The Throne Page 8

  “Tell me something about my mom,” said Meredith. “What did she do as a kid for fun? What was her favorite candy?”

  “Caramels,” Aunt Sancy said without hesitation. “She liked the usual things—skipping and hopscotch, and, later on, video games. She was in gymnastics and aerobics. A cheerleader. You know all that, Meredith.”

  “Tell me something new,” pestered Meredith. “So I have something more to remember her by.”

  “New,” mused her aunt. “Let’s see. She hated Where Is Waldo? puzzles. Her favorite breakfast cereal was Cream of Wheat.”

  “Yuck!” cringed Meredith.

  “You aren’t much like her,” smiled her aunt.

  Meredith hesitated. Asking Aunt Sancy questions about Ally Polk was easy, but James was a real tightrope act—a careful balance between questing for information and forestalling another rant about the evil Polks. So she took a cautious breath, then asked, “Am I much like him?”

  “No,” her aunt said shortly.

  “Well ...” Meredith paused, then gave up on her quest for more info on her father. “Am I like you? What were you like as a kid?”

  “Me?” said her aunt, surprised. “Kind of scrappy, I guess. I picked a lot of fights in elementary school. And every candy was my favorite kind. I used to pull gum off the street and chew it.”

  “Yu – uck!” gagged Meredith, now cringing in earnest.

  “Black Cat was the best,” her aunt said with satisfaction, ignoring Meredith’s reaction. “I don’t know if they make it anymore. It had a licorice flavor. Ten people could chew the same wad in a row, and it’d taste just as good. Had to watch out for small stones in those street wads, though.”

  Meredith gaped at her aunt in unmitigated horror. Aunt Sancy chuckled.

  “I survived just fine, Meredith,” she said. “Didn’t pick up any rare diseases or grow an extra head. When you think about it, it’s not much different than picking your nose and eating it.”

  “Picking someone else’s nose and eating it!” Meredith corrected her.

  Aunt Sancy laughed outright. “Granted,” she conceded.

  “God!” Meredith said pensively. “I hope I never sit on a Black Cat wad. That’s all I need.” She had told her aunt about the math class and hallway wads, but nothing further. One peep about her suspicions regarding Seymour, and Meredith knew she would be spending the next hour listening to another tirade concerning Polkton’s scallywag crowd—the Polks, the Boggs, and the degenerate genes they had no doubt passed on to their current progeny ... present company excepted, of course.

  Aunt Sancy’s eyebrows rose. “There haven’t been any more, have there?” she demanded.

  “No, no,” Meredith assured her, and her aunt’s relieved gaze refocused on her handiwork. “Tell me,” she asked, scowling down at it. “D’you think this muffler looks right?”

  “If I’m honest, will you give me this week’s allowance?” hedged Meredith.

  Mock fury crossed Aunt Sancy’s face and she glared at her niece.

  “It ... looks wonderful!” cried Meredith, raising both hands protectively. “Really—I’d know it was a muffler for sure ... maybe ... if you told me first.”

  Grabbing a throw cushion, Aunt Sancy bopped her niece several times on the head. “Go do your homework!” she ordered.

  Meredith went.

  The locker room was cacophonous, girls coming and going from the showers, locker doors slamming. Standing at her locker, Meredith was halfway through changing, keeping pace with Dean, who had snagged the locker to her left. At the locker to her right, Reb was just getting started, having stayed behind the rest of the class to help the gym teacher put away field hockey equipment.

  “Hey!” said Reb, opening her locker. “What classes d’you guys get next? Mine’s a stinker. I’ve got Geo—”

  A clamor of voices interrupted her. Turning to see what was going on, Meredith caught sight of several classmates playfully shoving each other as they came down the aisle. Not knowing them well, she turned again to her locker and reached for her rain hat, intending to tie it on over her butt. But as she did, Reb cried out sharply; a second later, something ... or someone ... fell hard against Meredith’s back.

  Pressed into her open locker, she struggled to regain her footing. Her head throbbed where she had bumped it, and one arm felt scraped. Abruptly, behind her Reb shouted, “Oh no, you don’t!” and Meredith twisted around to find one of the girls from the carousing group sprawled against her, while Reb grabbed determinedly at the girl’s right hand.

