Free The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door by Karen Finneyfrock Page B

kind of laziness isn’t going to fly in the sixth grade.” It was the same thing in grade eight. “You know, you kids aren’t going to get away with this kind of sloppy work in high school. Not in high school, you’re not.”
    I worried about high school so much that when I was still in eighth grade, I bought a copy of the Hershey High yearbook to prepare. The name of the yearbook is—you guessed it—
The Chocolatier
. For a freshman entering high school, the yearbook is like a catalog of cliques. You can browse through the pages and imagine your life in a series of social groups. I tried to imagine myself with the theatre kids or the debate club, but I couldn’t picture it. Before I even entered high school, I felt doomed to be one of the kids confined to the posed photographs, never to be featured in a candid.
    I got out my notebook and added a few more revenge ideas while Mr. Pearson rambled on about the challenges of writing in dialect.
    FORM OF
REVENGE
PRO
CON
Pour itching powder down the back of her shirt in L.A.
Irritating and potentially painful
Need a major diversion to avoid getting noticed, and not truly humiliating
Slip melting chocolate bars into her coat pockets
Fantastically gross
Probably get caught and not embarrassing
     
    The rest of morning classes fused into one another as the hours counted down to the last bell. In the hall on our way to lunch, Drake pretended to be onstage.
    “Thank you so much for coming to hear me read tonight at Carnegie Hall,” Drake was saying in a mock falsetto. “My new book of poems is entitled
Pink Slip
and was inspired by my experiences at a repressive public school in rural Pennsylvania, where I was forced to join the local ruffians in a barbaric confinement called detention—”
    “Drake!” said a voice so loud we both jumped. Mr. Scott, Hershey High’s basketball coach/gym teacher, approached us. “Drake,” he said again in the only volume sports coaches have: loud. “You thinking about next year? You stay on your jump shot, I think you could make varsity as a sophomore. Hey, Cindy, how ya doing?” he added, looking at me.
    I looked back at him Darkly.
    Coach Scott always watched part of the pickup games at lunch, so he had seen Drake play.
    “Hey, Mr. Scott,” Drake said back, shrugging. “I’ll be back in New York next year. Maybe even next month.” Drake didn’t sound happy or positive when he said that.
    “Well, if you end up staying longer, maybe we can still get you on the team this year,” the coach went on. “I might be losing some players.” He said that last part behind his hand, as if it was a secret, but he said it just as loudly as everything else. He patted Drake hard on both shoulders and strode off down the hall quickly before Drake could protest.
    Drake shook his head at me and said, “Come on, Cindy,” and tugged me into Earth Science.
    At the end of the day, I said good-bye to Drake and plodded fearfully to the detention hall.
    The helpful walking map on my pink slip aided me in moping all the way to the right corridor. STUDY HALL/
DETENTION read the sign on the door. I took a deep breath and opened it.
    × × ×
     
    Inside, I found a normal classroom full of desks. A gray-haired man with a pointy chin sitting behind a wooden table took my pink slip and pointed me to a desk in the front row. There were two dejected-looking upperclassmen in the back of the room, slumped in their chairs, their long legs spreading out into the aisles. I sat down and crossed my legs, hoping to seem small and harmless.
    A few seconds later, the door opened again, and if I had been chewing gum, I would have swallowed it. In walked Clock, his black trench coat billowing out behind him like a cape. He tossed his pink slip on the gray-haired man’s table without looking at him and slid into a desk right next to me as if we had planned on meeting there.
    “What’s up, Weird? Get detention for macking on your boyfriend in the halls?” he asked with