Big Mouth (29 page)

That realization gave me a rush of pride—a small rush, but it was enough. I held my head up higher. When the going got tough, Thuff Enuff could handle it.

“Stay right there,” I commanded, struggling to make my voice steady and strong like Captain Quixote’s. But Shane and his Finns kept marching. “I said
stop.
”

Jeez, I sounded more like a mouse than the captain of the finest space vessel of all time. I wouldn’t have stopped, either, if I were them.

Right, left, right, left.

“The man said stop.” The voice came from a table in the pea-greener section. A kid in a black shirt stood up at one of the tables.

Gardo! At a pea-greener table?

Gardo headed directly toward the Finns and Shane, throwing down his backpack like a knight tossing the gauntlet. The Finns’ eyes opened in surprise, then narrowed in hate. Shane started pulling at their arms and telling them to stay focused, but it was useless. Their focus had shifted completely to Gardo. One of their own was challenging them, and in the wrong color shirt, no less. No one liked a traitor.

Watching the three eighth-grade wrestlers staring each other down, I realized that Gardo might be a foot shorter, but his back was just as straight and sure as theirs. Even bigger than the height difference though, was the attitude difference: The Finns were scowling, Gardo was smiling.

“Get out of here, Esperaldo,” Shane warned. “You’re out of uniform. There are penalties for disrespecting your captain and teammates.”

“Yeah,” sneered Wayne. Or was it Blayne? “Maybe you need another bleacher tour. What do you think, Shane, twenty laps, or thirty?”

“Oh, give it a rest, Blayne,” Gardo said with disgust. He looked up at the sun trying to peek through the clouds and breathed in deeply. “Shane’s not captain anymore. It’s time to pick a new leader.” Grabbing his backpack, he walked over to our table and casually tossed the bag on top then added himself to my Roshon-Thuff-Tater wall. “I’m with Thuff Enuff.”

My knees wobbled as Shane sized us up again, now four against three.

Suddenly Kenny leaped up and locked elbows with Roshon. “I’m with Thuff Enuff, too.”

Kenny!
My knees stopped wobbling.
Five
against three.

Next to Kenny, Runji stood up and locked on. “
I’m
Thuff Enuff.”

Six!

“
I’m
Thuff Enuff!” another Plum shouted. Then another shout. And another. All around me, Plums were popping up and locking arms.

Shane’s body couldn’t keep up with his head as he swiveled to see all around him. It was amazing—in seconds, half of the Plums in the cafeteria were standing up to Shane.

Slowly, like a rumbling storm, a low chant started.
“Thuff, Thuff, Thuff, Thuff…”

The Finns had been surveying the room, too. They looked at each other for a moment.

“Thuff, Thuff, Thuff, Thuff…”

Then the left Finn nodded as the other turned and patted their former captain on the shoulder. “Okay. We’re done.”

“What?”

“We’re done. It’s been real.”

“You’re
done
?” Shane looked puzzled for a second, then the light bulb must’ve gone on. “You too? I can’t believe this. What’s with all the scrubs around here? When did you people forget your place? I outrank you. You’re all in serious violation.”

“I’ll tell you who’s in serious violation, Mr. Hunt!” Principal Culwicki’s bellow echoed off the walls as he marched into the cafeteria waving a bent locker door like a sword on a battlefield. All three slimy Olive Shirts were with him. “Cuff him.”

“What?” Shane backpedaled in our direction as the Olive Shirts rushed forward and grabbed him, cuffing his hands behind his back. “What’s going on? Stop! I haven’t done anything.”

“You
wish
you hadn’t done anything.” Our principal threw the bent door onto the ground. “Defacing school property is a criminal offense.”

“But I didn’t deface any—”

“Stop. Enough lies. The entire team heard you threaten your father and this school. You finally got sloppy, Mustard Man.”

“Mustard Man?”

“Don’t bother denying it. I’ve got all the proof I need right here, mister. One of your own
honorable
classmates realized it was time to put a stop to your shenanigans.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it in Shane’s face, just a few feet from me.

I thought I’d fall over. A Plum had finked. On Shane…Shane, the
Mustard Tagger.
Holy cow.

Culwicki continued waving the paper. It had a bunch of photos printed on one side, and when he finally stopped flapping it around, I saw that the other side was a mess of curlicue scribbling.

“Green marker,” I whispered in amazement. Gardo and I whipped our heads toward Tater. He unhooked his arms from ours and looked up at the sunroof, whistling.

“Your days as a mustard-loving
artiste
are over,” Culwicki declared. “No more tagging for you.”

“I’m not a Mustard Tagger!” Now that the paper wasn’t thrashing, Shane was getting a good look at the pictures. “There! Look. That’s not me. I don’t have red hair. That’s someone else ripping the door off the locker.”

Culwicki paused and pulled the paper closer to his squinting eyes. “That’s not red hair….”

“It is, too. I’m being set up, can’t you see that? That’s my captain sweatshirt, I admit that, but that’s not me wearing it. Are you blind? Look!”

“Hold your tongue, boy! I know red when I see it, and that hair was not red.” He shoved the paper into Shane’s face again. “And your face is crystal clear in
that
one. That is clearly you throwing your wheelchair in the gym.”

