Margo The Mystery Girl

Chapter 8

Margo had left often enough that there weren’t any Find Margo rallies at school or anything, but we all felt her absence. High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship—nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change. Specifically, they get worse.
That morning, I was on time for once and got a ride with Sunny. We found everyone unusually quiet outside the class room. “Dude,” our friend Shubham said with great seriousness.
                            “What?”

“Divyam, Ankit, and Ganesh ran over twelve bikes belonging to freshmen and sophomores.”

“That sucks,” I said, shaking my head.

Our friend Shrey added, “Also, yesterday somebody posted our phone numbers in the boys’ washroom with—well, with dirty stuff.”

I shook my head again, and then joined the silence. We couldn’t turn them in; we’d tried that plenty in middle school, and it inevitably resulted in more punishment. Usually, we’d just have to wait until someone like Margo reminded everyone what immature jackasses they all were.
But Margo had given me a way of starting a counteroffensive. And I was just about to say something when, in my peripheral vision, I saw a large individual running toward us at a full sprint.

He wore a black ski mask and carried a large, complex green water cannon. As he ran past he tagged me on the shoulder and I lost my footing, landing against the cracked concrete on my left side. As he reached the door, he turned back and shouted toward me, “You screw with us and you’re gonna get smackdown.” The voice was  familiar to me, it was Sarthak.
Sunny and another of our friends picked me up. My shoulder hurt, but I didn’t want to rub it. “You okay?” asked the Geek.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I rubbed the shoulder now.
There was a sudden electric shock inside me as I ran and threw the nearby chair to Sarthak. Blood started pouring from his head and he ran and ran so fast crying that everyone was laughing as well as shocked. I smiled because I thought Margo would have done the same thing.

The Geek shook his head. “Someone needs to tell him that while it is possible to get smacked down, and it is also possible to get a smackdown, it is not possible to get ‘smackdown.’” I laughed. Someone nodded toward the parking lot, and I looked up to see two little freshmen guys walking toward us, theirheir T-shirts hanging wet and limp from their narrow frames.

“It was pee!” one of them shouted at us. The other one didn’t say anything; he just held his hands far away from his T-shirt, which only sort of worked. I could see rivulets of liquid snaking from his

sleeve down his arm.

“Was it animal pee or human pee?” someone asked.

“How would I know! What, am I an expert in the study of pee?”

I walked over to the kid. I put my hand on the top of his head, the only place that seemed totally dry. “We’ll fix this,” I said. The second bell rang, and the Geek and I raced to physics class. As I slid into my desk I dinged my arm, and the pain radiated into my shoulder. The Geek tapped his notebook, where he’d circled a note: Shoulder okay?

I wrote on the corner of my notebook: Compared to those freshmen, I spent the morning in a field of rainbows frolicking with puppies.
The day went well except with a talk over Aisha who is Sunny's new girlfriend. She came to apologize as she thought Margo
Is with me. This gave me a concern  because now I was more worried about her.
That whole night I spent checking on Apprentice if I could get anything about Margo but it went in vain. She had not logged into her account from the day she left.