Ink and Ashes (7 page)

I smacked his hard chest with the back of my hand. “I knew it! You guys have been doing this all along.”

Nicholas didn’t flinch. “And because there’s nothing wrong with you,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll get asked to the dance.” He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze and jogged away.

“Hey, wait up,” he said to a group of senior girls ahead of us. They stopped, all giggles once he caught up to them.

I loved Nicholas like a brother, but he also annoyed me like a brother.

I HAD ALWAYS
been a diligent student but found myself distracted all morning with thoughts of what Parker and Nicholas were up to, my father’s past, and the lies my parents had told me. I was staring at the pictures plastered on my locker door between sixth and seventh period when Forrest waved a hand in front of me and snapped me to attention.

“Are you coming to history?” he asked.

I looked at a picture of me and all the guys, and then at the one on top with me and Nicholas at a watermelon-eating contest. How easy it would be to go back to a time when I didn’t know what I didn’t know? I closed the door and spun my combination an extra time to make sure it was locked, then adjusted my backpack on my shoulder and followed Forrest to class.

Except for a row of windows opposite the door, the brick walls of our classroom were covered in posters of former US presidents and buildings that had historical significance. Forrest and I always sat at the back by the poster of Abraham Lincoln. We made our way down the aisle, and I expected Chase to glare at me, but his desk was empty.

Alex Adams usually sat next to Chase. He’d asked me on a date once but hadn’t spoken to me since. His brown hair was cropped short, and his big brown eyes gave him a baby face.

“Hey, Alex,” I said.

“Hey.” Alex immediately turned to get something out of his notebook.

We didn’t have assigned seats, but everyone usually sat in the same places. A few girls from my soccer team surrounded us. Katie Pelo took the desk in front and to my left. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. She waved to us as she sat and put her backpack on the floor. The Miyashima sisters, Mika and Kimi, sat directly ahead, with Ashley Cheung on their right. Though there weren’t very many of us, it was nice to see fellow Asians at school.

The bell for sixth period rang, but Mrs. Davenport wasn’t here. Lanie Ward sneaked in and sprinted to the seat on the far right of the row. Her strawberry-blonde hair was stuffed into a messy bun. She wiped her forehead, her freckles spreading wide when she smiled at us.

Katie turned around and crossed her long legs. “Hey, I’m having a party this weekend. Do you want to come?”

I looked at Forrest, unsure which one of us she was inviting.

She pointed at me. “You, Claire.”

Words caught in my throat. I glanced at Forrest. “I don’t know if—”

“She’ll be there,” Forrest said.

“Can he come too?” I asked.

“I already invited him,” she said and winked at Forrest.

“Okay, yeah,” I said. “I guess I can be there. Thanks.” I grabbed my history book from my bag and held it front of my face, pretending to read. If I sneaked a look at Forrest, I knew I would find him shaking his head at me.

I began to hope we would get a free period when a large man walked through the door. He was about six foot six tall with broad linebacker shoulders. His hair was black with waves that clung to his scalp, and his skin looked like the sun had toasted it to perfection.

Lanie twisted around and mouthed, “He’s hot.” She acted like she might faint from all the swooning, then turned back around.

The large man set a messenger bag down on the desk at the front of the classroom. “My name is Mr. Tama. Marcus Tama.” He took a marker and wrote his name on the dry-erase board.

“I’m Maori, and I was born in New Zealand but moved shortly after that.” Mr. Tama stood directly in front of the class, posture straight, arms behind his back as if he had been in the military. “Mrs. Davenport has taken a sudden leave of absence, so I am your new teacher.”

I thought I detected a slight accent but wasn’t sure. He didn’t sound like others I had met from New Zealand.

He clapped his hands and lifted our textbook from his bag. “I’ve also been asked to take over the debate team since Mrs. Davenport was the debate coach as well, so if you’re interested, I’m sure we could use some more students.”

I wasn’t too surprised Mrs. Davenport had left. She’d always seemed like she hated kids, and I never understood why she’d become a teacher in the first place. Nicholas had almost quit the debate team several times because of her, so he’d probably be happy with the change.

Mr. Tama moved behind the desk and locked his messenger bag in the bottom drawer. Instead of sitting in the chair, he sat on top of the desk and straddled the corner.

“In this class,” he said, “I expect you to be prepared. And if you’re not prepared, I expect you to be honest about it. For the first few weeks, please state your name before you answer a question if I call on you. My understanding is that you were discussing the Boston Massacre?”

A tall guy at the front confirmed. “People call me Mumps, and that’s where Mrs. Davenport left off.”

