The Usual Suspects Read online

  Though Twon, Rodrigo, and Pierce weren’t in their normal classes, the Special Ed room is unusually quiet. Until Nehemiah makes his entrance. He stops at the threshold and jumps to see if he can touch the upper trim. His slap echoes loudly, drawing all attention to him, so he slowly struts into the room. Mrs. Horner is on him like a hawk, waiting for him to slip up. That boy loves to clown. He meanders by the mirror, brushing the slight waves in his hair. No matter how much time he spends in front of the mirror, he somehow never catches the thin crusty film that always frames his mouth.

  A couch and television area separate the desks from the six computers that line the back wall. They face the only windows in the room. After collecting my to-do list from Mrs. Horner, I speed through the day’s math assignment. The material’s so easy it’s almost insulting, not that I’m complaining. My fingers dance along the keyboard like a spider hyped up on Mountain Dew. Through the blinds, we have a view of the parking lot and the playground. Staring out the window and slipping the computer’s headphones on, I lose myself in my thoughts. Finally I can breathe again and concentrate clearly.

  I can’t believe someone brought a gun to the park. Well, I guess I can. It’s close enough to the school that if they needed it, they only had to jog a little bit from the playground to get it. No matter where you go, there’s always someone bigger, stronger, meaner than you and they have no problem reminding you who’s the rabbit and who’s the hyena. Sometimes you just get sick of being the rabbit all the time. Some folks cope by puffing up like they’re a hyena or at least threatening enough to make the hyena move on. After all, most hyenas have water in their veins and are just looking for the easiest prey.

  Nehemiah strides toward the computer area. He slows and we clap hands, interlock our index fingers, and spin our hands to lock thumbs. We form gun barrels with our fingers, shoot them to each side and snap our fingers. That’s our special handshake. Just for us.

  “You need some lotion.” No one else dares mention it because he’s so quick to anger. Just about anything sets him off, zero to Hulk in 3.4 seconds. Everyone tiptoes around him, scared. Everyone except me.

  “Settle down, friends.” Mrs. Horner can save that “friends” nonsense. The word always sounds phony in her mouth, like she’s one of those politicians who says things that makes sense to some people but not others. But we all know what they’re really about.

  Nehemiah draws up a seat quietly next to me and flicks on the computer. Like I said, everyone has a gift. Here’s the thing about Nehemiah: he’s a wizard with a computer. The hacking of the library computers so I could play online poker? That was him. Because she doesn’t see him, I don’t think Mrs. Horner has a clue about how good he is. She’s convinced he’s cheating somehow on his assignments. Don’t get me wrong, he is, but he’s breaking the code of the education software through some back door he discovered in the program (I don’t know what he’s going on about most times with this computer code stuff). The thing is that it all sounds much harder than if he just did the math work itself, so he should probably get the A anyway.

  Nehemiah adjusts the headphones so that the ear closest to me remains uncovered. He slumps toward me and begins in a conspiratorial whisper, “Can you believe someone brought a gun around here?”

  “The only thing I can’t believe is that this is the first time it’s happened.” I focus on my screen, not betraying our conversation more than I have to. “Man, Mrs. Fitzgerald don’t play. She is straight-up gangsta.”

  “She as gangsta as My Little Pony.” No one impresses Nehemiah, not that he’d ever let on if they did. “Still, I wish we could’ve seen it.”

  “Like you’ve never seen a gun before.” I side-eye him.

  “It’s different.”

  “Because it’s at school?”

  “Yeah.”

  I suspect that conversations like this are happening all over the building at this moment. The idea of being called to the principal’s office over it still rubs me wrong. No matter what words came out of her mouth, I know what Mrs. Fitzgerald really means: the Special Ed class is on notice, and as soon as enough evidence is collected, someone, or someones, was going to be expelled and sent to Banesford.

  “Nehemiah, can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I lean forward and stare him directly in his eyes. “Was it you?”

  “How you going to ask me that, T?” Nehemiah springs up, knocking his chair over onto the carpet.

