Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher (2 page)

So, yeah. As Grams would say, I had good grounds to demand a change. Trouble is, when I got to the office, I found out from the office lady that my counselor couldn’t see me. “She’s swamped, sweetie,” Mrs. Tweeter said with a tisk. She leaned forward and whispered, “She’s new this year, so have a little patience, all right?”

“But she put me in Mr. Vince’s class!”

Her eyes did some rapid-fire blinking over the tops of
her reading glasses, and I could tell she was remembering the Sluggers’ Cup fiasco. “Oh my.”

“Exactly!”

She took a prim breath and a little step back. “Well, Mr. Vince
is
a professional, dear. And if you stay on your best behavior—”

“No! This will never work!” I looked past her to the vice principal’s office door. “Can I please see Mr. Caan? He’ll straighten this out.”

“Hmm. I
would
see about that,” she said, drawing out the words, “but Mr. Caan no longer works here.”

“He what? Wait. Why not?”

“Didn’t you read the August newsletter, dear? He’s now principal at the high school. Mr. Foxmore is our new vice principal.”

“Mr. Caan is at the
high
school?”

“That’s right, dear.” She gives me a cheery smile. “So you’ll reunite with him next year.”

“Well, what about Dr. Morlock?” I ask. “Can I see him?”

She looks at me like, You’re kidding, right? because Dr. Morlock is a totally absentee principal. I only saw him about three times last year, but one of those
was
at the Sluggers’ Cup tournament, so he knows about me and Mr. Vince.

“He’s not even here?”

“He was, dear, but he had a meeting.” She reaches to answer the ringing phone. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn to see Miss Anderson, just like everyone else. I’m sorry.”

I left there so frustrated that even the janitor noticed. “Hey, hey, hold on now, Sammy,” he said, catching up to me. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, hi, Cisco,” I said, feeling bad for blasting right by him. I mean, Cisco may be “just” a janitor, but he’s the coolest adult at school. He can talk about music or movies or sports, and he knows all the kids by name. So instead of answering “Nothing” like I would have with most other people, I said, “They put me in Vince’s class, and nobody in the office seems to get why that’s a disaster.”

“Oh boy,” he says, and I can tell that he
completely
gets it. He glances back at the office. “A lot of changes around here, man. Not all good, that’s for sure. I coulda told them what to prune and what to transplant if they’d asked me, but of course they didn’t.”

I laugh and tell him thanks, and just knowing he understands why I’m unhappy makes me feel better.

A lot better, actually.

“Don’t worry,” he says with a wink. “Things’ll work out.”

After that I just tried to tell myself that my schedule
would
get changed. Things
would
get better. After all, they couldn’t get much worse, right?

But when I walked into history third period, I found myself face to face with Heather Acosta.

“Hey, loser!” she sneered.

I stepped around her and found a seat, but wow. Talk about a rash of bad luck. I mean, anywhere near that vicious redhead is like being surrounded by poison oak. Get too close and your life will be covered in itchy, oozy
bumps. Stumble in and you might actually die. The only real solution is to avoid her, but she makes that difficult.

Very difficult.

For one thing, she’s sneaky. Some days she’s shiny and green, and people think she’s, you know, a blackberry plant or some sweet little meadow clover.

Don’t let her fool you. She’s always poison oak, and when she finally shows her true colors, you’ll just want to go drown yourself in calamine lotion.

So I steer clear.

Really, I do.

Trouble is, she likes to brush up against me.

Likes to camouflage herself in front of our teachers.

Likes to surround me and make my life as painful as she possibly can.

So after she calls, “Hey, loser!” she says, “I saw my brother hanging out with a hot girl at the high school yesterday. He is
so
over you!”

See? It’s hard to ignore her. Especially when she says things you’re secretly worried about. I mean, Casey isn’t
officially
my boyfriend, but Marissa has been saying that it was inevitable for so long that I’d started to believe it.

I
wanted
to believe it.

But he’s in high school now.

And he’s still my archenemy’s brother.

Whose dad is secretly going out with my soap-star mother.

Which makes everything … complicated.

And messy.

And not at all inevitable.

