Ms. Bixby's Last Day (6 page)

“We should probably get off this street,” I say. “Someone could ID us.” Someone on the PTA, for example, one of a dozen meetings my mother manages to flit to.

“What? You mean your black-and-green camouflage isn't helping you to blend in?” Brand asks as we cut across a parking lot between two redbrick apartment complexes. I give him a dirty look, taking little satisfaction in the fact that if we were in the jungles of Cambodia, he'd be toast in his little tiger T-shirt. I unfold the map to make sure we are still headed toward the bus stop. We learned map reading this year in Ms. Bixby's class.
Legends and keys and Never-Eat-Spoiled-Watermelons and all that stuff. We had to, she said, because it would be on the test. The big, ugly, standardized, pass-this-or-you-will-be-sentenced-to-death-while-your-teachers-are-flayed-alive test. Ms. Bixby hated that test, so we hated it, but we took it anyway. Sometimes you have to suck it up and get it done.

“If we just make a right up here, then another left at State Street, we will be at—”

I'm suddenly cut off. Not just cut off; I'm actually thrown against the side of the apartment building beside us. Brand has one hand in my chest and another dragging Steve backward against the wall.

“I think we've been spotted,” he whispers. It sounds exactly like something I would say.

“What?”

“Our cover has been blown,” he repeats. He indicates that there's someone around the corner. Someone we know. I quickly steal a glance, swallow hard, then pull back.

“Oh, gefragt. Big Mack attack.” I press back against the wall. Brand nods gravely.

“What? Mr. Mackelroy?” Steve squeaks. Mr. Mackelroy. The other sixth-grade teacher. The master Dungeon Master if ever there was one. Dressed in his tweed jacket and carrying his briefcase—the only teacher at Fox Ridge who bothers to carry a
briefcase, like it's still the twentieth century—cigarette dangling from the corner of his frown. Thankfully he was on the phone and distracted, or he probably would have seen me sneaking a look. “Shouldn't he be at school already?” Steve whispers.

“He might say the same thing about us,” I point out. I wonder what Mr. Mack is doing walking to school, but then I remember hearing that some of the teachers who work at Fox Ridge live in the nearby apartments. Mr. Mackelroy—divorced and with no kids save for the students he's constantly torturing—is probably one of them. I look down at my camo. I don't have any pants the color of red bricks.

“What do we do?” Steve asks. “We can't let him see us. He will report us to the front office. They will call our parents.” Steve's face is puffing up like a blowfish, his eyes bugging out of his head. The whole mission is in danger and we've just gotten started. We are about to tunk big time. It's suddenly clear what must be done.

“We have to silence him,” I say.

“Huh?” Brand says.

I glance around, scanning the ground, struggling to come up with something, thinking out loud. “You know. Take him out. Eliminate the threat. We can use a shoelace to strangle him. Or a belt.” I can hear Mr. Mack's voice now, still on his phone, getting closer. “Or, here.” I bend down and pick up a chunk
of brick that has broken free from the wall, pushing it toward Brand. “Just smash him over the head with this. Then, while he's unconscious, we can drag him behind those Dumpsters over there.”

“Or,”
Brand suggests, lowering my brick-holding hand calmly and pointing to the parking lot we just walked across, “we could just go hide behind a car.”

I look at the brick. Then at the cars. “Right,” I say, and set the brick down as the three of us sneak behind the gray Toyota parked closest to us. We huddle just below the window as Mr. Mack emerges from behind the apartment building, walking quickly, talking loud enough for us to hear. His voice is raspy. Cold morning air and way too much smoking.

“I will, all right? Listen. I'm running late yet again, and if I'm not in that room by the time the second bell rings, Principal McNasty is going to have my butt in a sling. Yeah. I swear that witch has it out for me. I don't know. Maybe she was dropped on her head as a child. Right. Call me next week.”

I peer over the door through the car windows, taking in briefcase, coat, and grimace. Mr. Mack clicks off his phone and takes one last long drag of his cigarette before smashing it under his loafer. He looks like a gangster, or at least a gangster's weaselly accountant. He pockets his phone and heads toward the parking lot, making straight for the Ridge.

Just keep walking. Don't look this way.

He's passing right by us. Completely oblivious. We are in stealth mode. Under the radar. No problem at all.

