Don't Care High Read online

  Rosalie Gladstone was the maker of the campaign’s largest poster, which consisted of no fewer than 208 pieces of construction paper. Naturally, there was no room for it on the already-cluttered walls inside the school, so she displayed it in the parking lot, protecting it from the wind by parking her Volkswagen on it.

  Her effort inspired Dick Oliver to come up with the campaign’s longest poster, which was eighteen inches high and 175 feet long, and used the word “Mike” thirty-five times. Dick strung this outside across the front of the building, where it would ultimately be shredded by the wind.

  There was also a valiant attempt at the most voluminous poster, but the three-dimensional monstrosity collapsed to the floor while its creators were assembling it in the hall of the math wing.

  One afternoon, Peter Eversleigh, while staring at a wall plastered with eight-by-ten glossies of Mike, became overwhelmed with the conceptuality of the situation, and began a rampage through the school halls, yelling at the top of his lungs to anyone who would listen, “Mike Otis is our main dude!” This finally ended on the fourth floor, where Peter collapsed with exhaustion, greatly in need of licorice.

  A political science class burst into a violent shouting match after Dan Wilburforce suddenly blurted out, “How can you sit there and talk about democracy when Mike Otis was booted out of office even though all the students love him?”

  Coincidentally, all the planned repairs to the school were over by that week. Sheldon pounced on this mercilessly.

  “The minute Mike was gone, the school board stopped all its improvements to our school!” he howled at a cheering mob packed into a little-used fourth floor hall. “I think it’s obvious that they got rid of Mike because he was too effective!”

  * * *

  Mike Otis was noticing changes in his life. His photograph was appearing all over the school along with posters and banners that screamed his name. A lesser man would have wondered why; Mike simply accepted it all as one of the things at this school that he didn’t understand.

  When he walked through the halls, students would come up to him, pat him on the back and ask to shake his hand, saying things like, “You’re the greatest, Mike,” and “Hang in there, guy.” Cafeteria lines would melt away so he wouldn’t have to wait, and there were always students offering to carry his tray to a vacant table.

  Once he happened upon one of Sheldon’s rallies, and a few people at the rear recognized him. In an instant, he was swamped by a well-wishing mob, and forced to scribble his name on their countless photos.

  Wayne-o had taken to trying to introduce Mike to all his friends. Mike was finding himself on the receiving end of almost incredible amounts of praise and gratitude.

  “Mike, your courage is an inspiration to us all!” said Shirley LaPaz without reservation.

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Mike in his usual dull tone, since a reply seemed to be called for. “I didn’t do anything” was also Mike’s reply to the group of well-wishers who mobbed his car on several mornings. “I didn’t do anything,” he told Wayne-o honestly on the subject of his fixing of the Don’t Care bathrooms.

  “He didn’t do anything!” shouted Sheldon in a booming voice from his now-customary stage in the cafeteria. “Never before has someone who ‘hasn’t done anything’ done so much!”

  “He’s too modest to talk about his achievements!” hollered Paul to a wildly agreeing crowd.

  “We don’t have to talk about his achievements!” Sheldon added. “We know them! All we have to do is continue our support and triple efforts!”

  “Hooray!” cheered the LaPazes, who were good at triple efforts.

  Peter Eversleigh did his bit by repeatedly offering Mike licorice.

  “No thanks,” Mike would say.

  “Okay, dude. But should you experience the desire for this confection of which we are speaking, my stockpile of sticks is yours.”

  While this new treatment was unusual, it was not particularly uncomfortable, and Mike had no trouble pursuing his daily life. His admirers were enormously considerate of his desire to be alone, seeing him as a man with many burdens who needed time for contemplation. He was also regarded with a certain amount of awe, as many could not begin to imagine the thoughts of this quiet person who had accomplished so much.

  “Give the dude his space,” Peter Eversleigh advised. “A dude such as Mike needs to be given space in which to conceptualize.”

