I'll be going into "Weapons of Class Destruction" in some depth, but I'll try to summarize the parts that haven't changed. No point making this chapter a total rehash, but some rehashing is inevitable.
But once again, look at what hasn't happened.
Disclaimer: I do not own Veronica Mars. I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.
X X X X X
I made an appointment to see Mr. Clemmons after lunch.
Lunch that day was with Wallace, at my insistence. "What's this about?" he asked suspiciously.
"What's what about?"
"Why do you want to spend lunch just with me?"
"No motive. It's just been a while."
"You're not going to ask me any favors?"
"Well, I may try to swipe your cookie, but otherwise, no plans." After a second, "Have I really been asking you that many favors?"
"Sometimes it seems that's all I do for you. Don't get me wrong. I'm your friend and I know you're mine too. But there's a bit of an inequality here. Doesn't the brother get to ask any favors?"
"Okay, what do you want?"
He stammered for a second. "Nothing, really. Just keeping my options open."
"So, changing the subject . . . Dad was acting real weird this morning."
"Yeah, my mom too," Wallace said. "She was acting like she wanted to tell me something but just started making small talk about relationships."
"Parents," I said.
"You said it."
We finished the rest of the meal discussing nothing of consequence. I was going to ask him his opinion of the fire drills but figured, since he worked in the office, he'd probably take that as a favor request.
I did, however, take his cookie. I noticed as I did so a website etched into the table: My best guess is, it wasn't about someone's pet gerbil.
Clemmons definitely seemed to be hiding something with the fire drills. He gave me some song-and-dance about the "district-wide policy for mid-semester fire drills," when I knew damn well that as long as I'd been in Neptune schools we'd had one, maybe two a semester. Not three in one week.
At Ms. Stafford's suggestion – the woman may have been terminally perky but she only looked dumb – I called Assistant Superintendent Roush to find out what district policy actually was. One a semester, just as I thought. I still couldn't figure out what was going on until cops with dogs came in and, just as our resident experts in high living were hitting the panic button, the dogs zoomed past them as though they were looking for something else.
So what else could they be looking for? A quick phone call to Clemmons – as Assistant Superintendent Roush, I do have a gift for mimicry – confirmed my fears:
Bomb threats.
I ran with it in that issue of the Navigator, with Ms. Stafford's full blessing. I might have to re-evaluate my opinion of her: she might have less journalism experience than I did, but she had to know that the story would tick off Clemmons and yet she told me to run with it anyway.
X X X X X
Logan took me directly to the Echolls estate as soon as I submitted the article; while ostensibly I was there only to pick up my car and then go see Mom – and Mac was coming by around 5 PM so she and Logan could square off on one of the Grand Theft Auto spinoffs – that still gave us a half hour or so we weren't planning on wasting.
Lynn's car wasn't even in the driveway. I think I had Logan's shirt off before we even got the front door closed, and he had half my buttons undone.
"If I wanted to see porn," a bored voice came from the inside of the house. "I'd rent some."
We stopped, mid-grope, and saw Trina sitting in the living room going over her script. "Well, my mood's killed," I said, buttoning my shirt.
"Your mood's killed?" Logan muttered. "I won't be thinking about sex for a week." I looked at him. "Okay, a day." I kept up my glare. "Okay, five minutes. Sheesh, Mars. What is it with women?"
"All I really need to know about life I learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer," I said. "Looking at linoleum makes teenaged boys want to have sex."
"Maybe they had better linoleum than we do."
Anyway, with the mood killed, I took my car and left. God help Clemmons if he got really angry tomorrow. A frustrated Veronica is a cranky Veronica.
Mom was exactly the same. Exactly the same.
Damn Jake Kane and Damn Clarence Weidman and damn those assholes at the Sage Brush cantina who kept giving booze to a woman who was clearly drinking herself to death.
Damn all of them.
Dad came in a few minutes later and kissed her hello. Then we both started to tell her how our weeks had gone so far. This was the routine. We sat, we talked, we stared sadly, we left.
That was not the beginning of despair I felt. It wasn't.
I was ready to tear the head off the next person who pissed me off.
X X X X X
Fortunately for his head, Vice Principal Clemmons was not that person. All he did the next morning was politely request me to stop writing about the bomb threats -- apparently he was still trying to be nice to me after the crap I'd gone through in the last week. He didn't even ask me who my source was.
I must be like Meg and not use these powers for evil.
It's going to be mighty tempting, though.
After an English class highlighted by a new student named Ben making disturbing comments about death and Norris Clayton laughing along, I headed out for lunch, gulped down my food and went out to the parking lot, where Logan was waiting in his X-Terra.
