Brody, Saturday, 9:16 AM

I had breakfast with Sophie today. Usually I'd sit with Marlon and them, but Big Tommy and Trey told me he'd had detention with Louis late into the night and they were sleeping in. Thank God it wasn't a school night at least. Last time, Louis fell asleep standing up during practice and one of the younger kids, I think his name was Emilio, smacked him in the face with a baseball. Then Marlon beat him up and got in trouble again.

Little did I know it was more than plain old detention. At breakfast, Sophie immediately started talking about 'what was going to happen to Louis and Marlon'. It turned out I was out of the loop. According to the other kids, they had done something so bad that detention was no longer an option. Some kids, according to Sophie, said Ericson was going to whip them in front of the entire school.

I'm sure it was just a rumor. No way even Ericson would stoop that low. And besides, they already did detention.

"But what if that's an excuse?" Sophie said. "What if it happened already, and that's why they're not here?"

Sophie was the tinfoil hat type, and normally that was funny, but I didn't much like whatever she was getting at here.

We talked about our classes for a while before another girl joined us. Violet. As far as I know, she got to the school in the middle of summer, which is weird because most kids waited until fall. Anyone who's got anywhere else to be usually didn't want to spend it at Ericson's. She was short, basically skin covering a skeleton, with pale, stringy blond hair and a bad slouch. I had never spoken more than a few words to her, but that was because she was the kind of person who faced the world with a wall. And it's hard to talk to someone through a wall. Seemed like she only took it down for Sophie, which was fine, but I still found it uncomfortable to be around. So, I quickly finished my food and said goodbye.

Just outside the cafeteria, Mitch and Simeon were defacing the wall with the pocket knives they definitely shouldn't be carrying, and Jasper was keeping watch for teachers. He waved at me as I walked past. He was actually really nice the few times I talked to him. Makes you wonder how he ended up friends with the other two. Although maybe it was the other way around, and only someone like Jasper could become their friend.

From there I just wandered around the school. The sun was out and the sky was blue enough, but today wasn't the sort of day that made the world 'pop'. It probably had to do with the rain yesterday, which always brushed over nature's beauty with its gloominess, even after it was gone. I soon made it to the main courtyard. Some of the little kids were sitting at the picnic tables drawing pictures with crayons. Their teacher Ms. Kruger, who deceivingly looked like a sweet old grandma, was minding them from a distance. I was about to slink back into the shadows and out of sight, but old age or no, Kruger was as sharp as a tack, and she called me over to help with the kids before I could make it into the dorms. The little ones lit up like bulbs when they saw me and that was that—I was staying here whether I wanted to or not.

They were real sweet, the kids, but it was Kruger that made being here unbearable. I guessed she liked me—it was hard to tell for sure—and that meant she took me as a 'sympathetic ear' to complain about all my classmates to. How she pitied Justin's parents because he was too slow to be anything but a burden, how Roderick was definitely sneaking weed in from Freshwater, and how Sophie liking jeans over skirts meant she was going to grow up to be a 'bulldyke'. I looked nervously at the shorts I was wearing when she said this and wondered what she might have said to Therissa about me.

She finally let me go at noon, and I said goodbye to the kids and ducked into the dorms. Most of everyone had cleared out to hang around the playgrounds and the gym, so the halls were silent. I stopped to appreciate it. Unexpected silence is one of the three great wonders of Ericson's Boarding School, the other two being the baseball team and Mr. Baker's uncanny ability to hone in on kids sneaking around the school after curfew—at least according to Louis.

I turned the corner to the boy's side of the dorm. In the distance, the silence was punctured by meaty blows and grunts of… pain? My steps slowed. As I moved down the corridor they grew louder, and I could hear spoken words to match.

"Fucking fatso-"

"Teach you to talk back to us-"

My nostrils flared, and I burst past the corner and barked, "hey!"

There were two boys kicking at another kid on the floor. They whipped around and froze. At first they looked afraid, but it must be because they thought I was a teacher or something, because their stares turned to glares real quick.

The first boy stepped forward. He had a crooked nose that poisoned the rest of his face. "What are you, a hall monitor? Keep walking."

"Leave him alone."

"Or what?" Said the other. He looked older, with longish arms and legs. I recognized him as the one who threw the baseball at Louis—Emilio.

"Or else you'll regret it."

"Better be prepared to back that up."

I tensed, to show them I wasn't going to back down.