  “She’s got some chewed-up gum!” cried Reb, as the girl pulled free and ran down the aisle after her friends. “Penny Gugomos—she was reaching for you, and there was gum in her hand.”

  “The bitch!” Dean said indignantly. “She must’ve been trying to stick it on your bum! Come on, let’s go get it.”

  “Get what?” asked Meredith, gingerly touching the sore spot on her head.

  “The gum!” said Dean. “It’s in Penny’s hand, right, Reb? It’ll be proof.”

  “Not anymore,” said Reb. “She’ll have ditched it by now.”

  “We’ll get her anyway!” insisted Dean. “Confront her—make her admit it!”

  Without waiting for a response, she started off down the aisle. Heart in mouth, Meredith hesitated, then followed, a dubious Reb at her heels. The fleeing girls had turned right at the end of the aisle but weren’t difficult to find, clustered as they were around an open locker two aisles over. Storming toward them, Mount Matsumoto clamped a hand onto Penny’s shoulder and pulled her around.

  “You’re the one who did it!” she declared to the astonished girl. “Come on, hand it over!”

  “Lay off!” exclaimed one of the other girls, stepping forward and shoving Dean so she stumbled backward. “Keep your fucking hands to yourself!”

  Instinctively, Meredith and Reb stepped forward, buttressing Dean to either side. “Same to you!” Dean shot back, regaining her balance. “And your gum wads! You keep them off my friend’s bum!”

  “I’m not interested in your friend’s bum!” yelped Penny. “You can have it, if that’s what turns you on!”

  In spite of herself, Meredith stiffened, and she heard Reb hiss angrily. A titter ran through some of the watching girls, but others looked uneasy. “Hey, cool it!” someone called. “Or we’ll get Ms. Vickery.”

  “I’m cool!” Dean snapped back. “It’s these girls who are the problem, not us.”

  “Oh, yeah?” demanded Penny. “We were just standing around talking. You’re the one who came busting in here and grabbed me.”

  Dean’s face jutted forward. “Because you were trying to stick gum on Meredith’s bum,” she insisted. “Admit it. Reb saw you.”

  “What gum?” demanded Penny. “I fell against Meredith when Rebecca pushed me. I don’t have any gum.”

  Again Meredith heard Reb hiss, but before either of them could respond, another of Penny’s friends stepped forward. “I have gum,” she interrupted loudly. “Is this the wad you’re looking for?” Opening her mouth, she stuck out her tongue and waggled it. On the tip sat a wad of purple-colored gum.

  “Me, too,” chimed in another girl, blowing a pink bubble. “D’you want my gum, Dean?”

  “Hey, what about this?” asked the last of the group, reaching into her locker and pulling out a package of Chiclets. “Want some of this gum for your bum, Meredith?”

  Chiclets package outstretched, she observed Meredith, the taunt dancing in her gaze. She knows, thought Meredith, staring back at her. Maybe Penny was the only one who had tried to pull off the actual stick-it job, but all the girls in this group of friends knew; every one of them had been in on the intended prank. The smirks on their faces were a dead giveaway.

  “Come on,” she said, touching Dean’s arm. “Let’s go.” Up and down the aisle, watching girls began to relax and turn back to their lockers, relieved the episode was over. But the current of anger pulsing through Dean was still strong and,
for a long tense moment, she resisted, her body hunched forward, her eyes intent.

  “We know!” she said heatedly, her words carrying clearly along the aisle. “It’s Seymour Molyneux, isn’t it? He put you up to this.”

  The surprise that blew across the group’s faces was obvious. Eyebrows lifted and each girl looked down or away; suddenly, they had nothing to say. Bingo! thought Meredith, studying them, and then, Shit! Because the first thing this group of friends was going to do when it got out of the change room was, of course, track down Seymour and tell him what had happened. That could only escalate matters, and the last thing she needed was an escalation of gum wads.

  “Come on, Dean!” she said urgently, pulling on her friend’s arm, and this time Dean relented; turning, she scuffed along beside Meredith, with Reb bringing up the rear.

  It was as they reached the end of the aisle, about to turn left, that the comment reached them. Spoken behind their backs, its source was anonymous—could have been anyone’s voice, everyone’s. “Nice rain hat, Meredith,” it said coolly. Then, softly, it singsonged, “Daffydildos.”

