Delaney Blake's Guide to Detention

Step # 6: Realize You Are In Over Your Head

I think I found my reflection

I text Milo under my desk during Algebra. From the back, nobody pay attention to me. Or maybe that's just because nobody expects me to be any good at math. For that matter, nobody expects me to be good at anything else, either.

Milo: oh good

Me: NOT good

Milo: oh

From two rows over, Milo tries to give me sidelong glances while still paying attention. My fingers are not fast enough to type out the kind of problem I am presented with.

There is another one of me. The longer I replay the sighting in the hall, the more sure I am. There is another Delaney and in a single night, it is she who managed to write giant orange letters on my school and got all up in Jesse's business. What next? Do I want to think about it?

Getting back in there. got a detention

I look up in time to see Mr. Tanaka swiveling his gaze toward me and I shove my phone under my thigh. It vibrates and the uncomfortable plastic chair amplifies the buzzing twice as loud and all I can do is hold Mr. Tanaka's gaze. 

What's the worst he can do? Give me another detention? Stack 'em on. I've got nothing better to do.

Mr. Tanaka is the first to give up on our staring contest when I don't move to answer my phone. Milo is pale on the other side of the classroom, like he has given me up to the philistines or whatever.

"Aren't you going to do something about that?" Lena pipes up, looking daggers at me from the next row. If she could literally spit venom at me, she probably would. Clearly, a couple rumors made their way into her tiny, dainty ears. I know they're not true, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't absolutely fill me with delight to think that Lena believes Jesse came back to me after all. She's acting like she wasn't the side chick the whole time. "I'm really distracted by all that buzzing."

Mr. Tanaka looks wearily at me, but moves on. He likes math more than he likes disciplining. Maybe he'll be the next teacher to take up a life of black magic to make high school more bearable.

Milo doesn't dare text me the entire rest of class, only trying to send his telepathic thoughts me way. I receive none, but I I can tell he's trying his damnedest by the bug-eyed way he looks at me from his seat until the bell rings. 

"Whore," Lena mutters under her breath, but intentionally loud enough for me to hear as I walk by her on my way out. It prickles a little. Like, that's the best word the other woman can come up with? It doesn't even make sense. Even if I was guilty of performing desperate post-break up weekday fellatio, would that really make me a whore? Really? How does Lena justify her choice in after-school activities, but not mine?

I float out into the hallway, feeling light-headed. Milo waits anxiously for me right outside the door, clutching his books like they are a wriggling animal that might escape his grasp.

We duck into an alcove, huddling close enough to whisper. It feels like it should be secret, private, but really, what will anyone actually think if they overhear our conversation? There is nobody who will take anything I have to say at face value right now. There is no reason to believe me, of all people.

Well, maybe Tommy H. would believe us. He's still clinging tight to that voodoo doll thing.

"So, where's your reflection gone?" Milo whispers conspiratorially.

"I saw her," I say.

"Her?"

Never in my life did I think I would be referring to my reflection as another entity, independent of me. That's not how reflections are supposed to work. I should be able to exist without my reflection, but not the other way around. She is not supposed to exist without me or without a mirror.

Milo's brow squishes and I wish I could just show him. I wish I had the same kind of solid evidence. It was easy to prove my missing reflection. Milo saw that for himself. Nobody will believe me without experiencing the phenomenon for themselves. Two Delaneys. One is already probably too many for this school.

"Yeah. Everybody keeps telling me about all this stuff I did last night. Jesse, Bianca, the groundskeeper. They all supposedly saw me and, newsflash, I was a little preoccupied last night," I saw.

People walk by us, shooting us judgmental looks because Milo has a very animated and expressive face and I have very animated and expressive hands and we are both using those things to the fullest at the moment.

I glare at them, a threat about milk on the tip of my tongue. Anybody could become the next victim of the Lunch Lunatic.

A scream jars their stares from us to a locker down the hall and even Milo and I let ourselves get distracted. We spill out of the alcove into the crowd to see Lena stumbling out of her locker. Her hair frizzes wildly, her clothes rumpled.

"You!" she points at me like she's about to accuse me of being a witch. She wants me hanged. Or to try to pass that test where the delirious townsfolk tie you to a rock and if you float, you're guilty of witchcraft, but if you drown, you're innocent.

I don't have words for Lena. The only witchcraft I partake in has been accidental, so why the wild eyes?

"You tried to lock me in a locker!" she declares.

Eyes swivel between us, from Lena to me. The same eyes that very clearly judged me and Milo discussing the impossible with full gesticulation. There is a small relief in knowing that at least a handful of these classmates don't honestly think I would do something as juvenile as try to lock Lena in a locker. Or, maybe they do think I would, but clearly witnessed me elsewhere while this supposed locker-shoving took place. 

Mr. Tanaka shoulders through the student bodies and makes his way to Lena.

"What exactly is going on here?" he says in his calm, tired way. I don't think he has the energy to get worked up over us.

"She," Lena emphasizes with more dramatic finger-waving, "pushed me into a locker and was about to close it on me."

"I didn't," I say, because I didn't. Nobody else adds in their witness statements.

Lena's face is beet red now, cartoonish and furious. "You just didn't like hearing the truth."

The truth that I'm a whore or that buzzing phones distract her from algebra?

"It wasn't Delaney," Milo cuts in beside me. "I did it."

I blink. I'm 90% ready to fight, prepared to contest my guilt, but somebody else taking the fall? Didn't see that one coming.

"No he didn't," Colin interrupts, "he was off in a totally different corner."

Good to know Colin values honesty now.

Mr. Tanaka's brow furrows at Milo, whose face is pure innocence. Some ask themselves what would Jesus do, but some others ask what would Milo do in order keep themselves on the track of good vibes.

"It was me," Milo insists.

The crowd begins to lose interest, prioritizing class over finding out who is about to take the fall for this one.

"Did you see who pushed you, Lena?" Mr. Tanaka asks.

Lena falters, her face answering enough. "Well, not exactly."

"Fine. Milo, if you're going to insist, detention tonight." Mr. Tanaka dispatches the matter and no one else dares add anything. "Get to class."

Lena smolders under the heat of this injustice, of not getting me into more trouble, just like she failed to in class. It appears she only saves the doe eyes for Jesse and other assorted guys with decent haircuts.

Milo smiles meekly. "Guess we're detention buddies now."

I melt in about a millisecond. Getting detention might be the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me. I see his objective now. We can figure this out.

The last witnesses follow Mr. Tanaka's advice and turn to other classrooms.

A girl in sunglasses lets her shades slide down her nose just enough that I catch the very familiar glint of green before she pushes them back over her eyes and disappears in the flurry.