Responsible (2 page)

I hauled my sweatshirt down over my fingers again and picked up the mouse. I had thought it would be stiff, but it was as floppy as a stuffed toy. I set it on Erin's math book, right at the front of her locker, so she'd at least see it first thing. That way she wouldn't be feeling around for her books and get a handful of dead rodent instead. She was going to freak no matter what.

I felt like the mouse was looking at me, sitting there on the middle shelf of the locker. A cold shiver rolled from my shoulders all the way down my back. “Sorry,” I whispered as I closed the locker door. I wasn't sure if it was for the poor dead mouse or for Erin.

I couldn't get going in the morning, so by the time I got to school it was almost first bell. Nick was standing at the bottom of
the main stairs with Zach and Brendan and some geeky kid from grade nine who talked way too much. I thought his name was Oliver. I knew Nick was just hanging there, waiting to see what happened when Erin opened her locker.

I walked over to them. I just wanted to go to my locker or homeroom, but it would have looked weird if I had. I didn't look down the hall. We'd know soon enough when Erin opened her locker.

Nick was going on about video games and playing
Doom Master
. He thought he was hot stuff because he'd gotten to level six in the game. I'd gotten as far as level fourteen. That wasn't something I'd ever told him, though.

I didn't see Erin until she was right behind Nick. “Uh, Nick,” Zach said, pointing. I looked around. It seemed like half the school was hanging around, watching. I wondered if Nick had put the word out.

Erin was holding the mouse up by its tail with her bare hand. If she was scared,
I couldn't tell. In fact, she was sort of smirking. “Jeez, Nick,” she said. “I thought you could come up with something better than a dead mouse.”

Then she reached over and stuffed the mouse in the pocket of Nick's Zipperhead T-shirt. “Here you go,” she said, giving the pocket a pat. Yeah, she was definitely smirking.

Nick jerked. He grabbed the mouse out of his pocket and hurled it down the hall. It landed with a splat by the water fountain. He wiped his hand on his jeans. He was breathing hard and there was sweat on his forehead. Erin wasn't afraid of a dead mouse, but Nick sure as hell was.

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't laugh, but I could hear snickers all around me. Everyone was watching Nick. I thought he might hit Erin, but at that moment Mr. Harris came down the steps. Erin moved in front of him. “Mr. Harris, Nick put a dead mouse in my locker—probably after school yesterday.”

My ears burned.

“I didn't put anything in your locker yesterday,” Nick said. “Or any other day.”

Erin didn't even look at him. She took a step closer to Mr. Harris. “There was a dead mouse in my locker this morning. You know about all the other stuff. When are you going to do something about it?”

“Where's the mouse?” Mr. Harris asked. Erin pointed toward the fountain. “Don't move, any of you,” Mr. Harris said. He walked down the hall, stared at the dead lump of gray fur and walked back. “Erin, this is an old building,” he started to say.

She didn't let him finish. She waved her hand in front of his face. “No, no, no. Don't try to tell me this was just some poor mouse that somehow crawled into my locker by accident and died right on top of my math book. No! How did it get in there? What was it? The David Blaine of mice?” She looked at Nick then. “No, he did it.”

Mr. Harris took a slow deep breath—it was probably a technique he'd learned at vice-principal school. “I don't know how a
mouse got in your locker—they can squeeze through amazingly small cracks—however, I know Nicholas didn't put it there. He was in detention with me yesterday afternoon and again this morning.”

Nick gave Erin a smug smile, like a cat that had just swallowed two or three fat mice.

Erin bit her lip and let out a breath. “Then it was one of the toadies that walk around kissing his ass.” She pointed at Zach. “That one.” She turned and jabbed her finger at Oliver. “Or that one. why do you put up with his crap? why the hell don't you do something?”

“I am going to do something,” Mr. Harris said. He had almost no lips, I realized, kind of like a salamander. And his bald head had the same kind of knobby shape. “I'm giving you detention for the next three days. You can use the time to think about what kind of language you should be using in this building.”

“This is ridiculous,” Erin shouted. Her face was almost the same color as the
crimson hockey championship banner hanging from the ceiling. “That jerk harasses me for weeks, puts a dead animal in my locker, and I get detention. This place is insane.”

