“You should be!” Mr. Chamberlain snapped, but he didn’t seem startled by it at all. As if he was expecting it. He took another step closer. “It would be in your best interest to put a muzzle on…this anger of yours, Morales.”
“A muzzle?” Miles jumped from his seat, his desk crunched up in front of him. Luckily for him, at that very moment, the bell rang. Still with a closed fist, Miles looked around at his classmates, everyone wide-awake, looking on with their mouths hanging open. They slowly grabbed their bags under the heat of his gaze, as if they could be crunched up next. Miles eased his glare, collapsed his chest, collected his things as quickly as possible, and left.
As he tore into the hallway, Miles heard Alicia calling for him over his own internal voice yelling. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But he kept moving, juking through the mob of students, some already whispering about what had just happened moments before in class. Information moves faster in high school hallways than it does even on the internet. So Miles had to move twice as a fast.
“Miles!” Alicia shouted out again. But Miles put his head down and charged on. “Miles! Wait!” Alicia followed Miles to the end of the corridor. “Just…stop for one second!” she said, finally close enough to him to touch his shoulder. Miles turned around, his face tight and flushed, his chest heaving, his hands still trembling. It’s over for me. I’m outta here. Alicia caught her breath. “Look, I just wanted to say that what happened in class today was…was…we gotta do something.”
“Do something? Do what?” Miles shot back. “You wanna have a little poetry reading about it? You think that’s gonna help me?” The words came out with sharp edges. Prickly. And Miles regretted them as soon as they left his mouth.
“Help you?” Alicia’s face knotted. “You think this is about you, Miles?” She shook her head and sort of laughed, but not in a ha-ha kind of way. “This ain’t about you. This is about us. And not just you and me, but about Winnie, and Judge, and all the freshmen and sophomores who are gonna have to take this class. The seniors who already have. The kids coming into this school. And if Chamberlain’s acting like this, if he’s talking like this, you think he’s the only one? And you think you the only student he’s picked on?” Alicia crossed her arms. “Maybe a little poetry reading won’t do much, but let me ask you something, Miles, what are you gonna do?”
“That’s not how I meant it,” Miles said. “All I’m saying is, what can I do? You…you just don’t know. I just…smashed a desk.” Miles caught himself. “I mean, I…I just pounded it, and it broke up like that. But the point is, they’re probably about to kick me out because of it. So, at this point, it don’t really matter what I do.”
“Oh, okay. I see,” Alicia said sarcastically. “I don’t know, huh? Well, let me tell you what I do know. You scared.” Miles opened his mouth to say something, but Alicia put her hand up, stopped him. “No, no. It’s okay. I understand. I don’t blame you for being scared, but because you are, you just not gonna do nothing, right? Just gonna take your defeat because that’s better, right?”
“Alicia…” Miles started, but he had nothing. No answers. No way to explain everything.
“Well, let me know how that all goes for you, Miles,” she said, turning and walking away.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Aight, now spill it.”
Miles had finally gotten back to the dorm after his afternoon classes, his stomach morphing from a tight knot to an empty pit after talking with Alicia, the same thoughts repeating over and over in his mind: It’s over for me. I’m outta here. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ganke had just turned on the Nintendo as Miles dug through his closet and pulled out his mask.
“Where do I even begin,” Miles started. “First, somebody robbed the store yesterday,” he said, flat. “While I was trying to get extra credit from Blaufuss, someone broke into—” He caught himself in a lie. No one “broke into” the store, because it was left wide open. “Someone came into the store and stole a bunch of sausage.”
“What?” Ganke immediately paused the game, glanced back at Miles, who was still digging in his closet. “Sausage?”
“Yep. Sausage. In a can.” Miles flung his mask and suit on his bed. “And they think I did it.”
“Who thinks you did it?”
Miles rubbed his face. “Dean Kushner. My folks. That’s why they came up here. They think I had something to do with it.” Miles shook his head. “I mean, not for nothing, I don’t even like sausage in a can.”
“Who does? It’s gross.” Ganke unpaused the game, his thumbs working the controller as Mario jumped on bricks and onto the heads of goombas.
“Gross, stupid, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Dean Kushner fired me from the store, and the whole work-study program, so now my folks have to pay out of pocket to cover my food and my luxurious life in this funk-box with you.”
Ganke paused the game again, turned back toward Miles. “My man, I know you mad right now, and you just talking, but this ain’t no funk-box, and if it is, it ain’t because of me. First of all, you the one who wears the same jeans every day.”
“That’s how you break them in.”
“Whatever. And second of all, I’m Korean. We don’t have BO.”
“What?”
“Just trust me on that one.”
Miles looked at Ganke like he had two heads. “Look, the point I’m trying to make is, I can’t let my parents pay for this—for my mistake. Things are already tight, and the amount of money they’re probably gonna have to shell out to keep me in this dorm is gonna jam them up.” Miles knocked on his forehead. “So I gotta figure something out.”
“Just beg Kushy Kushy for your job back.”
“Thought about that, but let’s be real. When was the last time you’ve seen Kushner smile? I mean, he won’t even loosen up his face, so why would he loosen up on me? Not to mention, none of this is probably gonna matter anyway, because I just flipped out on Chamberlain and smashed a desk. So they’ll probably expel me for destruction of school property.”
“You did what? A desk? Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
“Ganke, I’m telling you, he’s…there’s something about him. I just couldn’t help it. But surprisingly he didn’t say nothing to me after class, or even try to stop me from leaving, so, we’ll see.”
“I mean, he ain’t write you up, but you still might be screwed. So what you gonna do?” First from Alicia, now from Ganke. This was a question Miles was getting tired of hearing. Ganke leaned back in his chair, rested his arms on his belly. He noticed the suit on the bed. “Wait, is the sabbatical over already? Are you about to become a hero-for-hire? I hope so. Or are you just about to go find a replacement desk for Chamberlain? Which, I have to tell you, doesn’t really seem like a job for Spider-Man.”