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  “Well,” Cara says thoughtfully, rolling over onto her stomach to examine the hunger poem, “it’s interesting, it’s really interesting, because yeah, I think basically it’s the best in the bunch, but you have to remember who you’re dealing with here in this competition. Winning isn’t always about being the best, right? It’s about giving the judges what they want. And I mean, this hunger poem is incredible, you know how much I love it, it’s incredible and amazing and I wish I’d written it. But think about it: girls writing about hunger and body image and stuff . . . I hate to say it but the judges are all the oldest English teachers in the school, Mr. Handsley and Mr. Rufus and those guys, and they’re a bunch of old men. They don’t really understand this kind of poem, or they get it but they think it’s not important enough to write about. It’s sexist, actually, it’s really uncool that these guy teachers don’t care about the things girls care about. I’m going to have a serious talk with Mr. Handsley about it. But in the meantime, you have to think about giving them something they can relate to if you want to win. And I really want you to win, because I want the whole world to know what I know about how brilliant you are.” Cara rummages around in the papers on the floor, extracts a page, and hands it to Aimee. “Give them Bill. Bill’s killer.”

  “Really?” Aimee takes the paper from Cara and looks down at the poem about Bill and the dozen eggs, as long and skinny on the page as Bill is long and skinny in life. “You really think this one’s better?”

  “I really think that one will win. You want to win, right? Anyway I want you to.” Cara shrugs a you-just-can’t-see-how-great-you-are shrug. “That’s my advice. Go with Bill.”

  In the darkened car on the way home Aimee can’t stop smiling. She puts her hand lightly to her face to feel the strange, unfamiliar shape of her grin.

  “So?” her mother says, a tiny bit eagerly. “You were there all day, you must have had a good time?”

  “Yeah,” Aimee sighs. She’s feeling so floaty and good she almost wants to lean over and put her head on her mother’s shoulder. It would be extremely weird and she doesn’t actually do it, but she feels like she could.

  “I’m glad.” Her mother looks like she’s holding back a huge grin. “This girl Cara, she seems like she has real friend potential.”

  “Yeah.” Aimee sighs again.

  Her mother waits for more, then asks, “What did they serve you over there?”

  “Danish,” Aimee says dreamily. “Pancakes. Eggs.”

  “And no reactions?”

  Aimee shrugs and shakes her head no. She doesn’t mention that being served Danish and actually eating Danish aren’t the same thing.

  “Well that is just wonderful news,” Aimee’s mother says, a tiny bit tearful. “Honey, that’s just the best news I’ve heard all week.”

  9

  “I have wonderful news that I know will cause all of you to rejoice.”

  Mr. Handsley is standing in front of the blackboard in D12 holding an 8 x 10 manila envelope. The class blinks, groggy and unmoved.

  “I have managed to secure the auditorium for the Wednesday after next during our double period, for us to act out portions of the Caesar for one another in full dress. By which I mean togas.”

  Now everybody wakes up all at once: a collective gasp, a collective groan, a swelling wave of whines and objections. Mr. Handsley’s voice rises above it.

  “I know, it’s thrilling! You will take into your mouths the words of the Bard. You will beautify your minds by memorizing his language—by which I mean you will be off-book, you will not be performing with scripts in hand. You will work independently, in groups that I will assign, on scenes that I have chosen for you. You will labor hard and ennoble yourselves. You will be transformed from mere students into . . . thespians.”

  A rolling snicker from the jocks’ corner. Mr. Handsley narrows his eyes.

  “Thespians, thespians,” he lisps at them like Sylvester the Cat, tongue stuck out exaggeratedly between his teeth. “Actors. Inheritors of the tradition of Thespis.”

  He holds the manila envelope up over his head.

  “I have here in this envelope your assignments. On the sheet I give you, you will find your assigned scene, the role you’ll be playing in it, and a list of the other members of your group. I have named the groups after exotic fruits to keep myself entertained during the assignment process. The assignments are final. No trading, bargaining, or begging.”

