Wickedpedia Page 11

  “Say what,” Josh repeated. This time it wasn’t a question.

  “It’s none of your business.” The statement hadn’t come from Cole.

  It came from Winnie.

  Josh was as surprised as Cole, and stood there for a moment wearing the stupid expression of a king unfamiliar to dissent.

  “What?”

  “I said it’s none of your business,” she said, adding with emphasis, “it’s between Cole and me.” She turned back to Cole, as if to continue their conversation.

  Josh was snubbed.

  The sensation was discombobulating. Cole felt like he’d driven over an unexpected rise and been drawn out of his seat and made suddenly, briefly weightless. Josh was even more disoriented. His jaw seemed to come unhinged and fall agape as he worked out what to say in response.

  The bell rang. Gavin scooted inside just before the sub closed the door.

  “Everyone, please take your seats. The principal will be along any minute now to speak to you all.” Cole’s classmates shuffled to their desks. Josh didn’t move from Winnie’s side, and so neither did Cole.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Josh whispered to Winnie in a plaintive, friendless voice. “Meet me at my car and we’ll go somewhere. We’ll talk.”

  The sub verged on Drick’s desk, moving scrap paper from one side to the other. “Everyone?”

  Winnie faced Josh. “She wants you to sit down.”

  “Gentlemen, we’re about to start.”

  Josh touched Winnie’s arm. “That’s okay. We’re not staying.”

  A current raced through the classroom, eddying amongst the students. “I’m not going anywhere,” said Winnie. “Especially not with you.”

  Cole’s classmates were looking up from their books, giving up the pretense that they were not, in fact, hanging on every word. Josh hooked his fingers under Winnie’s elbow.

  “It’ll be okay. I promise. Just come with me.”

  What happened next became the stuff of legend. Cole would remember none of it. That can happen when you get a concussion, which is what Cole got. Accounts of the events that unfolded varied sensationally by the IQ and excitability of the witness, but a more-or-less reliable narrative emerged and was recorded for posterity by the Muckraker. Lila made quick work of the story. The SHS student body got the news in a mass text.

  * * *

  … NEWS FLASH … Cole Redeker defends honor of Winnie Hoffman from rumored serial killer Josh Truffle …

  A free-for-all ensued today in the honors history class of the late teacher Arnold Drick when disgraced former soccer star/knuckle dragger Josh Truffle attempted to spirit Winnie Hoffman from school against her will. Standing in the way was none other than Cole Redeker, better known for his biscuits than acts of bravery.

  This latest episode can only serve to further damage Truffle’s once-golden reputation, already marred by a violent confrontation with his formerly animate best friend, Scott Dare, as well as a threat of bodily harm to the notorious Mr. Drick. According to witnesses on the scene, Truffle entered the history class shortly before the beginning of seventh period and approached the desk of Hoffman, his estranged girlfriend. He found Hoffman already deep in conversation with Redeker — the ex-boyfriend she’d dumped in order to date Truffle — and flew into a rage.

  “It had to be, like, the biggest thing to hit history since I don’t know what,” commented the contextually challenged senior Katrina van der Smeenk. Visibly shaken by the ruckus, van der Smeenk claims Truffle demanded Hoffman go with her. “She started screaming at him, ‘Eff you, eff you, why would I go anywhere with a murderer?’ It got crazy after that.”

  Other witnesses dispute van der Smeenk’s recollection, but all agree that a distraught Truffle pleaded with Hoffman to leave class with him, despite her continued refusals.

  That’s when Redeker stepped in.

  “Cole wouldn’t stand for it,” said Redeker’s sidekick, Gavin Peters. “You don’t mess with the lesser sex in his presence. He’s old-school!” Peters says Redeker intervened to prevent Truffle’s manhandling of Hoffman. “He told Josh, ‘Hands off the lady.’ And Josh was all, ‘What if I don’t, brah?!’ And Cole rolled up his sleeves and said, ‘I’m not your brah, son,’ ” (Editor’s note: Emphasis is Peters’s).

