Free Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

snatched the newspaper from her hand. Min pointed to the article, and I started reading.
    The headline was “Health Teacher Speaks Her Mind, Makes Controversy.” Now I know what people mean when they say their heart is in their throat.
    It was a profile of Ms. Toles. It talked about her feelings on sex education and how she felt about condom machines in high school bathrooms (she was for them) and “abstinence-only” curriculums (she was against them). It also talked about when she’d put those condoms on that cucumber in class. (“Not one single student complained to me about that,” Ms. Toles said, “and after those classes, three students came up to thank me.” I had to admit these were pretty good points.)
    I didn’t need to finish the article to know that Ms. Toles was toast. She’d have been gone by the end of the year with just the cucumber and the condoms. Now with this article in the paper, she’d be gone in a week. I couldn’t help but wonder what in the world she’d been thinking.
    But none of this had anything to do with Geography Club, or anything “gay,” and I couldn’t figure out why Min was so upset.
    “What?” I said. “I don’t see any—”
    “Turn the page,” Min said, “and keep reading!”
    I yanked open the page—partly tearing it in the process—and kept reading.
    Two paragraphs before the end of the article, I came to a line that made my blood run cold. It was a quote from Ms. Toles.
    “‘As a health educator, it’s my job to teach all the students,’ Toles said.
    “According to Toles, that even includes gay students. ‘There are gay and lesbian students at every high school in town, including ours,’ Toles said. ‘Just last week, I talked to one of them about a support group for gay teens.’”
    Talk about burying the lead! This is what everyone had been chattering about in the hallways. This was also why Min was so upset. Someone had spilled the beans about the Geography Club!

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    Terese was pissed. “All right!” she demanded. “Who talked?”
    It was that same Monday after school, at an emergency meeting of the Geography Club. Terese wasn’t the only one angry about that article on Ms. Toles. No one had even said hello. The five of us had just stomped into the classroom and gathered in a circle, glowering at each other like competitors in a game of tag-team wrestling.
    When no one stepped forward to admit guilt, Terese said, “Well?” She meant business, but then so did everyone else.
    “It wasn’t me,” I said, if only because we needed to start the ball rolling somehow.
    “Terese,” Min said, “you know it wasn’t me.”
    Ike shook his head. “I never even talked to Toles before.”
    Terese whirled on Kevin. “Then it had to be—!”
    Kevin held up his hands and sort of ducked, like he thought Terese was going to hit him. “Wait a minute!” Kevin said. “It wasn’t me either!”
    “Then who ?” Terese said.
    We were back to standing there scowling at each other like a pack of fur-bristled wolves.
    Then something occurred to me. “Terese?” I said.
    Now she turned on me. “What?”
    “It’s just that you’re the only one who didn’t—”
    She gave me one seriously droll look. “No! It wasn’t me either.”
    Min sat down at one of the desks. She looked as confused as I felt. Ike started pacing. And Kevin had slipped a baseball from his backpack and was squeezing it and tossing it ever so lightly into the air. I’d never seen him do this before, but I knew right away that this was a nervous habit. (Even upset like I was, I found this endearing.)
    “It really wasn’t anyone here?” Terese said.
    “It wasn’t me,” Min said.
    “Or me,” I said.
    “Or me,” Kevin said.
    “It wasn’t me,” Ike said.
    I looked from person to person, at the droop in their shoulders and the hangdog expressions on their faces. I believed them. Suddenly, I was certain that no one in that room had squealed. Everyone else was