Mr. Tama turned to a different part in our history book. “Can anyone tell me another name for this event?”

Alex raised his hand. Mr. Tama nodded in his direction. “I’m Alex, and I think Paul Revere called it the Bloody Massacre.”

Mr. Tama’s voice was deep and lyrical as he explained the events leading up to the massacre. I hung on every word until he said, “Eight soldiers as well as an officer and four civilians were charged with murder.”

Murder. The word prickled something deep inside me, a sharp and bristly reminder that I didn’t know what I could be sure about.

“Paul Revere engraved this famous depiction,” Mr. Tama continued. He took a print from his desk and held it up for us to see. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies.”

He set it down, went behind his desk, and lifted a model from underneath.

“This is a more accurate replica of what it might have looked like.” Figures of British soldiers lined one side, complete with uniforms and rifles. The civilians had little hats, and every person had different clothing.

He placed the replica on his desk and held up the print again. “Unlike Paul Revere’s picture, it was actually winter, and there was snow on the ground. If you look at his British soldiers, you’ll notice they are the only ones firing shots, but in reality, the fighting broke out on both sides. And this person lying on the ground—” He pointed to a spot on the print of a man lying at the feet of the British soldiers. “His name was Crispus Attucks. In Revere’s depiction, you can see the man is white, but in actuality, Attucks was black and one of the most famous black men to fight in the Revolution.”

Mr. Tama set the print back down on his desk.

“Did you make that yourself?” Mumps asked.

“I did,” Mr. Tama said. “Took me two years.”

The bell rang, and I gathered my textbook and put it into my backpack.

“No homework tonight,” Mr. Tama shouted over the noise of students getting ready to leave. “And don’t forget to think about joining the debate team.”

On my way out, I paused to take a closer look at the teacher’s handiwork.

“Pretty impressive,” I said to Forrest in the hall.

“I hope I still play with toys when I’m his age,” he said.

I stopped shy of my locker. The door was hanging ajar—and I was positive that wasn’t the way I had left it. I flung open the door.

“What’s wrong?” Forrest asked.

“Someone took all my pictures.”

ONLY A FEW
pieces of tape holding ripped photo corners were left on my locker door. Blood rushed to my head.

“Is anything else missing?” Forrest asked.

I rummaged around to see what had been taken, but everything else seemed to be there. I never left my wallet or anything else valuable in my locker. There was no good reason anyone would need to break in. What would they want with my pictures? Couldn’t they have just asked? I wouldn’t have necessarily given them pictures, but still . . . it would have been easier.

Anyone trying to get my combination would have had a hard time, but it wasn’t impossible for someone who was motivated. The second day of my freshman year, I had forgotten my combination and learned the administrative assistant, Mrs. Davis, kept a spreadsheet on her computer. I’d also heard rumors later she had opened lockers on occasion for students when they wanted to leave birthday balloons or an invitation to a dance.

I pounded my fist on the locker next to me. “This has to be Chase, and when I find out for sure . . .” I had no idea what I was going to do to him. But it would be bad.

“Are you sure it’s him?” Forrest closed my locker door.

The visualization of ripped picture corners was inescapable. “I know I’m not perfect, but I can’t think of anyone else who hates me enough to do something like this.” Had I offended someone that badly in the past year? If anything, Chase had offended
me
, not the other way around, but he seemed to blame me for his disgrace.

“Maybe the person who took the pictures didn’t do it because they hate you,” Forrest said. He leaned his back against the lockers. The muscles in his arms and neck were tense, and his eyebrows were pinched in.

I tried to digest what he had said, but that made even less sense. My backpack slid down my arm. “That’s kind of creepy.” It had to be Chase. Chase and his personal vendetta.

“You should go report this.”

I opened my locker, threw my history textbook inside and slammed the door. “I guess.”

“Do you want me to go to the office with you?” Forrest asked.

“No, I’ll go now,” I huffed.

“Sorry this happened,” he said. “I’m going to get to class, but I’ll see you after school.” He gave me a quick hug and jogged down the hall.

IN THE OFFICE,
Mrs. Davis lifted her head of short, curly white hair when the door closed behind me. She pushed up her bifocals and typed a few more things on her keyboard before meeting me at the counter.

“Someone broke into my locker and stole all my pictures,” I said.

Mrs. Davis tsked, then pulled out a piece of paper. “I’m so sorry, honey. Pictures are irreplaceable.” She filled out the incident report form, getting details from me as to what was taken and when. “Who would do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I can print new pictures, but I don’t know why they’d do it.”