  Redeker then endeavored to release Hoffman from Truffle’s grip, resulting in much adolescent pushing and shoving. Substitute teacher Mrs. Millicent Purdue fluttered around the fray but was unable to bring the altercation to a halt, and departed to seek help as punches were finally thrown, which culminated in Redeker taking a right hook to the head and dropping to the floor, out cold.

  By the time Principal Trusk arrived on the scene, Truffle had departed, though not with Hoffman. She stayed at Cole’s side as the school nurse arrived and removed him to her office for care and observation.

  Truffle was seen tearing out of the SHS student parking lot in his BMW. It is believed he is wanted for questioning by the police.

  His whereabouts are unknown.

  Cole awoke for the second time in twelve hours, but for the first time ever in the nurse’s office. The light above his curtained-off section of the exam room was dimmed, but there was enough fluorescent spillage from the surrounding beds that he could clearly make out an eye chart and a poster advertising the benefits of hooking up.

  Something about that didn’t seem right.

  His head felt airy, as if everything inside had settled to the bottom of his skull, like the contents of a box of cereal left too long on a store shelf. He tried to sit up, but this morning’s breakfast gushed discontentedly in his stomach, so he hiked back onto his elbows instead.

  “You’re up.”

  Cole’s head flopped to the other side. A girl sat in a chair beside him. She had a lot of hair. He knew her. He knew her very well. Or used to. Or never did.

  “Whitney. Hi.”

  The girl in the chair with the stare-worthy hair smiled. “No. Not Whitney. Winnie.”

  “Right,” said Cole. “Whitney.” No, not right. “I mean, Whitney.”

  Everything was coming out wrong.

  “Here.” She stood up and rushed to his side. “Put your head back down,” she said, helping him. She was his nurse, but not the nurse.

  Cole closed his eyes. “It hurts to think.”

  “Then don’t try so hard. A doctor is supposed to come to check you out but I heard the nurse say they think you got a concussion. If things are muddy, that’s why.”

  “How’d I get a concussion?”

  “How much do you remember?”

  The sound of his heart caving in on itself when she dumped him came to mind. Like it was yesterday.

  “Class?” he asked.

  “Do you remember Josh?”

  “As a concept? A person? Or an event?”

  “Sounds like you’re already bouncing back,” she said, redistributing the bangs that fell across his forehead. “He hit you pretty hard. Do you remember why? Do you remember getting in his way? Standing up for me?”

  “Vaguely,” he answered, though he had the nagging sense that she hadn’t exactly deserved it.

  “Under normal circumstances that would have pissed me off. I’m quite capable of standing up for myself. But I’m making an exception in your case. Josh actually tried to drag me out like I was his property. Before he took off for parts unknown.”

  There was something he had to tell her about Josh. He wasn’t sure what.

  “But then you were there.”

  It had to do with Cole.

  “Standing between us.”

  Something Cole did.

  “I always knew you cared.”

  Something bad.

  “But I didn’t know you cared that much.”

  Something she needed to know about.

  “Josh lost it. If Gavin hadn’t pulled him off you, it might have been a real beating. Or worse, maybe. I know he’s been through a lot. And people are saying all kinds of stuff about him. But I
’ve never seen it. I didn’t think he was really capable of those things. It’s obvious now something’s seriously wrong with him. I feel like such an idiot for never catching on. It’s like he has this other side he’s kept stowed away, hidden from everybody. A bad side. Something totally … I don’t know …”

  Cole remembered. “Wicked.”

  Her gaze had drifted with thoughts of Josh. Now it refocused on Cole. “Yeah. I guess. Wicked.”

  Cole pressed his palms against his eyes and rubbed. Could he massage his mind back into coherence? “No. Listen. Wicked. Wickedpedia.”

  She lifted a shoulder and let it drop, blankly. “I don’t understand.”

  “You need to look at it. Wickedpedia.”

  “Is that a parody of the website or something?”

  “No. Not parity.” Parody! Stupid tongue! “The real site. You need to read it. Your page.”