  Mr. Handsley moves out among the desks and weaves his way through them with one eyebrow raised, like a predator seeking the weakest member of the herd. After a moment he begins reaching into the envelope and dropping little folded pieces of paper onto people’s desks, barely looking at them as he does it. Becky Trainer opens hers, scans it quickly, and squeals in delight, turns in her seat to wave a little birdie wave to Martha Scherpa and Kaitlyn Carmigan, sitting on the other side of the room, who beam.

  As Mr. Handsley approaches the jocks’ corner Meghan watches J-Bar let his hand float into the air, as effortless a gesture as untethering a balloon.

  “Mr. H?” he says.

  “Yes, young J-Bar?”

  “I don’t think we’re gonna be able to do this.”

  “No trading, bargaining, or begging, I believe I just said.”

  “Yeah but me and Shane and Freedom have an in-school conditioning clinic that day. Next Wednesday?” He looks to his boys for confirmation; Shane and Freedom grunt their agreement. “Yeah, ’cause we’ve got our first scrimmage with Gateway that night, so Coach scheduled us for a daylong clinic during the day.”

  Mr. Handsley comes to an abrupt standstill in front of J-Bar, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  “During the day,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “On Wednesday.”

  “Yeah.” J-Bar nods a slow up and down.

  “Richard Cox is requiring you to miss a day’s worth of class? In preparation for a basketball game?”

  “I guess so, Mr. H. I’m really sorry, I mean, I can tell how awesome this project is gonna be, and we hate to miss it, don’t we guys? But we don’t have a choice. This is a team requirement.”

  As long as Meghan’s watched J-Bar operate, she can never get used to what a clean-cut citizen he becomes whenever he talks to adults. They’d never in a million years guess by looking at his relaxed, charming face that under his PROPERTY OF VALLEY REGIONAL ATHLETICS shirt beats the heart of a serial killer.

  “Well now, I hardly know what to say to this. Obviously this is unacceptable. This performance will count substantially toward your final grade, and whether or not you care about William Shakespeare, you surely care about maintaining the kind of GPA that befits a young man of your stature in this school.”

  “Huh. Sure, of course I do.” J-Bar knits his brow with concern, pretends to be thinking hard about what Mr. Handsley just said.

  “I will not excuse you from my double period to go press iron in Richard Cox’s gymnasium.” Meghan sees Freedom and Shane exchange glances at Mr. Handsley’s off-kilter cliché. “If you miss this performance for that reason it will not count as an excused absence.”

  “But that’s not fair,” Freedom blurts out. “One teacher tells us we have to do something, then another teacher tells us we’ll get in trouble if we do it, that’s not fair.”

  J-Bar shoots Freedom a shut-up look, but it’s too late.

  “Fairness, Mr. Falcon,” Mr. Handsley intones, gearing up for a major rant, “is a questionable standard to build your life around. It is certainly not the chief value of your hero Mr. Cox, and I venture to say that—enough, enough. I’ll take this up with him. Here are your assignments”—he drops a folded piece of paper onto each of the basketball boys’ desks—“and I look forward to seeing your performances next Wednesday.”

  Mr. Handsley continues distributing assignments, but he seems flustered and distracted—off his game.

  As he approaches Meghan’s desk she closes her eyes to pray: Please n
o, no togas, no groups, no stage, no J-Bar watching, no J-Bar pointing, mercy, mercy, have mercy on me.

  Mr. Handsley lays a piece of paper down silently on Meghan’s desk as he passes, doesn’t make eye contact with her.

  Meghan opens the paper and reads:

  MEGHAN BALL: TECH CREW

  RESPONSIBILITIES: CURTAIN, LIGHTS, PROPS

  THIS IS A REAL JOB, NOT A COP-OUT!

  Meghan’s whole body courses with relief.

  “Now!” Mr. Handsley shouts, turning on his heel to face them at the front of the room. His eyes have a wild gleam to them that Meghan has never seen before. “How, children, do you fashion a Roman toga from common household objects?”

  C period. Meghan, porous and vaporous, sits in the bank of chairs outside the principal’s office, pretending to be waiting for an appointment. This is normally a high-risk spot in the mornings—very busy, very exposed—but she urgently needs access to the stash of hall passes Ms. Champoux keeps under the morning announcements folder in the top left hand drawer of her desk—her supply of blanks is running dangerously low. And anyway the office is full of scattered energy; there’s a fight going on in the principal’s office and all the secretaries are busy trying to pretend that they’re not listening to every word that’s slipping out through the half-closed door.