“You kids and your fancy machines,” she said. “What’s your locker number?”

“Six eighteen,” I said. “Did Chase Phillips stop by here earlier for any reason?”

She put the pen to her thin wrinkled lips. “Only when his mom checked him out after first period. He looked mighty sick.”

“Are you sure?”

She bent her head closer. “Are you sweet on him?”

I thought I might throw up. “No. No, I am
not
‘sweet on him.’ He wasn’t in class just now and . . . and we are supposed to work on a project together.”

“I’m sorry, dear. Didn’t mean to make you blush.” She opened the attendance book on the counter and lifted her bifocals higher so she could read the notes under the date. “He’s not here today.”

She glanced at her watch. “There’s only five minutes left before school gets out,” she said. “Why don’t you go home a little bit early, and I’ll give you an excused absence in the system for this period.”

I checked the time on my phone. There was actually forty minutes of class left. I glanced up. She winked.

“Thank you,” I said and left.

I walked down the hall and tried to think of who could have stolen my pictures. If Chase had left after first period, it couldn’t have been him. Once I got to my locker, I opened it and gathered everything I would need for homework and soccer practice. Why couldn’t they have taken my textbooks instead?

Forty minutes was a long time, and I had nowhere better to be. Fed was probably already wondering where I was since I was supposed to be in study hall with him, so I headed to the library.

The bell rang, and Fed and I parted ways to get to our lockers. He’d tried to help brainstorm possible culprits, but like me, all he could come up with was Chase. Students poured from the classrooms. Someone tapped my shoulder from behind.

I spun around. “Oh hey, Mumps.”

The wrists of his long-sleeved black shirt were frayed, and his dark jeans had holes in the knees. I hadn’t seen him this close before. He had long, dark ruffled hair and a vacant look in his dark eyes.

“Hey, Claire.” He clutched a lacrosse stick in one hand. I had forgotten he was on the lacrosse team.

Forrest sneaked in next to me and rested his hand on the small of my back.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go to the Halloween dance with me,” Mumps said, cradling the stick up and down, keeping a ball securely in the net. Forrest’s hand twitched against my back.

Other than that Mumps was a senior and was in my history class, I didn’t know much about him, including his real name. Neither Mrs. Davenport nor the new teacher had made him introduce himself by his real name. What I did know was this was the last thing I needed. Nicholas gave me a wave from the end of the hall, where Mumps couldn’t see him.

“You wouldn’t by chance be Nicholas’s friend?” I asked.

“Actually, yeah,” he said.

“Then no.”

“Cool. So I’ll pick you up at—wait.” He rested the end of the stick on the ground and caught the white ball as it rolled out. “Did you just say no?”

“I’m not going with you because—”

“She’s going with me,” Forrest said, moving his arm completely around my waist.

“Cool,” Mumps said. “Sorry, I thought you guys were just friends.”

“We are,” I said at the same time Forrest said, “It’s a new development.”

“It’s complicated,” I said at the same time Forrest said, “She means an easy transition from being just friends.”

Forrest pulled me even closer and kissed the side of my head.

The way Forrest held me tight against him was nice, but it was the kiss that sent an unexpected flutter through me. I put my arm around Forrest in the same way and rested my cheek against his chest. The flutter accelerated, the muscles in my face tensed, and my breaths grew so fast that my lungs struggled to keep up as I stretched my face to smile at Mumps.

What was happening? Whatever it was, it was an act—Forrest really was just my best friend. I thought about my conversation with Nicholas earlier. Maybe Forrest had been colluding with them too. I dropped my arm from Forrest’s waist, and urged my body to relax.

I waited for Mumps to stroll away before I whirled and said, “What the hell, Forrest?”

He laughed, but the sound coming from his throat sounded strained, forced. “Oooh, you so owe me. I totally saved you.”

I yanked my soccer bag from my locker and slammed the door. “I don’t need saving.” Without waiting for his response, I stormed to the women’s locker room.

On the soccer field, my mind raced nonstop while I stopped to tighten the laces of my cleats. If Chase hadn’t broken into my locker, then I needed to find out who had. I sat on the grass with the school at my back, and brought the soles of my feet together. Franklin High kept our fields in pristine shape with lush green grass cut at the perfect length. I leaned forward to stretch and breathed in the earthy smells of dirt and grass.

Mika plunked herself next to me and started to stretch too. Her long black hair was in a thick french braid. I wished I knew how to do that with mine. Putting my hair in a ponytail was the extent of my hairdo abilities.

“Want to be my partner for practice drills today?” she asked.

