CHAPTER THREE

We caught up to Parker — sans Kimberly —as he waited for the swim team to cross the main hallway. They hustled by on their way to the showers, sopping towels trailing pool water and a chlorine stench.

I patted my pocket to make sure the earrings were still there. They jangled reassuringly.

"Hey, Melanie," Nate said, hanging back from the swim train.

"Hey," she returned, disinterested. "You have a towel on this time."

"Sorry." Nate grinned like he wasn't sorry in the least. "Let's do it again sometime?"

Melanie shrugged. "Sure. Next time you get puked on, hit me up."

The boy behind him, a sophomore whose name escaped me – Patrick? – pushed him.

"Let's go, dude," Patrick, or Paul, or whatever, said. "Mrs. Olivia will chew me out if I'm late. And she'll do it in French, so I'll have no idea what she's saying!"

With a final shove, Nate and Unnamed Sophomore cleared the hallway, feet streaking the floor.

Parker looked at Melanie, perking up. "Did something happen?"

I thrust Parker's backpack into his hands.

We pushed through more early morning extracurricular clusters on our way to class. Unlike the swim team, the theater crew was never in much of a hurry on their way from morning rehearsal. Today, they were impassable. They shuffled in a tight herd down the hallway, jabbering at one another with costume mustaches. Whenever anyone tried to get past them, they pushed back with a chorus of vaguely British insults.

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We took an alternate route through the art hallway. Mr. Lawson, pursing the 'cool teacher' vibe, had his garage door rolled up. Jazz music poured out, and some of the creative writing students were busily tearing through their work. He ran his classroom aspirationally, as close as he could manage to a smoky, backroom bar where great souls played at poetry. His expression always leaned toward disappointment.

The Advanced Pottery kids were already holed up in their studio. Students in clay-caked smocks ferried projects between the kiln and the glazing tables.

"Hey, detour," Parker announced. "Come see my pottery midterm."

We stepped out of the carpeted hallway onto the tile floor of the pottery classroom. Mrs. Ryan was sitting at her desk with the monitor tilted away, either grading papers or discreetly checking Facebook.

"Good morning, Mrs. Ryan," Parker said, throwing out finger guns. His stick arms poked out of short sleeves.

"Parker," she greeted, looking over her monitor. "Showing off your midterm project?"

"Indeed." He gestured to us, his audience.

"Excellent," she said brightly. "I'll find my earplugs."

Parker retrieved his project from a bursting wire rack of cups and vases and less distinct creations, all in various states of completion. Parker, needless to say, was not an Advanced Pottery student. His misshapen pot looked like an attempted vase with a hole punched through one side. It clearly said "I am just here to pad out my arts requirements."

"We had to make a musical instrument." He held it up. "I call it a Shouting Jar."

"And how does it work?" Melanie asked, looking like she knew exactly how it worked.

Parker held the punched hole up to his face and screamed into it, a loud, forceful, singular vowel of a scream. The other pottery students snickered, but didn't look up. They'd clearly already heard the majesty that was the Shouting Jar.

Melanie and I golf-clapped.

"Beautiful," I said. "You should take that to Mr. Walters' class with us."

"He's already heard it!" Parker said proudly. "He hates it."

Parker put it back on the shelf and waved to Mrs. Ryan on our way out.

"My mom doesn't know how lucky she is," Parker said cheerfully. "It's almost Mother's Day."