WARS SHOULD TEACH YOU THINGS. THOUGH JUDGING BY HOW many humans have had, we must be terrible students.
Not me, though. I learned more in the two weeks following that first posted note than I did in the two years of middle school leading up to it.
Like you should maybe put your dirty laundry in a basket, because you never know when a girl’s going to come along and see your underwear lying in the middle of your floor. And that there are better ways to let your emperor know he’s being a jerk than stabbing him twenty-three times. And that people who get embarrassed by other people who laugh or sing too loud just don’t have the guts to laugh and sing out loud themselves.
And you can’t have it both ways. The road forks sometimes and you have to choose. Just pick the path that looks the least perilous and watch out for the trees on your way down.
And you can’t be friends with everyone, and even the friends you do make won’t always last forever, which royally sucks, but as my mom would say, that’s life.
And finally, if you can’t say anything nice, like, not a single freaking thing, then maybe you should keep your big trap shut.
But if you do have something nice to say, and you feel a little awkward saying it, you can always write a note.
There were a lot of changes after Wolf left.
For starters there was the new policy on phones. Too many complaints flooding in from parents and students both, so the administration decided it was a fight that just wasn’t worth winning anymore. The new policy stated that students could bring their phones into school but had to keep them in their lockers—they still weren’t allowed in class. That didn’t always work, of course, but for the most part the students followed along, happy for a compromise, and the teachers looked the other way, provided you weren’t sucked into the screen when you were supposed to be turned on to linear equations.
I still didn’t have a phone, so it didn’t make a bit of difference to me one way or another.
The phone policy wasn’t the only schoolwide change, though. As soon as Wolf transferred, the Big Ham promised to start a new program to help combat bullying and discrimination in school. I figured that just meant adding more brochures to the rack in the counselor’s office, but Mr. Sword volunteered to be the program adviser, so maybe not. I told him I’d help however I could. He told me that twenty other students had already said the same thing.
Post-it notes remained banned on school grounds. You could still find them sometimes, attached to someone’s binder or stuck to the side of the toilet in the boys’ room. I’m sure a few were still traded under the table, passed in secret exchanges in the halls, but for the most part you could tell they were done, especially since students could go back to texting each other between classes. The Sticky Note War, as it came to be called, ended the day we all used them to cover Wolf’s locker.
It’s not covered anymore. Now it’s just the newest-looking locker in the school, sticking out from all the rest.
Don’t get me wrong; the fighting wasn’t over. The nudging and needling, the dirty looks and side-slung insults and behind-the-back tittering, that still happened, though I’d like to think there was less of it than before. You couldn’t go a day without hearing someone say, “Not cool, man,” in response to an idiotic remark. Jason Baker got an especially cold shoulder from most of the student body—that is, once he returned from his three-day suspension. He and Cameron Cole started skipping school a lot. I didn’t miss them.
Ask most of the students about it and they’ll tell you that the whole Post-it note thing was just a fad. They won’t remember half the things they wrote, though they probably remember everything that was written about them. They certainly couldn’t tell you who started it. Ashley R. probably. Or somebody on the basketball team.
Just don’t ask Deedee.
He’ll tell you he personally instigated World War Three.
We were a triangle now. At least at lunch.
The week after he emptied his locker, Wolf transferred to St. Simon’s, the private K–12 school that was probably more than his parents could afford but was “worth it in the long run.” It was Wolf’s call—his parents ultimately left the decision up to him, and he didn’t ask to borrow Deedee’s dice to make it. I think he’d been wanting to go for a while. He just needed a nudge.
On paper, at least, it looked like an easy decision. St. Simon’s had a 97 percent college admittance rate, but that wasn’t why he wanted to go. They also had an excellent music program, with a jazz band and orchestra and everything. They were just as eager to have Wolf join them as he was to go there, apparently. Probably more so. After all, there were a few good things Wolf was leaving behind.
I started sitting with Sean Forsett on the bus, the kid with the crazy curly hair. His stop was before mine in the mornings, so he saved me a seat. In all honesty it was more like a third of a seat, but that was all right. Turns out Sean was a writer too, short stories, mostly in the fantasy genre. He let me read a few and I had to admit they were pretty good. I mean, Sean was no George R. R. Martin, but I could see the potential. (Deedee had lent me Game of Thrones. I kept it hidden under my bed next to my poems. He was right. It was thoroughly educational.) After I read his first story I asked Sean if he ever played Dungeons & Dragons. He looked at me like I was nuts.
“To each their own,” I told him.
