Pressure - By Jeff Strand Page 0,26

can’t prove it, I’m pretty sure that the cafeteria food was made slightly worse on our behalf.

Peter, Jeremy, and I did manage to entertain ourselves by joking about our plight, and we occasionally risked unimaginable punishment by breaking out an unlawful deck of cards like people drinking alcohol during prohibition, but for the most part it was a pretty miserable existence.

Though we were instructed not to interact with him, I’d see Darren each day in the cafeteria and in class. He’d almost always avoid my glance, but every once in a while, when he knew nobody else was watching, he’d smile.

It was the kind of smile that made me think it would be worth getting expelled and going to prison just for the opportunity to nail him to the ground with rusty spikes and punch him in the face over and over until every tooth was shattered.

I hadn’t ever thought that I was capable of hate, real hate, but there it was.

Ten long weeks after the incident, I sat in Mr. Wolfe’s classroom, taking a harder than usual but not unmanageable test. Though it may have created a joyless existence, all of this extra studying did mean that it was pretty hard not to ace a test.

“What is this?” Mr. Wolfe demanded, loud enough to make me flinch.

I looked over at him, as did the other boys in the class. Mr. Wolfe hovered over Peter, holding a piece of paper, looking furious.

“That’s not mine!” Peter insisted.

“It was on the floor in front of your chair. You’re the only one who could’ve used it.”

“But I didn’t know it was there!”

“Stand up,” said Mr. Wolfe. As Peter did so, Mr. Wolfe grabbed his test paper and crumpled it up. “Come outside with me. The rest of you, eyes on your own paper! I mean it!”

Mr. Wolfe led Peter out of the room and shut the door behind them.

I glanced over at Jeremy. He gave me a confused shrug. When I looked over at Darren, he was staring intently at his test, brow furrowed in concentration, cheek clenched as if trying not to laugh.

For what it was worth, Mr. Wolfe gave Peter a chance to prove his innocence. Peter’s answers on the test matched those on the stolen answer key, but of course correct answers were no solid evidence that he’d been cheating. So while Peter sat in an empty classroom by himself, Mr. Wolfe quickly wrote up a new test.

Peter, who was stressed-out, flustered, and terrified, got a C-.

That weekend, we helped him pack his things.

Peter had not officially been kicked out of school, but his parents decided that another approach was needed to straighten their son out. Peter didn’t know where he was headed, but he’d been assured by his angry parents that “the vacation was over.”

“I didn’t cheat,” said Peter as he put his clothes into his suitcase.

“Why would you cheat? We have to study eighty-five hours a day!” Jeremy took Peter’s books off the shelf, slamming each one onto his desk. “Darren did it!”

There was no doubt in my mind that Darren was responsible, but we had no way of proving it, and to even try to bring that idea to anybody’s attention probably would’ve gotten us in still more trouble.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” Peter said. “I probably won’t have any friends where I’m going.”

“Yeah, you will,” I insisted. “You’ll have lots of friends.”

Peter shook his head. “I bet I won’t.” He reached for one of the pushpins on the pug poster, then hesitated. “You guys can keep the poster if you want. If you like it.”

“Okay,” I said. The room wouldn’t be the same without the pug poster. “You need to sign it for us.”

“Sign it?”

“Yeah. Sign ‘Peter was here’ on it. That’d be kind of cool.”

Peter grinned, found a black magic marker, and scrawled his name on the bottom corner of the poster.

“What you should do is carve your name into the wall with a knife,” said Jeremy. “It’s not like you can get into any more trouble.”

“Nah.”

“Then carve your name into Darren’s face with a knife.”

Peter shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right.”

“What do you mean, it wouldn’t be right?”

“It should be your name. It has more letters.”

We all laughed, and then we helped Peter finish packing. His parents picked him up that evening, and I watched through the window as they walked across the front lawn, away from Dorm B and Branford Academy.

Before they were out of sight, Peter’s father smacked him so hard

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