Beside me Steve sneezes, and Mr. Mack turns. I duck down as fast as I can, leaving my heart in my throat. It isn't fast enough.

“Christopher, is that you?”

“Stay down!” Steve hisses.

“Don't sneeze!” I snap back.

“Christopher Renn?” I can hear Mr. Mackelroy's voice growing even louder. Closer. Can hear his footsteps slapping the asphalt.

Ten feet.

Eight feet.

I look down at my shoes. There's no way I could unlace them in time. Steve is clawing frantically at my shirt, as if that's going to help.

Six feet.

Five.

We are so totally gefragt.

Then everything gets quiet. Quiet and still. I'm afraid to breathe. I'm afraid not to. I can't hear a thing. Beside me Steve is huddled into a ball. Brand is crouched, bouncing on his heels, ready to spring, ready to bolt. He's faster than Steve and me. He says it's because he walks almost everywhere he goes.

“Boo!”

All three of us jump. My backpack scrapes along the car, and Steve actually slams his head against the driver's-side mirror and yelps like a kicked puppy. We fumble and spin and press together, merging like conjoined triplets as Mr. Mackelroy casts his ample shadow across us, one hand on his forehead like he's just developed a headache, the other pointing his phone at us like a pistol. He hasn't shaved in days. We all three stand, backs pressed up against the car now.

“What are you boys doing here? Why aren't you in class? It's almost eight o'clock.”

Mr. Mackelroy's eyes are bloodshot. The corner of his mouth twitches. We need an excuse and we need one fast. I fumble for something, maybe a lie about carpooling, and my mother's van running out of gas, and us having to walk the rest of the way. Trouble with that is that Mr. Mack would insist on walking to school with us. Then I would still have to knock him unconscious with something before we got there. On my left, Steve is muttering under his breath. A prayer, probably. Mr. Mackelroy looks like he's trying to develop laser vision so that he can just incinerate us with his eyes, he's staring so hard. Thinking that there is no other recourse, I'm about to just make a run for it when Brand steps forward.

“Why aren't
you
in class?” he says. I turn and stare at him.
I've never heard him talk back to a teacher like that before. Other kids, yes, but not Brand. He barely talks when you call on him.

“
Excuse
me?” Mr. Mackelroy growls.

Steve groans. That's it. It's over. Mr. Mack will drag us back to school by our earlobes. We will be marked as tardy. Worse still, we will have to call our parents and explain that we were caught trying to skip school. Likely there will be detention. Two hours in the brig. No snacks. No phones. No drawing. Just torturous silence and evil teacher eyes burrowing into you.

“What did you just say to me?” Mr. Mack points at Brand with one finger. He has yellow fingernails. Pretty gross.

“It's okay. I get it,” Brand continues. “It must be hard to go work for Principal McNasty every day.”

Mr. Mack's face blooms bright red; his jaw drops like a drawbridge with a busted hinge.

“That witch really has it out for you, huh?” Brand presses.

“What?”

“Can't blame her with all that childhood brain trauma. I didn't know she was dropped on her head as a baby. Or were you just making that part up?”

“I never said—” Mr. Mack stumbles.

“No, it's all right. I understand,” Brand continues. “She's your boss. You're allowed to say terrible things about her behind her back. But if she really has it out for you, you probably shouldn't
be late again either. What will this be, the fourth time? The fifth? And it's already what time again?”

Brand points to Mr. Mack's watch—he actually still wears a watch. Nobody wears watches anymore. Mr. Mackelroy glances at it.

“Oh crap,” he mutters, glances at it again, just to be sure, then turns and starts running in the direction of the school, briefcase flapping at his side, looking like a bird with one wing broken. He slows once, looking back at us as if trying to figure out what to do, how best to punish us. Then he gives up and keeps running, across the street, past the baseball diamond, toward the school parking lot.

I can't help it. I have to laugh. Part relief, part amazement, part just watching Mr. Mack trying to run. You can almost hear the echo of his wheezing in the breeze. I give Brand a high five. “Did you see the look on his face?”

He's smiling smugly. Steve looks less enthused. His whole body is shaking. “We are going to pay for that later,” he says.

“Yeah. Well. Lucky for us, Mr. Mack isn't our teacher,” I say.