We still played. Wolf, Deedee, Rose, and me. Just about every weekend. And even after everything that happened, Deedee still kept his ten-sided die in his pocket and used it to calculate the odds that somebody would trip in the cafeteria and bury their face into their spaghetti. But he also insisted I go with him to the restroom every time. And that Rose guard the door. We always went right before lunch, which was still the best period of the day, even though there were only three of us now. Bench still sat with his football buddies. Occasionally he’d look over at our table and wave. If I noticed I made sure to wave back.
The third day without Wolf I got my food and sat between Deedee and Rose. We had plenty of room to stretch out, but we tended to scrunch together anyway, taking up only half the table.
“Did you talk to Wolf last night?” I asked. “Find out how his first day at Saint Stuffy’s went?”
Rose nodded, taking a bite of her peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, prime mouth-roof-spackling material. “Yeah,” she said through a mash of PBB, “he said it was all right. They have uniforms, apparently. And three times as much homework. And everyone knows everyone else, so it’s pretty obvious when you come in right in the middle of things.”
Rose would know. She was no stranger to starting over. “Did he make any new friends?”
“It’s only been one day, Frost,” Rose said. “But yeah. He said he met some nice people.”
“That’s good,” I said. And I meant it, though I felt an ache. It wasn’t jealousy, exactly, though that was part of it, having to share. I guess I wasn’t sure I wanted Wolf to have a whole new set of friends yet. I didn’t want him to forget about us. But I understood. You find your people. I wondered what they would call him. Maybe he’d try to pull off Amadeus this time. Or maybe he would just be Morgan. With us he would always be Wolf.
Rose punched my shoulder. Apparently I’d been staring off into space.
“Earth to Snowman. Come in, Snowman. Look, I made you something.”
She handed over a fish folded from an old math quiz that she’d aced. She was incredibly smart, Rose Holland. A total nerd. Pure tapioca. And she ate deadly, tree-studded kamikaze hills for breakfast. She was frankly kind of awesome. And I was a little surprised she still bothered to hang out with us.
“What is it this time?” I asked, taking the paper fish from her. Knowing Rose, it could be anything.
She shrugged.
“That’s the best part,” she said, smiling.
“Hey, we’re still on for this weekend, right?” Deedee asked. “I mean, I’ve got all new maps and everything.”
“Absolutely,” Rose said. Then she pointed to his tray and asked if she could have the rest of his pudding.
There’d been a rebellion.
At least that’s how Deedee put it. Of course he was prone to exaggeration, but in this case we cut him some slack. He was the master, after all. He’d done all the prep work. We were just along for the ride.
“The goblins are revolting,” he said in a comically deep voice that wasn’t supposed to be funny at all. “They have risen up against their masters and are now planning a takeover of the entire kingdom, the world of men”—he looked across the table—“and women included.”
“¡Viva la revolución!” I said, refusing to pass up a chance to tease the dungeon master about his limited Spanish.
“Charlene doesn’t do goblins,” Rose protested, twisting her little cardboard gnome around and around. We were all sitting at my scratched-up dining room table. Rose looked a little scrunched in one corner but it didn’t seem to bother her. “She considers them beneath her.”
“Swords don’t discriminate,” Deedee told her.
“Mine does,” she said.
“I find that hard to believe,” Wolf said.
Rose looked at Wolf and smiled. She reached for the bowl of chips—sour cream and onion—but he snatched it away from her. “Not until you promise to play fair,” he said. “No making up random powers that you don’t have, and no bullying Deedee into letting you reroll your dice just because you feel like it.”
“You’re such a downer,” Rose teased. “Since when does Wolf Thompson play by the rules?”
“It’s the school uniform,” I said. “Wearing khaki all day makes you tame.”
“Lay off the khaki,” Wolf warned. “I happen to look very good in slacks and polos. Besides. On Fridays we get to wear jeans.”
“You rebel!” Rose snarked. We joked about Wolf’s new, posh private school, but truthfully he seemed happy there and the rest of us were just jealous that it had an open campus and we still had to eat lunch in our obnoxious and odiferous cafeteria.
“Are we going to get started or what?” Deedee was getting impatient.
I nodded and poured us all a round of red cream soda, which had become the only beverage served in taverns across the five realms. Our little table was crowded with all of Deedee’s maps and guides and his towers of dice and the chips and our cups. We’d started switching houses every week and it was my turn to host. Kind of a shame, because Rose had a gigantic basement with an expensive-looking poker table that was perfect for dragon slaying, plus a gargantuan TV and a fridge full of soda in the garage. I lobbied to move D&D night to her house permanently, but she said her parents would never go for it. Her mom wasn’t much of a people person and didn’t like loud noises, and even from all the way in the basement she could hear Deedee’s groans whenever we set one of his minions on fire.