“Sure.” I counted to thirty on this butterfly stretch. Then I stood and spread my feet into a wide stance so I could lunge to one side for thirty seconds and then lunge the other way. Across the field, I noticed the leaves of the large cottonwood trees had changed color almost completely.

The rest of the girls on the team were spread all over. Katie jogged to the middle of the field. “Bring it in, girls. Let’s get started.” As team captain, she was in charge of warm-up drills.

We divided into two lines, each line dribbling through fifteen cones. Right foot only to the end of the cones and back, then left foot only, alternating each touch with the inside of the right foot and then the outside.

After fifteen different drills, Coach Cesar showed up. “Divide into pairs and practice trapping the ball,” he called. Coach was a small guy for a soccer player, but he’d played in college and semi-pro in Europe somewhere. “Ten reps each of inside wedge, outside wedge, top of the foot, and then elevator.”

His coaching style was militant but effective. He never called the game soccer—only fútbol—and we gave him a hard time for referring to cleats as “boots.”

I paired with Mika, and the rest of the pairs lined themselves down the field. She threw the ball to me from about ten feet away, and I stopped the ball with the inside of my foot and passed it back to her.

“So is Parker dating anyone?” She picked up the ball and lobbed it again.

I passed the ball to her. “Not that I know of.”

She trapped the ball with her foot and threw to me again. “Do you think he’d say yes if I asked him to the Halloween dance?”

I trapped the ball and passed it again. “I’m sure he’d be ecstatic.”

She looked up and fanned her face with her hand, still holding the ball with her foot after my last throw. “I get so flustered when I think about him.”

“Parker?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s so cute and funny.”

“Are you sure you’re not confusing my brother with someone else?” I looked around, then leaned in. “Parker’s pretty short for a guy, and he thinks he’s really funny but he’s not, and he collects junk—”

“Takata! Miyashima!” Coach yelled. “Run five laps.”

“Sorry,” I said to Mika.

She shrugged. “I’d rather run than do those stupid drills. Let’s take our time.”

We started to run along the perimeter of the field.

“Who are you going with?” she asked.

“No one,” I said.

“Have you been asked?”

“Yeah.” Talking and running at the same time wasn’t a good mix. I huffed between words.

We jogged the length of the field, turned the corner and ran past the goal at the north end.

“You don’t want to go?” she asked.

“Nope.”

She waited. I think she wanted me to explain why, but I didn’t want to tell her the whole pathetic story. For the past two years, I’d spent homecoming, Halloween, winter formal, Valentine’s, and spring formal dances with dates who barely danced with me and then shook my hand when the evening was over. I even got asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance!

I used to think it was rude to say no because asking someone out takes a lot of guts, which I knew because I never had the courage to do it. This was the year I was determined to change that. But it probably wouldn’t be the Halloween dance. I’d have to work up to it.

We ran the rest of the laps in silence. At the end of practice, I gathered my stuff together and dribbled my soccer ball toward the parking lot, where I’d meet the rest of the guys. Our sports practices were all at the same time right after school, soccer and football, so we carpooled home too.

I stopped dribbling when the grass turned to sidewalk, where I looked up and my breath hitched. At the far end of the field was a black SUV.

No one ever parked there unless there was a game.

Dear Otochan,

I really wish you were here right now. Everyone is being so dumb. A few days ago Alex Adams from my English class asked if I wanted to go to a movie with him. Mom said it was fine. So Alex came to pick me up today, and Dad went psycho because he said no one had told him about it. He was arguing with Mom in the kitchen, but we could still hear them in the living room.

And even worse, Forrest was here and sided with Dad because “Alex didn’t have a great reputation.” Whatever that means. I know him from school and he’s nice. I’m so annoyed. Anyway, since Alex was already here, Dad took him to his office and closed the door. They talked for about fifteen minutes. Next thing I know, Parker, Nicholas, and Forrest have been invited to come with us.

I’m so sick of being the only girl. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I had at least one sister.

It’s not that I even like Alex that way. I was actually very nervous and didn’t know if I even wanted to go. But I’m mad because I feel like everyone thinks I can’t take care of myself. I’m tired of not fitting in because I’m a girl. And I’m tired of not fitting in with girls because I’m always with boys.

I really hate when my brothers tell me to stop acting like a girl. But what I hate even more is that sometimes I find myself trying
not
to do the thing that’s making them say I’m acting like a girl. Screw them. Why is acting like a girl a bad thing?

I’m moving back to Hawaii to live with Grandpa. He doesn’t care that I’m a girl.

Love,

Claire, age 15