  Mike came to the conclusion that the only explanation for all this was that he was very, very famous. It was just another one of the things at this school that he didn’t understand.

  * * *

  At first, Mr. Gamble decided to ignore the rumblings of discontent about the Mike Otis dismissal. After all, how long could they last? These were Don’t Care students.

  There was great interest among the staff, especially Mr. Morrison, to observe the students in a state in which they were never found before — motivated and united. In fact, the art and shop teachers did not even try to discourage the activities in support of Mike Otis, since the quality of that work showed more life and fire than ever before. The occasional rally in the cafeteria and hall was tolerated so long as general peace was maintained. The original staff consensus was to observe.

  By the end of Mike’s first week out of office, however, the litter problem was becoming critical. All walls and lockers were covered with posters and photographs, including some bizarre creations both inside and outside the school that impeded free movement. Not only was the school an eyesore, but there was even a staff casualty. Mr. Willis slipped on an eight-by-ten glossy and sprained his ankle. Mr. Gamble demanded action, but the staff and Mr. Morrison persuaded him to hold off.

  The next week, Mr. Gamble knew right off the bat that he had made the wrong decision. The litter problem was raging out of control, and paper supplies were dwindling at an astounding rate. Wall space was virtually impossible to find, and signs and photos were beginning to overlap each other. On Wednesday after school, Mr. Gamble cleared the building of all students, and assembled the entire janitorial staff for what Sheldon would later call “the administration flexing its muscles.”

  Sheldon and Paul stood outside the school and, when the dense black smoke started pouring out of the chimney, they knew that the trash burners were working to capacity.

  They met after dinner to plan strategy. At ten o’clock, they took a walk past the school, where the burners were still going. The massive Otis campaign was almost gone by this time, including no fewer than three hundred eight-by-ten glossies of the student body ex-president.

  Paul was feeling like flexing a few muscles of his own. “With the support we’ve got at this point, we could have it all up again by the end of the week!”

  Sheldon shook his head. “Tomorrow, Gamble’s going to cut off the paper supply.”

  Paul stopped in his tracks. “How do you know?”

  Sheldon shrugged. “I would have done it a week ago. He’s also going to close the darkroom, art rooms, and all the shops as soon as class hours are out. And for good measure, I figure he’s going to threaten to suspend anyone who tacks so much as a three-by-five file card to a bulletin board.”

  “How do you know he’s going to do it all at once?” asked Paul.

  “The staff let all this go because they couldn’t believe it would happen at Don’t Care High. That’s why they waited so long before cracking down. But now that it’s stopping, it’s stopping for good.”

  “Don’t tell me we’ve lost, then?”

  “Oh, no,” said Sheldon. “That’s the funny part. In fact, from here on in, we can’t lose.”

  Paul was confused. “How do you figure that?”

  They stopped walking and sat down on a small park bench.

  “Just in case your campaign fever has made you forget,” Sheldon explained, “Mike never ran for president, and after that, he never did a thing for the school. We made all that up, and the big danger was that everyone else would lose interest, a
nd the two of us would be caught standing there holding up the flag. But now all twenty-six hundred kids love Mike — with or without us. They’re all on a campaign that Mr. Gamble is shooting down. So now there’s a conflict that we didn’t have to manufacture. All the things that could land us in the toilet are way in the past. Now we’re just two students in a whole united student body that has taken an interest in a school matter — the student body president.”

  “Will Mike ever be president again?”

  “We’ll keep working on it,” Sheldon promised. “But now that the whole school is all for Mike, everything can be on the up-and-up. It’s the plain campaign of a student body that had its president taken away for no reason. We’re the good guys.”

  “So we’re not just making trouble, then?”

  “Of course not! At least, not anymore. Look at Wayne-o. He used to like Mike because he fixed the can. Now he just likes Mike, period. We had to use all that underhanded stuff to achieve a very important and unselfish goal. And now we’ve done it. Don’t Care High cares.”

  Paul slapped his knee suddenly. “Sheldon, you may be a genius just like your mother!”