The first boy snorted. "It's easy for you to pretend to be brave 'cause all the teachers would be on us if we touched a girl." He got into my face and gave me a close enough view of his nose to realize the bend in the bridge was too severe to be natural. "But just so you know, if there weren't any teachers to save your ass, I'd show you a thing or two about regret, floozy ." He shoved me.

I shoved him back.

He staggered, growled, but ended up walking past me. With Emilio on his heels and both of them pinning me with glares, they disappeared around the corner.

"Honestly," I said with a sigh and bent down to the boy on the floor. Short kid, with some fat on his bones and a whole head of bunched-up brown curls. He sat himself up against the wall and groaned.

"I'm fine," he said in a hurry, as if it was the answer to a question he knew was coming. And, okay, maybe it was, but did he have to be so snappy about it? Not looking for praise or anything like that, but it was still kind of annoying.

He stumbled to his feet, holding his side, and started to walk off. I wasn't about to let him get away though. "What's your name?" I said.

"Omar." He spoke barely above a whisper.

"Well, Omar, the infirmary is that-away. I'm sure Ms. Martin isn't too busy-"

"I said I'm fine."

I held up my hands to show surrender. "Just in case you wanted an ice pack or something."

He grunted and shuffled onward. I dug my hands in my pockets. He was moving real slow so it wasn't like I had to make an effort to keep up.

"Ms. Martin would ask too many questions," Omar said. My eyes popped at this, but I didn't say anything in case that scared him back into silence.

His eyes flicked over to me fast as lightning before he continued. "And it's not anything to freak out about anyway. They don't bother me."

"Do they… come at you often?" I asked.

His mouth folded. "Anyone in our grade they don't like."

"Outside it too, I think. The tall one hit my friend with a ball once."

"Jarrod probably told him to do it. He's the one with the broken nose."

"Hmm," I said and thought back to him.

Omar stopped and pressed his hand to the wall for support. His breathing was coming out strained. A bolt of alarm struck me, but I tried to strangle it. I had come so far in connecting with him, and I had a feeling once I lost my progress I would never get it back.

"He's not that bad. Mostly he does annoying stuff, like playing bad pranks on me and stealing my things."

"He steals your things?"

"Sometimes."

I folded my arms. "Someone oughta really teach him a lesson."

Omar grunted and looked away.

"...I've got it."

"You've got it?" he said.

"We should steal them back. He probably keeps them in his dorm, right? So we'll just sneak in there."

"That-" he cut off and stared at his shoes. "Won't the teachers catch us? I mean, you're a girl. You're not supposed to be in the boys' dorm."

"But I've been here anyway. Lots of times. As long as Baker's not on patrol—and he never is during the day—it'll be easy as pie."

Omar's face seemed to wrinkle, fighting itself. Then with a wobble and a shake, it settled. "Okay."

"Attaboy," I shoved him playfully. He gasped and I winced. "Sorry. Forgot you were hurt."

We cut up the stairs and to the second floor. "See?" I said when we walked into the empty hallway. "I come in here all the time. They don't care as long as it's not night."

"Let's just hurry."

"Fine. Which one's Jarrod's room?"

We moved deeper and deeper into the boy's dorm until we found it. All the rooms in the dorms were the same: four bunk beds, a desk above a window, and a closet that was nowhere near big enough. Kids would add things to make theirs stand out. I liked Sophie's room the best; it was covered all over in her paintings, like she was wallpapering over the boring white-and-wood. This room's walls were bare, but the lower bunks were stripped of their bedding and loaded with books and clothes.

"It's only the two of them in here," Omar said. "The other kids who were supposed to be with them moved to other rooms."

"Can't imagine why," I said.

Omar walked closer to one bunk that had its backboards lined with pillows and stood on his tippy toes. He exclaimed and picked something off it—a large rectangular book inside of a torn plastic sleeve. He quickly thumbed through the pages, then let out an exhale of pure relief.

I craned my head over his shoulder to see. It was a cookbook.

"Is that it?"

He pressed it to his chest. "That's all I care about."

"But he has some of your other stuff, right? Let's get that too."

"No! If he sees too much stuff is gone, he'll know we did something."

"That's good. That way he knows not to mess with you anymore."

His chin dug into the top of the book. "That's not how that works."

I sighed. "Listen, Omar, you can't just let him walk all over you."

I don't know what I said but the look on his face turned from uncertain to angry really fast. "I'm not doing that. I don't care what he does! He doesn't bother me!"

