Ian hid his irritation. Nor would he ever let her think he was hurt at being rejected, or wanted to know what she didn’t like about him. For he already knew what it was: they were nothing alike. He was hard and she was strange.
It was not that he liked her much. But Ian did not want the others to find out Mimi had dumped him. Later he would spread the word among the boys that she had refused to go all the way with him. Or maybe he would say she’d done it with him, and then he’d dumped her. He would have to think about how to get the best out of this situation. Still, he wanted the pencil case. “All right,” he said.
Mimi didn’t move. “You don’t badmouth me, or say things like what Rod said about Blanca.” It was as if she’d heard his thoughts.
“I won’t say anything. And you won’t say anything either,” he added, then gestured impatiently. “Now, are you gonna give it to me or not?”
Mimi bit her lip. As she held out the case, he could see that her hand was shaking. She was not good at this sort of negotiation, had held nothing back to keep him in line. He would have no problem turning the breakup in his favor.
“Go on out,” he said, taking the case. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
Mimi was staring at the pencil case, now safe in Ian’s hands. She looked frightened, her eyes sparking with the strange flecks that made them swirl. “What are you going to do with it?”
But Ian was already turning into the cloakroom attached to their class. “Nothing for you to worry about,” he said over his shoulder. As he rummaged on the coat hooks for his jacket, he could feel her still in the hall, and gritted his teeth. “Idiot,” he muttered. He now felt miles removed from the desire he’d had for her at the flagpole. He found his jacket—plain, navy blue, unused for the past few weeks as it had grown warmer. Before pocketing his new possession, he unzipped the case to look inside. There wasn’t much of interest: pencils of various lengths and colors, a couple erasers, a plastic pencil sharpener, a short ruler, a dime, a piece of Bazooka bubble gum, a scrap of paper, a plastic egg full of Silly Putty. He kept the dime, unwrapped the gum—dropping the brightly colored comic that came with it without reading it—and stuffed it in his mouth. He glanced at the paper: written in a peculiar loopy style was O’s name, address, and phone number. He envisaged the crank phone calls he could make and smiled; the opportunities had been handed to him on a platter.
Ian dumped everything else into a cardboard box full of a jumble of classroom detritus: broken chalk, old blackboard erasers, gray metal bookends, scraps of construction paper. He pulled a sheaf of leftover mimeographed worksheets on the main agricultural products of the United States (corn, wheat, cotton, beef) over the case’s contents. No one would find them for weeks, until Miss Lode cleaned out the cloakroom when school finished for the summer. He would be long gone by then—on to another school and other victims.
Once it was empty, Ian examined the case. God, it was hideous. Only a girl could stand to use something as lurid as this. The only interesting features were the embossed strawberries, with knobbly points poking up from the plastic that reminded him of nipples. He had seen nipples dimpled like that in the copies of Playboy he’d stolen over the years. The girls’ nipples he’d caught glimpses of—when he spied on them changing for gym, or the fifth grader he’d pressured into lifting her top for him—were tiny and smooth like birds’ beaks. Ian touched one of the knobbly strawberries and smiled as the sensation traveled to his groin. Maybe this was why the black boy had had the pencil case, if it had the same effect on him.
He mustn’t keep it, however. It would be much more useful in stirring things up out on the playground rather than exciting him in the cloakroom. Ian could get that feeling from other things. What could he do with the case, though? It needed to be in Casper’s possession to have the most effect on O, as concrete evidence that would confirm the suspicions Ian had already planted. But Casper wouldn’t carry around something like that; no boy with any self-respect would hold on to a pink plastic pencil case covered with strawberries.
If not Casper, then someone close to him. Yes. Ian smiled and nodded to himself, knowing now what to do. Shrugging on his jacket—it would be warm outside but he needed a hiding place—he tucked the case in the inside pocket and headed outside.
The sixth graders had gathered for their afternoon game, when girls and boys played together. The usual captains—Casper and Ian—not being there, two alternatives had taken on the roles: Rod—and O, to Ian’s surprise. How could a new, black boy have wormed his way into the playground hierarchy so quickly and easily? Ian expected more of his classmates, but they seemed to be pussies, willingly rolling over and allowing the new boy to dominate. Ian would have to act fast, or O would take over completely.
The moment Rod spotted Ian, he ran over, calling, “Ian! Ian’s on my team.” The skin around his right eye was turning inky blue where Casper had punched him, but he was otherwise intact. Ian felt a moment’s disgust.
“I got detention,” Rod whispered when he was close. “Mrs. Duke said she would’ve suspended me except the black eye is punishment enough. It hurts!”
“Did you mention me?”
“No, I said I wouldn’t and I didn’t.”
“Good.”
“Hey, it’s not your turn, Rod!” a couple others cried. “It’s O’s turn.”
Ian stood waiting as O considered which student to pick next for his team. He had already chosen a few others, including Dee and Mimi. Despite his antipathy to the black boy, when O’s eyes came to rest on Ian, the attention thrilled him—positive attention, unlike the cringing unease he was more accustomed to from the others.
O nodded at him. “Ian.”
Ian nodded back, and walked over to join the team as Rod muttered, “Damn!”
While O and Rod continued picking teammates, Ian found what he was looking for: Blanca, sitting alone on the pirate ship, sulking. She would not be playing but preferred to lick her wounds very publicly. Perfect.