  Mrs. Horner glances up from her desk. “Is there a problem back there?”

  “No, Mrs. Horner.” My eyes beg for Nehemiah to have a seat. I can’t afford for him to pop off all “Hulk smash!” style right now. Too much is at stake.

  “Pick up the chair and finish your work,” Mrs. Horner says.

  “Come on. We got this, okay?” I whisper. “It’s all good.”

  “So why’d you come at me like that?” Nehemiah barely manages a whisper. His whole body shakes, drawing Mr. Blackmon’s attention. If he comes over with one of his hand-on-the-shoulder moves, Nehemiah would fully erupt and they’d spend the next half hour chasing him through the halls.

  “You always talking about the rough stuff your brothers get into. Almost bragging.”

  “’Cause their foolishness is funny. But I ain’t them.”

  “Look, you know what all the teachers are thinking: we all guilty. One of us. All of us.” I throw my hands up. “I don’t know, all this stuff plays in our heads after a while. . . . I had to ask.”

  With those words, my anger toward Mrs. Horner softens. But only a little. I’m more ashamed of myself. Nehemiah is like the rest of us, going through life accused all the time. This one day when she came back to the room to find her coffee cup broken, Mrs. Horner keyed in on Nehemiah. Rode him ragged. Questioned him, talked about his lack of home training, all in front of the class. Soon after, the janitor came in and apologized for knocking it over. No “I’m sorry” crossed her lips in Nehemiah’s direction, only a “you didn’t do it this time” sneer. I’m pretty sure life isn’t supposed to be lived so on the defensive. My attention bounces from him to my screen. “I take that back. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Nehemiah emphasizes.

  “I know.”

  Somewhat mollified, Nehemiah relaxes a little. “Well, for the record, your honor, I didn’t have anything to do with that gun.”

  I crack half a smile at him. “Once I thought about it, if you had brought it to the park, your crazy self would have run up and down the basketball courts, waving it around until you got tackled.”

  Maybe not waving it around. A brother’s got to be discreet. It’s all about the threat. Nehemiah straightens with sudden pride. “What’s the point of carrying it if no one knows you got it.”

  “Yeah . . .” I drift off. In the distance, sixth graders run up and down the playground basketball court, little more than blobs of color scurrying about in the throes of recess. They all look so young, but old enough to all be potential suspects. Or victims. This feels so . . . big. I don’t want to see any of them hurt. If I can help find any information to keep them safe . . .

  “Everyone come into community circle.” Mrs. Horner’s announcement interrupts my thoughts. “I have something I want to talk about.”

  She reminds me of the old-school principal before Mrs. Fitzgerald. Mrs. Horner no longer cared. Most of the time she just sits at her desk, playing on her phone. She only acts busy if Mrs. Fitzgerald comes by or if one of us misbehaves enough (or too loudly for her to concentrate on scrolling through Facebook or whatever). Even then, she’s more annoyed at having to deal with us than wanting to teach us. The computer programs give us our assignments, Mr. Blackmon manages us, leaving her like a football coach playing out the clock at the end of a game.

  Actually, school is one big game and there is an unspoken contract between teacher and student. Teachers, facilitators, and administrators have their jobs: telling us what to do. Go her
e, go there, do this, do that. No, this way. Start over and do it again. And again. And again. Now we students have our own job, too: make their jobs as hard to do as possible.

  As if the simple effort to push ourselves up from our chairs is too much for us, we start grumbling as soon as Mrs. Horner stops talking. I roll my eyes for good measure. Nehemiah slams his pencil into his desk, pretending that her request somehow interrupted the flow of the work he had no intention of doing. He laps the room, passing our “Reward Store,” which has all sorts of treats for good behavior (so, pretty much the only time he ever gets near it), stopping for a drink of water at the sink, making quite the production of his protest march before heading toward the gathering.

  Twon seems a little slow, but he has a way about him. I have a theory that people get blessed with certain traits, but there is only so much heart to go around. People can’t handle being both sweet and extra-gifted. So some folks, like me, double dipped for talents, charm, and good looks. I’m just saying. People like Twon received extra heart. It’s all about priorities of who you wanted to be. This is just a working theory.

