The Big Splash (16 page)

“Hey!” I said, a little too quickly and a lot too loud.

“Hey, yourself!” Jenny said, matching my enthusiasm. I masked my disappointment. I didn't want her to feel bad.

“What's up?”

“I called you last night, but nobody picked up.”

“I was out late,” I said.

“Oh.” I could tell that she wanted to ask me more questions, like “Where?” or “With who?” I turned away from her, toward my locker, before she had the chance. Being out with my mom wasn't exactly great for my business image.

As I opened my locker, there was a strange
riki-tik-tik
sound. Part of brain was yelling at me, warning me that something was wrong, but I was tired, and when you're tired, you tend to overlook small details. The
riki-tik-tik
sound increased as I opened the locker door wider.

“Look out!” Jenny yelled, pushing me out of the way. Something flew past, hitting the wall behind me with a splat. The strong aroma of cat urine filled the hallway. Kids stopped, trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. I was right there with them.
Jenny was lying on top of me. “Are you okay, Matt?” she asked, still panting. I nodded yes, but I wasn't sure yet. She climbed off me and gave me a hand getting up.

“Booby trap,” she said between heavy breaths.

I looked in my locker. A large elastic band hung inside like overcooked spaghetti. One end of it had been attached to my locker door; the other end attached to the back of my locker with a paper clip. A slingshot for a urine-filled balloon. When the paper clip bent, it fired the balloon at where my crotch would have been … if Jenny hadn't pushed me out of the way.

“How did you know?” I asked Jenny.

“The sound,” she said, still out of breath. “My sister …” She took a deep breath and started over: “My sister used to make them all the time. I remember her testing them in our basement. The balance between the elastic and the paper clip had to be just right, otherwise it wouldn't work. She'd test it for hours. The best elastics made that that
riki-tik
sound as they were pulled tight. I haven't heard it in so long … It was a technique she was pretty proud of.”

I wondered again why I was trying to find justice for Nicole, a girl who once took great pleasure in devising traps like this. The case had started out as a pure money
deal, but no job I've ever taken was only about the money. I knew that my pride and ego were wrapped up in it, but I liked to think I had some altruistic motives, too, even if I had a hard time coming up with any at that moment. Before the question derailed me, I had a flash of intuition. One glance at the top shelf in my locker confirmed that I was right. My “good luck charm” was gone. “They stole the little surfer girl,” I said.

“No!”

I was upset, mostly because I wanted to yell “I told you so!” into the face of that little surfer girl; I didn't need her “good luck” to escape the Outs. I guess that made me a couple of pins short of the spare. Before I checked into the loony bin, I figured I should start being the detective I claimed to be. “Who did your sister teach her technique to?” I asked Jenny.

“The assassins,” she said. “All of them.”

“How many is that?”

“I think around thirty.”

“Great. Only thirty?”

“But who knows who they taught.”

“Right. Thanks.” Someday, I'd have to introduce Jenny to sarcasm.

“Oh, my god, what time is it?” she asked.

I looked at the clock in the hallway. It was 7:45. I said

so.

“I have to go.” She ran off in a full sprint. I grabbed my first-period textbook, spared one last moment to look at the booby trap that almost ended my life, then took off after her. A crowd of kids were gathering around the cat pee splat, like snobs in a gallery admiring an artist's latest work.

I almost lost sight of Jenny, but then found her again. She was taking a path that was easily identifiable to me: She was headed for the principal's office.

When she was a few steps away, the door to the office opened, almost as if on cue. It seemed to play out in slow motion. Jenny kept running toward the door. The principal came walking out with a plain-looking girl in baggy clothes. For a moment, I wondered if it was Jenny's cousin—a girl who shared the family features, but who I had never seen before. It was only after a minute that I realized that the girl coming out of the principal's office was actually Nicole Finnegan. Apparently, everyone in the hallway realized it at the same time I did, because all movement and discussion
stopped, as if someone had pressed the pause button on a remote control.

Nicole had gone through a drastic transformation over the past couple of days. She looked haggard and washed out. Her hair, which used to be the shimmering auburn of fall leaves, was now a dull, burnt umber color. Her skin used to look smooth and white, like a freshly opened container of cream cheese. Now it was pale and clammy. Her eyes, bloodshot and puffy from crying, darted from face to face. She expected the inevitable ridicule from the crowd, and she was afraid.

Nicole passed through the hallway, leaving a trail of whispers and barely contained laughter. The crowd held off because of the presence of the principal, but you could feel the pressure building. Jenny followed close by, and I caught her eye as she passed. She looked resigned, as if she knew she'd be spending the rest of the year shepherding her sister around school. “Talk to you later,” she said in a voice usually reserved for funerals. I nodded solemnly, with respect for the departed.

the day, I caught glimpses of Jenny as she ushered Nicole to her classes. Jenny tried to defend her sister against the laughter and taunts of her classmates, but Nikki had made too many enemies. She had brought a lot of misery to a lot of kids at the Frank. Finally, her bill had come, and her classmates were going to make sure she paid every last cent of it.

By the time lunch rolled around, Jenny and Nicole looked beaten down, exhausted by the constant barrage of insults from all sides. They had different lunch periods. Nicole went first. Jenny walked her to the cafeteria doors,
stopping at the entrance. Nicole walked forward as if the floor were coated in ice. She kept looking back at Jenny, her face full of fear and sadness, like a preschooler leaving her mom behind and getting on the school bus for the first time.

