Don't Care High (12 page)

Paul was feeling like flexing a few muscles of his own. “With the support we've got at this point, we could have it all up again by the end of the week!”

Sheldon shook his head. “Tomorrow, Gamble's going to cut off the paper supply.”

Paul stopped in his tracks. “How do you know?”

Sheldon shrugged. “
I
would have done it a week ago. He's also going to close the darkroom, art rooms, and all the shops as soon as class hours are out. And for good measure, I figure he's going to threaten to suspend anyone who tacks so much as a three-by-five file card to a bulletin board.”

“How do you know he's going to do it all at once?” asked Paul.

“The staff let all this go because they couldn't believe it would happen at Don't Care High. That's why they waited so long before cracking down. But now that it's stopping, it's stopping for good.”

“Don't tell me we've lost, then?”

“Oh, no,” said Sheldon. “That's the funny part. In fact, from here on in, we can't lose.”

Paul was confused. “How do you figure that?”

They stopped walking and sat down on a small park bench.

“Just in case your campaign fever has made you forget,” Sheldon explained, “Mike never ran for president, and after that, he never did a thing for the school. We made all that up, and the big danger was that everyone else would lose interest, and the two of us would be caught standing there holding up the flag. But now all twenty-six hundred kids love Mike — with or without us. They're all on a campaign that Mr. Gamble is shooting down. So now there's a conflict that we didn't have to manufacture. All the things that could land us in the toilet are way in the past. Now we're just two students in a whole united student body that has taken an interest in a school matter — the student body president.”

“Will Mike ever be president again?”

“We'll keep working on it,” Sheldon promised. “But now that the whole school is all for Mike, everything can be on the up-and-up. It's the plain campaign of a student body that had its president taken away for no reason. We're the good guys.”

“So we're not just making trouble, then?”

“Of course not! At least, not anymore. Look at Wayne-o. He used to like Mike because he fixed the can. Now he just likes Mike, period. We had to use all that underhanded stuff to achieve a very important and unselfish goal. And now we've done it. Don't Care High
cares
.”

Paul slapped his knee suddenly. “Sheldon, you may be a genius just like your mother!”

Sheldon laughed modestly. “Now that you trust my judgment so much, how are you for some Greek food? I know a place not far from here where the souvlaki melts in your mouth.”

“And lies like a rock in your stomach,” added Paul feelingly.

“Don't be a wet blanket. Zeus himself would come down off Mount Olympus to eat this stuff. Come on. Life is too short not to live a little.”

A roar of discontent went up throughout the school.

The students were bitter. After homeroom, they met in large and small groups and exchanged gripes and opinions. Plaintive voices rang in the halls. Some of the groups approached Sheldon and Paul with thoughts of revolution.

“Calm down,” said Sheldon soothingly. “We're on the side of what's right and good. We can't lose. But let's not do anything stupid. Mike doesn't want that.”

Despite Sheldon's calm confidence, Paul was not satisfied with the new situation. Mike was still out of office, and the idea of doing nothing rankled. He went through the day constantly expecting Sheldon to announce a massive plan of attack to reinstate Mike, but Sheldon seemed quite happy to let the matter simmer.

After school, Paul was forced to turn his mind to other problems, for today he was scheduled for his first New York haircut. His appointment had been made by Auntie Nancy personally, so the warning bells were ringing loud and clear in Paul's head as he walked into Edmondo's Creations.

Auntie Nancy had arranged for Paul to have Edmondo himself. How can she stand to be so good to me? he thought, as Edmondo ran his fingers through Paul's hair experimentally, sizing up the
ambience
of the cut that was forthcoming.

“Just a normal trim, please,” said Paul nervously.

“Ah, normal. What is normal? If you will just allow me to study your face for a moment, I shall assess the balance and composition. There is only one correct affectation to every
visage
, only one style that truly is, as you say, normal.”

Paul shut his mouth and eyes, determined to endure, while Edmondo went to work on him, clipping artfully and humming arias from
The Barber of Seville
. When it was all over, Paul allowed himself to look at the man he had become. He stifled a cry of shock. His neat wavy brown locks had become a halo of tight, riotous ringlets that framed his face like a bonnet.

Paul paid his staggering bill, left a large tip because Auntie Nancy had told him to, and escaped to the street. There he found his reflection in a store window and tried to smooth down his curls with frantic hands. Nothing helped. Edmondo was a top-notch barber. He had cut so well that the only way to deprogram this hair would be to attend to each curl individually. He finally had to settle for a bit of a flat-top with stick-out bangs — all rather messy, but at least it looked sort of like Paul Abrams. Confidence somewhat restored, he started out for the subway and home.

He was planning sarcastic comments to fire at his mother when he heard a cry of pain, and Edmondo appeared out of nowhere, scooped him up off the sidewalk, and hustled him back inside into the chair, displacing another customer with, “
I'm sorry, sir! You'll have to wait! This is an emergency!
” He turned to Paul, his voice thick with agitation. “
What happened to your hair
?”

“It was… uh… windy,” explained Paul, despising himself.

“No, no, no!” cried Edmondo as he set about restoring his desecrated creation to its former glory. This time he sprayed each ringlet with a generous shot of hair spray before sending Paul on his way. “Be careful!”

Paul knew care wasn't necessary. You couldn't have moved this hairdo with a bulldozer.

As he headed for the subway, he realized that he was walking past the parking garage into which Mike Otis had disappeared the day he and Sheldon had followed him. It was a bit of a jolt to his system, as the mad pace of recent events had caused him to put the mystery of Mike out of mind. He quickened his step and then stopped short. There was a sign on the entrance that he and Sheldon had missed the first time around, probably because of the layers of dirt that covered it. It read:

His heart began to pound. An inner gate! That had to explain Mike's disappearance! Forgetting his haircut, he rushed right over to Sheldon's house.

