Runt (12 page)

Lastly, we want to remind parents that the first sixth grade dance of the year, sponsored by the Preston Middle School PTO, will go on as scheduled. It will be held Friday night in the Middle School gym from 7:30 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. There will be chaperones at the entrance to the building and no students will be allowed to enter after 8 p.m. or leave before 10 p.m. without special written permission from their parents. Anyone found with prohibited substances (see: Preston Student Handbook, pages 13–16) will be immediately and severely dealt with.

Have a great week,

Mrs. Grace Meadhall

Elizabeth had a million ideas
flying through her head keeping her awake. Well, she had seven that might work. Okay, she had three real plans for getting back at Maggie. Two that were in any way doable—if she had superpowers. Still, lying in bed planning outrageous evil deeds was the only way Elizabeth could even imagine how she was going to go back to school Monday after seeing the Smelly-Girl person2person page, though it had mysteriously disappeared.

Funny, watching the night doesn't stop the sun from coming up, but when Elizabeth heard the sounds of court TV coming from downstairs, she knew she must have fallen asleep at some point and now it was morning.
The worst morning of her life. Breakfast waiting for her.

“Everything all right?” her mother asked.

Elizabeth tried to swallow a spoonful of cereal. Better yet, she used her mouthful of milk and Cheerios to muffle her answer. “Sure, Mom.”

She hadn't told her mother about the person2person page but her anxiety about going to school today was probably obvious. Elizabeth wasn't sure if she was more embarrassed to tell her mother or more worried that her mother might go into the school and make a big stink, which, of course, would only be more embarrassing. In the end she opted for lying.

She finished another spoonful. “No, really. I'm just a little rushed, that's all.”

And wouldn't you know it, the bus
was
late, meaning everyone in homeroom would already be seated and they would be halfway through attendance. There was a moment Elizabeth stood outside the door, peering in through the tiny rectangular window. If she could have disappeared, or combusted spontaneously, never to be heard from again, she wouldn't have objected. But with neither of those options presenting themselves, Elizabeth opened the door and walked in.

No one looked up. There was no audible whispering or people who deliberately avoided glancing her way. One foot followed the other, and Elizabeth took her seat by the bookshelves near the back and tried to breathe.

Homeroom was followed by first-period gym, and somehow Elizabeth found herself in the locker room alone. No one had said anything yet or even looked at her differently, but then again the day had only just started.

Lots of kids tried to opt out of P.E. class, especially for the swimming unit, but the physical education department was cracking down on fake notes from home and other excuses. By this time of year, nearing winter break, the sixth grade was well into their volleyball unit, and everyone was expected to participate. Elizabeth could hear Mr. Hill calling out names for the two teams and reminding everyone about the rules.

Rules.

What rules?

Elizabeth bent her knees, sank down between the benches, and let her back press against the cold metal of the gym lockers. She had changed into her P.E. clothes—shorts and a T-shirt—but she couldn't bring herself to go
out there. Homeroom was one thing, but a full-period class. No, not yet.

Maybe not ever. Her body felt like it had no bones. You can't bump pass a volleyball or block a shot if you have no bones. That's when Elizabeth noticed the bright pink straps sticking out from the locker directly in front of her. No doubt that was Maggie's backpack. She must have slammed the door shut and not realized that it hadn't locked properly.

Elizabeth looked around, toward the gym door and back to the main entrance and the hallway outside. Quiet. The inside of the locker room was silent. Sounds from the gym class were echoing in the gym. Mr. Hill's whistle shrieked. The volleyball game had started and Elizabeth crawled carefully across the floor toward Maggie's locker, which was ever-so-slightly open.

I was just pushing the straps back in,
Elizabeth heard inside her head.

My contact popped out and I was looking for it down here.

Oh, I just lost an earring.

Elizabeth didn't wear contacts or earrings, but who knew that?

Elizabeth carefully pulled open the door and even more carefully unzipped the top of Maggie's backpack, not moving it an inch from its crumpled spot at the bottom of the locker. What could she find inside?

Information is the new weapon. That's what they say these days.

Or was it the new currency?

Elizabeth wasn't sure, but she definitely needed a weapon. A shield, at least. Something to give her the strength to face her friends, face anybody, hold up her head and just make it through the day without wondering what everyone was really thinking about Smelly-Girl.

What a mean thing that was to do. Smelly-Girl. What an evil, awful, mean thing. And nobody was going to do anything about it. Because nobody else was hurt by it. And now it was taken down from the Internet anyway.

Elizabeth let her fingers be her eyes as her hand moved around inside the bag. A long, smooth, cylinder. ChapStick. Skinny, pointy. Ouch. A sharpened pencil. Gum. Bejeweled cell-phone case. Water bottle. Eww, a mushy powerBar. And something folded, folded, and folded again tightly. Elizabeth drew it out. As if it were
an ancient text on parchment, she slowly unwrapped it from itself.

It was a letter. In Maggie's handwriting. Well, Elizabeth assumed it was Maggie's handwriting since her name was signed at the bottom. The paper was worn into so many creases but it was still legible.

And oh, wow, jeez. Oh, no. Wow. Look who it was written to.

If information was the new currency, then a love letter to a teacher was a winning lottery ticket.

“Okay, practice is over. Stretch
out. I'll be in my office . . .”

We didn't know if Coach Fogden had actually said those words or if we had just been wishing he'd say them for so long that we, together, had made the sentence magically become audible. It could have been a group hallucination. We didn't know for sure, so we kept running.

There's a certain sound that a group of basketball players in a gym makes after they have been running for two straight hours. The time between steps is shorter. Your legs feel so heavy that they're really being dragged more than lifted. You can no longer make out the sound of distinct footsteps hitting
the floor. It becomes more of a group-shuffling noise.

Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh.

But over and over again. Up and down the court. Everywhere.

Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh.

Oh, and don't forget the breathing. The loud, labored, painful breathing, in various rhythms coming from all over the court. And the coughing, and the spitting, and the occasional throwing up of a sandwich that was eaten too close to the start of practice.

But mostly it's the sound of shoes shuffling on hardwood.

Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh.

Touch the line and run back. Touch the next line and run back to the first line. Touch all the lines and don't stop running. Ever.

Coach Fogden gleefully calls them “suicides.” That's
what we are running. We are running suicides. We think we might be allowed to stop, but again, we may be hallucinating.

We finish the suicide and look up. We scan the gym. We blink and rub the sweat out of our eyes.

Coach Fogden is gone. He's no longer in the gym. He is in his office, like he said. We weren't hallucinating. Practice is over. We are supposed to stretch out now.

We look at each other. Normally there are twelve of us, but today there are ten.

We have our hands on our knees, our torsos bent over our legs, and we're sucking in breaths of air so rapidly that it might appear to an outsider that we are all competing over a limited amount of it.

The breaths are loud because they are urgent. It is the only thing we can hear. We need that air.

Whoooo-woo whooo-woo whoo-woo.

Then we all fall to the ground. Just start collapsing. One after another, right in the exact spot where we stopped running. It can't really be called sitting on the ground, because we don't sit. Sitting requires controlled movement. We have no controlled movements anymore.

We crumple.

To the ground.

Nobody says anything. Nobody can talk.

The first thing that goes when you have been running for that long is your ability to speak. Even if you are somehow able to open your mouth, which requires muscles that you no longer have the strength to use, you have another problem: the fact that you don't have any saliva left in your mouth.

You aren't going to be able to produce any sounds with a mouth as dry as the Sahara.

That's what Coach Fogden told us the last time he made us run and not stop. It was after someone had talked back to
him. He told us we were going to run until we couldn't talk anymore. And then we'd see if anyone spoke back to him.

That was a month ago and now it was happening again.

Only our offense was much worse this time. Or so he told us. We still aren't really sure what we did. How could
we
have stopped Matthew from punching Stewart?

All Coach Fogden said was, “I don't care what happened. All I care about is that now Stewart can't practice.”

And then he yelled “SEW-AHHHHH-CIDES.” So we started running.

And now we are here, countless suicides later, crumpled on the floor, attempting to breathe normally again.

Whooo-woo whooo-woo whoo-woo.

Eventually some of us are able to get up, get some water, Gatorade, any kind of liquid, and slowly begin stretching.

Normally Stewart would start us off. We'd get into a circle at center court and he'd call out each stretch as we went through them, but without him there we are more than glad to make do on our own.

Nobody needs to count to ten out loud. It's not necessary.

But the silence was killing us. The only noise we could hear was one of us bouncing a basketball, playing around with it as he was stretching.

Bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom.

The silence was draining. Someone needed to say something. Our saliva was back.

“We need to get back at him somehow.”

Finally. Words. It didn't matter where they were coming from. We all knew who the “him” was and we all agreed.

We knew we would never be able to get revenge on Coach Fogden. And if we tried and failed, we knew it
would be the last thing we would ever do.

And we also knew this wasn't Matthew's fault. He did what we all wish we could do. Matthew was a hero.

It was Stewart. Stewart was the reason we all had throbbing headaches and could no longer bend our legs. It's all because poor Stewart couldn't practice.

Poor Stewart with his broken nose.

We had to do something.

“Yeah, that was the worst practice of the year. I think I am
literally
dying right now.”

“I know. I can't feel my legs. Someone tell me if they are still attached to my body. Please. I'm serious.”

“Oh, you're lucky. I can definitely feel my legs, and they hurt like hell.”

Bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom.

The basketball was still bouncing. It was steady.

“Can someone explain to me why we even had to run today? What did we do?”

“Oh, that's pretty clear. We let Stewart, the O Holy Stewart, get punched in the face. Or something like that.”

“Yeah, we didn't somehow stop Matthew from knocking King Stewart back to third grade and Coach Fogden knows we can't win without him this weekend.”

“God forbid anything happens to baby Stewy.”

“How were we supposed to stop Matthew? That just makes no sense. We knew nothing about it. I wasn't even in school that day.”

“Does anything ever make sense with Coach Fogden?”

Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom.

The bouncing was getting faster.

“I can't believe we just had to do all that running because of Stewart. That piece of crap.”

Bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom, bom-bom-bom.

“Yeah, but what are we going to do to get him back?”

“Let's piss in his locker.”

“How about pissing in his lunch one day when he's not looking?”

“Yeah! We could get it in his apple juice or something.”

“Who drinks apple juice?”

“How about we just tell on him, fill out one of those stupid bully forms? Dude, he's been taking your math homework every day for the last three years and turning it in as his own.”

“Or the time that he pulled your chair out from under you in class and you smacked your face on the desk and then told the teacher you had ‘tripped.' ”

“Or that he used to throw out Jake's lunch every day because he needed to ‘shed a few pounds to get quicker on the court.' ”

“Come on. We all know Meadhall wouldn't believe any of those stories and Stewart would find out we told on him. We need something we can really do.”

“Yeah. Something embarrassing.”

“Isn't the dance coming up?”

“Yeah, this weekend. Why?”

“Do you guys remember what Stewart did to me during the game against Bethel last year . . . ?”

We all did.

The basketball stopped bouncing.

“But what if something happens?”
Elizabeth said to her mother. “If she gets out and gets lost in the house or trapped in something? Cats like to crawl into tiny spaces and not come out.”