Slacker: Chapters 18–24

In the past three weeks, these wonderful, selfless young people have restored our Village Green to its former glory, run a successful toy drive for Sycamore Children’s Hospital, and volunteered in the kitchen for Meals on Wheels.

We got out and stole through the underbrush, the whipping branches and jutting twigs scratching at our faces and arms.

Then the doors folded open and out poured battalions of middle schoolers, all carrying picks, shovels, sledgehammers, buckets, and wheelbarrows.

I don’t remember myself in middle school but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t ever dumb enough or immature enough that slogging through a swamp was my idea of a good time.

A giddy voice, louder than the rest, cackled: “You losers might as well go home right now! Nobody digs mud like The String!”

“They’re building a beaver habitat,” he told me.

Felicia threw a party so she could hit me up to endorse Jordan in the student council election.

When I finally managed to wangle some decent gaming time, my space cruiser had barely entered planetary orbit when the banging began.

But when sanitation workers found a section of honeysuckle hedge in the garbage outside the home of P.A.G. president Cameron Boxer, it was hard not to conclude that this was an act of deliberate vandalism.

“That’ll teach your dumb friend to dispose of the evidence in his own trash can. I always knew that kid’s head wasn’t screwed on right.”

“You’re delusional,” Emma said to me.

In her last column, Audra Klincker wrote: ... to build a beaver habitat for no beaver would be a hilarious farce if not for the waste of time, man power, and school resources....

And while we can expect no easy answers, it seems clear that unoccupied beaver lodges should be very low on our list of priorities.

“It’s a big undertaking, and a tough one. But it’s also in a high-profile location that half the town goes to. If we can ace it, I know we can turn everything around.”

The roar shook the rafters. P.A.G. meetings had become a lot like pep rallies at our school. Bigger, even, now that String was off the Seahawks.

There was a churning-water sound, a kind of bubbling roar.

“Stop it!” shouted Chuck.
“Who’s going to make us?” jeered an older girl.

There they flailed in the sudsy, paint-stained water, howling in outrage, windmilling their arms, and kicking up even more foam.

It was so chaotic, so crazy, that I almost missed it.

“Or Freeland,” I continued gamely. “He never had a thought beyond the football field. Now he has a real life, and his grades are improving."

It was a testament to how much the P.A.G. had become a part of my life that I wasn’t even surprised when he didn’t show up.

I watched his face as he digested my words.

A grimace appeared that sent the corners of his mouth shooting up toward his ears.

The last thing I heard as the bathroom door closed behind me was the flourish of trumpets from his video game.

Pavel sounded exasperated over the network. “You’ve got tunnel vision about your so-called lifestyle,” he accused. “You never think about other people and what makes them tick.”

She peered at the screen. “Have you figured out the hack where you have a centurion ride beside you? It helps fight off the barbarians in the home stretch.”

Ex-paggers pulling me aside to reminisce about “the good old days,” and to complain that we got busted up when the Friends of Fuzzy were still going strong.

An icy chill ran up and down my spine, radiating outward to frost my entire body.

My voice sounded squeaky, an octave higher than normal.

“I’ve got something for you.”
Here it comes, I thought in agony. A punch in the face, a broken arm, a ruptured spleen—

“Well?” I prodded.
“I didn’t do it,” he swore.

He regarded me in abject misery.

I’d always thought Cameron Boxer was an unimpressive, unmotivated, lazy student. Now I knew better. He was a brilliant schemer and tactician.

If he thought he could bamboozle John LaPierre the way he’d bamboozled his hordes of followers, Cameron Boxer had picked the wrong principal.

If he thought he could bamboozle John LaPierre the way he’d bamboozled his hordes of followers, Cameron Boxer had picked the wrong principal.