Free Losers by Matthue Roth Page B

acceptability. That would certainly erase the whole Bates thing from their consciousnesses.
    â€œWhy do you ask?” I choked out suddenly.
    Of all the things I could have asked, that might not have been the worst. But it was definitely— definitely —the most potentially incriminating.
    Devin stopped in midstride, turned around, and tilted her head to the side.
    â€œThat group of kids who trashed the party,” she said. “They stole the beer keg, remember? Well, Nessa Greyscole still owes her parents three hundred dollars from the deposit.”
    â€œThree hundred dollars?!”
    â€œIt was the biggest keg they had. And we would’ve finished it, too, if it wasn’t for that gang,” she said. “Anyway, if you see any white-trash kids floating around the school who look familiar, let me know. Here, take one of these.”
    She handed me a flyer.
    It was Photoshopped to look like a Wanted sign from the Old West, complete with old block letters and a reward. In the space where the mug shot was supposed to go, there was a picture of a toxic waste dump. “ ‘Wanted: Low-Down, Dirty Keg Thieves and Stool Pigeons,’ ” I read aloud. “And she’s offering a three hundred dollar reward? Why doesn’t she just use the money to pay the deposit?”
    â€œI’m offering the reward myself,” Devin informed me, already looking down the corridor to find more people to hit up. “Ifigure it’s my civic duty and all. I mean, I did convince her to lay out the cash in the first place.”
    I thought about suggesting an alternate plan, but decided to keep silent. “Whoa,” I said. It was, I thought, what popular kids said when they didn’t know what else to say.
    â€œNessa said that Reg said that Crash said that someone saw one of the Yards gang looking tight with one of the people at the party,” she informed me, the valley-girl tone in her voice suddenly gone. “One of our people. Reg reckons they told the Yards guys to come over and crash the party. I seriously can’t imagine—I mean, why would anyone from the Yards even be at the party in the first place?—but, you know, they had to find out about it somehow. That’s the stool pigeon part.”
    â€œMaybe they were just cruising by?” I suggested.
    â€œMaybe,” Devin echoed dryly—as though she wouldn’t believe it for a second. “Anyway, thanks for listening. It’s good to see you in action, you know? I mean, within the walls of North Shore and everything.”
    â€œYeah,” I started to say, “you, too,” but Devin was already cruising down the hall, removing the next flyer from the top of the pile.
    Dr. Mayhew led Vadim down the first-floor hallway. They whizzed past students digging in their lockers, students sitting against classroom doors and studying, students talking and flirting and hurrying to wherever they had to go. Dr. Mayhew moved faster than them all. They say that a school is only as good as the principal that leads it, and in the case of North Shore, both school and principal were irrevocably intertwined—so muchso that it seemed to Vadim that the hallways flexed and curved with each of Mayhew’s steps. When they banked sharply to the left to avoid the hip-hop kids who were freestyling in the center of the corridor, the walls themselves seemed to bend left to allow them free passage.
    Finally, they stopped in front of a short stairwell that seemed to lead nowhere. Through its dim, cobwebby top, Vadim could see a rusted brass sign on the door, a door that hadn’t been opened in years, that read JANITOR’S CLOSET—NO ADMITTANCE.
    Up and down along the stairs, though, sat a good dozen or so of the smartest, geekiest, most socially unaware and fashionably clueless ninth-through-twelfth-graders that Vadim had ever set his 45/20-prescription eyes upon.
    They were all genders, but mostly male; all