  Rodrigo raises his index finger to ask for one minute. The second Mrs. Horner and Mr. Blackmon turn away, he flips off the rest of the class. He can’t help himself.

  “Come on, Pierce,” Twon says to the last kid remaining in his seat. “Mrs. Horner wants us all in community circle.”

  “It’s okay. Leave Pierce alone,” Mrs. Horner says. “He’s doing his work.”

  “Yeah, plus he has that creepy stare. I don’t need to deal with that before lunch,” Rodrigo whispers.

  Pierce Lyons is in sixth grade, but is so small for his size he looks like he could’ve been in third. With his blond hair trimmed down to military length, a thick cloud of freckles dots each cheek. His regular teacher even leaves him in here to eat his lunch at a desk. Like Nehemiah, he violates the school uniform policy with regularity. Unlike Nehemiah, he wears a sweater vest and necktie, which make him look like he wandered in from some upscale private academy. The colors almost match the Persons Crossing Public Academy colors, so Mrs. Horner lets it slide.

  Then again, if there’s a student Mrs. Horner tends to favor, it’s Pierce. She holds out hope for him, I guess. We aren’t dumb. We know if his skin was darker, he’d be deemed as much a lost cause as the rest of us. It’s the other reason we tune her out. There’s something to be said for self-preservation.

  The vaulted ceilings hide recessed fluorescent lights that call attention to the row of student names: Thelonius, Nehemiah, Twon, Rodrigo, Pierce, Brionna. Centered between them is a quote: “In a world where you can be anything . . . be yourself!” The carpet of the Special Ed room matches the rest of the school with its pink-against-maroon pattern woven into it. The wall with the whiteboard fixed to it is a faded red. This is the only room in the school with anything close to pink in it. Some genius convinced someone gullible along the way that the color scheme would be soothing. Burgundy cubbies hold our coats, backpacks, and lunch boxes along the wall farthest from the door. Cabinets hang over a sink on the side where the time-out closet is. Its door dangles open, like an expectant mouth eager to devour the next kid that acts out. That’s why most kids called it the “Scream Room” instead.

  “Raise your hands if you’ve come back to the class and found your stuff messed with or stolen.” Mrs. Horner starts her morning lecture she calls community circle. Community circle was supposed to be about sharing frustrations and working through our feelings. I swear teachers have nothing better to do than come up with new ways for us to think about our feelings. Feelings we got. Communicating our feelings we got. When Nehemiah takes off his shirt and screams at people, even the dullest detective in the world can pick up on his feelings. Most days Mrs. Horner simmers, just as frustrated as us, except she works through her feelings by punishing us. We just have to take it . . . while thinking about our feelings.

  Just about every hand shoots up in answer to her question. Now, my things have never been even remotely disrespected. The problem is that I don’t want to be the lone hand unraised. That would look funny. Maybe I’m too suspicious, but I wonder if part of the game Mrs. Horner plays at involves pitting one of us against the others, and letting peer pressure do its thing. My hand shoots up.

  “That’s what I thought. We go out of our way to make sure you have all the school supplies you need to do your work. These things are here for you to use, not abuse.” Mrs. Horner paces back and forth, forcing all eyes to be on her, a trick she picked up from Mrs. Fitzgerald. She talks slow and soft, forcing us to lean in to hear her. “Mr. Blackmon went out of his way, spent his own money, to get you all name tags with the multiplication tables on them.”

  I pay attention to Mr. Blackmon during Mrs. Horner’s rants. That dude is hilarious without saying a word. He sits against one of the front desks but right behind us like he was one of the boys. Half the time she treats him like that, too. A pained expression crosses his face, like he’s eaten three-day-old raw fish, whenever she talks like they’re on the same team. He sips from his water bottle.

  “In one week, twenty pencils. Gone. Twenty pens. Gone. It’d be different if you were doing enough work to use them up, but you’re obviously not.”