  Instantly Dean stiffened, and Meredith grabbed one of her arms, Reb the other. “Just keep walking,” Reb hissed and they turned left, leaving the silent aisle behind.

  Ninety minutes later, they were under the willow tree and staring up into its gently wafting branches, trying to make sense of what had happened. In spite of the time that had elapsed since the change room confrontation, Meredith still felt bruised by the event, and not just on her sore head. Generally, she didn’t spend much time contemplating her soul, but now she thought she could feel it—a confused, quivery presence inside her body that felt as if it had been shaken, rattled, and rolled.

  “It happened so fast,” she said wonderingly. “One second Reb was talking about Geography, and the next ... Well, those girls aren’t wallflowers. For a bit there, I thought someone was about to get decked.”

  “I know,” agreed Reb, quiet shock also lingering in her voice. “If it had gone on much longer, I would’ve fetched Ms. Vickery myself.”

  A passing breeze rippled the willow’s green and gold canopy, and instinctively Meredith found herself breathing in its rich, warm scent. “I doubt anything violent would’ve happened,” she said, running the scene through her mind again. “Not with half the class watching. Most of them know about my rain hat and why I’m wearing it, so they probably figured out pretty quick what was going on. Two of them talked to me about it in my next class. What I don’t get about the whole thing is—why Penny Gugomos? She’s not really popular—just average, like us. How would she know Seymour?”

  “She doesn’t,” said Reb. “At least, I don’t think she does. But Sandra Clulee’s older brother hangs around with him.”

  “She was the one with the Chiclets,” said Dean, speaking for the first time.

  “Okay,” Meredith said slowly, studying the intricate sway of leaves above her. “So Seymour talks to Sandra, Sandra talks to a group of her friends, and Penny gets pressured into doing the actual bum-gumming while the rest distract whoever’s around. But why would Penny agree to do it? She doesn’t have anything against me. None of those girls do. They hardly even know me.”

  “Because they don’t know you, Mere,” Reb said matter-of-factly. “One wad of gum is no big deal to them. They don’t know how many times it’s been done to you already, how your clothes get ruined, or what it’s doing to you—always having to watch out for it happening again.”

  “Maybe,” hedged Meredith. “You’re making it sound ... I dunno, normal—like sticking gum on someone else’s bum is the kind of favor any friend would ask. But would you stick gum onto someone’s butt because a friend asked you to? Someone you hardly knew, who had never done anything to you?”

  “No!” Dean spat out immediately.

  “No,” Reb echoed after a thinking pause. “No, I wouldn’t. And y’know what else is weird? We were the ones in the right, obviously. But when I go back over the whole thing in my head—to be honest, we looked stupid.”

  “I’ll say stupid,” muttered Dean.

  “The ones who were in the wrong looked cool,” continued Reb, ignoring her. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. When you’re right, there should be some kind of ... I dunno ... a divine light that drops down onto you and proves you’re telling the truth. Instead, those girls looked ice-queen cool and we just looked dumb.”

  “Dumber than dumb,” mumbled Dean. “Daffydildos-dumb.”

  “Hey—did you notice?” asked Meredith, her heart quickening. “I mean how it was said?” Excitedly, she singsonged the word for them. “Da-ffy-dil-dos—that’s exactly the way Neil Sabom said it to me in the hall. D’you think he was in on what happened today?”

  Silence followed as Dean and Reb pondered her question, and then Reb said, “Nah. He’s probably been telling his joke a lot, and it’s getting around, and that’s why kids are saying it the same way. Mind you,” she added hastily, with a sideways glance at Meredith, “I don’t think it’s getting around that much. I haven’t heard it yet, anyway.”

  “Wait a few days,” sighed Meredith. “If only that was my biggest problem. What’m I supposed to do now Seymour knows that I know he’s behind all the bum-gumming? What’s he going to do next?’

  “Oh, Mere!” burst out Dean. “I am such a moron. I thought if they knew you weren’t alone, and you had friends who’d for sure back you, they’d lay off.”

  For a moment, all three blinked rapidly, swallowing hard, hard again. “Maybe they will,” Meredith said hoarsely. “Because like you said, now they know for sure I’m not alone.”

