Absent (Katie Williams)

at the bottom of the wall, waiting for its wings to flutter.
    I spend the next day as tiny-boned Heath Mineo. His gossip is of a different sort entirely. Kids sidle up to him, twenties soft in their palms, and murmur drug orders—a series of names and numbers I don’t try to decode. I throw in a skeptical comment about Paige Wheeler’s suicide when I can, but the burners are much too eager to believe it was suicide; they don’t even listen.
    I decide that I’m not too keen on being the school drug dealer. Not after what happened to Brooke. I wait until the guidance office is empty and squeeze the ill-gotten twenties into Mrs. Morello’s canister for harelipped children. I’ve prepared for some resistance from Heath, a hearty shove for giving all his money away, and I’m surprised when there’s nothing, not a stir. Maybe Heath has some ambivalence about his dealing, after all.
    While I’m in the office, I retrieve Heath’s locker combination from the school secretary, who seems unfazed that Heath would have forgotten it. I’ve resolved to find Heath’s stash and flush it,and who cares how he explains that to himself tomorrow? But when I open his locker to look, a note falls at my feet. I stare at the folded square of paper resting on the toe of Heath’s sneaker, then snatch it up and open it with a shiver of premonition.
    It haswith a five written under it.
    I know that code. I know that blocky handwriting. In fact, I’ve received the same note myself.
    So instead of joining the flow of students returning to class, I walk in the opposite direction, toward the forbidden bathroom, where I expect to find Lucas Hayes waiting for me.
    Too bad I get stopped on the way by Principal Bosworth, who, it turns out, knows that Heath has Algebra II this period, located nowhere near the gym. He walks me all the way back to class, where Mrs. Kearny ignores me huffily, like I’ve personally wronged her and will now be punished with the silent treatment. It takes half the hour and repeated pleas before she hands over the hall pass.
    “Two minutes,” she says.
    “Two,” I agree, wrenching the pass from her pincer fingers.
    I run all the way to the other end of the school in a minute flat, and as I run, I think about the note tucked in Heath’s pocket. I think about how everyone else saw Lucas as this perfect specimen: gleaming smile, transcript, and trophies in the case. And I’d seen him that way, too, emphasis on the surface sparkle. Until I’d started to see him as someone else, someone who’d fix my physics project for me, someone nice, someone I might be able to like. But we’d been wrong about Lucas, my classmates and I. Or at least we’d been working with incomplete information. Turns out, Lucas is also the type of guy who has secret meetings with the school drug dealer. Turns out he’s the type of guy who’ll pretend he didn’t know you, even after you’re dead.
    I round the corner and see the bathroom door in front of me. I push through it at a jog and am three steps in before I realize that my steps are splashing. I look down at my feet.
    Water.
    I hadn’t noticed it at first, the shhh! of the faucets running. When I turn the corner, there’s Lucas, standing in front of the overflowing sinks like he’s guarding them from potential harm. The sinks wobble with the shine of water that pours over their sides. This is no simple paper-towel-stuffed drain; this is a full-on flooding.
    “Did you do this?” I ask Lucas.
    His smile is like a fishhook, and his voice has a sharp, sarcastic edge to it. “Nah, I just happened to walk in on it.”
    “Really?”
    “Of course.”
    “We should go,” I say. “The water’s almost out the door.”
    Lucas tilts his head, his hair falling over one eye. “No. Let’s stay.”
    “But they’ll think we did it.” I pause. “They’ll think I did it.”
    “That’s probably true,” Lucas admits, shaking his head. “Karma, man. Sucks when it finally comes around again.”
    “What are you talking about? Why are you acting like this?”
    “Like what?” he says.
    “Are you on something?”
    He laughs at this, a dry, narrow laugh. “Just high on life.”
    “I’m going,” I tell him. “And I think you should, too.”
    “Really, Heath? Is that what you think I should do?”
    “Yeah, it is,” I say. “But stay if you want. I’m going.”
    I’m good as my word. I turn and splash back out of the bathroom and straight into Mrs. Morello and Principal