Mr. Harris did his deep-breathing thing again, and then he held up three fingers. “Want to make it four days?” he said. Erin pressed her lips together. I figured she was probably biting her tongue too. She looked at Nick. All I could see was hate on her face, hard in her eyes and tight mouth. She turned and walked away.

Mr. Harris turned to Nick. “It would be best if you stayed away from Erin,” he said. “And I don't want to find out you or any of your friends had anything to do with this.”

“You won't, sir,” Nick said. I don't know how he managed to keep a straight face. Me, I just stared at my feet and wished I was invisible.

Nick waited until Mr. Harris had disappeared down the hall and around the corner. I hoped Erin getting detention would make up for her making him look stupid with that mouse.

He ran his hand back over his hair. “So Miss Prissy-ass is getting detention. I'm not sure that'll teach her the lesson she needs to learn.”

“What're we going to do?” Brendan snickered. Mr. Harris may have looked
like a salamander, but Brendan looked like a ferret. There was an old guy in the trailer park who had one. He took it for walks on a leash, just like a dog. That's what Brendan looked like—a pointy face and tiny ears—except the ferret could grow more hair on its face than Brendan could.

Why did we have to do anything, I wondered.

“What did you say?” Nick said.

Crap! I'd said it out loud.

“What did you say, Frasier?” Nick asked again.

I was screwed. He was moving slowly, talking quietly, like a snake, waiting to strike. I had to say something.

“Why should we do anything? I mean, why even bother with her anymore?” I tried to grin but my mouth wouldn't cooperate. “You got her sent to detention. Isn't that enough?”

Nick slammed me against the stone wall under the stairs before I even knew what was happening. “I'll decide what's
enough,” he hissed. “You saw what she did, putting that frickin' mouse in my pocket. You think some stupid detention makes that okay?” He was holding me by the throat, and it was hard to breathe.

“No,” I managed to choke out. My mouth was filling with spit, but I couldn't swallow. “I just...I just didn't think...she was worth...worth it.” Nick's thumb and finger were digging into the sides of my neck so hard his face was beginning to wobble and shimmer in front of me.

Then suddenly he let go and I sank to my knees. “Here's a hint, Frasier,” Nick said. “Don't think. You might hurt something.” He leaned over me. “And keep your mouth shut. Got it?”

I nodded. Nick straightened up and headed down the hall. The other guys followed him without saying a thing. Slowly I got up. My throat felt like the time I'd had strep throat when I was eight, but at least all my limbs were still attached to my body and there wasn't any blood anywhere.

Nick made a big production of leaving Erin alone for the rest of the day. If they came near each other in the halls he'd hold up his hands and back against the wall. “Look. I'm staying out of your way,” he'd say, but there was a mocking tone to his voice and a sarcastic smirk on his face. Erin just walked past as if he was invisible.

I tried staying out of Nick's way too. In gym when we played dodgeball—and who came up with that stupid game anyway?— Nick pretty much pounded me with the ball every chance he got, and I let him. He didn't just have to get even for what I said. He had to get ahead, and everyone had to see it. By the time the class was over there were bruises coming out on both my arms, and my ribs on the left side ached every time I took a breath. Nick slapped me on the back as we headed for the showers. “Your timing sucks, Frasier,” he said with a grin. “You oughta work on that.”

I didn't like it when Nick was so happy. It always meant he had a plan. He wasn't just going to get even with Erin. He was
going to do the same thing he'd done with me—get ahead.

That night I stood at the stove making Kraft dinner and hot dogs, wishing for once that my dad was home. The whole left side of my chest was a giant red and purple bruise that hurt when I moved, when I breathed, when I did anything.

I took my bowl over to the little table jammed in against the wall. I looked around as I ate and suddenly realized my dad's guitar was gone. Not his precious '54 Les Paul Goldtop, but his regular one. That meant he was out playing somewhere and wouldn't be home till maybe one or two o'clock. Dad would probably tell me it served me right for hanging out with those guys in the first place. He would say, “Why do you hang around those punks? Stay out of things that aren't your business? Don't go looking for trouble.”

