Reformed

“Where’d you go, Hart?” says Devon as I slide down the table next to my friends at the dining hall that night. I was trying to disappear and get two minutes alone, but I don’t tell anyone that. Can’t show any weakness, Tom.

But we haven’t gotten a break yet. Not after surviving that hike—or those weird trust exercises the teachers made us do to “learn about each other.” My stomach is a tight ball and my mouth is so dry I can’t swallow right. But now dinner’s here. That’s something, right?

Ash pushes a little plate into the middle of the table for me. “Pie was going fast,” he says. “Got you some lemon meringue, though.”

“It’s so fluffy.” I drag the pie with its creamy, foamy peaks toward me. “You’re the best, Ash.”

He shrugs. “One of the many services I provide.”

Before I can even settle into enjoying my pie, I feel the slam of a dinner tray against the table. The force of the crash sends earthquakes through my more gelatinous food items, and from behind me comes a horrible voice.

“Anyone sitting here?” says the Stache. I mean, Cole. “Pretty crazy first day, huh?” he adds, squeezing his giant body onto the bench. Cole doesn’t wait for an answer. He just smirks and snarfs about half of my lemon meringue pie in one bite.

“Mmm, good pie!” he manages to get out, along with a spray of food particles. His version of “sharing,” I guess. Then there’s that wide, grinning mouth … daring us to say anything.

“It’s always a big decision, right?” Devon breaks the silence.

“What’s that?” says Cole.

“Where to sit in the cafeteria of a new school,” says Devon.

“Sure is,” says Cole with a grin.

As the silence closes in on us again, Alva comes up to us with her tray.

“Mind if I join?” She eyes us all warily and slides down the bench.

Cole sort of smiles at her, and he bumps me down so there’s bench next to him. “Make space, dude.”

Without looking up, she opens her mouth and says, “You guys are from the same school or something?”

“The four of us,” says Ash, pointing at Mark and Devon too. “East Huron Elem—Middle School.”

“You can call us the Huron Spawn,” I say.

She smirks. “Did you just give yourself your own nickname?”

Cole laughs and I can already feel my cheeks reddening, so I just focus on what I should have been doing the whole time: staying quiet. I watch this Alva Anonymous girl, and the longer she sits with us, the more it feels like maybe she’s just jealous we’re here with friends. Which I can totally understand, you know?

Ash sees me watching her and looks at me with raised eyebrows, but just then Mark elbows me.

“Ian, come on,” he says. “We’re leaving now.”

I look up and see my friends gathering their things to go.

“Okay, coming.”

But when I stand up, something feels wrong. I look down to figure out why but I’m already falling forward—and as I stretch out my arms to break my fall, all the slimy remains of my dinner end up on my clothes and face and down my shirt. I feel it all happening in slow motion, but I don’t realize until I’m on the ground looking at my feet:

My shoelaces are tied together.

Cole Harper bursts out laughing, and a bunch of other kids join in too.

And for a second, I see myself like I’m one of them, watching it all happen. My hands, my clothes, everything covered with slime. I’m outside of my own body, looking down on it all. And the next thing I know, there’s a weird whooshing sound all around me—like a toilet flushing—and the dining hall starts to stretch out like gum when you’re peeling it off the bottom of your shoe. Like the whole world is inside a toilet bowl that someone just flushed.

Great.

Here we go again.

Have you ever been sucked into a black hole, Tom? No? Well, they say your whole body gets stretched out toward infinity by its gravity, and then your whole body gets crushed down to a speck.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever, that’s not important. Point is … one second ago I was on the ground in a puddle of slime. Then the dining hall got sucked down a drain, and when the world started to make sense again, I was somewhere else.

The boys’ bathroom, alone in a locked stall.

This used to happen to me a lot when I was younger. I’d give the wrong answer in front of the whole class, or take a kickball to the stomach and fall down, and my head would get really hot and everything would go blurry, like I was about to pass out … and the next thing I knew, I’d be in the boys’ bathroom all by myself, with no memory of how I got there.

I’d just be sitting on top of the toilet, head between my knees. And I could feel the toilet flushing, in the very center of my being. Like, I know that’s weird—but it’s true. I could feel my heart swirling around some cosmic vortex. As if it had gotten sucked right out of my chest and into the porcelain U-bend.

And in my head, the embarrassing thing I did just kept playing on loop. Over and over. The cosmo-flush happened again and again, and there I was: back at the beginning of the nightmare once more.

Time travel isn’t like it is in the movies, Tom. It really sucks.

But eventually the swirling vortex has always slowed down and stopped. And I remind myself it’ll happen again today.

After a million slow-motion replays of the dining hall, the toilet will stop being a time machine and become a toilet again. And the bathroom will just be a bathroom.

And so when it does I do what I have to do: I pull my heart up from the pipes by the arteries—very, very carefully—and Scotch tape it back into place, and I walk out, back to my prison cell full of bullies. Just in time for lights-out.

Our dorm has about a dozen bunk beds, including one that’s got my name on the card at the end. I climb up into it, shucking off my shoes and socks as I go, fumbling my way through the dark.

Devon’s already asleep as I climb above him into my bunk. He doesn’t even twitch, just keeps sleeping soundly, no matter what’s in his way. Why can’t I be like that?

I freeze in place. There’s a hulking shadow in my bed—

“Ian? Get up here!”

“Ash! You freaked me out.”

“I think we should keep watch tonight,” he says.

“I don’t have a watch,” I tell him.

“Ian. I meant that we should stay up and make sure no one tries anything funny while the other guys sleep.”

“Oh,” I say. “Smart plan. I’ll take the first watch.”

“Be strong,” he says and hands me an invisible watch, which I invisibly fasten around my wrist.

Just then a hand shoots up and grabs his ankle from below.

“Don’t slip, Ash,” hisses Cole, walking past like nothing happened.

Ash puffs up his chest a little, showing no fear: Ash knows to never let a bully see that they’re getting to you.

“You have to sleep sometime,” whispers the Stache.

“So do you,” says Ash.

“And there are two of us, and only one of you,” I add.

“Is there only one of me?” says Cole. “Seems like a bit of a, what do you call it … an assumption.”

“Would you all shut up?” that kid with perfect hair and teeth barks at us.

Cole turns on him. “You shut up!” he yells.

Then there’s a shoe flying through the air. It misses me and hits Devon right in the stomach. “Ow!” he grumbles, startling awake. “Who did that?”

The door swings open and the bright hall light spills in.

“Boys!” An angry silhouette stands in the doorway. “You may not talk or be out of your own bed after lights-out.”

I try to peer closer. There’s something about the voice that’s slightly familiar to me. But just as I blink, trying to see who it is, the lights go out again as the door closes with a loud ka-chunk!