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“Me?” Daneca asks, blinking at her like she’s gone crazy.
“When did you feel your amulet break?” Dr. Jonahdab asks. “Are you sure that it broke right at this moment?”
Megan shakes her head. “I don’t know. I just—I grabbed for it and there was only half still on the chain. Then when I moved, the other piece fell onto my desk. It must have been stuck in my blouse.”
Yes, she really says “blouse,” like she’s someone’s grandmother.
“Sometimes stones just break,” says Dr. Jonahdab. “They’re fragile. No one touched you, Megan. Everyone here is wearing gloves.”
“She’s on the video at that worker meeting,” Megan says, pointing to Daneca. “She sits right next to me. It must have been her.”
I expect Daneca to lecture her. I really do. I figure Daneca’s been waiting all the time I’ve known her for a chance to really let some idiot have it, especially after yesterday. Instead she sinks down in her chair, her face going bright red. Tears glisten in her eyes. “I’m not a worker,” she says quietly.
“Then why do you go to those meetings?” one of the other girls asks.
“Heebeegeebies.” Someone fake coughs.
I stare at Daneca, willing her to speak. To tell Megan that a decent person cares about people other than herself. To explain about the plight of workers and put everyone in their place. All the righteous stuff she says to me and Sam. All the stuff she said, even in jail. I open my mouth, but even in my mind the lecture gets garbled. I can’t remember the slogans. I don’t know how to talk about worker rights.
Besides, for some reason, that seems like the last thing Daneca wants me to do.
I turn to Dr. Jonahdab, but she’s glancing between Daneca and Megan, like somehow she’s going to be able to sense the truth if she just watches them a little longer. Something’s got to wake her up. Leaning toward the guy at the desk next to mine—Harvey Silverman—I say, “Hey, what did you get for problem three?” I say it loud enough that my voice carries even to the front of the class.
Daneca turns toward me. She shakes her head narrowly in warning.
Harvey looks down at his paper, and Dr. Jonahdab finally seems to snap out of her trance. “All right, everyone, that is enough talking! We are in the middle of a quiz. Megan, you may bring up your paper and take the rest of the test at my desk. After that we will go to the office together.”
“I can’t concentrate,” Megan says, standing up. “Not while she’s here.”
“Then you can go down to the office now.” Dr. Jonahdab writes something on a piece of paper and rips it off a legal pad. Megan takes her bag and the paper, leaving all her books behind as she walks out.
As soon as the bell rings, Daneca races toward the door, but Dr. Jonahdab calls her back. “Ms. Wasserman, I know they’ll want to talk to you.”
Daneca reaches into her bag. “I’m calling my mother. I’m not—”
“Look, we know that you didn’t do anything wrong—” She cuts herself off when she notices me loitering by the door. “Can I help you, Mr. Sharpe?”
“No,” I say. “I was just—no.”
Daneca gives me a tremulous smile as I go.
On my way to French class, I walk by one of the announcement boards. It’s plastered with a bunch of those public service posters you see in magazines—the kind that say I’D RATHER GO NAKED THAN BE WITHOUT MY GLOVES. Or JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT, DOESN’T MAKE IT OKAY. HIRING CURSE WORKERS IS A CRIME. Or simply NO GLOVE, NO LOVE—except that the faces of models have been replaced with grainy stills of students from the video. Photos that the school secretary is frantically trying to rip down.
By the time I get to my French class, the news of what happened to Megan is all over the school.
“Daneca cursed her with bad luck, so she’d fail the test,” someone says as I pass. “That’s how she keeps up her GPA. She’s probably been doing it to all of us for years.”
“And Ramirez knew about it. That’s why she’s leaving.”
I spin around. “What?”
It turns out the speaker is Courtney Ramos. Her eyes go wide. She was in the middle of applying lip gloss, and the wand hovers in the air, like she’s frozen.
“What did you say?” I shout. People in the hallway turn toward us.
“Ms. Ramirez resigned,” Courtney says. “I heard it when I was in the office waiting for my guidance counselor.”
Ramirez, who let us go to the protest. Who was the only one willing to sponsor HEX, so Daneca could organize the club on campus two years ago. Who doesn’t deserve to get taken down for us. Mr. Knight flashes his class, but he stays. Ramirez goes.
