The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem, Julie Steimle [i can read book club TXT] 📗

eyes were red, and she look like she had been kicking the walls in her anger. Her foot prints were up about as far as she could reach. When she saw us, she gasped under her spell tape and tried to ram those carrying Spastic and I into their chests to make them let us go.

But Col. Jefferson set me gently inside the door as he said to her while fending her off, “Now there, Piranha—that’s what got you brought here in the first place. No violence.”

Muffled curses under her mouth tape answered him. Her hands were free and she was punching him—though not hard enough to make any real impact.  

“That’s not polite,” he said. “I’m trying to help you, you know.”

Piranha swung at him with her fist again. But Col. Jefferson easily dodged and deflected. He caught her and gently pushed her to me. “You two need to talk. White boards are over there.”

White boards… I saw them. It was our only way to communicate as unfortunately, Spastic’s and my mouths were also closed, sealed shut so that we could not call on imps to take revenge—at least, not until we had a thorough talking to by whomever—which is what I thought they were going to do before they dragged us to detention. He and I were both fuming over it. I felt so utterly powerless. It wasn’t fair, especially after all the garbage we already went through. But when Spastic was set into the room, and they shut the door, Piranha grabbed a whiteboard marker and chucked it at me.

I caught it, wishing I could swear at her. Tromping over to the white board, I was about to write. But then I stared at the bare wall. I had had enough of playing things their way—so and wrote on that instead. Stupid people giving me a marker when I was so mad…

I wrote:

 

Piranha, Wispy is safe at the hospital. She is ok.

 

She grabbed the other marker and scrawled:

 

Ok? Ok? I saw you running out of here with her, and you were covered in blood!!!!!!

 

I scrawled back:

 

She is fine now. Good cops are guarding her.

 

There is no such thing as a good cop.

 

I wrote big:

 

TOM BROWN’S BEST FRIEND IS A COP.

 

She glared at it. Then she scrawled:

 

It is Trouble’s fault we are here.

 

I replied:

 

Trouble got Wispy away from Mutton and Thug and Dervish and all those creeps…. WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME WHAT THEY DID TO HER?

 

Piranha dropped her pen. She stared at me as if I had slapped her. She picked up the pen, closed her eyes and scrawled….

 

She was afraid you would not like her.

 

I stared at that. Then I wrote:

 

Why would I not like her?

 

Piranha chucked the pen at my head and grabbed the one from my hand. She threw that one at me also. Then she grabbed another one from the white board. I ducked to get away, hands raised to block her next attack.

But she grabbed my arm and wrote on it.

 

She likes you, you idiot.

 

I stared at the red pen writing on my arm.

I liked her too…. She was a nice halfer. Just like Spastic and Piranha.

Piranha tackled me and drew on my face—first a mustache, the rest I could not see as there was no mirror. Her eyes seemed to be screaming at me. She wrote on my stomach with the black pen which she had grabbed off the floor. It kind of hurt.

 

LIKES you likes you, STUPID. Like a boyfriend.

 

When she climbed off of me, allowing me to read the upside down writing, I stared at it. Wispy liked me? Me? ME?

Seriously, that made no sense. I was… I was nobody.

Seeing my face, Piranha huffed, chucking the pen to the ground. She had clearly given up on me.

But Wispy…. She liked me? Me.

Honestly, I didn’t know what to think. I liked her as a friend… kinda. Honestly, I barely knew her. She was pretty, starved, sweet, and broken. I always felt that. But I never really thought about girls like that. …That’s not to say I thought about boys like that either. I just didn’t think like that at all. I had never thought about romance or relationships or anything. I was just glad to have a friend in Piranha and anyone, really.

But then it hit me. I bet Wispy had thought I liked Piranha like that. That wasn’t exactly a silly guess either because I kind of had a crush on Piranha because she was so brave and daring against Dervish. But… Wispy liked me? My mind was reeling. Wispy honestly could do so much better. I was nothing. I was trash.

“Piranha,” a strange man said as he stepped into the room. His eyes rested on all three of us, especially taking in the writing on me and the walls. He walked in, gesturing to her to approach him—but Piranha hung back, folding her arms. Sighing, he came up and gently reached out to peel off the tape. “I won’t hurt you.”

Huffing, she finally allowed him to remove the tape. Her imps screamed for her to tell them what they can do against Wispy’s attackers. However, the look in her eye said she was waiting to find out what was this man wanted first.

“I’m Agent Stevenson from the CIA and a recruiter for West End Prep.”

Piranha huffed, folding her arms tighter across her chest, leaning back. “So?”

He glanced to me before saying to her, “We believe you are an ideal candidate for West End Prep. And to be frank, we want to train you for work in the CIA.”

She huffed. “Isn’t Tom Brown enough?”

