The Amanda Project: Book One

The Amanda Project: Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

But my dad wasn't even there.

Three chairs faced Mr. Thornhill's desk. The middle one was empty, while the other two were filled by Nia Rivera, the biggest freak in the ninth grade, and Hal Bennett, who I guess is what you could call a recovering loser. All through middle school, Hal was this bean pole who wore high-waisted, too-short pants and looked like his mom cut his hair by putting a bowl over his head and trimming around the base of it. But he must have spent his summer watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or something because when we got back to school in September, he had become uber-cool. Now he wore vintage T-shirts and worn jeans that he totally filled out, if you know what I'm saying, and his dark blond hair had this whole shaggy-but-styled thing going on. Also, he was, like, an artistic genius. Maybe he always had been, but this year, he'd done a devastating caricature of Thornhill in the school paper that created a buzz for a few days, and then he was chosen to go to New York to represent the entire state of Maryland in a contest that some big museum sponsored back in November. He'd even shown up on the I-Girls radar-Kelli and Traci were talking at lunch last week about what a hottie Hal Bennett was becoming, and after years of being afraid that they would somehow find out that he and I had hung out together before I became an I-Girl, I suddenly wanted to tell them. I didn't say anything, though. I noticed that Heidi did not weigh in at all, and what if I told them about our once having been friends and then he somehow got re-dorkified?

"Have a seat, Callie," said Mr. Thornhill. Totally confused, I slipped into the empty chair. Clearly my being summoned here had nothing to do with my mother.

Mr. Thornhill had his hands folded under his chin, his index fingers touching the ends of his short, bristly moustache, forming a V around his mouth. The fluorescent light shone on his bald head, so shiny you'd have thought he spent his mornings polishing it.

No one was talking, and no one other than Mr. Thornhill acknowledged my entry. Since I'd never been in the vice principal's office before, I checked out the room. There wasn't a whole lot there, no diplomas or pictures of his family. One wall was covered in file cabinets with alphabetized labels, and in the center of the desk was a small pile of manila folders but nothing personal-no Endeavor mug to hold his pencils or a #1 DAD paperweight. It was almost weird how blank the room was considering Mr. Thornhill had been the vice principal here since I started middle school.

The silence grew. I turned my head slightly to look first at Hal and then at Nia, but he was staring at the carpet, and her thick hair hung along the side of her face so I couldn't see her expression. As my eyes swept the room, Mr. Thornhill and I made eye contact for a second and his stare was so intense I had to look away. It was like he was . . . angry at me or something. For the first time, it occurred to me that I could be in trouble. I mean, he was the vice principal. I tried to think of a rule I might have broken recently, but it wasn't like I'd been smoking in the bathroom or not doing my homework or anything.

"Well," he announced finally, "I think you all know why you're here."

Okay, this was getting really weird. For the first time since Mrs. Leong had called my name, I actually started to find the whole thing funny. I imagined telling Heidi, Traci, and Kelli the story over lunch. And then it was like he thought I'd done something. With Nia Rivera! For the past two years, the words Nia Rivera had been a guaranteed punch line with the I-Girls, so I knew they'd crack up as soon as I uttered them.

As it happened, Nia was the first to break the silence. "Actually, I have no idea why I'm here." She swept her long brown hair over her shoulder, not flirtatiously, like an I-Girl would have, but impatiently, like it was annoying to have hair.

I was really surprised by how confident she sounded, as if 10she wasn't afraid of the vice principal at all, and for a second I was reminded of the fact that she is Cisco Rivera's sister. Cisco is the coolest, most popular guy in the junior class. It's hard to believe two people who are such polar opposites could be even distantly related, much less siblings. It makes you think their parents performed some kind of social experiment on them when they were young.

Mr. Thornhill slammed his hand down on the desk so hard I jumped slightly, but I noticed Nia did not flinch. "Nia, I really don't have time for lies right now. This is potentially a very serious situation."

Like I said, I don't exactly spend a lot of time of time getting called into the vice principal's office, but I had heard him get mad before. Actually, the person I'd heard him getting mad at was Amanda-many times since she arrived in October, and most recently about a month ago. I'd come to the office to drop off the day's attendance slip for Mrs. Peabody, and his door was open and he was yelling at her. It was the day after the President's Day holiday, and the vice principal had opened the door to his office to discover a huge stuffed raven wearing a stovepipe hat sitting on his chair. I don't know how Thornhill figured out that Amanda had done it, and she'd never told me if he'd been right to accuse her or, if he had, how she'd gotten into the vice principal's office in the first place, but he was furious. And that was far from the only time, either. After the master clock in the office was rigged to run fast so that school got out early two Fridays in a row, I could hear him yelling at her in his office while I was walking by in the hallway.

Now he sounded that mad. Mad like Nia had done something really, really terrible.

Whatever it was, I definitely didn't want to be associated with it. Or her. I cleared my throat. "Um, Mr. Thornhill, I think there's been some mistake. We don't even know each other." Sometimes the cluelessness of adults is nothing short of shocking. I mean, not to be snotty, but I'm an I-Girl and Nia's a social leper. Did Mr. Thornhill think we were friends or something?

"Callie, you've always been an excellent student with spotless behavior." Mr. Thornhill tapped the folders on his desk and I wondered if one of them had something to do with me. "I highly doubt you want to ruin such a stellar record by failing to tell me what you know." Was it my imagination, or did Mr. Thornhill emphasize the word stellar? Once again, I thought of my mother.

"Look, Mr. Thornhill, they're not lying," said Hal. "We really don't hang together." As he leaned forward, the small gold loop in his ear caught the light, and I remembered Traci had said something about his supposedly getting a tattoo somewhere on his body over the summer.

"No, you look, Hal. I am talking about a serious act of vandalism. I want you to tell me what you know and I want you to tell me now."

Mr. Thornhill was so angry a vein bulged on his neck. I 11actually felt a little afraid of him. This time, when I glanced over at Nia, she was looking at me, and I knew the What the hell? look on her face was mirrored on my own.

"Why don't you tell us what you know?" said Hal. His voice was calm, soothing. Like he thought Mr. Thornhill was crazy or something.

Which, given the circumstances, didn't seem so impossible.

Mr. Thornhill leaned forward and jabbed his finger in Hal's direction. "Don't you condescend to me, Hal Bennett. You all know what Amanda Valentino did this morning. What I want to know is, why has she implicated the three of you in her crime?"

Okay, this was so weird. I mean, I'd just been thinking of Amanda when Mrs. Leong called me into Thornhill's office, and now he was mad at me for something she'd done. But still, what he was saying made no sense. I mean, Amanda and I were friends, but Amanda and Nia and Hal weren't. Nobody was friends with Nia, except maybe some of the other weirdos in model congress or mock trial or whatever lame clubs she belonged to. And as hot as Hal may have been, he still only hung out with a few other dorky guys whose names escaped me. But not Amanda.

"Look, obviously you're not going to believe us if we say we're innocent. So why don't you just ask her yourself? She'll tell you," said Nia, and the crazy thing was that now her confidence didn't remind me of Cisco so much as of Amanda, the only other person I knew who never backed down in the face of authority.

Vice Principal Thornhill got up and walked around to the front of his desk. Then he leaned back on it and crossed his arms, staring at each of us in turn.

"That's a lovely idea, Nia, and I'd be happy to comply. There's just one problem with your plan. As the three of you know perfectly well, Amanda Valentino has disappeared."