Free The John Green Collection by John Green Page B

followed the smoke rings with her fingers, stabbing at them like a kid trying to pop bubbles.
    And then we heard a branch break. It might have been a deer, but the Colonel busted out anyway. A voice directly behind us said, “Don’t run, Chipper,” and the Colonel stopped, turned around, and returned to us sheepishly.
    The Eagle walked toward us slowly, his lips pursed in disgust. He wore a white shirt and a black tie, like always. He gave each of us in turn the Look of Doom.
    “Y’all smell like a North Carolina tobacco field in a wildfire,” he said.
    We stood silent. I felt disproportionately terrible, like I had just been caught fleeing the scene of a murder. Would he call my parents?
    “I’ll see you in Jury tomorrow at five,” he announced, and then walked away. Alaska crouched down, picked up the cigarette she had thrown away, and started smoking again. The Eagle wheeled around, his sixth sense detecting Insubordination To Authority Figures. Alaska dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. The Eagle shook his head, and even though he must have been crazy mad, I swear to God he smiled.
    “He loves me,” Alaska told me as we walked back to the dorm circle. “He loves all y’all, too. He just loves the school more. That’s the thing. He thinks busting us is good for the school and good for us. It’s the eternal struggle, Pudge. The Good versus the Naughty.”
    “You’re awfully philosophical for a girl that just got busted,” I told her.
    “Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.”
    ninety-eight days before
    ONE OF THE UNIQUE THINGS about Culver Creek was the Jury. Every semester, the faculty elected twelve students, three from each class, to serve on the Jury. The Jury meted out punishment for nonexpellable offenses, for everything from staying out past curfew to smoking. Usually, it was smoking or being in a girl’s room after seven. So you went to the Jury, you made your case, and they punished you. The Eagle served as the judge, and he had the right to overturn the Jury’s verdict (just like in the real American court system), but he almost never did.
    I made my way to Classroom 4 right after my last class—forty minutes early, just to be safe. I sat in the hall with my back against the wall and read my American history textbook (kind of remedial reading for me, to be honest) until Alaska showed up and sat down next to me. She was chewing on her bottom lip, and I asked whether she was nervous.
    “Well, yeah. Listen, just sit tight and don’t talk,” she told me. “
You
don’t need to be nervous. But this is the seventh time I’ve been caught smoking. I just don’t want — whatever. I don’t want to upset my dad.”
    “Does your mom smoke or something?” I asked.
    “Not anymore,” Alaska said. “It’s fine. You’ll be fine.”
    I didn’t start to worry until it got to be 4:50 and the Colonel and Takumi were still unaccounted for. The members of the Jury filed in one by one, walking past us without any eye contact, which made me feel worse. I counted all twelve by 4:56, plus the Eagle.
    At 4:58, the Colonel and Takumi rounded the corner toward the classrooms.
    I never saw anything like it. Takumi wore a starched white shirt with a red tie with a black paisley print; the Colonel wore his wrinkled pink button-down and flamingo tie. They walked in step, heads up and shoulders back, like some kind of action-movie heroes.
    I heard Alaska sigh. “The Colonel’s doing his Napoleon walk.”
    “It’s all good,” the Colonel told me. “Just don’t say anything.”
    We walked in—two of us wearing ties, and two of us wearing ratty T-shirts—and the Eagle banged an honest-to-God gavel against the podium in front of him. The Jury sat in a line behind a rectangular table. At the front of the room, by the blackboard, were four chairs. We sat down, and the Colonel explained exactly what happened.
    “Alaska and I were smoking down by the lake. We usually go off