Kris didn't want to go to school, not at all, not while whoever was doing this was still doing it. But she had to. Both Mar and Charlie spent a long time talking to her that night as they decorated the tree, about how at school she was safe with so many people there, and that scaring her was what the person wanted. Kris couldn't argue. She knew they were right. But she still dreaded opening her locker.
"Tag, wait!" Joe came running up, stopped her before she touched her locker. "Let me dust for prints before you open it."
"Joe…" Kris looked around; Angie and her friends were watching and snickering. "Why? They'd be messed up anyway because we all touched it yesterday."
Joe gave her a look and pulled out a box from his backpack, opened it and got out a small jar and brush.
"Joe! I have to get my books!"
He ignored her — just as Frank reached over him and yanked the brush from his hand. "Hey!"
"Let her get her books and see if anything's there, idiot," Frank said. "Here, Tag, use this." Frank handed her a clean handkerchief.
When Frank and Joe were like this, there wasn't anything to do but go along and wait until they got whatever they were after. Heaving a sigh, Kris used the handkerchief to open her lock — a blue-foil bag tied with ribbon sat on the shelf.
"What's wrong?" Sharon said, coming up behind Kris.
"That doesn't match the others, Tag." Joe hesitated, and Kris saw him look behind her. "Yeah, it's safe. Go on, take it and get all your books for the day. We'll wipe the locker down and we'll print it after school."
"All of them?" Kris said, aghast. Granted, the bad gifts had all used the same green wrapping paper, but Joe had sounded too sure that this one was okay. "Joe, I can't haul all that around all day! And what about my coat?"
"You have to," Frank said. "We're going to trap whoever's doing this."
"We can share textbooks," Sharon offered, "if you sit next to me for Science and History. Just tell the teachers you forgot 'em."
"Leave your coat in the locker," Joe said. "I can dust for prints before we walk home."
"Dad talked to Chief Collig last night," Frank said. "They're taking it real serious, Tag. Dad's even making us buy our lunch from the cafeteria, so our stuff doesn't get drugged while it's in our locker."
Kris stared. Mar had given her lunch money, too, but hadn't said why. Even Mr. Hardy was scared, then?
"You're lucky," Sharon said. "Today's pizza. Mom made me pack mine."
Kris brightened — something else to do for her Secret Santa, then. "Um, I'll get more slices and we can share. Shimá gave me extra money for that."
"See?" Joe said to Kris, as she finished stuffing her books in the bag. "There's a bright side. Sharon…uh…we'll have to figure something else out for…uh…your Santa person. Dad doesn't want to change the locks just yet, so we can get evidence."
"I can manage," Sharon said.
Kris eyed Joe, then Sharon. Thinking about it, it was kind of odd that Joe was helping Sharon — they hadn't been friends until Kris had met Sharon at Bell Book and Candle. Maybe Sharon's Santa person was one of Joe's friends, like Tony — Joe and Tony had the same schedule, after all.
Joe and Frank started wiping her locker down, then Joe's, making sure the doors and locks were clean of prints. "There," Joe said finally. "Anything in them after this, we'll have prints on who did it."
"Um…" Kris looked around the busy hallway. Angie's group was poking each other and laughing.
"Let 'em interfere," Frank said, glaring Kris down. "If they want to get in trouble with Chief Collig, that's their problem. And you're sitting with us at lunch."
"Frank!" That meant dealing with Phil…
"No buts," Frank said. "I'll keep Phil reined in, and you sit on the other side from him."
"But what about our real Santas?" Kris said. "They'll leave their fingerprints, too."
"Well…" Joe said, looking at his brother, "they'd be innocent, any way, because they'd only leave something nice. And if they are the ones leaving the bad stuff, then they deserve to get caught."
"We told Chief Collig we were doing this," Frank said. "And he said okay. And we told Chet and Phil and everyone, so they can be on the lookout for anyone messing with our lockers."
Kris could imagine Chief Collig's face; it would've been the same face he'd worn when Frank and Joe tried to tell him about Applegate's treasure, and Mr. Mack's lab, and every other thing they'd gotten into for the past year. But she watched as Joe and Frank finished with the lockers, and Joe used the handkerchief to lock them.