  Sheldon laughed modestly. “Now that you trust my judgment so much, how are you for some Greek food? I know a place not far from here where the souvlaki melts in your mouth.”

  “And lies like a rock in your stomach,” added Paul feelingly.

  “Don’t be a wet blanket. Zeus himself would come down off Mount Olympus to eat this stuff. Come on. Life is too short not to live a little.”

  9

  May I have your attention, please. Just a few announcements from Mr. Gamble, which he says are important.

  Even though the lighting in the halls is wanting, you have probably noticed that all posters, pictures and other paraphernalia have been removed overnight. From here on, there will be no use of school paper and materials without approval and supervision by staff. School facilities such as the darkroom, art room, metal and print shops are off limits to students outside of class hours. Anyone caught posting a bill without staff approval will be suspended.

  A roar of discontent went up throughout the school.

  If this seems rather severe, may I reassure you that the staff will not take any hostages, and that public hangings will be discouraged. That’s all. Have a good day.

  The students were bitter. After homeroom, they met in large and small groups and exchanged gripes and opinions. Plaintive voices rang in the halls. Some of the groups approached Sheldon and Paul with thoughts of revolution.

  “Calm down,” said Sheldon soothingly. “We’re on the side of what’s right and good. We can’t lose. But let’s not do anything stupid. Mike doesn’t want that.”

  Despite Sheldon’s calm confidence, Paul was not satisfied with the new situation. Mike was still out of office, and the idea of doing nothing rankled. He went through the day constantly expecting Sheldon to announce a massive plan of attack to reinstate Mike, but Sheldon seemed quite happy to let the matter simmer.

  After school, Paul was forced to turn his mind to other problems, for today he was scheduled for his first New York haircut. His appointment had been made by Auntie Nancy personally, so the warning bells were ringing loud and clear in Paul’s head as he walked into Edmondo’s Creations.

  Auntie Nancy had arranged for Paul to have Edmondo himself. How can she stand to be so good to me? he thought, as Edmondo ran his fingers through Paul’s hair experimentally, sizing up the ambience of the cut that was forthcoming.

  “Just a normal trim, please,” said Paul nervously.

  “Ah, normal. What is normal? If you will just allow me to study your face for a moment, I shall assess the balance and composition. There is only one correct affectation to every visage, only one style that truly is, as you say, normal.”

  Paul shut his mouth and eyes, determined to endure, while Edmondo went to work on him, clipping artfully and humming arias from The Barber of Seville. When it was all over, Paul allowed himself to look at the man he had become. He stifled a cry of shock. His neat wavy brown locks had become a halo of tight, riotous ringlets that framed his face like a bonnet.

  Paul paid his staggering bill, left a large tip because Auntie Nancy had told him to, and escaped to the street. There he found his reflection in a store window and tried to smooth down his curls with frantic hands. Nothing helped. Edmondo was a top-notch barber. He had cut so well that the only way to deprogram this hair would be to attend to each curl individually. He finally had to settle for a bit of a flat-top with stick-out bangs — all rather messy, but at least it looked sort of like Paul Abrams. Confidence somewhat restored, he started out for the subway and home.

  He was planning sarcastic comments to fire at his mother when he heard a cry of pain, and Edmondo appeared out of nowhere, scooped him up off the sidewalk, and hustled him back inside into the chair, displacing another customer with, “I’m sorry, sir! You’ll have to wait! This is an emergency!” He turned to Paul, his voice thick with agitation. “What happened to your hair?”

  “It was… uh… windy,” explained Paul, despising himself.

  “No, no, no!” cried Edmondo as he set about restoring his desecrated creation to its former glory. This time he sprayed each ringlet with a generous shot of hair spray before sending Paul on his way. “Be careful!”

  Paul knew care wasn’t necessary. You couldn’t have moved this hairdo with a bulldozer.

