Watchers

Cops and Carnival Freak Trees

Adam saw it first. Neither one of us was expecting to find it, because our minds were too set on the task at hand: skipping out of school without getting caught. Now you have to understand something. Adam and I aren't necessarily good kids, but we definitely aren't bad, either (as much as Adam sometimes wants to convince other people that he is). Actually, we're just a couple of in-betweeners. We're the sort that kind of just fall between the cracks. We aren't good or bad enough to have a lot of attention paid to us. So in all honesty, we really weren't sure what would happen when we skipped. Would they notice we were gone? Would they do anything about it? Would they call my parents or Adam's mom? Who knew. We were interested to find out, and a little nervous also.

We sort of had a good reason to skip. Adam and I had walked to the gas station to get a couple of slurpees that we could eat on our way to school. Not really a healthy choice for breakfast, but we weren't thinking about vitamins or proteins. All we wanted was something cold and liquid. It was early June, and that meant not only that school was almost over, but also that we still had another week of pure, senseless torture to get through. Goldenrock Middle was not up on its technology; there wasn't a drop of air-conditioned atmosphere in it, which was why we sat through sweltering, muggy anguish from mid-May to early June, worrying more about whether we had sweat marks under our armpits in front of girls than what our homework for the day was. Adam and I figured that if we had something icy to cherish on the trek to Goldenrock, we just might make it through another day of classes.

So anyway, our plan to get slurpees didn't really go the way we wanted it to. The lady at the gas station accused Adam of trying to steal something (which he wasn't doing, of course) and decided to yell over to a cop who was parked at the pumps with a cup of something hot in his hands. Then in came the cop, all big and puffed up like he was real important—far too important to drink slurpees from an Amoco when the world had a Starbucks! And he pulled up his belt like he wanted to show off his gun and shifted his shoulders up and down. He looked long and hard at Adam, but not so long and hard at me. Then he chewed his words for a minute and finally said, "This young lady here tells me you boys have been up to some mischief."

Adam and I looked sideways at each other. Was he serious?

"She says you've been pocketing the potato chips."

Gazing down at his baggy, sagging jeans, Adam raised his eyebrows. I wished he'd just keep quiet, even though I knew it would be impossible for him. "No mischief here, sir," he smirked.

The cop looked half-convinced, then turned hard-faced again. "I want you to empty your pockets, son."

"I'm not your son. And don't you think you'd see big bulges in my pockets if there were bags of chips in them?" Adam went on, lifting his long black shirt to show how flat his pockets were.

"Empty them now, you little wisecracker! Don't argue with me."

Wiping some of his hair out of his eyes, Adam sighed noticeably but did as he was told. Onto the counter went fifty-one cents, a rubber band, two safety pins, a patch of the British flag, and a small pile of pocket lint. Nothing to get excited about.

The cop glanced at the stuff and sifted disgustedly through the lint. Then, as if trying to make the point that he was always right despite being wrong just this once, he said, "I'm sure you know what you were trying to pull. I'll have no more of that, you hear? Now clean this mess up and get out of here. Too early for a couple of kids to be wandering through gas stations, anyhow." Without a word, Adam put everything (including the loved lint) back into the depths of his pockets. He elbowed me slightly, and the two of us inched away from the cop and the station worker toward the door. Just as we were bolting out of the place, the cop called, "And get a haircut, kid! You look like a danmed girl!"