24

NAME: NAOMI ERLANGER

What were we supposed to think?

First Cap got crushed by the entire junior high football team, and the coaches practically had to carry him to the nurse. Three hours later, he got decked by Darryl Pennyfield—I was never speaking to him again. Next thing you know, he was being taken away by ambulance.

I hadn't seen him since.

The first sign that something was wrong came the next morning, when I didn't see Cap board the bus with Sophie, who looked quite sad and hopeless. She sat by herself near the back of the bus, which was very strange when you consider that she always sat close to her friends in the front.

I walked up to Sophie and sat down next to her, concerned. "Hi, Sophie."

"Hey, Naomi," she cheerlessly replied.

"So, what happened to Cap? I saw you get in the ambulance with him yesterday after school."

"I'm afraid I can't tell you or anyone else anything about that."

"But why?" I wailed. "Everyone wants to find out if he's ok!"

"Sorry, girl," Sophie replied. "My mother made me promise not to reveal anything about Cap at school. A lot of things have happened to him that I'm not at liberty to talk about. You all need to respect his privacy." I could hear she was choosing her words carefully.

And with that, Sophie went silent, refusing to say anything else. I also sat in silence for the rest of the bus ride.

For the first couple of days, nobody was surprised Cap was absent from school, as he clearly wanted us to leave him alone. He was hurting. Who wouldn't be? Then the weekend—the Condors game on Saturday. Well, who could blame him for blowing off that event after what the team did to him? Lena only went because she's a cheerleader, and she said it was the lousiest turnout she'd ever seen for a Condors-Raiders junior high matchup. (C Average and Rhinecliff battled to a 3–3 tie, in case you're one of the few who cares.)

Serves those assholes right.

Anyway, I figured I'd catch Cap on Monday. Wrong. And by Tuesday, I was getting worried. It was almost a full week since anybody except Sophie had laid eyes on the eighth-grade president.

Okay, I was extra upset because Cap was extra special to me, but everyone was talking about it. You'd see a bunch of junior and senior high kids in a huddle in the hall, and you didn't have to eavesdrop to figure out the topic of conversation. Where was Cap? Why hadn't he come back yet? Why was Sophie still refusing to reveal anything about him? Could he be really hurt? The custodians were still trying to scrub his blood off the terrazzo in the corridor where the big punch had been thrown.

He must have been in bad shape. What else would keep him away from what was brewing between the two of us? "To be continued"—I meant that. This wasn't another shallow middle school crush like the one I'd had on Zach. This was a relationship. And besides, the Halloween dance was on Saturday night. Cap had to realize we could never pull it off without him.

When I asked Mrs. Vogel, my homeroom teacher, she replied, "I don't think Cap Anderson is a student here anymore."

"What?" She might as well have told me that the school was slated for demolition with all of us inside it. "Of course he's a student! He's the eighth-grade president!"

She looked uncomfortable. "I don't want to argue with you, Naomi. I've told you what I know."

"I'm going to ask Mr. Kasigi!" I stormed.

"Who do you think told me?" she said, not unkindly. "Mr. Kasigi held an emergency staff meeting to bring all the teachers up to speed. I don't recommend that you mention Cap's name to him. He gets very emotional on the subject."

"But the dance is Friday night! Who's going to run it if Cap isn't here?"

She wouldn't look me in the eye. "The announcement is going to be made at lunch. The dance has been canceled."

I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach with a two-by-four. "You can't be serious!"

She was serious enough to kick me out of the room. By the time I staggered into the hall, the first of the notices was being posted:

DUE TO UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES, THE HALLOWEEN DANCE HAS BEEN CALLED OFF.

As you can imagine, the chaos was rising. There was only one high school in Claverage. Our neighbors had all gone here, our older brothers and sisters. Most of our parents had attended C Average. There had always been a junior high Halloween dance.

"They can't cancel our dance!" wailed Tiffany Peterson. "It's a tradition!"

"They can and they did," Lena said darkly. "Kasigi's such a jerk. He spends the week partying at some fancy convention, and then comes home to pull the plug on anybody else having fun."

