March 5th 2:38 p.m.
"Stupid science!" Mr. Perino gave us so much work to do!" Alli whined.
"Coming from the girl who wanted to join the Science team?" Clare challenged.
"Hey!" Alli yelled jokingly. "It's something I'm good at, automatically making it something I like." Alli giggled while Clare smiled.
Alli heard whispers behind her, but she ignored it. She figured that it was probably just some girls gossiping. She turned around to find nothing but a wisp of black hair.
It was a girl's hair duh! Alli thought, not bothering to think about it anymore. She turned back to Clare and announced, "That was so close back there with the boys!"
Clare answered, "Yeah, I feel bad though. Eli has told me some pretty personal stuff, but I don't think I can tell him about last year. Frankly, I'm done with that chapter in my life, and if anything, I don't need it to make reappearance." Clare continued inserting slides onto their PowerPoint and typing.
Alli replied, "Yeah, I don't wanna mention it. I'm glad that there has been a good amount of drama this year so everyone will stop talking about it. For age fourteen, we did a pretty good job of messing with people and making drama. I think I stirred up more drama though." Alli peeked sideways before Clare to see her reaction when she said that.
Clare reacted perfectly. She scoffed before saying, "Oh no you didn't. That was all me, but if you wanna take the title then sure. I mean, the girl who threatened killing another girl definitely beats the girl who got a staff member fired. I don't really wanna think about it though. Even if it is really funny." Clare giggled at the memory, her curly hair bouncing ever so slightly.
Alli sighed, remembering old times. She looked up in concentration to try and remember. Finally, she exclaimed, "Ha! Remember when we got caught in the bathroom stall by Jane!"
Clare and Alli doubled up laughing remembering their incredibly shocked faces when Jane Vaughn caught them in the bathroom with a thick purple vibrator.
Alli mentioned between laughs, "She probably thought we were wierdos!"
Clare noted, "Ehmagosh! That was so funny! She was probably laughing about our faces!"
Alli calmed down a bit before exclaiming, "Yeah, freshman year did have its ups and downs."
Clare commented, "What a cliché thing to say. Very typical and kinda not creative." Clare smiled and so did Alli.
All Alli had to do was croak out two words before Clare started laughing all over again. The words were boyfriends and uniforms.
Alli laughed along with her. She did admit that Clare did stir up some trouble, but Alli could at least be her accomplice.
They agreed that they were partners in crime, and went back to the project and worked on it for a good ten minutes before the ball rang.
March 5th 2:41 p.m.
"Look! There are the girls! Let's listen in!" Drew squealed with the same giddiness of a child about to spend a million dollars at a candy store.
"You're impossible," Adam sighed. Drew was bouncing up and down in his shoes, hands in his khaki- covered pockets. "No offense to myself, but you sound like more of a girl than I do."Adam finished.
"Thank-you, I try to be impossible. As for that comment about being a girl," Drew murmured, "You'll pay for that later." Drew rolled his chocolate brown eyes as Eli grunted trying to get a better view and changed positions.
The boys were hiding behind exactly five aisles of book behind where the girls sat. They crouched and avoided strange stares from the students, dressed in a flurry of yellow, red, purple, and blue. Their calves were hurting from crouching, but the only thing that hurt more were their brains. They tried to figure the girls out, but they couldn't seem to put two and two together.
"This. Is. Killing. Me." Adam said after a two minutes of hard, critical thinking. Eli looked annoyed, Adam looked thoughtful, and Drew looked flat- out confused.
"What do you think they meant by 'threatening another girl'?" Drew asked.
"And boyfriends…" Eli grumbled.
"I have no idea, but before my brain explodes, let's look at the yearbooks. Let's do it quick, we only have seven to ten minutes before the period ends." Adam replied.
Drew, Eli, and Adam ran into the encyclopedia section of the library for there was an entire shelf of book devoted to the school. They looked at each year before choosing the book labeled 2009.
On the inside, there were pictures of excited students of all classes: seniors hugging their boyfriend or girlfriends, juniors posing with a big line of their friends as if they were models, sophomores with a single friend or two making kissy-faces, and innocent freshman simply smiling.
They quickly flipped to the freshman page, but not before slipping onto the staff page.
