And there were lots of signs of progress.
“Look,” Cheater said one afternoon at the end of history class. He held up his test—he’d gotten an A. “You were right, Coach. I made sure to use my own words. It worked. It really did.”
“Great.” I was happy for him. He’d do fine. Though the sad part was that, in a way, it didn’t really matter. Once you got dumped at Edgeview, everyone assumed you’d never get better. We were all treated as if we were incurably sick.
“Good job,” Flinch said to Cheater. “You know what? It helps, understanding what’s going on. It’s hard work, but I’m getting better control.”
It was hard work for me as well as Flinch. I must have thrown about a thousand punches a day at him. Okay, maybe not that many. But it sure felt like it. After the first day, my shoulder hurt. I didn’t nail him in the jaw again, but I came frighteningly close a couple of times. Still, Flinch was learning to handle his reactions. He’d figured out this system where the faster he saw something happening, the longer he knew he had to wait before reacting.
Cheater liked to work with Flinch, too. Despite his protests about stereotyping, he loved to scream “Hiyaaaa!” and throw what I guess was some kind of karate chop.
Torchie was making progress, too. Even though he still hadn’t figured out exactly what made it happen, the very fact that he spent time each day trying to start fires seemed to have cut down on unintentional flames.
I, on the other hand, managed to get into more trouble than ever. I tried—I really tried to keep my mouth shut around my teachers. But I just couldn’t help it—especially when someone like Parsons got in my face and gave me a hard time. He really hated me. So did almost all the teachers.
And that explains how I was the first in our group to learn the news. Flinch could see into the future, and Cheater could read minds. Lucky could find things. But I found out what was happening the old-fashioned way. I stuck my nose where it didn’t belong.
MOB VIOLENCE
The next Friday, right after classes. I was sitting in detention once again. It was Miss Nomad’s turn to play zookeeper. But she wasn’t paying much attention to us. Her desk was covered with leaning towers of papers and file folders. She was busy cleaning out one of her desk drawers when she knocked over a file folder, spilling a stack of papers.
“I got it,” I said.
“Thank you, Martin.” She smiled at me, and then went back to sorting through the drawer.
I guess I still felt sort of bad about some of the things I’d said to her. Maybe I could say something nice about one of her poems. I walked over to the front of her desk and started gathering up the papers. But it wasn’t a pile of poems. The folder was labeled ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION COMMITTEE. When I saw that the sheet on top was a memo from Principal Davis, I couldn’t help reading it. I skimmed the memo, and then the next piece of paper. It was a copy of a letter from the state Board of Education. There was a bunch of other stuff: memos, letters, even some copies of newspaper articles. I didn’t look at all of it, but I saw enough to know what was going on.
After detention, I rushed upstairs. I reached the room at the same time as Cheater.
“Wait till you hear my news,” he said.
“I’ve got news, too,” I told him.
“What is it?” Torchie asked.
“The state might close this place,” I explained. “They’re having this big inspection at the end of the year.”
“Why would they close Edgeview?” Torchie asked.
“I guess some people don’t think the school is doing any good.” It felt strange to realize that there were people arguing over what was best for me—people who had never met me, people who had never bothered to ask my opinion.
“Well, it isn’t, is it?” Lucky said.
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered what I thought. There wasn’t anything any of us could do. We didn’t have that kind of power. The adults were going to make the decision. And June was far away. “What’s your news?” I asked Cheater.
“Check this out,” he said, pulling a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “It was in yesterday’s newspaper.”
“Pinball tournament!” I said, reading the ad. “Hey, it’s tonight at nine.”
“So what?” Trash asked. “They won’t let us go.” He looked around the room at us. “Hey, what are you all grinning about?”
“You’ll see,” I told him. “I just hope you aren’t afraid of high places.” It was time for a road trip. And so we added Trash to our Friday night gang and headed off that evening for MondoVideo, our pockets filled with quarters thanks to Lucky and his endless supply.