  Ms. Champoux stands, red-faced and sweating, over the Xerox machine in the corner; the phone at the reception desk goes unanswered, bleating like a lost lamb over and over: ba-a, ba-a, ba-a . . .

  Meghan tunes her ear to the conversation taking place five feet away from her in Dr. Dempsey’s office.

  “—too long in this job to tolerate this kind of interference!” It’s Mr. Handsley, his voice quavering with indignation.

  Dr. Dempsey’s low, muddled rumble, clearly trying to be soothing: “Okay, Joe, what kind of hurm-hurm-hurm are we talking about?”

  “I had three children in my classroom last period telling me this man excused them from participating in our performance project. A performance project that is a requirement for my class! During school hours!”

  “Now that’s nuts, that’s just crossed wires, or nuts.” Mr. Cox, unmistakably—nice and fired up. “I don’t tell my guys they’re excused from anything. I tell them they need to make choices, and sometimes those choices have consequences—”

  “Well that’s the understatement of the century!” Mr. Handsley cries. “If we’re teaching our children to choose volleyball over Shakespeare the consequences will be dire for our entire society!”

  “Now, Joe,” Dr. Dempsey murmurs. “Hurm-hurm-hurm.”

  “It’s basketball, by the way,” snaps Mr. Cox.

  “All right, both of you, let’s hurm-hurm a second.”

  “What I want from you, Skip,” Mr. Handsley says, addressing the principal, “is an assurance that I may visit upon any student who misses the performance in order to prepare for the ‘scrimmage’”—he pronounces the word like it’s dirty—“the kind of grade penalty he or she will deserve. Which may ultimately disqualify him or her from participating in varsity athletics, I can’t make any guarantees.”

  “Skip?” Mr. Cox demands. “Do you hear this? This is what I’ve been talking about, this is a vendetta! This guy has a vendetta against my team!”

  “Okay, Rich, calm down—” Dr. Dempsey begins, but Mr. Handsley talks over him, clipped and contained.

  “I have no such thing. On the contrary, I’ve done everything in my power to help the members of your team keep from falling behind in my classes. I want all my students to succeed, and I help every one of them to the degree that they need it. But the attitude of your ‘guys,’ Rich, is rank. It’s repellent. No matter how much extra attention I give them, they regularly repay me by failing to complete assignments, skipping class to attend scrimmages and games, even taunting and ganging up on other students during class time. I don’t know what kind of philosophy you’re drilling them in, but to me at least it seems deeply flawed.”

  “We went twenty and three last year,” Mr. Cox drawls. “I guess I’m doing something right.”

  A silence.

  “Of course you must do what you believe is best.” Mr. Handsley’s voice is low and controlled now. “And so must I. I will not be excusing a single one of your players from our performance project next Wednesday.”

  “Skip!” Mr. Cox yells.

  “Joe,” says Dr. Dempsey, “I think we can all hurm-hurm your hurm-hurm. But we’ve got to keep in mind what basketball hurm.”

  “Ambassadors,” Mr. Cox chimes in. “Tell him the thing you said to me about how my guys are ambassadors for the entire school.”

  “Please,” Mr. Handsley says briskly. “I do not require a lecture on school spirit or the salutary effects of winning sports championships. I know that basketball is important to this school. But Shakespeare is important to life. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again now: If you teach these young men that Shakespeare isn’t important, that studying and learning don’t matter as much as charging up and down a painted court like a herd of animals, what you’re really teaching them is that this, right now, is the pinnacle of their lives. This moment, when they’re the strongest and fastest they’ll ever be and have the most raw power over other people, is their brightest moment. You’re teaching them that now is their real life. When as a matter of fact their lives begin when we’re done with them, their lives begin the day they leave us behind. What do you want them to leave us with? Nostalgia for a triumphant away game at Hamp? Bitter memories of the tragic fall to Gateway Regional?”

  “Now that game was rigged! That ref was a—”

  “Rich?” Dr. Dempsey cuts Mr. Cox off sharply.

  “I will not be moved,” says Mr. Handsley.