The agent cleared his throat as if he thought Tom Brown was too much. His imps were well in order and silent, though they urged him to curse and say a few choice words about Tom which were not helpful. However, Piranha became intrigued. But then she would. She was mad at Tom for bringing us eastward. She swore his imp name whenever she was angry. No one understood that her cries of Trouble were not some weird imp thing.

“Look, I’m sure you have heard that Tom Brown is waiting for the future day in which he will die blind,” the agent said.

Piranha paled. She hadn’t heard it.

I walked to the wall and wrote on it.

 

I heard about it.

 

She stared at me. “Did Trouble tell you?”

I shook my head then wrote:

 

Some guy named Carlos told me.

 

The CIA agent nodded at me. “Yes. Tom informed us that he knew a kid who could predict a person’s death—and he saw Tom die blind. Tom has been preparing for the day when he will lose his sight. And to be quite frank, he has been a lot of trouble. We are never quite sure where his loyalties lie.”

Piranha huffed, smirking at him. “What makes you think I will be any different?”

To that, he smiled at her. “You are different already. You are an intelligent woman. You have a great deal more self-control than he does. And as far as we know, you are not being regularly whisked away by the Unseelie Court every Halloween.”

We all stared at that.

“So that’s true?” Piranha voiced for all of us, intrigued

He nodded. “Since year one. Every year he gets picked up—during training or while on assignment. We have to expect it now as they refuse to leave him alone. No matter where he is in the world, they hunt him down—and that is incredibly inconvenient for the Company.”

“And you don’t expect them to do that to me?” Piranha asked, her eyes sharp on him.

He shook his head. “Nope. They fixated on him when he was fifteen when he offended Queen Maeve during his first abduction.”

The dude had dared to offend a faerie queen. Man, he had to either be really stupid, or I dunno, freaky brave.

“Then why don’t you just fire him?” Piranha asked, her imps screaming that they were all idiots for keeping Tom on if he was that much trouble. But I also noticed from them that her esteem for Tom rose during this conversation. In fact, I saw that her anger at him this entire time was because she actually liked him. A ripple of jealousy ran through me.

But of course we already knew the answer to Piranha’s question also. We knew why the CIA kept him on from the day he had showed up at the Unseelie Gang’s clubhouse. He was the perfect special agent. Talented. Able to control imps perfectly. He was brilliant. And he knew important people.

“He’s too dangerous to let loose,” the agent replied, however. But his imps shouted, He conspires with werewolves, you lunatics—and worse. They were scared of him being out of control… But I also wondered what was worse, especially according to their point of view. He knew that gang of weirdoes with the swords… and now Eve, the demon surfer of California.

We shared looks.

“If you come with me, you can take the test for the school,” he said.

“And what if I don’t want to go?” Piranha replied, eyeing him over.

I could see the cogs working behind his eyes as he put on a congenial smile. He was a brilliant actor. So convincing. But his imps shouted that she had no choice in the matter. She had been selected out of all of us. She was perfect CIA agent material. But he said, “What choice do you have? Stay here? What kind of future could you possibly have here?”

“My friends are here,” Piranha said without even looking at us.

The agent nodded to himself, though his imps shouted for him to explain that he could do nothing with us. Spastic was too much like Tom. And I was entirely useless in their view. I was just too creepy looking. And Wispy, she would not be able to survive as a CIA agent. She was too fragile. And those words hurt us all—though Spastic was flattered to be described as too much like Tom. But the agent said, “True. But you will have to part ways someday, as you, my dear, graduate first and have to enter real world again. We can give you a secure future. Gulinger Private Academy cannot guarantee such a thing. They can only give you a high school education.”

He then walked to the door, his eyes raking over the writing on the walls again. “Follow me for the test. When you get your score, I’ll give you time to think about it.”

Piranha looked at us hesitantly before actually following him out of the room.

They shut the door, leaving only Spastic and myself alone together. We stared at the closed door for a while. A long while.

She had left us. I could feel it. She was leaving us.

But then Spastic picked up one of the pens from off the floor. I watched him kick off his shoes and tear off his socks. With his toes, he gripped the pen and began to draw on the floor as if there really wasn’t anything else to do.

Sighing, I joined him, kicking off my shoes to draw with my feet—letting my mind wander in our enforced silence. 

My mind wandered as I drew long lines on the smooth tile and filled each drawing them in with the three colors we had. I was losing Piranha. Wispy had nearly died. I was now under accusations—no matter how false—of sexually harassing my classmates of which one teacher at least was part of the conspiracy. It was a dismal place I had landed in.

And my mind wandered more, thinking about the future. If the school wasn’t safe for Wispy and she had to be taken somewhere else, if Piranha left to West End Prep, what was left for me? Honestly, Spastic was so much like Tom Brown that I knew he would survive well enough without me. He was happy with Quinn, and nothing shook him up. But me? What would I do if I was stuck here in this nasty hell without my real friend Piranha? This