Angie was smirking at them from across the hall; no matter what Frank said, there'd be a lot of cheerleader fingerprints all over the lockers by lunchtime, Kris knew it. But as Kris passed them to get to homeroom, Angie reached out to pick an imaginary something off Kris's shoulder, mimed it being a bug and dropped it to stomp it with her foot as her friends laughed.
"Little ugly dummy," Angie sneered. "Mummy's sending you on a ghost hunt to get rid of you for the weekend, huh?"
"Shut up, Angie," Joe snapped. "Sherlock Holmes believed in ghosts, too. Y'know, someone smarter than you. Not like that's hard."
Angie mouthed a long, sarcastic ooooo, and rolled her eyes.
Joe pushed Kris past them and into homeroom. "Stupid cheerleader," Joe muttered. "What's she know about it?"
"But…" Kris glanced back, then ran to catch up, "…you don't believe in ghosts, either, Joe."
"No, science just says they can't prove it. There's a difference." Then Joe broke into a grin. "Besides, me and Frank beat up Fred, and there had to be something there for us to beat up, after all."
He was using his teasing voice again. "But how'd Angie know?" Kris whispered back, but Joe only shook his head and went on to his desk.
As Miss Hawkins called attendance, Kris unwrapped the blue foil bag: Christmas chocolates, cheery printed foil showing smiling fat-cheeked Santas, snowmen, and Christmas trees. It lifted her day from miserable to happy, and she made sure to give some to Joe and Sharon when the bell rang for first period, and passed Frank a handful when she ran into him in the hall.
She managed to get into Sharon's locker to leave her own gift — a blown-glass fairy that Kris had found at Woolworth's; it looked close enough to an angel to pass with Sharon's parents — then went on to the Special Ed trailer, where she split the Christmas chocolates with Tina and left a few on Danny's wheelchair tray. Tina was chattering about a bag of chocolate "gold" coins and an odd wooden top she'd found on her homeroom desk, along with the two big candy canes that Kris had left in her locker (from Phil, which had surprised Kris when he'd asked her to give them to Tina yesterday). But Kris noticed the coins and the top had weird lettering on them — it looked like the stuff Papa had used whenever he marked their apartment doors in God's name.
"Here, K-k-kris," Tina said happily, and dumped some of the coins into Kris's hand. "Look! It's n-n-not fr-from S-santa." She pushed the gift tag towards Kris.
Hidden Hanukah Herald? Then Kris got it. Frank and Joe must've told everyone about Tina, and Phil was Jewish, after all. Maybe the guy wasn't so bad.
"Do you know what Hanukah is, Tina?" Miss Hawkins said, in her cheerful teacher-y voice, and for a bit, Special Ed Math became a lesson about the Jewish holiday before Miss Hawkins made everyone go back to working out the multiplication tables.
Well, Hanukah made more sense than Christmas and Santa Claus, definitely, not that Papa would've agreed. He would've slapped Kris to the ground for even thinking that anything Jewish was okay. Kris passed her and Joe's lockers on the way to History — they still looked normal, and again when she passed them again on her way back to the Special Ed trailer for English — then she and Sharon managed to get the desks behind Joe and Tony again in Science. Kris told Joe about the coins, and both Joe and Tony were still laughing when Mr. Mack came in.
"I'm gonna be all over Phil," Joe said, when the bell rang for lunch. "I told him he should be a Hanukah Herald and he just laughed at me."
"We'll get him to teach Tina that dreidl game," Tony said.
"So it was Phil?" Kris said. That made her feel better; even though she'd suspected Phil, a tiny part of her had worried that it'd been…someone else.
"Oh, yeah," Joe said. "He's a good guy, Tag, really. I don't get why you and him hate each other."
Kris wasn't about to go into that with Joe. It'd just make him and Frank upset. They pulled up short at the door; people were clustered in the hallway, whispering and pointing, and Joe made a frustrated noise as he shoved past a clump of seventh graders…
…and Kris stopped dead.