Whoa, where'd all this fire come from? But it vanished just as quickly as it came and he sank onto one of the bottom bunks, and now the air was full of melancholy.

Omar stuck a hand under his leg and pulled something out from under him. It was a gray stegosaurus. He took it in both hands and stared gloomily at it.

"I haven't seen this since I first got here."

I cleared away the junk next to him and sat down to listen.

"His name's Stego. We used to go on adventures exploring the school together."

"That sounds like a lot of fun," I said. "But then Jarrod took it, right?"

"Yeah. Going away from my parents was really hard. But Stego made it less scary."

Omar turned Stego around in his hands, looking at every part of it like he was saying goodbye.

My shoulders sagged. "Alright, then. Let's get out of here."

He stood up and stared at the rest of the junk on the bed and Stego in his hand. I waited for him to toss the dinosaur back.

But he crammed it into his pocket.

He seemed to realize what he was doing and paused, looking at the dino bulging in his pocket.

I watched him, and added, "it's yours, isn't it?"

His shoulders loosened. He glanced at the heap of stuff on the beds.

"So's all that."

"Yeah," he said.

There was a note in his voice, a small one. But however small it was, I knew I could reach it.

"Take them," I said.

There was a while, and then his fist balled, and finally, he started grabbing stuff.

We rifled through the bottom bunks for Omar's things and shoved as many as we could into our pockets, and then our arms. When we were finally ready to go, we were moving slower, but the hall was still empty so everything was fine. That is, until we heard sets of footsteps and a deep voice echoing through the corridor, and we were still a ways from the stairwell. Panicking, we dove into the closest room. That turned out to be a mistake. I don't know who this room belonged to, but seemed like what they decided to add to their room to make it stand out was a layer of BO so thick you could taste it.

Clamping a hand on my nose, I crept to the door and cracked it just a bit open to see who was coming. Now that I was calm, I could hear that one set of footsteps were heavy, with strong commanding soles. Probably a teacher. The other could hardly be called a gait it was so irregular.

Then, words. "You're fucking it up, Bo. You've only been here for a week, and you're fucking it up."

They passed the room. The teacher wore a dress shirt with a beer belly bulging out the front. That plus the voice made me think I was looking at Mr. Graham. He was dragging someone, another new kid, forward by the collar. The new kid scratched at his forearms and Graham let go with a growl, then seized him again and shook him. "Little bastard. See how much fight you've got in you once you spend the rest of the day in the Quiet Room." They turned the corner.

"Yeesh," I said.

"What was that?"

"Graham's taking one of the new kids to the Quiet Room."

"Oh." He didn't ask any questions, we all knew what the Quiet Room was, but I could tell from the way his face looked he didn't know what it meant. I didn't either, not really. Just some stuff I had heard from Marlon, who'd had more than his share of visits. Didn't like to talk about it often though. Most of the school only knew about what happened there (or what they thought happened there) through other people. The Quiet Room wasn't for the regular kind of troublesome; it was for kids who were violent.

I opened the door once more and waited for more footsteps, then Omar and me booked it. We were winded when we got back to the staircase landing.

"Okay," I said, then bent over trying to catch my runaway breath.

"I can't believe it," Omar said, just as winded, "we actually did it." This time his voice was just the right volume for me to hear how it actually sounded—mellow, stirred nice and smooth into a Southern drawl.

"Didn't I tell you?" I said.

He beamed. But then there was a door slam back in the hall, then footsteps. My heart near jumped out of my throat, but when the door to the stairwell opened it turned out to be-

"Louis," I said, and that on its own was too much for my lungs.

"Hey, Brody" —he glanced curiously at Omar— "and friend. Why're you guys breathing like Coach made you run the school grounds?"

"Long story," I said.

"Sounds like a wild one. I'm afraid I'll have to ask about it later."

He walked past us and started down the stairs. "Wait, where are you going?" I gasped.

"To the infirmary!" He called back.

Louis, Saturday, 1:33 PM

After we had had a much needed nap and then made an oath to quit our troublemaking ways so we'd never have to do free maintenance for Ericson again (who would've thunk it, the best way to discipline a kid was hard labor), I told Marlon all about the trucker. He hadn't been as impressed because apparently, his uncle was a trucker. I told him to stop flaunting his privilege in my face. I mean, I didn't even know what my uncles did, just that it involved a lot of paperwork and therefore wasn't worth knowing any more about.