Noise wasn’t an issue with my mother. That’s another thing that made her cool. There were a lot of things, actually. She was in the kitchen only one room away, watching the oven, determined not to burn the homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and singing Janis Joplin so loud I almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring.
“Did you order pizza?” Deedee asked, hopeful.
I shook my head and got out of my seat, the three of them following me to the door, probably because they thought I was lying. Outside the living room window you could see the first Branton snow starting to fall, a crystalline blanket the color and consistency of soft wool. I saw the car parked in our driveway, headlights on, still running. I recognized it instantly and my stomach lurched as I opened the door.
“Hey, Frost.” Bench stood there in his BMS jacket, a cap pulled down to his eyebrows. He had his hands tucked in his pockets. “Hey, guys.”
Deedee said “hi” back. Wolf and Rose waved. I glanced nervously behind me toward the dining room, to see if you could spot the table from the doorway with all the dice and figures spread across it. I wondered who told him we were getting together at my place tonight, but then I saw the look on Deedee’s face and it was obvious. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I know you guys are busy.” Bench scratched his head underneath the rim of his cap; he did that when he was nervous. “I actually just came by to tell you the last football game of the season is next week,” he continued. “We’re only four and six, and I know you’re not really all into it, but Coach says I’ll probably get to start this time. . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s great.”
I meant it. It really was great. Bench wasn’t going to be “Bench” anymore. I’d have to find something else to call him. At least during football season.
“Yeah. So, you know. It’d be kinda cool if you could come.”
He was looking at all of us. Not just me.
“Sure,” I said, though I wasn’t sure at all.
Bench focused on Wolf standing in the doorway behind me. “How’s the new school? Good?”
“Yeah. It’s good,” Wolf said. “Things are all right.”
Bench nodded. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he looked relieved, like that was really the reason he stopped by. To ask that question and get that answer. The rest was just an excuse. He glanced back at his car, where his dad was waiting for him. “Okay then. I guess I’ll see you all around.”
He was halfway down the sidewalk when Rose called out to him. “Bench, hold up.”
She stepped outside, ignoring the snow that slushed beneath her feet, seeping into her purple socks. You could see her cloudy breath and Bench’s meeting in the cold as they faced each other. “I don’t know what you’ve got going on,” she said, “but we haven’t started playing yet. And judging by the number of manuals Deedee brought, it’s going to be epic. . . . That is, if it’s all right with everyone else.” She turned and looked in the doorway.
Deedee and I both looked at Wolf. It was my house. Rose’s offer. Deedee’s game. But we let Wolf make the call. After everything that had happened, it only seemed right.
Wolf shoved his own hands in his pockets, the cold air already pinking up his freckled cheeks.
“I think we can make room,” he said.
And for a moment I pictured it, all five of us, crammed around the table somehow. Laughing and teasing and carrying on, snorting red pop and begging my mother for more cookies.
But I’m a sucker for a good image. I knew Bench’s answer already, even before Rose asked.
“Thanks. Maybe next time.”
Bench smiled, then walked to the edge of the driveway, put his hand on the car door, and stopped. In the amber glow of our porch light he looked older to me. A high school kid already even though high school was still half a year and forever away.
“No matter what happens,” he said, “keep your head up. Keep your eyes forward. . . .”
“And don’t let go,” Rose finished.
Bench nodded and got into his car. His father waved as he pulled away.
The four of us stood in the doorway with Rose at the front of our pack and watched, and I realized that, from here on out, it would always be maybe next time. Maybe we’d all go see him in his last middle school football game. Maybe only some of us would. Maybe just one. Maybe there’d be summer days where we’d happen to meet up at Freedom Park and kick the ball around (his ball this time), or just sit in the grass and talk about nothing in particular—favorite bands, lame movies, the usual. But it would never be just like it was before. Two roads and so on. I couldn’t predict the future any more than Deedee’s dice could.
All I knew for sure was that it was cold outside. And the goblins were coming. And the villagers were counting on a backstabbing thief, a passionate bard, and a ninja warrior princess named Moose to come and save them, which we were going to do whether Charlene the Freakin’ Crazy Sharp Sword That Will Cut Your Head Off If You Make Fun of Her wanted to or not.
And we would easily polish off both bottles of soda and all the chocolate-chip cookies. Then we would squeeze onto the couch afterward with a bag of cheese turds and settle in for a couple more episodes of Dr. Who. Just enough room for the four of us, shoulder to shoulder, packed tighter than the trees on Hirohito Hill, telling each other that everything was going to be all right.
Without even saying a word.