pictures.

  The week before sixth grade started, my dad left.

  My dad used to travel a lot, and would send me lots of photos.

  I was born.

  So that’s pretty much it. After it all went down, Ms. Lewiston went hard, asking me to please “go high when they go low” and “rise above the easy answers” to “do the hard work of making things better.”

  Frankly, it’s a lot to ask. What I really want is for this whole thing to go away. I keep reminding myself that they’re just photos. And let’s be honest: most people in this school wouldn’t know good art if it landed on their heads while wearing a Viking helmet. Every time the horrible aliens-in-my-stomach-threatening-to-erupt feeling hits, I breathe deep, Mom’s-yoga-style, and tell myself that I’m fine, that I don’t ever—and I mean ever—have to live through this again.

  Ms. Lewiston keeps saying she knows I’m being strong about it, but that’s not it. I put my artwork out there and it was a huge mistake. My photos will not be displayed in public again until I’m long gone from Shipton. Knowing that it would take high-level torture to make me repeat this egregious error in judgment is comforting somehow, since I can’t envision a scenario where that happens.

  So yeah, I don’t want to go high. I prefer to go snarky, honestly. But Ms. Lewiston is probably the best thing I have going at school, and even though she wouldn’t say it, or at least I don’t think she would, I know that she and Ms. Davis are often doing their moose-charging dance, and this justice thing is important to her.

  I’m debating the wisdom of trying to call my mom—she refuses to answer the phone while driving, so if I do call, she’ll simply pull over somewhere to answer, thus slowing the pace of her arrival from snail-crawling-uphill to glacial. But before I can weigh the pros and cons, the front door opens with a bang, and Ms. Davis flies out. Ms. Lewiston comes out right behind her.

  “I think it’s safe to say that if what I saw was an indication, this process is a waste of time and money,” Davis snaps, her voice devoid of all the syrupy sweetness she uses on the kids. Clearly, she doesn’t see me slumped on the bench by the wall. “I’m tempted to pull the plug now, rather than lose a full week—”

  “Lose a week of what?” Ms. Lewiston asks. Her voice is chill, but she’s got a pretty solid tell for when she’s cheesed: one eyebrow goes up almost to her hairline, while the other stays still.

  “A full week of my much-needed and well-deserved vacation, for one!” Davis says. “You realize that while you’ve given your time, I also need to be here.”

  Ms. Lewiston shrugs. “I’m sorry that it’s inconvenienced you. The kids’ families have all agreed that this is a worthwhile process, and they’re committed to it. As I’ve said before, the goal is to establish trust before pushing for answers. This is about more than just victims and perpetrators.” Then, in a seriously advanced maneuver, she swerves around and ahead of Davis so there can be no eye contact. “I’m looking forward to engaging them tomorrow and moving forward.”

  But Davis actually pulls Ms. Lewiston’s arm, holding her back. “That’s fine,” she snaps. “But bear in mind that this…process…is your responsibility. And if it fails to deliver results—and by results I do mean an admission of guilt and appropriate punishment—then your next performance review will be the place we discuss it. And I don’t think I have to remind you that budgets are tighter than ever. We’re finalizing next year’s numbers, and staffing constraints are already an issue.”

  I almost expect Davis to disappear in a puff of green smoke after this, but no, she mutters something about opposite-side parking for street cleaning tomorrow, and the nee
d to stop at Home Depot, then unlocks a poop-colored sedan with a Support State Troopers bumper sticker and drives away. Man. What an anticlimax. She can’t even be a decent villain.

  Ms. Lewiston stands still for a second, staring out into space. Then she mutters a word that she definitely would not repeat if she knew I was within earshot and stomps off toward her car. Unlike the Wicked Witch of the Front Office’s, Ms. Lewiston’s car isn’t in front of the school, but stuck with the peasants’ along the side.

  There is approximately a 1 million percent chance that this school without Ms. Lewiston would be an abyss of boringness. Apparently, I will have to make this Justice Circle work, or at least not let it go down in flames. This depressing realization hits right as my mom screeches into the parking lot.

  “SORRY! So sorry, love! Sorrysorrysorry. There was one last phone call that I thought would be quick but…” Mom blathers on, and I smile and tell her it’s all good, that I wasn’t waiting long (lie). But meanwhile, in my head I’m working over one thought: that this better end well. Because as much as this week is a trash fire of epic proportions, Ms. Lewiston getting canned would be far worse.

  Date: Feb. 19

  Name: Molly Claremont

  What happened and what were you thinking at the time of the incident?

  Didn’t I already answer this?? I HAVE NO IDEA.

  What have you thought about since?

  I want to help. I really do. But yesterday was literally the worst school day I’ve ever spent. I can’t do this all week.