Everyone was staring at her now. The last of the hushed pre-bell conversations fell silent.
Mr. Davis looked up. “Yes, Michelle? Is something wrong?”
“I don’t feel safe, Mr. Davis,” she announced, as if she were onstage. “You know, with what happened over the weekend.” She jerked her head at me. “What with these jihadis still out there.”
I blinked back. At first I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her correctly. Did she just say jihadis? The rest of the room was nonresponsive. Embarrassed? Unmoved? I whirled around to Vanessa in the back. She was shaking her head in disgust.
“Seriously, Michelle?” she spat. The veins in her neck bulged. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Language!” Mr. Davis barked.
I turned to face the front again. My heart began to thump. I waited for him to defuse the situation. And waited…
After an eternal pause, he sighed.
“You can go to the office, Michelle. The rest of you, open your books to page one-forty-three.”
Michelle hurried out the door and slammed it behind her.
Mr. Davis stood, as if nothing had happened at all.
My mind whirled as I overheard Vanessa whispering obscenities on my behalf. Had Michelle just been punished? Or had Davis just given her a free pass to skip Pre-Calc because of me—because she thought I was one of “these jihadis”? Mr. Davis’s tone was unreadable. Which scared me. He could have stuck up for me, could have made this a teachable moment. He could have talked about the facts.
Fact one: the authorities were still investigating. Fact two: jihad is misunderstood and abused by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Fact three: the only jihad I was guilty of was an internal one: the battle of the nafs: higher vs. lower self, consciousness vs. ego.
Those were the facts. And higher-self Salma—the girl who makes way too many excuses for others—wanted to take Michelle down with a love-bomb tackle, roll her around in a big bear hug. (Radical love.) But my lower self—the one that always tries to get its way—was more than ready to bitch her out. Wasn’t that Mr. Davis’s job, though? Not the bitching, but the handling, the “adulting”? Wasn’t he supposed to reach for his higher self and deal with Michelle’s offensive behavior in a meaningful way? Didn’t he at least feel responsible to talk it out?
He shot a surreptitious glance at me.
I sat up and opened my hands, silently telling him: Yes? Say something!
In response he pushed his glasses up his nose, turned his beady eyes on the whiteboard, then scrawled away, oblivious—or pretending to be oblivious.
I couldn’t decide which was worse: faking that he didn’t care or truly not caring.
* * *
—
As soon as the bell rang I gathered my belongings and bolted out the door. Vanessa was calling my name, but I kept walking. She wouldn’t give up, though. She ran to catch up to me in the hallway.
“Hey,” she said breathlessly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I dropped my shoulders. “I’m sorry. That was lame. I just—”
“Needed to get the hell out of there?” she said, finishing my sentence.
I nodded.
Vanessa cracked a mischievous smile. “Please,” she said, patting her cargo shorts. “I get it. So, look, I was going to save these to get out of his next exam, but now I’m thinking we could use them to make a point.” She pulled out a bright purple pack of grape-flavored gum.
I stared back, not following. “Um, how?”
Her eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t know about Mr. Davis’s aversion to grape flavors?”
If Vanessa devoted even a tenth of the time to schoolwork that she devoted to digging up dirt on the teachers at Franklin—or useless information like gum flavor preference—she’d be a shoo-in for valedictorian. But she was obsessed with the personal lives of the staff and administration. They were a constant source of outrage, fascination, amusement, and horror…and even, in some rare instances, envy. It was a good thing she wasn’t into blackmail.
“It’s like he has an allergic reaction or something,” Vanessa went on, unwrapping a stick and shoving in into her mouth. “It makes him nauseated. He’ll vomit. I’m serious. It happened two years ago. My older brother Luke was there.” She stopped chewing. “What?”
My nose wrinkled. I was actually with Mr. Davis on this one. With my sensitivity to synthetic smells and tastes, that gum smelled like bad cotton candy left in the sun.
“Yes, I know it’s gross.” She giggled and shoved the gum back in her pocket. “But here’s my plan: I’ll bring these to the next class with Davis. And I’ll tell everyone but Michelle. I’ll make sure everyone starts chewing at once, and he’ll barf. She’ll be so bummed not to be in on it.”
Now I had to giggle, too, even though I would probably barf. I didn’t doubt she could pull off her plan. No doubt she could get the very same people who had stayed silent moments ago to go along with her. Vanessa transcended cliques; it was one of the things I loved most about her. Then again, her only other school-related passion was throwing parties, either at home or at her family’s place on Lake Arlington. Wherever her parents weren’t, Vanessa was. Hosting for everyone.
She locked arms with me and steered me toward our lockers. “But listen—” She stopped mid-sentence. “Oh crap! It’s Monday.”
“Meaning?”
“Duh, I’ve got gym!” She shoved her textbook into my hands. “Would you hold on to this until later? I need to get to Ms. Wallace early, before class starts. It’s track week and there’s no way in hell I’m going to do any actual running.”
I arched an eyebrow. Even kids who’ve never had Ms. Wallace knew that she made “no exceptions for anyone!” Anyone on the Franklin premises would have heard her shriek these words at one time or another. Plus, rumor had it that she’d eaten several office passes in front of horrified students—literally chewing and swallowing—and that her husband had left her for another man. The rumors came from Vanessa, of course. But Mariam had been there to corroborate….
My throat tightened. Mariam should be here now, too. I needed the bright side of our moon.
“What?” Vanessa asked, peering into my moistening eyes. “You’re not worried about me, are you? Salma, please. I’m the only case where Wallace makes one exception!”
I had to laugh. The impersonation was dead-on. Maybe she had started blackmailing the Franklin grown-ups. Or more likely inviting them to her parties. Radical love, Richman-style.