"But it's our trademark!" Tiffany persisted. "The elementary school kids have holiday pageants; the senior high kids have Homecoming. Halloween is our thing! How can Mr. Kasigi do this to us?"

Zach put his two cents in. "Kasigi isn't the problem. Since when do the teachers have much to say about what goes on in this place? You're ignoring the obvious: the dance got canceled because Cap screwed up somehow."

"How do you figure that?" asked Lena. "The details are all set, and Cap isn't even here."

"Exactly," Zach agreed. "It's his party. Where the fuck is he?"

I jumped on that so fast that the wind should have knocked him over. "Where is he? It was your precious football team that tried to put him through the crust of the earth. And don't forget the punch that leveled him was meant for you. You totally deserved to get the shit slapped out of you by Sophie."

He shrugged. "It's not my fault Pennyfield's gone over the edge."

"Nothing's ever your fucking fault," I snarled at him. "When you couldn't use Cap as your clown, you tried to use him as your crash-test dummy. I've had it up to here with you, Zach Powers! You and I are through!"

As rattled as I was, I took some satisfaction in the expression of total shock on his face. I laid it on even thicker. "Did it ever occur to you that 'unfortunate circumstances' might not be just a lame excuse? What if it means—what if it means—"

Well, what could it mean? No one had the guts to say it, but it was in everybody's thoughts. Stone-faced Mr. Kasigi couldn't hear Cap's name because it made him too emotional. What unfortunate circumstances could cause that? Add in the fact that Cap seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.…

Up until that moment, no one had dared to speak the awful words out loud, but I couldn't keep them bottled inside me any longer.

"What if it means he's fucking dead?"

"Let's get to the bottom of this," Lena decided.

Good old Lena. She was a tough nut, but she could be so sensible sometimes. Plus, she had tons of connections, and everybody in junior high seemed to owe her a favor. Phil Ruiz helped out around the office, so Lena made it his job to get into student records and pull Cap's file.

He snuck the folder out in the kangaroo pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and showed it to us in the stairwell by the gym.

This is what it contained: nothing. No papers, no grades, no test scores, not so much as an index card.

"How the fuck is it possible to have an empty file?" Lena demanded.

"It isn't," Phil told her. "It should have transcripts, transfer forms from his old school, and emergency contact information."

"That's what we need!" Lena exploded. "We have to contact him. This is a fucking emergency!"

"Don't worry," I cut in. "I know where he lives."

I rode the same bus as Cap and Sophie, and their stop was before mine, so I knew exactly where they got off- a well-kept split level on a quiet side street. Just the realization that I already knew where Cap lived and slept made me feel warm inside.

After school that day, Lena and I got off before our own stops. Sophie got off at her stop first, and we followed her off the bus. When she heard someone else step off the bus, she turned around and looked at us with suspicion. "Why are you girls getting off at my stop?"

"We're not going home until you tell us what really happened to Cap!" I confronted her.

"Yeah! We're sick and fucking tired of your secrecy, Sophie! Since you won't say anything on the bus or at school, we've come to your home," Lena cut in.

Sophie rolled her eyes at us and started walking up the driveway, with both of us following. There was a big red car parked there, and Sophie's expression changed from one of indifference to one of excitement after she saw it.

"Is Cap alive?" I asked anxiously as we marched up the walk to the front door.

"As far as I know, yes."

I heaved a sigh of relief. "Does he still live here?"

"No. You girls are too late to pay him a visit."

"Well then," Lena persisted, "where the fuck is he now?"

Sophie reached the front door and began to unlock it. "I'll tell you that in a minute. Let's talk inside the privacy of my home so no one will hear us."

She pulled the door open and gestured for us to enter her house. "After you."

Lena and I walked into the home. The house was pretty nice. The living room was a few steps down; the bedrooms were a few steps up; and the kitchen was in the middle, just as I had imagined it.

Sophie entered after us, and the three of us came face to face with a middle-aged man who was standing in the middle of the front room.

"Dad!" Sophie let out a shriek of joy, ran up to the man and hugged him.