Both her and Joe's lockers hung open, their coats on the floor and splashed with reddish goop that stunk. Taped between their lockers was a piece of wrinkled, stained notepaper, scrawled in red:
WHORE
REVELATIONS 17:16
"Oh…no…" Joe breathed. He started forward, but Frank was there, too, and pulled his brother back.
"Joe, don't, that's all evidence."
Joe shook him off. Kris watched as Joe knelt by his coat and scattered papers, and picked something up, something that had been wrapped in glittery red wrapping paper, but was now torn open. Dirt spilled out — Joe cupped his other hand, caught it, cradled the package as he brought it back to where Frank and Kris stood.
"Christmas Rose," Joe whispered. The white star-shaped flowers lying limp in the ruins of the little pot; the cheery Merry Christmas From Your Santa gift-tag looked out of place in the wreckage.
Kris bit her lip, watching Joe struggle not to cry. Iola must have left her gift before all that happened.
But…why? It was one thing for whoever this was to call Kris bad names and leave bad stuff. It wasn't like she was worth anything any way. But why Joe? Joe hadn't done anything. He and Frank were good. They always tried to do the right thing. And the Christmas Rose — Joe had said it was his mom's favorite plant, and Kris had told Iola, and Iola had gotten it for him as a wonderful Santa gift. Whoever had done this had ruined it, out of sheer, evil mean-ness to destroy a holiday that was supposed to be about peace and love…
"Tag," Frank said quietly, "you know who Joe's Santa is, right?"
Swallowing her anger down, Kris nodded. "I'll talk to…to…them." It wouldn't be too hard; Iola couldn't have done any of this. She wouldn't, not to Joe, anyway, even if she was friends with Angie. But then something occurred to Kris. How had Iola gotten Joe's locker combination…?
Frank was scowling at the wreckage. Mr. Mack was already shooing students away, as both Principal Schafer and his secretary came running. "Revelations," Frank muttered. "That sounds familiar."
"The last book of the Bible," Sharon said, staring at the wreckage as if mesmerized.
"I know that," Frank said. "I mean the chapter sounds familiar, for some weird reason."
"It's the chapter about the Harlot of Babylon," Kris whispered. Oh, yes, she knew Revelations. Papa and Mama…the Joneses, she had to remember to call them that…continually thumped on that particular book, especially whenever they moved or fled from paying rent or creditors or any of a number of reasons that they said meant the end was near. Kris closed her eyes, trying to remember. "Where she's sitting on the beast, and the angel's telling John about the seven hills and seven kings and all that."
Now Frank was looking at her weird.
"It's a symbol for Rome." Sharon's gaze hadn't left the wreckage. "Mom says it's a metaphor for the Roman persecutions."
That hadn't been what Papa had said. Sharon's mom was probably right, but Kris didn't think whoever did this thought that way.
"Joe?" said a breathy voice. Iola stood there, holding a little clay pot. "I…um…I got it from Mr. Mack's lab. He still had all the seed stuff from last month." She looked uncomfortable as Joe scowled at her. "I saw you pick it up."
"We can take it to Shimá after school," Kris said, anger and helplessness growing in the pit of her stomach, a horrible rise of nausea. "If we get it in the new pot with warm water and let Mr. Mack keep it on his desk until we go home, it should be okay."
Joe didn't answer, not looking at them.
"How'd your Santa get your locker combination?" Frank said to him.
"I haven't told anyone, big brother," Kris said; Iola looked even more uncomfortable, shifting from foot to foot. "And I didn't put anything there for anyone, either." She took the little pot from Iola and together, Kris and Frank steered Joe into Mr. Mack's room to help Joe get the Christmas Rose transplanted. Iola, Sharon, and Tony stood by, watching.
"I know you didn't, Tag. You're smarter than that." Frank scowled towards the door. "I don't get it. That had to make a lot of noise. How come no one heard anything?"
"Kids?" Mr. Mack stuck his head in the room, saw the plant and the remains of the wrapping paper, and nodded. "Joe, put it over there in the window box. I'll keep an eye on it. Mr. Schafer's out here, and he wants to talk to you two."