Our teacher's sitting in a hospital bed, probably reading twenty-plus construction-paper cards from her students, completely unaware of what three of them are up to.

“And Big Mack's probably opened his big mouth wide enough for one day,” Brand adds. He grabs his pack and heads
off in the direction of the bus stop again. “Aren't you guys coming?” he asks.

He takes the lead, but it's all right. He earned it.

“Now what?” Steve asks, still watching Mr. Mack in the distance, waddling across the empty bus lanes toward school.

“We stick to the plan,” I say.

“Yeah, but—”

“But what? Today isn't about Mr. Mack. What we're doing is more important. Plus now at least we have a new name for Principal McNair.”

I smile at him and he returns my smile at half strength. He's not convinced, but I know he's not going to back out now, not to go on his own. I turn and follow Brand, and after three seconds Steve jogs to catch up. “Still wasn't smart,” he huffs from behind.

Yeah, but don't you ever get tired of being smart all the time?
I want to ask him, but I don't, because I know the answer. I've known Steve for longer than I haven't, and unlike Brand, almost nothing he does surprises me.

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT.

I came in to find that written on Ms. Bixby's board one day. It was said by a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus over 2,500 years ago. I know. I looked it up. Of course, Heraclitus was a recluse who rubbed himself with cow manure before he died because he thought it would cure his swelling, so his wisdom is questionable. Still, I've found the quote to be frustratingly true. Just when you think you've got something pinned down, it shifts on you.

Take Pluto. I was devastated when I found out Pluto wasn't a planet anymore, and all because it's not gravitationally dominant in its own orbit, which is suddenly what's important. Not that I think Pluto should be a planet. I just think people should be
consistent in how they define things. You can't suddenly stop being a planet because a bunch of scientists say so.

The diorama on my headboard has nine planets. Astronomically inaccurate, I realize, but it gives me comfort seeing little Pluto sticking out on the end. Topher says I worry about this kind of stuff too much. He once said to me, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I told him that may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

The problem is that you get used to things being the way they are, and then you wake up one day to find that they've rearranged the aisles at the grocery store so that you can no longer find the individually packaged applesauce cups, which have moved from the canned fruit to next to the crackers. Or your sister, who used to let you sleep in her bed with her when you were little and your parents were arguing, suddenly starts whispering to boys on the phone and screams at you to get out of her room when you are just stopping by to see if she wants to play Scrabble. Or your teacher disappears with only a month left in the school year, leaving you with a sub who doesn't even know the capital of Syria and doesn't call on you because she's afraid you'll politely point out when she's wrong.

Or the empty chair at the lunch table you've been sitting at for years is suddenly not empty anymore. And instead of the two of you, like usual, there are three of you. And even though you
know that nothing has changed, not really, that your best friend is still your best friend, you still feel uneasy, because it
could
all change, your whole relationship. Because, as the saying really goes, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”

That's actually what Heraclitus said, 2,500 years ago—the exact quote—probably just before he covered himself in cow poop. I'm sure his fellow Greeks wished
he'd
stepped in a river once or twice.

One thing I am certain of: Bus 142 smells like a wet dog.

The bus picks us up at State Street and then heads east, stopping seventeen more places before it hits Woodfield Shopping Center. It has two sets of doors, one at the front and one in the middle. It holds approximately forty-eight people. Forty-nine if you count the very large woman driving it. She stares out the front window as we drop our coins into her box. I actually drop mine in one by one because I like the sound they make; it reminds me of wind chimes.

We head to the back, and I'm a little surprised when Brand and Topher take a seat together. Not that they aren't allowed to, exactly, it's just that typically Topher and I sit together. We take the same bus to school, Bus 17, and every day he saves me a seat. He saves me a seat toward the back, and then he copies off of my math homework while I eat some of the prepackaged
cookies his mother gives him for lunch. My parents don't pack me sweets. They don't want me to be one of those fat American kids the TV is always complaining about. Unlike my Tupperwares full of fresh fruits and vegetables, everything in Topher's lunch box comes in its own foil wrapper, which is a very tidy if environmentally unsound way of doing things. The cookies usually come four to a pack, which makes two for each of us, though Topher usually lets me have three.