As I was coming down the hall, I noticed the window had its curtains drawn. That was weird. Ms. Martin never drew the curtains. There was also this girl sitting in one of the chairs that lined the infirmary's halls and when I came close enough to recognize her bunned-up almost-orange hair, I'll admit I freaked a little. That was Ruby, and she doesn't like me. Among my peers I'm something of a controversial figure—no idea why—so I briefly considered turning back. But it was too late; she saw me.

I grimaced inwardly. "Hey, Ruby!"

She squinted at me. "...Hey." It was always hard to tell if she was mad at you with how her jowls were flushed red. Everything about her was red, all the time. So much for the whole 'red means stop, green means go' system.

"So," I said. "You're going to see Ms. Martin too."

"Yes?"

"That's cool."

She raised an eyebrow. "Did you do something?"

I got asked that a lot. Not just by people who didn't like me—Brody was a big fan of it too. Sometimes it feels like people see me as some kind of ticking time bomb. Which doesn't make sense; Marlon's the one with anger issues.

"No, I don't work in broad daylight." I looked at the closed infirmary door. "So why don't you just go in?"

Ruby's expression changed into something dare I say human. "I don't know. I knocked and she told me to stay put. And the curtains are closed for some reason."

"Have you tried knocking again?"

"You really think that'll work?"

"Can't hurt to try." I rapped my knuckles against the wood.

Ruby scoffed. "She obviously wants it closed for a reason. Why would she-"

The door opened, but it wasn't who we were expecting. Standing in the doorway in that pompous way of his was our headmaster, Ericson.

"Children," he said. He always spoke slowly, sounding out every syllable. "Is there something you wanted from here?"

Ruby shot up from her seat. "I was just coming to help Ms. Martin. I always do on Saturdays."

Somewhere behind Ericson came Ms. Martin's voice. "It's true."

He straightened his tie. "Well, I suppose we wouldn't want anything to get in the way of routine. What about you, son?"

"Same here," I said frantically. "Though not always on Saturdays. I was here just yesterday though, right Ms. Martin?"

His eyes, which were usually so small and shrewd, widened a little. Just a little. Most people probably wouldn't have noticed. But when you're me, and you've sat in front of the man's desk countless times on some charge, looking into those eyes for a shred of mercy and finding no room for it there? Trust me, you notice.

"You were here yesterday."

I figured he meant it as a question so I answered, "yeah." Maybe I shouldn't have.

Heels clacked against the floor and Ms. Martin's head peaked over Ericson's shoulder. "Is it alright if you kids skip today? I'm a little-"

"Of course not," Ericson said. "You can help out your nurse today, as you always do." He stared meaningfully at Ms. Martin like he was psychically communicating with, or more accurately, commanding her, then stepped aside and went back the way I came.

Ms Martin's chest swelled with a sigh. "I suppose that's that. Come in, then."

She turned from the door and we followed. "Don't sit on this bed," she said, pointing to the one the trucker had been in.

Wait, the trucker. I scanned the rest of the infirmary. On the other side of the room one of the curtains was pulled all the way around a bed. It was a pillar of green next to the others.

The door to the office swung open and Coach stepped out. He glanced at us and flinched, which was both insanely weird and oddly satisfying.

"The hell are you two doing here?"

Ms. Martin answered. "According to his words, 'we wouldn't want anything to get in the way of routine'."

"You're kidding me," he hissed.

"So," I propped myself onto a hospital bed, next to the one Ruby was sitting on, "where did that trucker guy go? Did he leave already?"

Ms. Martin and Coach shared a look. It carried an extra meaning, like the one Ericson gave earlier, but there was a difference. It seemed more equal, like there was more of a connection. Now that was weird. I'm not an idiot; I know teachers talk with each other and eat lunch together and are maybe even friends (that last one I sorely doubted though), but these two were the last people you'd expect to want anything to do with each other.

"No," Ms. Martin said once they had finally broken eye contact, "no, he hasn't left."

I glanced at the green curtain around the bed.

"Why don't you go get some water from the cafeteria? Bottles of it, in fact, as much as you can. Ruby can help you. Don't be long, and don't get distracted by anyone."

Pushing myself off the bed, I nodded and headed out. Ruby closed the door shut behind me.

"So who's this trucker?" She said almost as soon as we left.

I finished explaining most of what happened yesterday as we got to the cafeteria. The place was buzzing with talking and yelling and a few high-flying balls of paper napkins. As the lunch lady piled bottles into our arms, Marlon waved me over from across the room, but I pretended not to see him. We quickly went back to the infirmary.

