Chapter 5
No matter what your age, being chewed out by the principal isn’t any fun.
But it does kind of give you a rush.
After, we had to wait in the hall while Mr. Gates talked to Indira and Fox—presumably because they were my parental guardians.
Believe it or not, I’d never gotten sent to the principal’s office during high school, probably because of a cocktail of social anxiety and severe perfectionism.
So, it was kind of fun to sit there with Keme, kicking the legs of the old wooden chair, slouching, and generally being no good, rotten, and a whole lot of trouble.
That thought made me perk up. “Oh my God! We’re the bad boys!”
Keme didn’t exactly groan. But he did cover his eyes.
“I’ll be Duke,” I said, “and you can be Butch. No, wait, I want to be Butch—”
“If I apologize, will you please stop?”
I didn’t say anything; sometimes, that’s the best policy with Keme.
Several long seconds passed, and then he mumbled, “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Does Millie need money?”
Keme snorted. “She’s got so much saved it’s crazy.”
“So, what happened?”
“I don’t know.” He squirmed around on the hard wooden seat.
“You started making me lunch, and the first day I got into the car with it, Millie got this huge smile on her face and said, ‘Is that for me?’ And I couldn’t say no.
” He uncovered his eyes, but only so he could stare glumly at the principal’s office.
“Then she loved the sandwich, and she asked if I would make it that way again—”
“It’s the potato chips. Fried, salted potatoes are basically the secret to all good recipes. I mean, not desserts obviously, although maybe—” For someone deep in an apology, Keme could still muster a look of withering scorn. “Uh, you were saying?”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Keme, it’s okay. I would have given you the money anyway.”
“I’m going to get a job. I know you’re all working really hard to take care of—” He hesitated, and I wondered if he had almost said me. But when he spoke again, all he said was “—stuff, and I don’t want to be dead weight.”
“Plus Millie’s been paying for all your dates.”
He did groan this time.
“She has a lot of money?” I asked.
“From her homemade jewelry.” He was back to brooding again as he added, “It’s ridiculous how much she has.”
It certainly raised questions—among them, if I had, perhaps, made a mistake in my choice of career, and perhaps I’d be better off making earrings out of upcycled fishhooks. (Or whatever it was Millie did.)
In a completely different tone, Keme asked, “Did Indira make Mr. Dunkle pee himself?”
“Right?” I sat up straight in my chair. “There was definitely a wet spot. And I think Fox chafed Mr. Minor pretty badly with their switchcomb.”
Keme made a noise of unutterable disgust. “He’s the worst.”
“You know what we should do next?”
Keme’s eyebrows went up.
“We should spike the punch at prom,” I said.
“What is wrong with you?”
“It’s a great idea. It’s a classic.”
“God, for, like, five seconds you were actually being normal.”
“And we can steal the mascot from the other high school—”
“What other high school?”
“—and it’ll probably be a pig or a goat or something, so we’ll have to hide it at Hemlock House—”
“Good luck convincing Indira to go along with that.”
“—and we should do the most amazing senior prank, like fill the swimming pool with beans or let a badger loose in the main office or—or put shaving cream on everybody’s cars!”
“You ate lunch alone a lot, didn’t you?”
“Keme!”
The door opened, and Indira and Fox stepped out. Fox was grinning. Openly. Indira, on the other hand, looked less than pleased, and her gimlet gaze took in first Keme and then, for what seemed like an eternity longer, me.
“You are in trouble,” Fox announced, their grin spreading.
“Yes,” Indira said. “You are. And it’s not funny. You—” This was directed at Keme. “—should have been in class.”
“But Dash—” he tried.
“And you—” This was directed at me. “—should have been at home. Writing.”
“Okay, but in my defense,” I said, “I only followed you because—”
But there didn’t seem to be a good way to express I assumed you’d need my help.
“Go ahead,” Fox said drily. “Finish that sentence.”
“The Xbox is mine,” Indira announced. “For two weeks.”
“You can’t!” I wailed.
“That’s so unfair!” Keme shouted.
“Do you want to make it three?” she asked.
Keme and I traded glances. We did not want to make it three.
“That’s settled, then,” Indira said. “Let’s get Keme to class, and then we’re going home.”
We walked a few yards in silence before I asked, “So, what was Mr. Dunkle doing?”
“He was stealing vape pens from the students’ lockers,” Indira said. “And then forcing the students to pay to have them returned—or for him not to tell their parents.”
“Somehow, he got wind of a drunk driving accident Raymond had in Clatsop County,” Fox put in. “He used that as leverage, and Raymond made him a copy of the master keys for the lockers.”
“And nobody was stealing Keme’s lunch,” I said, “except Keme. That’s like an Agatha Christie plot.”
“Was she an idiot?” Keme asked.
Nobody seemed to know what to say to that.
We were approaching Keme’s environmental science class when I said, “I could show you how I make my world-famous Dash sandwich. I mean, if you want.”
“That’d be all right, I guess.”
“Then you could make them for Millie.”
He shrugged. But a few seconds later, he said, “Yeah.” And then, even later: “Thanks.”
“The secret is to crunch up the chips small but not too small.”
He grunted.
“And while I’m showing you,” I said, “you can tell me about Tori.”
Horror filled his face.
I couldn’t help it; I smirked. “Let me guess: she chases you on the playground and pulls your hair and—ah!”
That was when I screamed because Keme executed some sort of atomic wedgie—I swear to God, my underwear entered a quantum state, and my toes left the floor.
A look from Indira made him set me down, and when he went into his classroom, there was an unmistakable swagger to his step.
Fox said, “This is why we didn’t bring you with us.”
“And you deserved that,” Indira told me.
As I tried to free the remaining particles of my underwear, I said, “Totally worth it.”