Today, though, on this strange, new bus that smells awful, Brand and Topher sit together, and I stand in the aisle for a moment, uncertain. Then the bus lurches forward and I spin on my heels, toppling into the seat in front of them, my backpack containing my portable speakers slamming against the side. The speakers are for the music—a mix that I put together especially for Ms. Bixby. The plan called exclusively for Beethoven, but I added a few extra tracks, things I think she would appreciate. I listened to them all last night. She won't be able to hear them if the speakers get smashed, though.

I manage to right myself and immediately get up on my knees and turn around so I'm facing them. The vinyl covering of the seat sticks to my fingers. I try not to touch it.

“You okay?” Topher asks. I must look worried.

I nod. “According to the US Department of Transportation, bus accidents resulting in injury have gone down steadily over
the past twenty-five years. I looked it up.”

“Good to know,” Topher says, then huddles over the map with Brand, the two of them tracing our route with their fingers, even though I was the one who did all the research and marked all the points along the way, from school to the mall to downtown to the hospital to the park and back again. It's Topher's map and Brand's idea, but it's my route.

I wait a moment, then say, “It should take us twenty-three minutes to reach Woodfield Shopping Center.”

Brand turns and says something to Topher, but I can't quite hear it because of the rumble of the bus engine and the squawk of traffic right outside my window. Too much noise makes me fidgity. When I get anxious, I sometimes have a tendency to talk more.

“The first-ever school bus was invented in 1827. It was drawn by horses,” I say. Last night's research might have gone a little bit off topic. Bus schedules led to accident statistics, which led to the history of mass transit. Before I knew it, an entire hour had passed.

“That's really great,” Topher says, finally looking up at me and putting down the map. “Hey, instead of using our only working phone to memorize every page of Wikipedia, maybe you could send a text to someone in our class and see if Mrs. Brownlee has said anything about us being absent yet.”

“Or if Mr. Mack ratted us out,” Brand adds.

“I don't text anyone in our class,” I tell Topher, though he already knows this. “Except you. Until you dropped your phone in the toilet.” I don't mean it as a joke, but Brand laughs anyway. Topher gives me a dirty look.

“It was an accident,” he says.

“Yeah. Those toilets are death traps,” Brand remarks, then starts to snicker again. The bus stops rather abruptly, sending me rocking backward. Three people get on. Nobody gets off. I turn back around, my back pressed up against the sticky seat now, and look out the window. I hear Topher laughing at something Brand says behind me and tell myself it's not important. I don't need to know everything. It doesn't matter who sits where or by whom. Topher's my best friend, and nothing is ever going to change that.

We met in the first grade, Topher and I. He pointed to my Lego Star Wars lunch box and asked me if I had any of the actual Lego Star Wars sets. I told him I had four, all complete, all sitting on my dresser at home, the instructions carefully packed away in case I ever needed to rebuild them, like if an earthquake happened. He said he had a few of them, too, but they weren't put together; as soon as he built them, he tore them apart and mixed the pieces in with his other pieces. Also
he lost Lego Boba Fett's legs when his dog ate them. I told him that was the craziest thing I'd ever heard. Not the dog part, which was troubling, but the mixing pieces part, which was even more troubling. I asked the obvious question: “If you mix up all the pieces, how will you put the ship back together?”

Topher shrugged. “Guess I'll just build my own ship,” he said.

In that moment, I knew the most basic thing I needed to know about Topher Renn.

It took a few weeks of building—with his Legos, obviously, as I refused to separate mine—but after that first month of school we clicked. We spent every afternoon together, playing Pokémon and lightsaber battles and at least a dozen games that Topher invented but all involved us running around his backyard, saving the world from mummies, zombies, vampires, or giant robots. We acted out movies without cameras, mostly jumping straight to the fight scenes and skipping over the sappy parts. We would get into his parents' car and pretend it was a starship, laying on the horn until one of his parents—whichever one was at home—opened a window and yelled at us to get out. It was all Topher's idea. It was always Topher's idea. I just followed his lead.