And on top of all that, I haven’t heard from him since he called me during his high school orientation, and that was over a week ago.

But anyway, as if having Heather in Mr. Vince’s class wasn’t painful enough, it turns out I also have her in science and drama.

Half of my classes!

Why not just move her in with me?

But after two weeks of trying to get my schedule changed, Miss Anderson told me that there’s nothing she can do about it. Dr. Morlock is never around, and the new vice principal refuses to see me, which makes me really mad. I thought about following him to his car after school and making him hear me out, but I don’t even know what he looks like!

Grams tried talking to him on the phone, but she couldn’t get anywhere with him, either. And when Mr. Foxmore began asking questions about why
she
was calling instead of my mother, Grams gave up. “Why didn’t I say I was Lana?” she moaned. She fluttered around the kitchen like a trapped little bird. “I’m sorry I botched that, Samantha. He made me so nervous! Maybe you can get your mother to call?”

I just rolled my eyes and snorted.

Like Lady Lana would want my sorry little scheduling problems to interfere with her soap-star life?

No, the bottom line is, I’m stuck with Mr. Vince for homeroom and history, and I’m stuck with Heather Acosta in history, science, and drama. “Oh, that’s harsh,” Cisco said when he asked me how things had turned out. “But
that’s what’s happening around here, man. People don’t
listen
.”

“It’s nice that you do,” I told him.

“Too bad that’s all I can do.” He smiled and pushed his cleaning cart along. “Except clean up your messes.”

“Hey! I throw out my own trash.”

He laughs and waves. “I know you do, Sammy.” Then over his shoulder he calls, “Believe me, I pay attention!”

Now, there
is
one good thing about my schedule, and that’s Billy Pratt. Billy is also in history, science, and drama and totally makes those classes. For one thing, he’s a good friend, but he’s also like a chimp in a cage of hyenas.

A macaw swooping through a murder of crows!

A clown fish in a school of sharks!

He’s so … Billy.

And although most teachers don’t appreciate his hyper sense of humor, I sure do. Especially after it finally kicked in again during the third week of school.

“Are we gonna reenact battles in here?” he asked Mr. Vince on Tuesday.

“No, Mr. Pratt,” Mr. Vince said with a frown.

“Are we gonna set up encampments in here?” he asked on Wednesday.

“No, Mr. Pratt. But you can set up camp in the principal’s office, if you’d like.”

“Are we gonna have guest speakers in here?” Billy asked on Thursday. “We could
really
use some guest speakers in here.”

This made Mr. Vince scratch his hip, and eye him with
a frown. “Are you implying that my class is boring, Mr. Pratt?”

Billy gave a little shrug. “I’m implying that we could
really
use some guest speakers in here.”

Mr. Vince scratches his other hip as he looks around the classroom. “How many of you think we need guest speakers?”

Billy’s hand shoots up, but everyone else just looks around at everyone else.

“Aw, come on,” Billy says to us. “Flap your chicken wings in the air already. Don’t you want to listen to some old Civil War dude? Or Rosie the Riveter? Or slaves that were hunted by hounds?”

Jake Meers’ hand inches up. “I would.”

David Olsen’s follows. “That would be cool.”

Soon almost everyone has their hand up, including me.

Well, not Heather Acosta, but that’s because she’s being her sneaky little shiny-leafed self.

Mr. Vince shakes his head and mutters, “I’m dealing with a roomful of retards.” Then his face pops full of blood as he screams, “Those people are all dead! Dead, you hear me? They’ve died! They’re DEAD!”

Billy jumps out of his seat. “We should have a séance!”

“GET OUT!” Mr. Vince yells, pointing an angry finger toward the door. “Go to the office NOW!”

So while Billy collects his stuff and trudges out the door, Sasha Stamos turns around in the seat in front of me and whispers, “I can’t believe he called us retards. Doesn’t he know that’s offensive?”

I smirk. “He
lives
to be offensive.” Then I add, “This
place takes some adjustment, huh?” ’cause Sasha was homeschooled until just this year.

“Well, my little brother’s autistic, and I shouldn’t have to
adjust
to such an ignorant teacher.” Then she gives me a we’ll-just-see-about-
this
look and turns back around in her seat.