Lena and I stared at each other.

"I've missed you so much, sweetheart," her father replied. "And who are these beautiful girls?" he asked, noticing the two of us standing there.

"They're eighth grade friends of mine, Lena Young and Naomi Erlanger," Sophie pointed at us. "Girls, this is my father, Bill Donnelly."

The father walked up to us and shook our hands. "A pleasure to meet you, girls. Can I get you anything to eat or drink?"

"Apple juice, please," I politely asked.

"Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be awesome, Mr. Donnelly," Lena replied.

Sophie's dad went to the kitchen, and the three of us sat down at the dining table.

"You must really love your father, Sophie," Lena remarked. "Neither of us would be so excited to see our dads after school."

Sophie rolled her eyes at us. "You girls have it lucky. My parents are divorced, and I live with my mom. As for my dad, he's a great guy, but he makes a lot of promises he can't keep. He rolls into town, drops by to stay with us for a few days, and then he's gone until the next time, when he does it all over again."

"That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear that," I cut in.

Sophie's dad brought the food and drinks and set them down on the table. "Dig in, girls," he cheerfully instructed before sitting down in the chair next to Sophie.

The three of us started gulping the refreshments down, as we were all hungry and thirsty after a long day at school. Sophie's dad drank coffee and ate some pastries.

I was the first to speak. "So, Sophie, you really need to tell us what exactly happened to Cap last week."

Sophie sighed and replied, "OK, fine. The first thing you two need to know is that the ambulance we got in was not meant for Cap."

"What do you mean?" Lena asked, confused. "He was knocked out cold by Darryl Pennyfield."

"The ambulance was actually meant for Cap's grandmother, Rain. Remember that Cap was only enrolled at our school because he was homeschooled, and his only teacher, Rain, broke her hip. Rain is an actual hippie, so some of her opinions didn't sit well with her fellow patients at the rehab center."

"So, Cap's grandmother came to pick him up?" Lena asked.

I gasped. "Then that means that Rain came to take him back home, right?"

"Exactly," Sophie replied, sadly nodding at us. "After we left the school, the ambulance stopped at our house so that Cap could clear out all his stuff before he went back home."

"Oh my god! Will he ever come back to our school?" I desperately asked.

"Unfortunately, no. He's gone for good. I'm sorry, girls," Sophie replied.

"Cap can't just leave like that! What about our Halloween dance tomorrow?" Lena blurted out.

"I saw that Kasigi canceled it, which really sucks for you kids. I had so much fun at that dance three years ago," Sophie remarked.

"We need to get Cap to come back! If we do, then Kasigi might change his mind about the dance tomorrow," Lena remarked.

"Can't you give us his phone number?" I begged.

Sophie shook her head. "Unfortunately, he doesn't have a phone at home."

"Where does he live?" Lena asked.

"A place called Garland Farm. It's a hippie commune. Only he and his grandmother still live there, and they don't want to be disturbed by the outside world."

"Sophie's mom Flora, my ex-wife, grew up there," her father cut in. "Rain was one of the founders of Garland, the queen bee of the place when Flora lived there."

"So, all we have to do to pay Cap a visit and get him to return to school is locate a farm called Garland-" I began.

"Stop right there, Naomi. You see, the reason my mother made me promise not to reveal anything about Cap at school was because she didn't want kids to try to find Garland and start hounding Cap to come back. Please don't tell anyone outside your close friend group about what really happened to him. You all need to respect his privacy and leave him alone now," Sophie continued.

"I agree with Sophie, girls," her father said. "I know you're both sad that Cap is gone, but that poor boy's life was totally disrupted after his grandmother broke her hip. Both of them deserve to be left in peace."

He and Sophie got up, and Mr. Donnelly motioned for us to do the same. "Come on, I'll drive you girls back to your homes. It's time to forget about Cap and move on with your lives."

The four of us exited the house, Lena and I following Sophie and her dad. We walked up to his car, which was parked in the driveway. The two of them got into the front, while Lena and I climbed into the back. Mr. Donnelly started the car, and we soon took off down the street.