Free Go Your Own Way by Zane Riley Page A

giving them a tour of the weight room and the locker room, Coach Davis let them decide between playing basketball in the gym and working on homework for other classes. Lennox ducked under the bleachers away from the others and began to read his English homework; Roxanne didn’t follow. By the time the afternoon announcements started, Lennox was finished with the reading and packing up for detention.
    Will would be there, and if nothing else, seeing him was a nice way to end another long day. He ducked into the locker room, washed his face and tried to perk up a little. Sleeping in a bathtub was like sleeping in a cage of dragons—uncomfortable and dangerous. Last night, his foot had caught on the faucet and he’d woken up to gushing, icy water. He supposed that was better than fire, but it burned either way. Maybe tonight would end better.
    Mr. Robinette was waiting for him at the band room door. He had a folder in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other.
    “You can join Mr. Osborne in the storage room,” he said as Lennox set his backpack down on a chair. “I’ve got you two orga­nizing the percussion lockers.” Mr. Robinette led him toward the sound of something wooden tumbling to the floor. Drumsticks?
    Mr. Robinette ushered him through a door in the back cor­ner. The floor was linoleum, and a chalkboard hung along the wall past half a dozen cabinets. Drums and the rest of the per­cussion instruments, from the timpani to a mahogany piano that had been moved back into the storage room, were scat­tered around the little space. Will was squeezed between the xylophone behind him and a large case hanging out of the cabinet he’d just opened. A few more drumsticks clattered to the floor.
    “Don’t worry about the sticks,” Mr. Robinette told Will. “Half of them will be broken in two weeks.” He turned back to Len­nox as he stepped through the doorway. “Orga­nize the cab­inets, wipe down the chalkboard and, if you finish that before five, start taping outlines on the floor where everything on wheels will go. If you two don’t get through the cabinets today, I’m adding another day onto your week. No talking, just working.”
    Lennox took the roll of duct tape and turned to Will as Mr. Robinette left. “Well, now that we’re alone—”
    Will shoved him hard, knocking Lennox back into the piano, which rolled down to the last cabinet and stopped.
    “You start down there,” Will told him. “I’ll start here and we’ll—”
    “Meet in the middle for blow jobs. Excellent.”
    “We are not—whatever. Just leave me alone until five o’clock.”
    For the first hour, Lennox did leave Will alone. He started at the cabinet closest to the door with a dust rag and a spray bottle. His first two cabinets were empty. At the far end by the chalkboard, Will wasn’t having the same luck. The first cabinet had dropped that shower of drumsticks on him and the second had been stuffed with old sheet music. Lennox had a good laugh watching Will scramble to catch all of the pages, but on Lennox’s third cabinet, Will got his revenge.
    Lennox pried the door open, and then yelped as a nest of spiders hit his face.
    Will laughed so hard he fell over, elbowed the xylophone and knocked several of its bars to the ground. Mr. Robinette appeared to see what was wrong. When he spotted Will picking up the bars, he wasn’t pleased.
    “No more fooling around,” he said. He eyed the cabinet Lennox was working on, and then Will’s, which was full of mallets. “Finish these last few up and I might let you leave a little early. Don’t forget the chalkboard either.”
    He left them alone again as Will put the xylophone bars back into their slots and finished organizing his third cabinet. Lennox left the spiders to do their thing and bumped shoulders with Will at the last cabinet left between them.
    “Go do the taping.” He shouldered Lennox aside. “Go away.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    Will stood up and glared at