  As he headed for the subway, he realized that he was walking past the parking garage into which Mike Otis had disappeared the day he and Sheldon had followed him. It was a bit of a jolt to his system, as the mad pace of recent events had caused him to put the mystery of Mike out of mind. He quickened his step and then stopped short. There was a sign on the entrance that he and Sheldon had missed the first time around, probably because of the layers of dirt that covered it. It read:

  RESIDENTIAL PARKING:

  ENTER HERE AND DRIVE THROUGH INNER GATE.

  His heart began to pound. An inner gate! That had to explain Mike’s disappearance! Forgetting his haircut, he rushed right over to Sheldon’s house.

  Sheldon opened the door, took one look at him, and collapsed into laughter.

  Mrs. Pryor, the genius, appeared in the hallway. “Shelly, is that any way to treat a friend? You must be Paul. Hello, I’m Sheldon’s mother.”

  “He looks like Little Orphan Annie!” Sheldon gasped, holding onto a wall for support.

  Paul felt himself turning mauve.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” interrupted his sister, Jodi. “I think it looks fine.”

  Paul was also introduced to Sheldon’s little brother, Harvey, who thought hair was unimportant, and Sheldon’s father, who sat at the dining room table examining coloured boarding passes with tweezers and magnifying glass.

  “This is Sheldon’s friend Paul,” said Jodi.

  “Hi, Paul. Flown anywhere lately?”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” said Sheldon finally. “Flash Flood’s doing one of his big retrospectives today. We can’t miss it.”

  Once in Sheldon’s room, Paul excitedly told of his findings. “This has got to be it, Shel. We staked out the only two doors to the garage, but this inner gate must lead to another parking area with other doors and probably elevators right into the neighboring apartment buildings. Mike must live in one of those buildings.”

  Sheldon grinned broadly. “Neat bit of detective work, Ambition. But tomorrow the real investigation starts. We’re going to find out about Mike’s secret life. Are you up to it?”

  “Of course I’m up to it,” said Paul. Which was exactly what Steve would have said.

  * * *

  The next day right after school, Sheldon and Paul staked out the parking garage, hiding behind a small Buick just inside the main entrance. By this time, Paul’s bravado had mellowed.

  “You know, Shel, if this is all on the up-and-up, why are we hiding? People who are on the up-and-up shouldn’t have to hide.”
<
br />   “Take my word for it, Ambition, this is the best approach. We have here a guy who gives a phony address and telephone number to the school. I don’t like it any more than you do, but finding him out calls for a little espionage.”

  “Don’t give me that, Sheldon. You love this. You’re having the time of your life.”

  Sheldon favoured him with a crooked grin. “It shows, does it?”

  At that moment, the light from the street was blotted out as a large vehicle entered the garage.

  “This is it!” exclaimed Sheldon.

  The two watched as the black behemoth whispered by their position and headed deeper into the garage. They followed, keeping low and in the shadows as Mike drove up to a metal barrier, inserted his key in a switch on the wall and waited as the gate began to lift. He drove through, and the grill started to descend. Sheldon and Paul made a mad dash, diving under the gate just in time. They hid behind a post, catching their breath, as Mike parked his car and headed for a bank of elevators. When the elevator had borne Mike away, they rushed over and checked the indicator.

  “He got off at seven,” Sheldon breathed triumphantly. “Now we check out the lobby.”

  The mailboxes were in a remote corner of the main floor. They examined the 7’s and, sure enough, box 7E bore the single word Otis.

  “Now what?” asked Paul. “Surely we’re not going to ride up there and knock on his door.”

  “Close,” said Sheldon. “We’re going to get on the fire escape and look in his window.”

  Paul was aghast. “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard!”

  “Well, do you want to buzz him? I’ll let you explain what we’re here for.”

  “Aw, Shel!”

  “Have I mentioned my fear of heights?” said Paul as the two climbed from the roof onto the fire escape. “And how about my mother’s lectures? I’ve already got one coming for the grime I picked up in the garage. I’ll bet there’s an even better one for dashing my brains out on the sidewalk.”