Every day after school we would set off on one of his adventures, making couch forts or digging holes in the park to bury
our treasure in, a quarter or a packet of Smarties that we would forget to go dig back up. The best was when we pretended we were secret agents and would spy on my sister, using my iPod to record her conversations or just hiding in her closet until she heard us breathing and screamed at us to get out. I spent more time with Topher than with my own family. I'm sure they weren't thrilled with the idea, this kid with the wild, scraggly blond hair and even wilder blue eyes monopolizing my carefully allocated free time, but Topher was polite around my parents and earned “decent enough” grades, so I was allowed to keep him as a friend. Friends were important to my parents, provided I didn't have too many and they didn't interfere with the quest for accomplishment and recognition.

We managed to stay in the same class as each other every year. Topher says it's because we are a duo. Like Batman and Robin or Finn and Jake. Other students, mostly boys, would sometimes make fun of us, sing the tree song, or just give us dirty looks. I'd learn about other things they said behind our backs eventually. I know Topher did too, but he never said anything to me. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that we stuck together. And saved the world from the giant robots after school.

Topher is a constant, like pi or radical two. He was there when I had to have my appendix removed, showing up at the hospital afterward with strawberry milk shakes and comic
books. He was there when my father and mother both had to go out of town on separate business trips and I spent four agonizing days with Christina bossing me around, acting like my mother even more than usual. He was there when Tyler Fisk threatened to “beat the living snot out of me” because I snitched on him for cheating off my math test. We both ended up with bruises that day and compared them on the bus ride home. Mine was bigger by a quarter of an inch, which made Topher jealous for some reason.

Constants are called that for a reason. You can take them for granted. Like sunrises or breathing or the hissing sound a can of Coke makes when you open it. Like the quote your teacher puts on the board every morning.

Or your best friend saving your seat on the bus.

“Woodfield Mall.”

Operator 57 calls out the stop in her gruff voice, and I stand. Topher and Brand shuffle behind me as we step off into the dewy grass, which thankfully isn't quite long enough to reach the cuffs of my socks. On our side of the street is the mall, a Sears and a JCPenney tethered to each other with strings of shops that my sister, Christina, could probably describe in detail. On the other side is another row of shops, punctuated by half a dozen restaurants. One of them is a McDonald's, but we aren't ready for that
yet. We are going to the bakery three shops down, the first red circle on the map. That's where we will find the first item on our list.

This is all part of the plan. The plan that we cooked up on the playground and then had to change when we found out Ms. Bixby was going to Boston. The plan that had us meeting up outside the school and calling in sick. The plan that calls for us making our first stop here to purchase item number one and then boarding bus number 37 downtown. There we will pick up item number two, though I'm still not sure how we are supposed to pull
that
off. It's illegal, for one. And probably expensive. Topher says he has an idea, but he won't tell me what it is, which means it's an especially bad one. Item number three on the list will be obtained last, because otherwise it will get soggy, which is why we don't need the McDonald's yet. After item three, we will walk the six remaining blocks to the hospital. Just like the three kings in the Christmas carol, Topher says. We break Ms. Bixby out of the hospital, take her to the park circled on the map—the one I looked up last night along with the bus schedule—and then . . .

I'm really not sure what happens then. I just know I wasn't about to let Topher go without me.

“There's Michelle's,” Brand says, pointing. I remember what he said last Monday under the monkey bars as we penned notes
on his arm.
Michelle's is a must have; there can be no substitutes.
Topher told him he sounded like a commercial, but he was right. Ms. Bixby mentioned Michelle's by name.

“Come on.” Topher gives me a tug and we run across the street, dodging potholes and cars. Brand leads the way, me in back, as the bus rumbles off, letting off one last odiferous cloud of exhaust.

Michelle's Bakery is a medium-sized stone building with tall glass windows filled with cakes. Most of them are probably plastic—either that, or cardboard pieces pasted together with thick, crusty icing, hard as limestone. My father told me once that all vanilla ice cream in photographs is actually mashed potatoes, because mashed potatoes don't melt. One reason why the real thing is never as pretty as the picture.

The sign for Michelle's is also white with rolling green letters, all pressed close together. The blinking blue light says
Catering Available
. Another sign advertises
Open Till 8 on Weekends
. There is a poster for a missing cat named Princess Paw Paw. I'm not fond of cats. My family doesn't own any pets, which is only odd because my sister is planning to become a veterinarian. I suspect she just wants to become a doctor but doesn't want patients that can argue with her. We walk in and a bell on the door jangles.