When Nicole walked in, all activity in the caf stopped. She turned to Jenny, a look of panic in her eyes. Jenny couldn't make up her mind whether to whisk her sister out of there or let it ride and hope for the best. A passing teacher made up her mind for her. “Get to class, Miss Finnegan.” When Jenny didn't move right away, the teacher stopped and looked back at her. “Now!” Jenny sighed, gave her sister one last encouraging look, and walked off.

Nicole stood frozen, watching her sister leave. As soon as Jenny was out of view, an open carton of chocolate milk flew out of nowhere and struck Nicole in the side of the head. Chocolate milk dripped down her face and hair like muddy water. The caf erupted in cheers and laughter. Nicole started to cry.

As she turned to face her attackers, another carton of milk came flying toward her head. She made no move to avoid it; she just hung her head and closed her eyes, bracing herself for impact, tears and chocolate milk
forming a puddle around her feet. When the impact didn't happen, she opened her eyes in surprise. She looked around to see what had happened. I was what had happened.

I had caught the carton before it hit her. I hated mob scenes, ever since a freeze-tag incident from a couple of years ago. And after the morning I'd had, I was damned if I was going to let a mob ruin my lunch.

The crowd quieted down; I had their attention, but not for long. “Thanks for the free milk,” I said. I opened it up and took a sip. A few kids in the crowd laughed. For a second, I thought I had ended the incident before it really had a chance to get ugly. I almost didn't see the kid a few feet away from me readying his mashed-potato spoon-catapult, with Nicole dead in his sights. I hooked my foot around the front leg of his chair and kicked out. With a yelp, he fell flat on his back, his catapult backfiring and spraying mashed potatoes over his own face. I lifted the kid up by his shirt, so that his potato-covered face was only an inch from mine. Nicole was now forgotten; all eyes were on me.

“Mashed-potato catapult? Are you kidding?” I asked.

“What?”

“That's Ellie crap. Why don't you grow up?”

Before he could answer me, some clown shouted from the safety of the back. “Hey! Matt's in love with the pee-pee g—uuurk …” His little speech cut off in a strangled gurgle. The entire caf turned to see what had happened. Kevin stood there, the kid's throat in his hand. When the kid's face turned blue, Kev was nice enough to let him go. The rest of the caf resumed their lunch. I looked at Kevin and gave him a relieved little smile. He tried to return it, but his mouth couldn't remember how. It just twitched twice, quickly. Then he walked back to his table, to sit and brood over his untouched meal.

“You okay?” I asked Nicole. A look of defeat and a soft whimper were the only answers she gave me. She was wet and sticky from the milk, her eyes now more red than her hair. “C'mon,” I said, and escorted her to the girl's bathroom. When she came out five minutes later, her hair still hung limp around her face, only now it was wet with water, not chocolate milk. A small improvement, but I'd take it.

I walked her over to an empty table and sat across from her. “Feel better?” I asked.

She nodded slightly, without looking me in the eye.

“You hungry?” I asked, as I put my brown-bagged lunch on the table.

She shook her head no.

“You sure? I have a chocolate chip cookie.” I felt like I was talking to someone half her age.

She sat silently for a moment, as if she hadn't heard me. Just as I was about to ask her again, her head bobbed up and down slightly. I put my hand in the bag. As I was pulling it out, she flinched, as if she were expecting me to have a squirt gun. I showed her the cookie I had promised, put it on a napkin, and slid it across the table to her. Her fingers touched the edge of the napkin and slid it the rest of the way. She picked up the cookie gingerly, as if it were made of glass, took a tiny nibble, then put the cookie back down. I watched her for a long time, trying to figure out what to say, rejecting every thought before it hit my lips. She kept repeating the eating motion with the cookie. At that rate, she'd finish it just before spring break.

I pulled the half picture of Joey out of my pocket. Again, she flinched as my hand came up. She started to breathe again when she saw the photo. I slid it over to her. “You know this kid?” I asked, tapping the picture twice.

“Joey,” she whispered, as if the name itself had power. She must have heard the stories, that it was Joey who took her out. She acted afraid, as if he was going to pop out of the picture and take her down again.

“This is a picture from a newspaper,” I said, “an Ellie newspaper. Do you remember it?” She shook her head no. “Do you know who was in the other half of this photo?” She shook her head no again. She never took her eyes off the picture of Joey. Her whole body started to shake, as if the temperature in the cafeteria had dropped thirty degrees. Her eyes welled up with tears, but none of them fell.

“You okay?” I asked, but I wasn't sure I cared. I was frustrated. Nikki Fingers, once the most fearsome girl in school, was reduced to this: a terrified little girl, scared to death of a picture from a newspaper, unable to answer simple questions or even look me in the eyes. Suddenly, I grabbed her hand. She flinched and started to shrink away, as if I was going to drag her off and humiliate her further. A frightened moan came from the back of her throat.

“Listen to me,” I hissed, “you're Nikki Fingers for Chrissakes! You could chew these kids up and spit them out, one at a time or all together. You don't belong in the Outs, and it's time to stop acting like you do.”