Sheldon opened the door, took one look at him, and collapsed into laughter.

Mrs. Pryor, the genius, appeared in the hallway. “Shelly, is that any way to treat a friend? You must be Paul. Hello, I'm Sheldon's mother.”

“He looks like Little Orphan Annie!” Sheldon gasped, holding onto a wall for support.

Paul felt himself turning mauve.

“Don't pay any attention to him,” interrupted his sister, Jodi. “I think it looks fine.”

Paul was also introduced to Sheldon's little brother, Harvey, who thought hair was unimportant, and Sheldon's father, who sat at the dining room table examining coloured boarding passes with tweezers and magnifying glass.

“This is Sheldon's friend Paul,” said Jodi.

“Hi, Paul. Flown anywhere lately?”

“Let's go upstairs,” said Sheldon finally. “Flash Flood's doing one of his big retrospectives today. We can't miss it.”

Once in Sheldon's room, Paul excitedly told of his findings. “This has got to be it, Shel. We staked out the only two doors to the garage, but this inner gate must lead to another parking area with other doors and probably elevators right into the neighboring apartment buildings. Mike must live in one of those buildings.”

Sheldon grinned broadly. “Neat bit of detective work, Ambition. But tomorrow the real investigation starts. We're going to find out about Mike's secret life. Are you up to it?”

“Of course I'm up to it,” said Paul. Which was exactly what Steve would have said.

* * *

The next day right after school, Sheldon and Paul staked out the parking garage, hiding behind a small Buick just inside the main entrance. By this time, Paul's bravado had mellowed.

“You know, Shel, if this is all on the up-and-up, why are we hiding? People who are on the up-and-up shouldn't have to hide.”

“Take my word for it, Ambition, this is the best approach. We have here a guy who gives a phony address and telephone number to the school. I don't like it any more than you do, but finding him out calls for a little espionage.”

“Don't give me that, Sheldon. You love this. You're having the time of your life.”

Sheldon favoured him with a crooked grin. “It shows, does it?”

At that moment, the light from the street was blotted out as a large vehicle entered the garage.

“This is it!” exclaimed Sheldon.

The two watched as the black behemoth whispered by their position and headed deeper into the garage. They followed, keeping low and in the shadows as Mike drove up to a metal barrier, inserted his key in a switch on the wall and waited as the gate began to lift. He drove through, and the grill started to descend. Sheldon and Paul made a mad dash, diving under the gate just in time. They hid behind a post, catching their breath, as Mike parked his car and headed for a bank of elevators. When the elevator had borne Mike away, they rushed over and checked the indicator.

“He got off at seven,” Sheldon breathed triumphantly. “Now we check out the lobby.”

The mailboxes were in a remote corner of the main floor. They examined the 7's and, sure enough, box 7E bore the single word
Otis
.

“Now what?” asked Paul. “Surely we're not going to ride up there and knock on his door.”

“Close,” said Sheldon. “We're going to get on the fire escape and look in his window.”

Paul was aghast. “That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard!”

“Well, do you want to buzz him? I'll let you explain what we're here for.”

“Aw, Shel!”

“Have I mentioned my fear of heights?” said Paul as the two climbed from the roof onto the fire escape. “And how about my mother's lectures? I've already got one coming for the grime I picked up in the garage. I'll bet there's an even better one for dashing my brains out on the sidewalk.”

Sheldon ignored him. “The E apartments are on this corner. We're in perfect position.”

They climbed down to the seventh floor and looked into the first window. The room was a frilly pink affair with a canopy bed and posters of bubble-gum pop stars on the walls. On the back of the door hung a cheerleader's outfit and two purple and white pompoms.

“Strange,” Sheldon mused.

They checked the next window. This was definitely a boy's room, but the decor of the place clearly indicated that it could not possibly have anything to do with Mike. The walls were plastered with posters of sports heroes and pennants from various universities. Countless model airplanes hung from the ceiling, with another under construction on the floor.

“Well, obviously there's been some mistake,” Sheldon murmured.

The third window looked into the kitchen, where the mother of the family was cooking dinner while chatting with her son and daughter, ages about eleven and fourteen. The window was open, and Sheldon and Paul could hear that the conversation centred on school cheerleading practice and the latest Ranger game.

“I don't know where we blew it,” whispered Sheldon, “but this is definitely the wrong apartment.”

Paul was looking in the last window. “No, it's not. Shel, get over here.”

The two crouched by the sill and peered inside. This room was smaller than the others and completely bare except for a small bed, bureau and desk. The white walls were totally unadorned and, except for the bed linens, there was really only one indication that the place was inhabited — on the desk chair was draped a large beige raincoat.

Sheldon's face radiated deep adoration. “It's Mike,” he said ecstatically. “And he's taken off his raincoat. He really lets his hair down at home.”

Back at the kitchen, Mike had joined his mother, brother and sister. There he sat, sipping at a tall glass of water while the conversation continued, enveloping but not including him.

Paul was almost relieved to see that Mike was pretty much the same at home as he was at school, answering only direct questions.

“How about that Ranger game, Mike?”

“I didn't see it.”

“Can you make it to my cheerleading practice tonight, Mike?”

“No.”

This was the night the Otis family ate early, as Dad had bowling, Mom had bridge club, Susie had cheerleading practice and Chuck had a Boy Scout meeting. Mike did not seem to have any plans.