The Fourth Stall Part III (16 page)

T
urns out we didn't have to wait long for Kinko to make her first move. The very next day at school a third of the kids were absent for the first few hours of the day. Turns out someone had slashed the tires of every single school bus earlier that morning in the dark. And it didn't end with just that one act, though I definitely wish it had.

Later in the morning somehow a whole section of the eighth-grade locker bay had red dye sprayed inside all of the lockers. How Kinko's crew had managed to pull that off without being seen by anyone is still a mystery to me. Luckily my locker wasn't affected, but it didn't mean I didn't still feel horrible for the kids whose lockers were. Backpacks, gym clothes, jackets, sweatshirts, homework, textbooks, all ruined. You'd have thought that the school mascot died that day or something when walking by that locker bay since so many kids were crying. It had been a pretty cruel and ruthless attack, but if that was the worst she was going to do, then maybe this wouldn't turn out so bad, after all. I mean, at the very least all of these attacks had diverted some of the attention away from my marked face. I was still getting ribbed pretty good by kids, but it would have been much, much worse without all of the other distractions.

But anyways, as you might suspect by now, those two things weren't even close to the worst things Kinko had planned for me and the school.

Later that day, around one o'clock or so, I was sitting in science class, listening to these two kids behind me argue quietly over who was going to carry whose backpack that day. They were Kate and Kiah, best friends since I could remember and the two nicest kids in the whole school. Nice to a fault, actually.

“No, I'll carry your backpack today,” Kiah whispered. “I mean, your back has been sore since you hurt it at tennis practice last week.”

“Kiah, don't worry about my back. I'll carry
your
bag. I mean, you're the one who broke his foot playing football this year!” Kate insisted.

“Ah, that's nothing. It's just a scratch,” he said.

“A scratch? You have crutches!”

“Hey, well, okay. Why don't we carry our own bags this time, if you're going to be so stubborn? But at least let me buy you lunch today.”

“But I was going to buy you lunch today! I've been planning on it all week,” Kate said, her voice rising.

Luckily for them our science teacher, Mrs. Lavine, was all but deaf. One time a kid mixed together some chemicals he shouldn't have and the resulting explosion actually shattered three of the classroom windows, and Mrs. Lavine didn't even turn around. She just kept on writing stuff on the board.

“Shoot, what are we going to do?” Kiah said.

“We can vote?” suggested Kate. “That's the most diplomatic way.”

Kiah laughed quietly. “But our votes always end in a one-to-one tie!”

“Maybe this time will be different?” Kate said.

I tried not to barf all over myself. Of all the people I ended up sitting next to, why did it have to be them? Everybody usually got pretty annoyed with them. We all kept saying that they should just stop messing around and get married already, since it was obvious that's what was going to happen eventually. Except they'd probably argue more than any married couple on the planet, despite also being the nicest to each other. Well, this was mostly based on my own parents and movies, but whatever.

Around the time they were about to start counting their votes and would inevitably reach another one to one stalemate, they stopped talking. The whole class did. Instead we listened to the trickling sound that was growing louder and louder, the same sound the creek had made the night it mercilessly swallowed up four thousand dollars of hard-earned cash.

Then kids in the front row started leaping from their desks. Mrs. Lavine was still involved in grading some quizzes and hadn't yet realized that
something
was happening. Those of us near the back never had the luxury of being able to react in time to avoid damage because all of the kids jumping around on their chairs and desks in front of us blocked our view and distracted us.

I didn't figure out what the deal was until I felt my feet were suddenly engulfed in cold liquid. The other kids in the back started leaping from their desks, only making the splashing worse. I, however, just sat there and let the water gushing in from under the classroom door swirl around my ankles.

By the time Mrs. Lavine had figured out that her feet were in eight inches of water, the flowing had stopped and now the water just pooled there, cold and smelly and slightly yellowish, obviously the act of a master saboteur.

They dismissed us from the school for the rest of the day while they investigated what exactly had happened to cause the whole school to flood and also to start the clean-up process. Vince and I walked home that day together, and while we both agreed that it was likely Kinko who was responsible, what we couldn't figure out was why.

I mean, all the incident had done was ruin some shoes and get all of our students a free half day off from school, maybe even more. What was her angle?

By the next day—on which school was canceled again—we found out. And it cemented Kinko, in my mind at least, as the most diabolical and genius saboteur in history. The act, which had seemed subtly good at first, ended up being the ultimate sucker-punch. Which I'm sure was exactly the intent.

School was canceled for the next three days while they tried to clean the place up, fix the pipes, and test for mold. Which, like I said, seemed awesome. But it wasn't. There are state laws that require all students get a certain amount of school hours every year. So we now had to make up the time missed either at the end of the year or during winter break.

So just like that, she'd cost us three days of our already limited precious holiday break. And the rumor was that the incident had caused so much damage and would be so expensive to fix that the school was basically flat-out broke now and might have to cut a few programs, including several spring sports and over a dozen school clubs.

If our school had been a living, breathing person, then Kinko had basically just shot it in the gut with a shotgun with a debilitating disease all over the ammo. Okay, that's kind of morbid, sure, but so was an entire school having to tromp through our own sewer water for half a day.

Furthermore, Ears, my best informant, told me he heard that Dickerson knew it was an act of sabotage. But he assumed it was an inside job. And that I was at the top of the suspect list. The word was that Dickerson would be gunning for me when school resumed that Thursday.

And that's when I realized exactly what Kinko's game was. She was going to destroy me and my school in a single diabolical move. This wasn't business, this was personal.