Graham was in there now on the bed beside the green curtain, arms folded and tapping at his bicep. I said hello, and he nodded distractedly.

We set the bottles on the bed next to him. "Okay," Ms. Martin said, "Darryl, this is where we'll need you."

Mr. Graham looked up. "Finally? Well, let's hurry this up then."

He got on one side of the curtain, Coach on the other. Ms. Martin took a water bottle, unscrewed it, then for some reason, hid it behind her back.

Coach drew back the green curtain.

The trucker lay with his back on a propped up pillow. His chest was rising and falling and rising and falling. Through half-opened eyes he looked at Coach, then at Ms. Martin, then at me.

Not knowing what else to do, I waved hello. But he had already moved onto looking at Graham. It was like he didn't really see me.

"How are you?" Ms. Martin said. She was approaching him glacially slow.

His mouth fell open and a croaking sound trailed out. His lips were slick, and the skin around his mouth was crusted with dried spit. She pressed forward anyways.

Coach looked at Graham and jerked his head towards the man. Then he placed a careful hand on the man's shoulder and said to Graham, who was doing the same, "slowly now."

The trucker groaned and shifted in his bed. Now that his mouth was open, his breathing came out in rasps.

Ms Martin was right beside him now. She slowly pulled the water bottle from behind her back. Coach's arms tensed through his shirt. The water bottle inched towards the man's face.

At some point how close the water bottle was getting became too close, and it was like someone flicked a switch.

The trucker lurched and Coach clamped down on his left arm. Graham had not been prepared though so the right one got free and batted away the bottle, splashing water onto Ms. Martin. That arm started pushing and scratching at Coach who yelled "Graham" through gritted teeth.

Ruby and I shot up. "S-should we-"

Ms. Martin held out an arm. "Stay back!"

Graham had gotten the man's arm now, but he was thrashing and roaring and screaming and the mattress springs under him screeched and I stood there paralyzed.

Coach threw his weight onto the man's arm and seized his head, one hand pushing his forehead into the pillow, the other forcing his jaw open. "Do it now, do it now!" Ms. Martin dashed forward and with trembling fingers turned the water bottle into his mouth.

He gagged, writhing, and water spilled but Coach forced his jaw shut and Ms. Martin held his nose. There were a few seconds of his wordless struggling, then Coach and Ms. Martin drew back. Seeing this, Graham got back too.

The man rolled onto his side and retched, scratching at his throat.

"Is he-" Coach looked at Ms. Martin, and she shook her head.

"He should be fine, relatively speaking." Her head sagged, arms on her hips.

"What the hell was any of that?" Graham said. "Who even is this guy?"

"We don't know anything." Ms. Martin said. "Whatever he had didn't seem that serious yesterday, but he's only gotten worse. I don't understand it."

"How can you not understand it? You went to school for this!"

Coach shot him a deadly glare.

"It's not like anything I've studied. My first instinct is to say it's rabies, but he only got bit yesterday. Rabies usually has an incubation period of at least a month."

I went to take a closer look at the trucker. His eyes were screwed shut as he twitched in the bed. There were long purple bruises where his fingers had clawed his throat. His breathing was still rough, hitching in stops and starts and sometimes a moan or a cry. He looked like he was asleep and having a nightmare.

"There's a cure, right?" I said suddenly.

"Yeah," said Ruby, "I've read about rabies. Didn't they make a vaccine for it?"

Ms. Martin looked sad. "Vaccines only prevent diseases, honey. They don't cure them. Besides…" Her mouth tightened, then she shook her head. "Nevermind." She crushed the water bottle and went to throw it away.

"Does Ericson know?" Graham asked.

Coach nodded. "He's going to be pissed off that you know too, but that's just the way things are."

"Is that-" his eyes darted to us kids still standing wide-eyed in front of the beds. "Is he really concerned about his image now of all times? What if the man's contagious?"

"We've taken all the precautions we can given the circumstances," Ms. Martin said. "The headmaster is concerned about causing unnecessary panic, so it's best to deal with this quietly. Besides, it seems to be transmitted by bite, which isn't especially contagious."

Graham still looked unconvinced, but instead of pushing back he just shook his head and sat back down. Ms. Martin ducked into her office, and the rest of us settled down too. No one talked, and for a long time there was nothing but the drone of fluorescent lights to keep our thoughts company.