  Mr. Blackmon winces again. He brings the bottle to his mouth, turns it up with disappointment on his face, and lifts it closer for further inspection. It’s empty.

  “Why you always be accusing us?” Nehemiah jerks his shoulders forward out of reflex, used to brushing off any attempt to touch him.

  “’Cuz you always be doin’ stuff.” Mrs. Horner never fails to sound condescending whenever she tries to talk to us using our words.

  Mr. Blackmon pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head.

  “I’ve divided up the rest of our materials. Every supply you need is in the pencil supply box in your desks.” Mrs. Horner steps back and sweeps her arm by the reorganized supplies like she’s a game show hostess.

  “You went into our desks?” Nehemiah sucks his teeth in disgust and jumps up to check his things. “That’s some bull.”

  Mrs. Horner pauses to let Nehemiah settle down. When she realizes he’s determined not to pay any further attention, she continues a little louder to cover his muttering. “When things go missing, it ruins the fun for everyone and that’s not fair. I expect this to be a nonissue from now on. Give me two claps if you understand what I’m saying.”

  Two unenthusiastic claps, not quite in unison, follow. Of course this is what she cares about: missing supplies. Not a mention about the gun. I guess she’s like them police who solve crime by fixing broken lampposts. You go ahead and fix that broken window while I’m shot up on the corner.

  Checking the time, 10:50 a.m., I have my Humanities homework to do. With a stroll so lazy Nehemiah would have been proud of it—if he wasn’t so caught up in making sure all his things were in the mess he called a desk—I headed toward mine. Out the corner of my eye, I watch Mr. Blackmon approach. It’s like he times himself to interrupt my flow.

  “Thelonius, can I talk with you for a second?” Mr. Blackmon’s water bottle still drips from being refilled. He drags a chair from the nearest desk over to me.

  “Sure, Mr. Blackmon. What you need?” I ease back in my seat and strike my the-doctor-is-in pose.

  I have to admit, Mr. Blackmon isn’t like the other folks who pass through Special Ed. Most folks fall into one of two camps: the burnouts, like Mrs. Horner, who came in day after day to collect their checks and whatever else it was old teachers do when they lose their joy; or the do-gooders, who try a bit too hard to relate to us but are mostly in here to study us so they can “change the system.” They ask a lot of questions, write a lot of papers, and pat themselves on their backs a lot for doing . . . something. Mr. Blackmon actually seems to care, though that doesn’t make him above being messed with.

  “What do you think about what Mrs. Horner just said?” he asks.

  “I agree with Nehemiah. She�
��s always accusing us. I guess it’s going to be that kind of day.”

  “I get that. That part’s on her. What about the part that’s on you?” Mr. Blackmon cocks his head. A bit of sympathy drips from his tone, but that head angle means he wants to drill into me for a while.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t think that somewhere along the line, in your history, you may have done things that have earned you . . . a bit of a reputation?”

  Pausing for a second, I sift through my words carefully. There is a trap in his question somewhere, I am pretty sure of it. “What are you getting at?”

  “First Mrs. Fitzgerald has her talk with us. Then Mrs. Horner has her talk with us. I was just wondering how you were taking it all,” he says without accusation.

  Shifting in my seat, I turn away from him. This dude’s always trying to get in my feels. I’m no saint, but I’m no felon either. That’s the way it goes, though: they get used to blaming you for little stuff and it’s easy for them to put the heavy stuff on you, too. This here has some serious weight to it and I know I’m not the one to carry it. Whoever it is will be in a world of trouble we ain’t ready for, though. I half mutter something along those lines and stop because it felt too . . . real.

  “What was that?” Mr. Blackmon asks.

  “What I meant to say was that it don’t seem right for her to just blame us for stuff. But that’s the way it always goes, I guess.”

  Mr. Blackmon leans back like he needs a moment to gather his thoughts. He glances up. Right above us, signs dangle along the wall:

  EMPATHY

  Is feeling or understanding what someone else is feeling.

  Compassion is empathy in action.

  RESPECT ONE ANOTHER