  “I don’t have a Wikipedia page.”

  “You do now. You need to read it. You need to know. And be ready. In case Josh comes around. Whatever you do, don’t let him near you.”

  “Believe me, I won’t. I broke up with him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Josh anymore.”

  “Me neither,” said Winnie. “I just want to kiss you.”

  She leaned down. Her hair poured over her shoulder and into his mouth. It smelled of eucalyptus and tasted of carcinogen. Cole hacked up the bulk of it and picked out the rest.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You’d think I’d have this figured out by now.” She moved in for a second take.

  But instead of welcoming her kiss, this time Cole turned away from it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Yeah, Cole. What’s wrong?

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” he said. “About us.”

  “Sure. We can talk.” She said it with a look that would have been more at home out to dinner, when presented with an entrée she had not ordered and did not want. “I just thought a kiss would say a lot more with a lot less.”

  “That would kind of be, like, glossing over a lot of stuff, wouldn’t it?” A voice inside Cole shrieked, Gloss, you fool, gloss! This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it? The easy restoration of your couple status and the free kisses that accompany it!

  “Like what?” she asked.

  Cole told the voice to zip it. “Like … why you dumped me … and why you started going out with Josh two minutes later.”

  “God.” She sat back down. “You really want to get into that?”

  Did he? Or was this the concussion talking? Asking a person who hurt you why they hurt you isn’t like asking them to point you toward the can. And it isn’t like they make it out to be in the movies, or on TV. It may come from a place of anger and sadness, but mostly it’s about humiliation. To ask a person what you did to deserve their contempt is to assume that you may have deserved their contempt, Cole thought. It’s to assume that you may deserve it again. Cole had to know. He had to hear her explain herself before he could decide whether she’d ever kiss him again. He had to know if she could hurt him again the same way she’d hurt him before.

  “Tell me why you did it,” he asked.

  She bit the inside of her mouth and said nothing. So Cole said something instead, and with each word he spent a little more of the meager self-respect he’d scraped together since she’d dropped him for Josh.

  “Did you just not like me enough anymore? Was it because I’m not hot enough? Did I do something? What did I do wrong?”

  Winnie looked up at the ceiling. Then down at the floor, like she was scrounging for an answer. But Cole knew Winnie always had an answer for everything. If she couldn’t speak now, it was because she didn’t want to say it. Because she didn’t want to look bad. Because she needed him now and couldn’t afford to lose him.

  A third voice broke the surface from behind the curtain. “The same thing you’re doing right now, Cola. It’s unbecoming, the way you throw yourself at her feet. She’s not a goddess to be worshipped. She’s a girl. And if the gossip I’ve heard is right, a pretty faithless one. If you don’t act like her equal, she’ll never treat you like it.”

  Winnie flung open the curtain. Lying on the next bed was Chetley. He was curled comfily on his side, tuned into their personal business like they were his private soap opera. Except talking to the characters on a TV show never affected the plot. Chetley had been there the whole time, listening in. And with a few choice words he’d altered their course.

  “You were listening to us?” she shrieked.

  “It’s the only entertainment around.” Chetley yawned.

  “What are you doing in here?” Cole asked.

  The nurse bustled in and supplied an answer. “He’s gathering his wits. Aren’t you, Mr. Chetley,” she said with a rude pop, the smack of latex on skin. “Came in to discuss your leave of absence with the principal and broke down into a blubbery mess, didn’t you? Right there in the teachers’ lounge with the decaf and day-old Danish.”

  Chetley turned away and drew his knees to his chest.

  Clearly school nurses weren’t bound to the same rules of patient confidentiality as other medical professionals.

  The nurse pointed at Winnie. “You. Out.”

  “We need to finish talking,” Winnie told the nurse.

  “He needs to rest. The doctor is on his way.”

  “FaceTime later?” she asked Cole.

  Winnie let the door draw to a close behind her without an answer. A brief quiet fell over the room before the sound of Chetley’s paper sheet quibbling with his shifting weight. Cole stared at the blue-green curtain between them for a long time and wondered if Chetley was staring back.

