Free Rules Of Attraction by Simone Elkeles

and am an American citizen. In the hallway two cops
    step toward me. “Are you Carlos Fuentes?” one of them asks.
    “Yeah.”
    “Can you show us where your locker is?”
    My locker? I shrug. “Sure.”
    I walk to my locker, the policía following so close I can feel their
    breath on the back of my neck. I turn the corner down J Hall and see a
    K9 police dog barking at my locker. What the hell?
    The dog is ordered to sit by its handler.
    Mr. House is standing next to my locker.
    “Carlos, is this your assigned locker?” he asks me.
    “Yeah.”
    He makes a dramatic pause before saying, “I’ll only ask this once.
    Do you have drugs in your locker?”
    “No.”
    “Then you wouldn’t mind opening it, would you?”
    “Nope.” I enter the combination and open the door.
    “What are those things?” one of the cops asks as he points to
    Kiara’s cookie magnets. He steps forward to take a closer look and the
    K9 dog goes nuts. He pokes one. “They’re cookies,” he says dumbly.
    “I think your dog is hungry,” I tell him.
    The second cop gives me a level stare. “You, be quiet. They’re
    probably laced with drugs and you’re selling them.”
    Laced cookies? Is he kiddin’ me? They’re fucking stale cookie
    magnets. I start to laugh.
    “You think this is funny, punk?”
    I clear my throat and try to keep a straight face. “No, sir.”
    “Did you make those cookies?”
    “Yes, sir,” I lie, because it’s none of their business who made them.
    “But you should probably not pull ’em off.”
    “Why not? Scared we’ll find out what’s in them?”
    I shake my head. “No. Trust me, they’re not laced.”
    “Nice try,” the cop says.
    Ignoring me, the principal tries to pick off one of the cookie
    magnets. The cookie breaks in his hand. I cough again, trying to cover
    up another laugh, as he holds the crumbled brown pieces in his hand and
    sniffs them. I wonder what Kiara would think if she knew her cookies
    were under investigation.
    One of the cops crumbles another cookie off and takes a small bite
    to see if he can taste traces of illegal substances. He shrugs. “I don’t
    taste anything.” He holds the rest of the cookie under the K9’s nose.
    The dog goes still. “The cookies are clean,” he says. “But there’s
    something else in the locker. Take everything out,” he orders, then
    crosses his arms on his chest. From the top shelf, I take out a couple
    of books and place them on the floor. I take more books out from the
    bottom. When I pull down my backpack, the dog starts freakin’ out
    again. That dog is certifiably nuts. If we watch it long enough, I’m sure
    its head will turn around and its eyes will roll to the back of its head.
    “Take everything out of your backpack and place the items on the
    floor in front of you,” House says.
    “Look,” I tell House. “I have no clue why that dog is about to attack
    my backpack. I don’t have drugs in there. Maybe the dog’s got a
    disorder.”
    “The dog isn’t the problem, son,” the K9 officer barks out.
    My pulse races when the guy calls me ‘son.’ I want to lash out at
    him, but he’s got a psycho dog he can sic on me. While I think I’m a
    hard-ass, I definitely know a trained psycho K9 can kick my ass.
    One by one I pull out each thing from my backpack. I lay them out
    in a straight line. One pencil. Two pens. One notebook. One Spanish
    book. One can of Coke.
    The dog starts barking again. Wait, I didn’t put a can of Coke in
    there. The principal picks up the can, starts unscrewing the top and . . .
    oh, shit. It’s not a can of Coke. It’s a fake one with . . .
    One bag of weed. A big bag. And . . .
    One bag with a bunch of white and blue pills inside.
    “That’s not mine,” I tell them.
    “Whose is it, then?” the principal asks. “Give us names.”
    I’m pretty sure it’s Nick’s, but I’m not about to rat on him. If
    there’s one thing I’ve learned in Mexico, it’s that you don’t open