The trip to the office doesn’t seem to dampen Billy’s spirits, though, because on Friday he comes into history wearing a hodgepodge of clothes that sort of adds up to a Civil War soldier’s uniform, including a blue hat with crossed rifles on it.

The hat comes off, though, when Billy notices a short man with soft features and receding red hair standing in a back corner of the classroom.

I catch Billy’s eye and grin like, Guest speaker? But he shakes his head and gives me a warning look that means one definite thing.

Be good.

The tardy bell rings, and Mr. Vince immediately clears his throat. “I’d like to apologize,” he says, looking down at his shoes, “for using the word
retard
yesterday. It was in poor taste, and I shouldn’t have done it.”

He glances up from his shoes and sort of vultures a look at the class.

We just stare at him, not making a peep.

“I’d like to put the incident behind us, so please accept my apology.”

We just stare at him some more.

Then suddenly he calls, “Mr. Foxmore, stay a minute, would you?”

We all whip around to see that the man with the receding red hair is in the middle of slipping out the door.

Now, through my head are flashing a million thoughts.

That’s
Mr. Foxmore? The new vice principal? The new discipline guy? The new Mr. Caan? The guy who flustered Grams and refused to see me?

It can’t be!

He seems so … soft.

And he’s
short
.

And his suit is all rumply!

I mean, if he can’t even control his suit, how’s he ever going to control eight hundred junior high kids?

But then it hits me that he just got Mr. Vince to do something that Mr. Caan—who looks and acts like a pro wrestler—had a really hard time getting him to do.

Apologize.

Sasha Stamos turns around and whispers, “My mom called the school about it yesterday!” She seems very proud and super excited, but then hesitates and adds, “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

I nod, and as Mr. Foxmore comes back inside the classroom, Mr. Vince reaches for the rope at the bottom of the projection screen, which is pulled down in front of the whiteboard. “I’d like to know,” he says, looking around the classroom, “which one of you thought you could get away with this?”

Then he yanks the rope, rolling up the screen and exposing a big, bold, red-lettered message on his whiteboard.

A message that says, DIE DUDE!

I don’t know why I thought it was funny, but I did. I mean, come on. How seriously can you take a death threat when it has the word
dude
in it?

So, yeah, I laughed. It just kind of came out. And other people laughed, too, so it wasn’t only me.

But Mr. Vince?

Oh boy.

He took it
really
seriously.

“You think this is funny?” He looked right at me. “Do you know you can get
arrested
for something like this? Do you know it’s a
felony
?”

“A felony?” I blurted. “Writing on your board is a felony?”

The rest of the class snickered, but I was already kicking myself.

When am I ever going to learn to keep my stupid mouth shut?

But off it yapped, anyway. “Hey, quit staring at me like that. I didn’t do it!”

“Yeah? Then who did?” he asked, looking around the room. “Death threats are felonies!”

Everyone sort of shrank back because he was definitely turning red around the edges. Then, over on my right, Jake Meers says, “Why do you think it was one of us? Someone could’ve put that up at break. Or earlier.”

“Yeah,” David Olsen adds. “Like, did you use the board in first or second?”

Mr. Vince just stares.

First at Jake.

Then at David.

“Perhaps you should just erase the board and get on with class,” comes a quiet voice from behind us.

Everyone turns to look at Mr. Foxmore.

His gaze is cool.

Calm.

Mr. Vince says, “But—” and in that instant Mr. Foxmore’s look sharpens, an eyebrow arches, and his head cocks slightly.

It’s a total ninja move, but just of his face.

Mr. Vince hesitates, then picks up an eraser and wipes the message away. When he turns back around, Mr. Foxmore is gone.

The vibe in the room was really weird after that. It was quiet and
seemed
calm, but the air was hot and angry. Like any second there’d be a downpour of hatred.

We were all glad to escape to fourth period, and by lunchtime the whole school knew about the message, and everyone had different theories on how it wound up there.

“You swear it wasn’t you?” Marissa whispered to Billy, who was sitting at our lunch table.

“Why does everyone ask me that?” Billy said. “I’m the poster boy for peace, love, and understanding.”