  “No, you’re not!” Dean said stoutly.

  “We’re with you all the way, Mere,” added Reb.

  “Thanks,” said Meredith. “Now, if I only knew where this daffydildo stupidity was headed next.”

  chapter 9

  Approaching home form the next morning, Meredith’s footsteps slowed. Ahead loomed the open doorway, a stream of students pouring continually past. As she came abreast, laughter erupted through it—laughter let loose by three guys, caught up in yet another amiable debate concerning the merits of Mr. Big, the supernatural, or the CFL versus the NFL. Hit by a surge of anxiety, Meredith came to a halt outside the open door. Seymour knows, she thought, flustered. He knows that I know it’s him. So what’s the best thing to do—act as if I know he knows? Or as if nothing happened yesterday in the change room; I haven’t got a clue.

  At that moment, she felt her rain hat twitch, and whirled around to see a senior male student grinning down at her. Eyebrows raised, he quipped, “Nice cheeks,” then continued along the hall, warbling, “We all live in a yellow daffodil, yellow daffodil, yellow daffodil.”

  A grin cut across Meredith’s face, dissolving her uncertainty. Okay, Mr. Mol, she thought as the revamped Beatles chorus receded down the hall. You haven’t won them all yet. Not by a long shot.

  Determinedly, she barged through the open doorway and fixed on him—Seymour Molyneux, Lord of the Underworld, leaning back in his chair and apparently pondering a point Morey was making. But only apparently, Meredith quickly realized, because the second she entered the room, Seymour’s gaze homed in on her as if he had been awaiting ... no, anticipating ... the moment she would enter the room. Dark, direct, and speculative, there was surprise in that stare. As Meredith started toward him, it was obvious from Seymour’s expression that he had not only heard about yesterday’s change room confrontation, but something about what he had heard was piquing his interest—or rather, something about her, Meredith Polk, a Grade 10 nondescript whom he thought he could doom to an entire year of Stupid Council lunch hour boredom simply by putting up his hand and casually dropping her name.

  For the second time that morning, Meredith came to a halt. Then, turning, she walked over to Mr. Woolger’s desk. “Sir?” she said hesitantly.

  Brow furrowed, Mr. Woolger was absent-mindedly conducting as he studied a musical score lyin
g on his desk. “Eh?” he grunted, looking up. “Yes, Meredith. What is it?”

  “Well, sir,” faltered Meredith. “Um ... I’d like to resign as class rep. For Student Council, I mean.”

  For a moment, her comment didn’t seem to register, and Mr. Woolger continued to observe her blankly. “Resign!” he finally exclaimed. “But you just accepted the nomination.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t,” said Meredith. In spite of herself, her voice wobbled but she forged onward. “I mean, I couldn’t have accepted it, not really. It happened too quick. Y’see—Seymour volunteered me without asking me first, and then someone seconded it. No one asked what I wanted, and I don’t want to.”

  Narrow-eyed, Mr. Woolger’s gaze shot toward Seymour, then dropped to his desk. “Uh-huh,” he grunted knowingly. “Still hunting the worm. Well, fine, Meredith. Your resignation has been duly noted. The class will just have to elect another rep.”

  “Thanks,” breathed Meredith, relief coursing through her. Without glancing at Seymour, she crossed to the back of the room, stepped up onto the third riser, and sat down behind the drums. Seconds later, the final bell went, its strident tone blaring through halls and classrooms; in its wake came the first weary notes of the national anthem. Settling back into her seat, Meredith let herself relax into the ponderous flow of notes. A tiny smile crept across her mouth, and for the first time since she had claimed the drum-set throne, she felt as if it was hers, as if she actually belonged there.

  My butt belongs to me, she thought. I put it where I want it. And I don’t want it sitting on Stupid Council. So there, Mr. Mol.

  The anthem was followed by several announcements, and then, before the class could begin chattering, Mr. Woolger rose to his feet. “I have just been informed,” he said briskly, rapping his baton, “that our Student Council rep is resigning from her position. This means this class will have to elect a new rep. As you know, Friday is a Career Development day, which means no school. So I’ll give you the weekend to think over whom you’d like as your next class rep, and we’ll hold the nominations on Monday morning.”