  “Goddamnit!” yells Mr. Cox.

  “Volume, Rich!” Dr. Dempsey barks.

  The door slams shut, shoved closed from the inside, and the argument blurs into murmur. Meghan watches the secretaries turn to look at each other, then move as a group to cluster around Ms. Champoux at the Xerox machine. They whisper together as excitedly as a group of ninth-grade girls gossiping in the freshman hallway.

  Silently, invisibly, completely unnoticed, Meghan gets up from her seat and moves in a single fluid arc across the office. She floats past Ms. Champoux’s desk, bending slightly to hoist and glide the left hand drawer open with a practiced flick of her wrist so it doesn’t catch or squeal on the sticky halfway spot, dipping her hand into the drawer and under the manila folder where the announcements are kept, pinching an inch-thick stack of pink passes from their hiding place, and slipping them effortlessly into her pocket. Silently, invisibly, completely unnoticed, Meghan slides the drawer to Ms. Champoux’s desk shut, slips around the reception desk, and vanishes out the office door.

  D period. Somewhere else in the labyrinth of the school, Social Studies is happening—American History I: Puritans are thatching roofs and striking soon-to-be-broken bargains with Native Americans—but Meghan is in the heart of the maze, floating, a dreamy minotaur, in the dark of the sick room. She feels expansive and unearthly, like a mist, pixilated into pure hearing, distributed everywhere in the murky room at once. All around her, the soothing rise and fall of Mrs. Chuddy’s information.

  “I know. Well Rich thinks he’s doing it on purpose. Rich says Joe singles out his boys to punish just because they’re athletes, and if that’s true I tell you it breaks my heart. Innocent children shouldn’t be punished for no reason.”

  A tiny pause while she lets Vivvie get a one-syllable word in edgewise.

  “Yes but I heard Rich telling Deborah in the hall, I heard him say ‘Joe’s trying to destroy the basketball team. Joe’s got it in for the basketball team,’ he said. Well I don’t know why he’d do a thing like that, they’re good boys. They bring a lot of pride to this school. Those are the kind of boys you read about later, the ones who turn up in the paper ten years from now doing something interesting in New York or Washington. I hate to think of a
ll that promise getting crushed because of something Joe’s doing out of spite.”

  Pause.

  “Of course it’s spite, what else could it be? Rich is just going up up up around here, Deborah said he’s gunning for a regional job soon and he’s laying the foundation right now, and Joe is . . . well you know I adore that man, I just think he’s the best and the sweetest, and I don’t like to say about someone that he’s on the decline, but . . .”

  In the dark Meghan imagines a thin sparkling thread running from her finger out the door of the sick room, through Mrs. Chuddy’s office, out into the hall, winding through the corridors of Valley Regional, through the door of room A34 where Aimee is sitting in Algebra II. Meghan imagines the thread wrapped around Aimee’s narrow ankle. She imagines tugging on the thread to get Aimee’s attention, imagines Aimee’s head snapping up, her hand going up automatically to ask for a pass. She imagines Aimee following the thread back through the halls, hand over hand, all the way up to Mrs. Chuddy’s door. She could be coming through the door right now, Meghan thinks. Now. Or now. Any second now.

  “He was never like this in aquarobics,” Mrs. Chuddy sighs. “We used to have just the most fun in that class. I tell you, that man can be a hoot and a holler when he wants to be.”

  Meghan hears the clock on Mrs. Chuddy’s wall hiccup back a minute, then click forward two minutes. D period is draining away, and still no Aimee.

  Tug—Meghan plucks the thread again in her mind.

  “When a fellow like that starts to lose his shine, why that’s a hard thing to watch.”

  Tug—Meghan plucks the thread a little harder.

  “If it were up to me, children wouldn’t even get grades. Each child would get their own chance to shine.”

  Tug, tug, tug.

  Nothing. Aimee’s not answering.

  Meghan’s waited long enough. She’s going to have to go directly to the source.

  10

  Bus 12 passes two beautiful sights on its route from Valley Regional out west of town. Aimee waits for the two beautiful sights every morning and every afternoon, checks them off in her head as they pass. She’s waiting for the first one to come around the bend now, on her way home through the glassy blue-and-gold fall afternoon.