I
held my nose closed from the musty stench of the recently flooded, old building as Dickerson led me into his office on Thursday morning. He'd personally come to my first-hour class to escort me. That was never a good sign.

“What happened to your face?” he said as he sat down.

“Oh, just a joke some friends played on me,” I said, trying to sound casual. The ink had started to fade, thankfully, but it was still plenty visible.

I could tell from Principal Dickerson's expression that he didn't find the “joke” very funny at all. In fact, he was disgusted by it.

“I knew you hadn't changed,” he said.

“But I didn't do this!” I said, pointing at my face. “Why would I?”

“I don't know what sorts of gang rituals you kids have these days. So who knows?”

“
Gang rituals?
” I said. “Mr. Dickerson, I never—”

“I know you're up to something again, Christian,” he interrupted. “Those pipes didn't burst on their own. That red ink didn't just come from nowhere. Not to mention the whole fleet of school buses getting their tires slashed. Do you have any idea how much all of this has set us back? We're going to have to lay off some teachers! Do you really want that on your conscience? If you even have one?”

“I swear I had nothing to do with this!” I said, which wasn't entirely true.

“Why would I ever believe you anymore?” he said.

I didn't know how to answer that convincingly so I just shrugged.

“Well, just know this, Christian. The school board determined that the pipe incident was ‘accidental,' even though I
know
better. But I'm telling you, the next time anything, and I mean
anything
, ‘funny' happens around here like the red-ink locker bay incident that I know was a deliberate act, you're taking the fall for it. And you'll be expelled immediately. Vince, too.”

“But you can't just . . . I mean, you need proof!”

“Not when a student has a history like yours, I don't,” he said.

I could see, thankfully, that he was taking no pleasure in this. In fact, it was likely that his hands were tied. I mean, considering what our school had been through, he was probably under a ton of pressure from the Higher-Up Suits to put an end to this type of activity here. And so his hand was being forced. I could hardly blame him, even as unfair as it was.

“I haven't been doing any of this, though,” I pleaded.

“One. More. Incident. That's it, dismissed.”

I got up and left feeling pretty helpless. I mean, now my choices were:

Do nothing, wait for another attack, and then get expelled.

Fight back, underestimate Kinko once again, and get the snot beat out of me by Sue and Michi Oba and then Staples, and then probably get expelled for good measure.

Start working for Kinko like she'd asked and then definitely get expelled and probably get the snot beat out of me afterward for kicks.

Beg for mercy.

And so, at lunch that day Vince and I went to the computer lab to type an email to Kinko. Option four was about all we had left. Vince was a much better writer, so he helped me, and together we came up with what I thought was a pretty professional and thoughtful email.

In it we explained to Kinko my predicament, explained how badly she had crippled the school. Expressed that we all knew she was superior. But that doing anything further wouldn't ever get me to work for her. All it would do was ruin the school year of a bunch of kids and maybe even the lives of some teachers. And then at the end we hinted that if any further action was taken against us, we'd have nothing else to lose by waging war right back. I thought, all things considered, that she'd be stupid not to accept the truce. It made perfect sense to me. She really had nothing more to gain by continuing this any further.

We clicked Send.

Now all we could do was wait.

After school Vince and I went back to the computer lab. iBully was there, as usual, working on some top-secret coding project. I nodded at him, and he flicked a quick wave in my direction, never taking his eyes off the screen.

I logged into my email and saw the reply right away. Kinko had replaced the subject line with a smiley-face emoticon.

“Vince, I think she went for it!” I said.

Vince grinned and nodded. “Well, what are you waiting for, open it!”

I clicked the email. Instantly my computer screen turned blue. In fact, all of the screens in the lab did. Then words started flashing on the screen in bold green letters, one at a time.

 

YOU

ARE

GOING

DOWN

PUNK

!!!!!!!

LOVE,

KINKO

 

On the last screen with her name on it there were also hearts and smiley faces and an animated flower that was dancing on the back of a unicorn.

This had happened on every computer in the lab. Then the screens all flashed black, and a white animated skull appeared and it looked like it was laughing. Then everything went dark.

“Holy, Mac. She sent a virus to the whole school!” Vince said.

iBully wheeled his chair over, looking panicked.

“No, no, no, that's not possible,” he said as he started typing frantically at my computer. “I set up all the extra security myself. The system was hack-proof . . . well, except by me, of course.”

iBully sat there and typed madly for at least fifteen minutes, the whole time muttering technical mumbo-jumbo to himself like, “Wire access net compromised” or “Cnet drive isn't found; how is that possible?” or “Server failure at code zero zero seven?”

Of course I had no idea what he was saying, but all in all it didn't sound good.

It must have affected the whole school, because by that time the school's computer teacher and tech guy, Mr. Kilmer, was in the lab, watching iBully go. Even he knew that iBully was the only person who could possibly fix this.

iBully was able to get the screen from pitch-black to blue with some text on it and eventually to a green screen with some text, but in the end he never could get it back to a normal Windows screen. After twenty minutes more he pushed back from his table and looked at us, dazed.

“They did it,” he said.

“What?” Mr. Kilmer demanded. “Did what?”

“They took us out,” iBully said. “I've never seen work so advanced. They wiped out the whole system. All my years of hard work, gone, all of it. Backup servers, too. It's all gone forever.”

He got up slowly. He stumbled toward the door, barely able to walk.

Mr. Kilmer went after him. “Wait, wait, what do you
mean
? It's
all
gone? Grades, school records, all of it? Are you sure they got to the backup servers? How is that possible?”

I saw iBully nod slowly as they exited the computer lab. I looked at Vince. He looked at me.

For once, there was nothing to say.