Michael Vey: Prisoner of Cell 25

Chapter 3: The Armpit

Mr. Dallstrom's office is as good a place to begin as any. Or as bad a place. Mr. Dallstrom is the principal of Meridian High School, where I go to school. If you ask me, ninth grade is the armpit of life. And there I was in the very stinkiest part of that armpit-the principal's office. I was sitting in Mr. Dallstrom's office, blinking like crazy.

You could guess that I'm not fond of Mr. Dallstrom, which would be stating the obvious, like saying, "Breathing is important" or "Rice Krispies squares are the greatest food ever invented." No one at Meridian was fond of Mr. Dallstrom except Ms. Duncan, who directed the Glee Club. She had a picture of Mr. Dallstrom on her desk, which she sometimes stared at with soft, googly eyes. Every time Mr. Dallstrom came over the PA system, she would furiously whack her baton on a music stand to quiet us. Then, after he'd said his piece, she would get all red-faced and sweaty, and remind us of how lucky we were to be led through the treacherous wilderness of high school by such a manly and steadfast defender of public education.

Mr. Dallstrom is a bald, thin scarecrow of a man with a poochy stomach. Think of a pregnant Abraham Lincoln with no beard and a yellow toupee instead of a top hat and you get the picture. He also looks like he's a hundred years old. At least.

When I was in fifth grade our teacher told us that "the easiest way to remember the difference between PRINCIPLE (an underlying law or ethic), and PRINCIPAL (the chief administrator of a school), is that the principal is your PAL." Believe me, Mr. Dallstrom did not put the PAL in principal.

It was the second time that month I'd been called to his office for something someone else did to me. Mr. Dallstrom was big on punishing the victim.

"I believe this is the second time you've been in my office this month," Mr. Dallstrom said to me, his eyes half closed. "Is that right, Mr. Vey?"

That was the other thing about Mr. Dallstrom-he liked to ask questions that he already knew the answer to. I was never sure if I was supposed to answer him or not. I mean, he knew the answer, and I knew the answer, so what was the point? Bottom line, it was the second time I'd been locked in my locker by Jack Vranes and his friends that month. This time they put me in upside down and I nearly passed out before the custodian unlocked my locker and dragged me down to Mr. Dallstrom's office.

Jack Vranes was, like, seventeen and still in ninth grade. He'd been held back so many times, he had a driver's license, a car, a mustache, and a tattoo. He sometimes called himself Jackal, which is a pretty accurate description, since both he and the animal prey on smaller mammals. Jack had biceps the size of ripe Florida oranges and wasn't afraid to use them. Actually, he loved to use them. He and his gang, Mitchell and Wade, watched ultimate fighting, and Jack took Brazilian jujitsu lessons at a gym not far from the school. His dream in life was to fight in the Octagon, where he could pound people and get paid for it.

"Is that right?" Dallstrom repeated, still staring at me. I ticked almost a dozen times, then said, "But, sir, it wasn't my fault. They shoved me inside my locker upside down." He wasn't looking very moved by my plight, so I continued. "There were three of them and they're a lot bigger than me. A lot bigger."

My hope for sympathy was met by Mr. Dallstrom's infamous "stare o' death." Really, you'd have to see it to understand. Last quarter, when we were studying Greek mythology and we got to the part about Medusa-a Gorgon woman who could turn people to stone by looking into their eyes-I figured out where Mr. Dallstrom had come from. Maybe it had something to do with my Tourette's, but I blurted out, "That must be Mr. Dallstrom's great-great-great-great- grandmother."

Everyone had laughed. Everyone except for Mr. Dallstrom, who had picked that precise moment to slip into our class. I spent a week in after-school detention, which wasn't all bad because at least I was safe from Jack and his posse, who somehow never got sent to detention no matter how many kids they stuffed into the lunchroom garbage cans or locked in their lockers. Anyway, that had officially put me on Mr. Dallstrom's troublemaker list.