Seventeen

The bell rang. I trudged out of health class, dumped my notebook in my locker, and jostled my way through the packed hall toward Art Club.

Art Club, where we still only had nine members, needed five more in a couple of weeks, and I had no idea where to find them.

I rounded the corner to the electives hallway—

—and got smacked in the face by the bulletin board. The former Art Club bulletin board, which was now plastered with girls’ basketball stuff. Team photos. Team rosters. Team articles from the Wheaton Daily Journal. And that twangy bent metal piece? No longer a problem. They’d covered it with a tournament bracket so no one could see it.

And they hadn’t stopped there.

The bulletin board had sort of exploded with construction paper cutouts—Win!, Rebound!, Go, Fighting Aviators!—blanketing the wall around it. They’d even stuck one right over the light switch and the name plaque next to the art room door that said Mrs. Frazee.

 

 

That was just plain rude. How could they think their homemade construction-paper We’re #1 (which was a total lie in the first place) was more important than a safely lit hallway or the name of a highly respected member of our middle school faculty?

It wasn’t just rude. It was selfish. It was snotty. It was—it was—wrong.

I glanced around. Made sure nobody was watching.

Then slid my fingers under the cutout and popped the tape loose.

I stood there for a minute, paper basketball in my hand, trying not to look like a middle school criminal. I sidled down the hall, found an empty spot on the other side of the bulletin board, and casually pasted the cutout back up.

I stepped back to make sure it looked like it was supposed to be there.

And standing there, gazing at the cutouts and the pictures, I think I actually smiled. The Kaleys would probably screech and rip their whole bulletin board down if they knew this, but they’d just given me an idea.

A great idea.

A genius idea.

An idea that would get us twelve players and two to spare.

 

When I got home to the Batcave (a.k.a. my bedroom) I unzipped my backpack and slid out the fresh new stack of Bristol board I’d gotten from Mrs. Frazee’s Cabinet of Wonders (a.k.a. the art supply closet).

I’d left the Batcave door open, and the blare of the cartoon channel drifted in from the living room.

“Beech?” I hollered.

No reason he couldn’t hang out in the Batcave and annoy me for a while if he wanted. I was feeling pumped enough that I could take it.

“Beech?”

No answer. Which I pretty much expected. With the Batmobile blasting through our TV set at approximately ten million decibels, he couldn’t hear me even if he wanted to.

And these days, it seemed he didn’t much want to.

I swung back around to my desk. Art Club needed members. Members with stamina. Members with agility and accurate throwing arms. Members who would fearlessly enter a dodgeball tournament . . . and win. Members who could beat Wesley Banks and his smirky, smarmy smile.

And I was going to find those members.

Yeah. I know. I’d already given it my best shot, and we saw how that turned out. But this was different. This was something I was actually good at. Something I could do.

Something I was born to do.

I sharpened my non-repro blue pencil to a crisp point and started to draw.