  Yup. Alone in the room with a former murder suspect. Nothing school security should be concerned about.

  “Gavin and I have this disagreement,” Cole said to the curtain. “He thinks the staff here is all wrapped up in what goes on among the students. I say we’d have to be supremely self-absorbed to believe we’re of any interest to you. It’s not like you all don’t have lives of your own.”

  “You know something? Your friend Gavin is a smart guy. You should really give him more credit. Kid’s going places.”

  Cole stared. The curtain revealed nothing.

  “That’s pretty sad,” Cole ventured.

  “Gotta get your kicks somehow.”

  “So you get yours from students?” Cole asked. He thought of something else. “And other teachers?”

  The curtain was unmoved.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Cole was taught to respect his elders, teachers especially. Chetley wasn’t much of a teacher, but he was still an elder. Barely. Cole figured they were more or less equals. “I mean your colleague. Mr. Drick.”

  Nothing from the curtain.

  “The guy who was stabbed to death?”

  Nothing at first. Then Chetley squeezed out, “I know who you mean.” He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “I had his blood on my hands.”

  “I remember,” said Cole. “I also remember the police. They took you away in cuffs. And now you’re here.”

  The curtain undulated, like Chetley had drawn a finger across it.

  “Because they realized they had the wrong guy. Josh is the one they want. He killed Scott for taking his spot on the team. He killed Drick for keeping him off it. Poor guy seems to overreact when things don’t go his way. He’s not likely to be feel too great about his girlfriend dumping him.” The curtain’s movement came to a stop. “Or the guy she dumped him for.”

  Cole didn’t need Chetley to tell him that. He just needed Chetley to tell him one thing.

  “What were you doing there? Why were you in the history department’s offices?”

  Chetley didn’t say anything. The silence went on so long that Cole thought he’d fallen asleep. Cole was on the edge of a doze, himself, when Chetley’s voice softly peeked under the curtain.

  “I was there because this is wher
e I work, Cole. I was working. Why were you there?”

  “I go to class here, Mr. Chetley. Mr. Drick was my teacher. I was going to see my teacher.”

  “So early? With Gavin?”

  “We needed to talk about an assignment.”

  “Huh,” Chetley said. “I suppose that makes sense.” His calculated tone told Cole he had a more interesting idea. “More sense than anything to do with his Wikipedia page. Right?”

  Cole grabbed the bed for dear life, the paper sheet stiff under his fingers. Where was the nurse? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe you know it better by ‘Wickedpedia.’ That’s what you called it just now when you spoke to Winnie, right? When you told her to check it out? Her own page?”

  “I think you misheard me. That can happen sometimes when you eavesdrop on people.”

  “Mr. Drick has a page. It was there on his computer screen when I found him. It’s not every day that a high school history teacher rates his own Internet reference. But then, there’s a Wikipedia page on the Pig Olympics, so why not Arnold Drick? There was something weird about this one, though.”

  Now would be a good time for the nurse to return. “You’re telling me you found a guy dead in this school and you stopped to read his Wikipedia page?”

  There was an abrupt crash from beyond the curtain, the brittle crunch of the paper on Chetley’s bed. Cole saw his feet touch the floor. “The weird thing about this one was that it described his death to a tee. Don’t you think that’s weird, Cole? It’s like someone knew how Mr. Drick was going to die before he died. Like they planned it and advertised it for everyone to see … if anyone cared to look.”

  Cole couldn’t breathe. Does a concussion do that to you? Or massive guilt? “Yeah, that sounds weird, all right. But like I said, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You sure, Cole? You haven’t you been paging through Wikipedia? Didn’t find some other articles you’d like to talk about? Did Scott have a page like Mr. Drick’s? Does Winnie?”

  The blue-green curtain vibrated, sure to come down at any moment. Chetley would be standing there on the other side, a tie loose around his neck, hands ready to call the cops or do something much worse.