Unfair
"And the winner is, West End Prep!”
The defeat was monumentally the worst, most awful insult to those who crammed for the Academic Decathlon that Friday in December. Everyone slumped against the tables, unable to bear the beaming grins from those snotty West Enders. It had already been insulting when West End refused to allow Gulinger Private Academy to compete against them if Tom Brown, Matthew Calamori, or Rick Deacon were on the team. Their objections to Tom’s impish shenanigans notwithstanding or to Matt’s ability to hear the answers as the judge read the question—denying Rick a chance simply because he was a werewolf was downright ludicrous.
It was the same as their last basketball game against West End in November. None of those ‘newly posh’ mafis and ghoulies wanted to compete against a ‘biologically advantaged’ werewolf obsessed with basketball. Rick threw a fit—a fit so unlike him—when they would not allow him on the court no matter how much he promised with exasperation that he would play as an ordinary guy—as basketball requires opposable thumbs. Eventually the officials ordered Rick out—to be dragged out if necessary by garlic-wielding, silver knife carrying, honey reeking referees. Everyone heard the rust-haired sophomore scream from the school hallway where he kicked the door they had locked, “What advantage does a wolf have over a man in basketball? This isn’t the movies!”
For spite, Tom had given all the judges wedgies.
The Gulinger Academic Decathlon team hoped he would give them wedgies that day too. But Tom wasn’t even in the room. He hadn’t really wanted to compete anyway. He didn’t even come to cheer. In fact, knowing him, he was probably outside on the street letting out the air in the tires of the West End school bus.
Outside
“Cheaters,” Tom Brown muttered, pressing the eraser end of a pencil on the pin inside the last tire, listening to the air seep out like a long sleeping snake. It gave off rippling puffs in the cold air. “Dirty, no-good, snotty pants….”
Matt wandered down the steps after peeking his head out the front door to find his buddy. The brown-haired Italian American chuckled. “Thinking of names for your children?”
Tom looked up, blushing. Or at least his cheeks were red from the cold, oddly framed by his spiked up, platinum blonde hair. The tire quit leaking air immediately. But it was basically flat, despite how much plumper it was compared to the others. “Oh.”
Matt kept smirking at him, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets.
“Nah.” Tom shook his head, grinning now. He twirled the pencil in his fingers then stuck it above his ear. “I have a feeling Selena would not want to have a kid named Snotty-pants, though I probably will call any one my kids that at any given time.”
Matt raised his eyebrows. Tom was half joking about the whole kids-with-Selena thing. The other half of him hoped for it.
“How was the lousy Academic Cheat-along?” Tom asked, peering at the other tires to make sure they would be a pain to inflate. He had stuffed small pebbles in the rim of one.
Hopping down the last step to the sidewalk, Matt shrugged. “Clearly they won.”
Tom rolled his eyes behind his dark sunglasses.
“I didn’t think you cared about that sort of thing,” Matt said, tilting his head to the side to look at his friend.
With another roll of his orange eyes, Tom snorted. “I don’t. But when people cheat, imps shout. It was giving me a headache.”
“Ah,” Matt said. He moseyed next to Tom, angling down to peer into his face. “What’s really bugging you? I can hear it, almost.”
Frowning, Tom leaned against the icy school bus side. He looked to the clouded sky first then the snow and ice crusted concrete. “Keenan. He skirted off once he saw me.”
Matt raised his eyebrows again. “Really?”
Tom nodded. “And there is something fishy about all of them from West End. Their imp chatter is different than before. I felt like…” Tom frowned.
“Go on.” Matt waited, still almost hearing Tom’s thoughts. But Tom himself was thinking them out in the same way he was speaking, unsure.
His frown tightening, Tom said, “Like they were practicing on me some kind of anti-imp-shout survival technique. Their imps were really put out.”
Matt stared.
Nodding, Tom added, “Like they were practicing on you too—attempting to see if they could contain their thoughts so that you couldn’t hear them.”
“Hmm.” Matt folded his arms across his chest. That was a thought. He had noticed there was something peculiarly focused about the thoughts of the people from West End that he spoke with—though most skirted away from him the second he came near. The only people who ever did that were those who had something to hide.
Then an idea came to Matt. He glanced sideways at Tom. “Why don’t you follow them back to their school? Find out what it is that they are up to.”
“Good idea,” Tom murmured. He looked up at the air that puffed around them as they breathed. It was a very good idea.
Selena Davenport, graduated girlfriend
Keenan Goodrich from Tale Thirteen
Following the West-Enders
But following West End Prep kids back to their ‘mysteriously hidden’ school campus was not a simple venture. Firstly (and Tom was sure of this), they would be keeping an eye out for anyone tailing them. Secondly, he would be the first one they would be watching for. Thirdly, there was no way he could use his pal Randon Spade for this task as it was clear the black cat would be West End’s second tailing suspect. But lastly, they had to refill their tires—with forced the West Enders to stay for lunch in the Gulinger cafeteria. It would be a while before they left. But that was good. It gave Tom time to formulate a plan so that he could trail after them unnoticed. So even though he was first on West End Prep’s security worry list, he was also the only one capable of beating it.
The West Enders ate together. Rick peered at them with a frown, most especially at those that had been a semblance of a friend to him when they were students at Gulinger Private Academy. Randon pretended
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.09.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7368-5213-6
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