The Van Pact

23: Stevie

            "You're right," Mr. Webb capitulated, and shut the back closet's door. "I'll just have to have a chat with Jake after school."

            Jesse sent me and Valerie a knowing smile. Valerie snickered. When Mr. Webb started going over his Power Point slides on the skeletal system, and took Jesse's attention away from us, I felt dizzy and a little jealous and overwhelmingly happy.

            We had a secret world, Jesse, Valerie, and me.

***

            Mr. Webb finally brought up Old Grim Bones after our hour test on Tuesday.

            "This isn't funny," he insisted, but our class would disagree.

            "Do you all want me to teach without a teaching aid?" he crossed his arms. "Because I can't. Would you expect Michelangelo to sculpt without a chisel?"

            It was a very good thing my classmates found Mr. Webb's reaction to Grim Bone's disappearance as ridiculous as I did. My uncontrollable laughter might otherwise be suspicious. Mr. Webb set his head in his hands. He looked like he might have a breakdown. An honors anatomy class could bring him to tears? What sort of hoodrats did he think we were, and how did he manage teaching the other academic levels? They'd roast him on spits. They'd SLAYYY him, alright. Literally. No, not literally, but figuratively. With the negative connotation of the word.

            "Valerie," Mr. Webb finally said, and a thousand bad thoughts ran up my spine. Were we caught? Was he feigning desperation, only to reveal that he knew what we had done? I examined the easy smile on Valerie's face. Surely she was as terrified and as guilty as I was, but there was no outward evidence of that. How does she pull this shit off, every. single. time?

            "Valerie," Mr. Webb repeated. "How am I supposed to teach without Grim?"

            "I don't know," Valerie shrugged. "All I know is that the classroom feels emptier without him."

            Girl's got balls.

            "Tell me how I'm supposed to get through this material," Mr. Webb held up the anatomy textbook by only it's front cover, so that all its pages were splayed open, "without Grim?"

            "Well," Valerie tilted her head, "You could use diagrams, maybe?"

            "I can't scare Stevie with diagrams!" Mr. Webb dropped the textbook onto his desk. The resounding thud made me jump in my seat. "I worked in a hospital lab for ten years and made good money. You know why I left that paycheck to teach?"

            "The summers off?" Valerie pursed her lips.

            "To scare kids like Stevie!" Mr. Webb answered. "That was the most fulfilling part of my career and now it's over." He slumped into the chair behind the front desk. "I don't even care anymore."

            We spent the rest of the period watching Super Troopers clips from YouTube on the projector screen.

***

            "What was that all about?" Jesse asked us as we descended the stairs to the science building's parking lot exit. "Do you think he knows?"

            "Nah," Valerie pulled open the door and we all stepped outside, "I think he just thought I would agree with him. I look like a sympathetic ear." She balanced her chin on one of her fists and cheesed hard at me. Really cute.

            "Cut it out,"  I tapped her wrist. She dropped her hand to her side.

            "Where's Grim now?" Jesse followed us as we started down the sidewalk toward the stadium. He seemed concerned. A few weeks ago, that concern would have surprised me. But now, I knew Jesse well. He was practical. And stable. And yet somehow sensitive. That combination made up for his complete lack of romantic recklessness.

            "Still in Gus," Valerie answered. "I want to get him a girlfriend. Maybe we could hold up a Forever 21 for a mannequin. One with one of those wigs." She waved her hands around her head as if to suggest the wig's dimensions, which, if I interpreted her gesturing correctly, was shoulder length, with blunt-cut bangs on the top. 

            "Maybe you shouldn't keep him in your van?" Jesse stepped in front of us. "I mean, you've been driving him to school with you for what, three days now?"

            "Four," I corrected him. "It's Wednesday."

            "Right," Jesse fixed those steady eyes on me. "You could both get into trouble if somehow Webb found out." He was looking out for us. He was looking out for me. I was weak.

            "You might have a point," Valerie spun her car keys around an index finger, "but what do I do with him? Can't exactly let him chill at home. The 'rents are too nosy for that."

            "Anybody would question why there's an anatomical skeleton in their child's bedroom," I said. "Not really nosy to ask that, dipshit."

            "You don't know," Valerie put up her dukes. "My parents are narcs, man. Stoolpigeons."

            "Don't be ridiculous," I slapped away her left fist.

            "I got an idea," Jesse said, like a well-adjusted person. "Lang wants me to stop in the band room before I leave, so, I'll meet you in the alley in 15?"

***

A/N: Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting! Next update, Friday!