“Well, yeah, but I—”

“Aha! A confession!”

“No! It’s not a confession. I’m not confessing to anything. I don’t have anything to confess to.” Shane turned on his Finns. “You two. You set me up, didn’t you?”

“Who, us?” they asked in unison.

Culwicki seemed to notice the Finns for the first time. He gestured their way. “Take them, too.”

“What? No, wait….” The Finns looked like they wanted to bolt as the Olive Shirts pounced on them.

Culwicki held the tipster’s note in front of their noses now. “And who’s that squirting mustard on our poor janitors? Huh? Huh?” They didn’t answer. “That’s what I thought. How dare you revolt in
my
school? What are you, a bunch of Big Burpees? This is unacceptable. My office. Now. Let’s go.”

Without further word, Culwicki spun and marched back through the hallway he’d entered, with the Olive Shirts poking and prodding their prisoners behind him with brooms.

The cafeteria they left behind was quiet enough to hear a French fry drop. No one had their arms linked anymore, but still we stood there, watching the empty doorway.

“Dang,” Roshon said quietly. “It was Shane. I can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I,” Gardo said with far less awe. He turned and eyed Tater, who was already sitting at the table slathering his hamburger with mustard. “Tater…”

“Yes?” My bald lab partner looked up and batted his eyes innocently.

“What did you do?”

“What did I do? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Gardo kept eyeing him. Slowly, a smile crept across Tater’s face. Reaching under the table, he picked up his backpack, stuck his hand in, and pulled out a book.
Introductory Forgery: How to Write Like Anyone But Yourself…And Not Get Caught.
Looking right at us, he dropped the book into the trash can next to him. Then he took his green marker out of his back pocket and tossed that in, too.

He lowered his backpack to the ground, then dusted off his hands.

“Oh, fellas,” he sang out. “I hate to trouble you, but has anyone seen my lucky pen? I think someone stole it.” Tsktsking, he picked up his hamburger and licked a drip of mustard. “People are so dishonest around here. It’s a crying shame.” He chomped into the burger, then smiled as he chewed. Mustard oozed down his chin like vampire blood.

Wow.
Tater did it—he vented the volcano. No more Plum pressure cooker. Culwicki would be off our backs now, and the Olive Shirts would have to go back to using their brooms on dirt. I had a new hero.

Gardo sat down and gave my hero a napkin. He tapped his chin, then pointed to Tater’s. “You know what, Tater? I’m starting to think you’re not as dumb as you look.”

“Why, thank you, Gardo.” He gently dabbed the corners of his mouth, missing the chin mess completely. “How kind of you to notice.”

I joined them on the bench as the other Plums sat down, too. The place was still eerily quiet. It was almost as if they expected Culwicki to come stamping back in.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t get something. What happens when the Mustard Taggers strike again? Culwicki will know he’s got the wrong guy.”

“Who says he’s got the wrong guy?” Gardo said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a plastic container.

“What do you mean? Of course he’s got the wrong guy.”

“How do you know? Maybe Shane is the Mustard Tagger. We don’t know that he’s
not.
” He looked at me long and hard. “Do we?”

Tater stopped chewing and waited for my response.

I considered Gardo’s point. Everyone knew that Shane had ordered the mustard-filled Super Soaker attack, and everyone knew he’d ordered my dunking and Jasper’s dunking and all the other cafeteria terrorizations. So even if the big jerk hadn’t
committed
the Mustard Strikes, he could’ve ordered them. We had no way of knowing.

So Gardo was right. We didn’t know that Shane
wasn’t
the Mustard Tagger. “No, I guess we don’t.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Tater started chewing again.

The drone of low voices was kicking back in. Around the room, yellow hats were disappearing, and jackets and sweatshirts were pulled on over yellow shirts. It was like city lights going out at night, one by one.

Boy, was I glad I never went yellow.

Roshon and his cousin didn’t have sweatshirts, so they were sitting shirtless.

The sound of squeaky wheels reached my ears. Max’s cart rolled up, the big crate on top blocking my view of the person pushing it. It stopped next to me, and Lucy stepped around it. Her eyebrows arched when she saw Runji and Roshon.

“Nice farmer tans,” she said. “When did Del Heiny approve stripping as an extracurricular activity?”

Roshon slouched and crossed his arms over his pale chest.

Runji wasn’t fazed. “No more yellow. Didn’t you see? Shane is the Mustard Tagger. And Thuff Enuff showed him who’s boss.”

“I saw,” she replied, looking my way. “You unleash a Leo, you better be ready for anything. They rarely do what you expect. People should remember that.”

My face got hot. Was she talking about me and Shane…or me and her?

She turned to the crate and lifted off the top. “Looks like my timing is good. Me and Max just made these. I thought I’d have to do some convincing to get people to ditch their yellow.” She pulled out some Max RE
D shirts and handed them to Runji and Roshon. “Here. Unless you’re planning to stick with the naked mouse look.”

After they pulled on their RE
Ds, she made them hand out shirts to other Plums, too. Former Yellows started crowding around the crate.

Tater scowled when Lucy handed him a RE
D. “I hate blending with the walls.”