Mrs. Dawes caught their eyes before they could go on. Suddenly, Adam exclaimed, "Mr. Dawes doesn't look any older now, but she still looks like a fragile elephant-skinned librarian. But not the stereotypical kind. The creepy kind, like at Toronto Library. The ones who obsess over cheesecake and won't stop talking about their imaginary boyfriends who 'went to meet the president'. You know, minus her ugly fifties-styled hair."
Unknowingly, Mrs. Dawes hovered by, being a frequent visitor to the library. She overheard a person comment on her, and quickly walked by them standing in the aisle where the comment had come from. In the aisle, stood Goldsworthy, and the two Torres brothers. Knowing the two brothers, who were very different, she assumed that it was Drew who made the terrible comment, and demanded that he meet her after school for such irrational behavior.
"But Mrs. Dawes, it wasn't me, it was Adam!" Drew looked down, and Adam turned red.
Mrs. Dawes replied, "Mr. Torres, I find it unnecessary to punish your brother for your actions. How could you blame him? Your sweet innocent brother?"
Adam spoke up before Drew got a detention, "It was me Mrs. Dawes." Adam looked down guilty.
"Because of your noble actions Adam, I'll let it slide, but no more verbal attacks, do you understand?" Mrs. Dawes asked gently.
Adam blushed and nodded before taking a few steps back to hide behind Eli.
Drew turned red and felt the heat prickle his ears. "Plus, Mrs. Dawes, any woman with sensible footwear such as yours couldn't possibly come to such an accusation! Personally, I think your skin is radiant!" Drew exclaimed, obviously trying to be a kiss-up kind of student to get good grades.
Mrs. Dawes said, "Really? You think so? I use a night serum right before I go to bed to improve the wrinkles on my face!" Mrs. Dawes continued, rubbing her face up and down trying to brag about her 'minimal' wrinkles, but only made her face look like old shaved-off snake skin. As Mrs. Dawes said this, Adam and Eli bit their tongues so hard to prevent laughing, that Adam's tongue had a mark in it.
"Thank you Mr. Torres, but sucking- up won't help you in my class. And for such a brave but irritating attempt, you will be serving a detention after school today."
With that, Mrs. Dawes left before Drew could sass her. The second she was out of ear-shot, they burst out laughing before vowing not to speak of a teacher like that in public, while Drew stood with his jaw still on the floor.
They leaned against the wall before flipping to the appropriate page. They flipped to the E-section, scrolling through many names. Adam recited, "Eagleman, no. Eagling, no. Eakins, no. Isn't that a pokemon? Oh, never mind," he continued, reading through the list looking for Edwards when Eli suddenly looked up at Adam, and asked, "You were a Pokémon nerd?"
"N-no, why do you say that?"Adam asked nervously, anxious for the answer he predicted.
"Because you know that that is a Pokémon."
"How do you know that's a Pokémon?" Adam questioned, a smug look settled on his face.
Eli's face went from curious to frightened in a split-second, and he realized his mistake. When he didn't answer, Adam continued reading after saying, "Yeah, that's what I thought. He scrolled and scrolled looking for the appropriate picture, while Eli swept his bangs so that they covered his now-clouded eyes, and Drew still was sputtering random words about injustice, jaw still perched in the same position, eye twitching.
"Here we go!" Adam said. "Clare Edwards." Eli snapped out of dark-mode and followed Adam's gaze. He landed on an innocent looking Clare, ponytail straight, head cocked slightly to the side, glasses in-tact and perched on her nose. Adam bookmarked the page and flipped to the B-section, and luckily Alli was easier to find, considering she was next to a big-nosed Sav Bhandari, and her name was in the first five upon seeing listed.
Her hair was nicely curled, her eyes bright, and her lips glossed light-pink.
"Drew, you're going to wanna look at this," Eli said with excitement oozing from his voice.
Drew returned to harsh reality and looked over Alli's small profile, and then Clare's. They read it, but it was the defaced section by each name that captured everyone's attention. They only found some useful clues but not many. Whoever defaced the books only left some clues, and most likely didn't get caught because then they would have to replace the Yearbook. Though the perpetrator didn't put many words, they still could use them to get to the next step in their journey.
The phrase by Alli's pretty face was: "I've got the rope!" and her word was Cellphone.
The phrase by Clare's nice face was: "Fighting the power! And her word was Shep,
Whatever that meant….