I still didn't quite have enough guts to try an overtly sexual act in the Neptune High parking lot – nothing would kill the mood faster than having Weevil notice and make some smartass comment, Clemmons suspending us for PDS, or (even worse) Madison peering in or maybe taking pictures.
Of course, Meg still had that topless shot of Madison so there was a serious case of M.A.D there. But you get the point.
Anyway, by the time we were done and headed back to class I was no longer in imminent danger of murdering anyone.
Logan – who had gotten crushed at GTA San Andreas -- still wanted to find something to beat Mac at. This was becoming an obsession with him.
"Pong?" I said as we walked.
"Funny, Machiavelli," Logan said.
"52-pickup?"
"Knock it off."
"Rock, paper, scissors?"
"You're lucky I love you."
On the way home that day, talk turned to the subject of Logan's favorite sister.
"I assume she hasn't been dumb enough to push her idea of Lynn acting in that script any further," I said.
"Trina? She may be monomaniacal but she's not dumb enough to want to end the gravy train. Dad left Trina a little bit of cash and knowing my darling sister she's already burned through it. She wants to live a Paris Hilton lifestyle on a Camelot Motel budget. She has to stay on mother's good side." He smirked. "She even tried to make Trina be nice to me but I told her not to bother. I may not care overmuch for Trina but if she wasn't allowed to vent at someone she'd explode."
"You do love her a little, don't you?"
"We are as far apart as two children of the same father could possibly be," he said. "I don't like Trina at all. But she's family." Which was all the explanation necessary. Trina was in that class of people that Logan would kill to protect. Even if Trina wouldn't necessarily understand or appreciate it.
That night, there was some daddy-daughter time watching an old movie called Storm Warning. Some drama starring Doris Day and, of all people, Ronald Reagan. Not my type of movie -- I'm one with the people who say that Ronald Reagan was every bit as good a politician as he was an actor -- but Dad seemed to enjoy it, and I enjoyed spending time with him.
My computer wouldn't stop the next morning, so when I ran across Mac in the middle of a discussion in some foreign tongue – well, that's what it sounded like – with Pete Kamiski, I asked her to take a look at it.
"Sure, Veronica," she said. "Um – but I'm going to need to take it with me, okay?"
"No problem. I trust you implicitly."
She looked at me and rubbed her hands gleefully. "My evil plan is working." Then she took my computer and left. Pete stopped me before I could take off and mentioned that he'd seen Norris and Ben throwing exploding tennis balls at stray cats.
Okay. This plus plus bomb threats has just put this investigation on a whole new level of frightening.
I ran into Wallace near his locker. "You know," he said a little quietly, "I'm getting a little worried about my mom."
"Worried like 'she keeps forgetting the milk' worried or worried like it's something worse?"
"Nothing melodramatic," he said. "She was going off on men last night for near as I could tell no reason at all."
"Hmmm. Has she been seeing anyone recently?"
"She hasn't seen anyone serious since my Dad died."
I shrugged. "Well, maybe she was trying to get something started with someone and it didn't work out or the guy called things off for some reason."
"But why would that get her this upset?"
"Maybe it was starting to get serious. I don't know. Psychoanalysis? Not my strong suit. If you want me to investigate –"
"No!" Wallace said in a hurry. "Far as I'm concerned my Mom's a nun and I'd like to keep it that way."
I saw Ben and Norris talking nearby. Looking at Wallace, I said, "And now to return our relationship to its normal ebb and flow . . ."
Wallace turned around, saw the two, and said, "You want me to get their files, don't you?" I smiled a bit sheepishly. "You're so predictable."
"I'll have to work on that."
"Clemmons made Norris turn his shirt inside out." When I asked why, he said it was because Norris' shirt read, "Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out."
Killemall, hmmm? Sounds like the kind of coincidence that isn't. When I checked out the website, the level of frightening ratcheted up from yellow to orange.
Wallace spent lunch sitting with the jocks, but I got to eat with Meg, Duncan, and Logan. I described the story of an entertainment lawyer who'd completely disappeared and then went in to how he did it.
"Wow," Duncan said when I was done. "I'll have to keep that in mind if we ever need to disappear."
"Can you think of any reason you'd need to disappear?" Logan asked.
Meg shrugged. "No. But it's always good to have options."
As we broke apart, I tried to talk to Ben and Norris – didn't get much of anywhere – and got Norris' file from Wallace, but Ben apparently didn't have one.
As school ended, I heard Ben and Norris having an argument about guns, then ran to follow Ben as he left the school.
Ben was living at the Camelot (odd for a high school student) and I saw him buying more fertilizer than you'd need for the entire state of Kansas.
Level of frightening, now red.
I took pictures until my phone rang.
"Hey," the voice on the other end said. "It's Meg."