But I couldn't stay out of things. Okay, I didn't exactly go looking for trouble, but
I did look for Erin, Monday after school. Well, I sort of looked for her. I really did need to do some more work on my tree project, so I spent about an hour in the art room after school, and it was Erin's last day of detention. I took the trail along the river because I knew that's the way she walked. Sometimes I walked home that way, even though it took a bit longer, and I'd seen her ahead of me on the gravel path. When I came out of the trees, there she was.

I had to run to catch up with her. Erin jumped when I touched her shoulder. She turned and took a step back. “What do you want?” she said, holding her bag to her chest with both arms.

What did I want? I stumbled over the words. “I just...I just wanted to tell you...to warn you to...watch out for Nick.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No!” I held up my hands. “Jeez, I swear, no. I just...you shouldn't trust him. Just be careful.”

She studied my face. “Why? what did he say?”

“He didn't say anything.” I jammed my hands in my pockets. “I'm tryin' to help you here. You've known him way longer than I have. You know what Nick's like. He's not going to let this thing between you just die.”

She shrugged. “If you're so sure he's going to do something then why don't you go to Mr. Harris, or even the police?”

“Going to Mr. Harris didn't do you much good, did it?” Did she have to be so difficult when I was only trying to help her?

“That's because no one else will speak up,” Erin snapped. “No one will say anything. You're all a bunch of mindless sheep. Everyone is so damn afraid of him. Well, I'm not afraid. If he tries something, he'll be sorry.”

She stalked away, still holding her bag to her chest, her shoulders hunched. I didn't bother going after her. I could taste something sour in my mouth. I knew for sure that whatever Nick did, he wouldn't be sorry about it—but Erin would.

On Friday morning, I was getting my books when Nick came up and leaned against the locker beside mine. He smiled. It made me think of one of the trailer park cats, George, a big ginger missing most of an ear. George got the same look on his face that Nick had, though when the cat looked that way there were usually a few feathers poking out of his mouth.

Nick punched my arm right on one of
my fading bruises. I sucked in a breath and swallowed my gum trying not to yell.

“Hey, Frasier, you spend a lot of time in the art room, right?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

He leaned closer, and the smile got more George-like. All he needed was a dark gray pigeon feather sticking out of the corner of his mouth. “And Ms. Henderson's there, right?”

“She's around,” I said.

Nick looked over his shoulder and then back at me. “See, I've got this little bet going with McCarthy that Ms. Henderson doesn't wear a bra. I figure today after school, when you're working on your little project, you're going to need some up-close and personal help. You can do a buddy a favor and report back what you see, you know what I mean?”

“Umm, yeah, sure, I can do that.”

“After school today, okay?” he said.

“Yeah, all right.” I nodded.

“Perfect.” Nick slugged me again and took off down the hall.

It was the only thing I could think about all day. I was going to have to look down the front of a teacher's blouse and see what kind of underwear she had on. Thinking about maybe seeing a woman's breasts should have been exciting, but it wasn't. This was Ms. Henderson. I knew a lot of the guys thought she was hot, but I liked her, I mean as a teacher.

After school I went to the art room and got my tree poster out. I didn't know what I was going to say to get Ms. Henderson into the room, but I didn't have to do anything. She just came in to see how I was doing, and when she leaned over I looked.

“It was a purpley-colored thing with lace,” I told Nick and the guys. They'd been waiting for me out on the picnic tables. “Like a slip or something.”

Nick nodded. “Nice work, Frasier.” He looked at Brendan and jerked his head toward the street. “We gotta go.”

I knew he didn't mean me. I watched them walk across the grass, laughing, and somehow I knew the whole thing had been
a setup. Since when did Nick get someone else to look at someone's boobs—even a teacher's? He was always checking Ms. Henderson out. He'd just wanted to see if I'd do it. I wasn't one of the guys, not like Brendan or Zach. They'd all been friends since first grade, back when Nick was swiping the fruit rollups out of other kids' lunchboxes and looking up the girls' dresses from under the swings. Me, I didn't really belong. Never did.