"You two" had to mean her and Joe. Biting her lip again, Kris followed Joe and Frank out, trailed by the other three. Iola tugged Kris's arm, pulled her back a bit, just enough to be out of earshot of Joe and Frank.
"I didn't!" Iola whispered; she looked ready to cry. "I put it there right before Science class, and everything was alright then!"
"How'd you get his locker combination?" Kris said.
Iola looked at her feet. "Well…Sharon. Sharon had Joe's name before, but she traded it to Lisa because Lisa had me, and then Sharon traded my name to Joe and Lisa traded me Joe's. And Sharon gave me Joe's combination when he gave it her."
Joe had traded names with Sharon to get Iola? That made no sense. Kris shook her head, unsure if she'd heard it right. "But did you see anyone? Was anyone hanging around that looked weird?"
Iola shook her head.
Something really wasn't right. "I'll let Frank know," Kris said. "They're gonna dust for fingerprints to trap whoever's been doing that bad stuff."
"Oh!" Iola said, eyes wide. "Don't tell Joe. Please?"
"Kris?" Mr. Mack said.
"I won't," Kris whispered hurriedly. "But I'll have to tell Frank at least, so he knows your prints'll be there."
Iola nodded, and Kris ran to catch up to Joe and Frank. But just as she left Mr. Mack's room and pushed through the crowd of staring, whispering students — Mr. Mack standing by the ruined lockers and shooing kids away — she heard more snickers from a cluster of girls nearby, then, loud and clear, Angie.
"You guys know what 'whore' means, right? The little dummy and Joe must be up to something really bad together. Like S-E-X. They're making ugly little babies."
Some of the older boys — the ones Joe called "Neanderthals" — started laughing right along with Angie's group, nasty, mean laughter. Kris stopped.
"Ooooo, look, she's getting angry," Angie said. "She knows we're right — Joe and the ugly little dummy…"
One thing about having an adoptive mother who taught karate: Kris knew how to punch. Nothing fancy: Kris simply pivoted and drove her hand into Angie's gut in perfect ridged-hand form. Angie oof'ed and doubled over, and, still silent, Kris followed up with another punch, same target, vaguely aware of more commotion, other kids shrieking, and something clawed across her face and scored her cheek, and then —
At that point, something inside her really snapped. Screaming, Kris lunged for Angie, yelling every single thing Papa and Mama had ever called her, every bad word, every half-understood accusation, screaming it all right into Angie's face. Then adult hands grabbed her, yanked her away and held the girls apart. Kris heard Joe yelling as Mr. Mack pulled him off one of the older boys, even as the gym teacher, Mr. Kennedy, hauled her back. Still screaming, wild and not caring anymore, she twisted against the hold, biting, kicking, and fighting every step of the way until Mr. Kennedy shoved her down into a chair in the principal's office and threw a glass of water in her face.
That shut her up mid-yell, and Kris gasped, spluttered.
"You will be quiet," Mr. Schafer said. "You, too, Joe. Not one single word. You're both in deep enough trouble. We're calling your parents —"
"I'd do it again," Kris snapped, not caring it was an adult, and an adult man at that. "I'd do it again and again and again —"
"I said you will be quiet!"
Kris's words choked off. Dripping water, wiping at her face, she slumped back, arms crossed, fuming. The principal could say whatever he wanted. She wasn't sorry. She wasn't, she wasn't, she wasn't.
Joe slumped next to her, his face just as sullen and angry as she felt. His nose was bloody, his face bruised.
"We're gonna get it," Joe muttered, "and I don't care. I don't care." Suddenly he was grinning at her. "That was totally killer, Tag —"
"I won't tell you again, Mr. Hardy," Mr. Schafer said, and Joe shut up.
They were still slumped there when Mar and Joe's aunt showed up. Mar simply stopped and looked at Kris with the same calm expression she always wore, Gertrude scowled at her nephew, then the principal ushered both women into the office.
A few minutes later, Mr. Schafer opened the door. "Both of you. In."
Kris and Joe had to stand there while Mr. Schafer spoke in his principal voice about what they did and how serious it was and how responsible adults did not act that way. Kris stared at a spot on his desk, didn't look up, and didn't speak; Joe muttered "yes, sir" and "no, sir". Kris didn't care. It didn't matter what the principal said. The world didn't work that way, the bullies didn't care about 'responsible', and nothing this stupid, dumb, polyester idiot said would ever change that.
"Suspended for three days," Mr. Schafer said. "When you come back, you will both offer a written apology to the students you attacked. At that point —"
"No," Kris said.
"That's not up for debate, young lady."
Anger boiled back up. "I'm not debating, sir. I'm not apologizing to Angie. She's nothing but a bully,and me and Joe have been getting bad stuff in our lockers, and she called me a whore and said me and Joe —"
"Irregardless —" Mr. Schafer overrode her.
"— and we wiped the lockers down before all that happened out there," Joe snarled. "So there'll be fingerprints all over it, and whose ever they are, they're the ones who did all that. And if they're Angie's, I'm not apologizing, either."
"Joseph," his aunt snapped.
"Actually," Mar said calmly, "they both have a point. We've notified the police on what's been happening, and what I saw of their lockers as we came in constitutes criminal vandalism and actionable threats to both these children." Mar's gaze rested on Kris. "Granted, they should have exercised better control, but under the circumstances, the children taunting them should also be held responsible for that same lack of control. I believe I told you of Kris's background, Mr. Schafer?"
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "That has no bearing here."
"It has every bearing," Mar said, standing up. "The police have been notified?"
Mr. Schafer scowled. "There's no need to involve the police."
"No need?" Gertrude snapped. "There's every need, when those horrible people are getting into the school to hurt our children. That should've been your first response. And if you don't get on that phone and call Chief Collig right this minute, I will, and when Fenton gets home, he'll be here, demanding to know why this wasn't handled correctly from the start."
"Frank's still out there," Joe said.
"You're still in trouble, young man," Gertrude said, and Joe looked back at his feet.
"We'll abide the suspension," Mar said, not losing her calm voice. "The apology, though, is another matter. We expect you to investigate and find out exactly what went on, before you blame my daughter and Joe for reacting to verbal abuse and threats from the possible vandals. Kids…"
Kris got to her feet, and she and Joe followed Mar and Gertrude out to their lockers to get their coats; Joe went into Mr. Mack's lab to get the Christmas Rose. But there, Mar stopped. Two uniformed police officers were talking to Mr. Mack and the other teachers; Frank watched nearby, along with Phil, Tony, and Sharon.
"Okay," Mar said quietly, "we'll leave the coats. I'm guessing they're needed for evidence. I'll turn the heat up in the Jeep."
"I'll bring 'em home when they're done," Frank said, coming over. "Miss Hawkins called the cops from the teachers' lounge. They're not paying any attention to our fingerprint trap, Joe!"
"Later, dear," Mar said.
"They're not, are they?" Gertrude flared, and promptly turned on the two officers. "So my nephews go to all the trouble to prepare something for the police to catch the horrible people who are doing this to innocent children, my nephews put themselves in a considerable amount of danger to do so, and our fine Bayport police choose to ignore that evidence? Now you listen here, you miserable excuses for slop-eating pigs…"
"Frank, if you would, also get their homework from the teachers, please," Mar said, as Gertrude continued giving the hapless officers a lengthy piece of her mind. "You two, out to the car, now. I can get it warmed up while Gert is handling things here."
"Here." Frank passed Kris and Joe their book bags, then handed Kris a small wrapped package. He smiled at her expression. "Another one from your Santa, Tag. She passed it to me while you two were in the office."
She? Kris blinked at him, then glanced; Joe had already walked out of earshot. "Iola's prints'll be on Joe's locker," she whispered quickly to Frank. "She left the Rose for him. She didn't do it, big brother, she didn't!"
Frank stared at her, but then Mar had Kris by the shoulder.
"Car," Mar said firmly. "Now. Move."