Bringing Down the Mouse Read Free

got a vending machine full of rice cakes that tasted like cardboard disks, celery-based snack packs you’d feel bad feeding to a goat, apple slices that went brown the second you opened the biodegradable packaging, and Yum Yum Chippers. Surely, the fact that the school had a vending machine at all, which students were allowed to visit in the brief few minutes between classes, was a luxury that many middle schools had to live without. But that didn’t stop anyone from complaining. The sadstate of the vending machine was an issue that crossed all class and clique boundaries.
    But the political ramifications of the PTA’s vote were far from Charlie Lewis’s thoughts. Charlie crouched low behind a bright yellow plastic garbage can at the end of a long palisade of aluminum lockers that bisected the school’s main entrance. From his vantage point, he had a clear view of the vending machine. And he was mostly hidden from the continuous slipstream of kids moving in through the glass revolving front doors of the building. Five minutes before eight a.m. was the highest traffic period of the day, which was exactly why Charlie had chosen that moment to plan his attempt. He’d never been the type of person who left things to chance.
    â€œHow does it look?” he hissed back over his shoulder. “You see any bogies?”
    Jeremy Draper leaned out from an alcove three lockers back, his mop of curly red hair flouncing over his freckled face. Jeremy was an exceedingly stringy kid, with pipe-cleaner limbs and a neck that could have doubled as a garden hose. He’d been the tallest kid in their class since the second grade, which might one day be a good thing. Jeremy had been Charlie’s best friend since before preschool; their mothers had met in a natural childbirth class in downtown Boston well before they were born, soCharlie had heard every nickname Jeremy had endured: Scarecrow, Stretch, Plastic Man, String Bean, Bean Pole, Green Bean, and a dozen other variations on “bean.” The names had followed Jeremy all the way until the last week of fifth grade, when his school-wide identity had gone through a radical and abrupt change. Unfortunately, the change had not been for the better.
    â€œWatch where you’re standing, Diapers!”
    Charlie watched as Jeremy dodged his head just in time to avoid the soccer ball tearing by his right ear. The ball ricocheted off one of the lockers, then rebounded back toward the eighth-grade soccer player who had kicked it at him. Jeremy mumbled something toward the kid, purposely too quiet for anyone to hear. Both Jeremy and Charlie had learned early on, it was incredibly hard to fight a nickname, especially one with a backstory as good as Jeremy’s.
    It had happened nearly five days before the start of the last summer break: Jeremy had been rushing to beat the morning bell, and with legs as long and awkward as his, rushing was never a good idea. To this day, it still wasn’t clear whether somebody had tripped him, or whether he’d stumbled over one of his own feet. What was clear, however, was that when he’d hit the ground, Jeremy’s backpack had come open, spreading its contents all overthe front hall of the school. Not books, not pencils or pens or any other sort of school supply. Diapers . At least a dozen, with brightly colored flowers speckled across their fronts, sliding mercilessly across the tiled floor. Nobody cared that Jeremy had a rapidly growing five-week-old baby sister at home, or that his sleep-deprived mother had accidentally packed newly purchased diapers instead of notebooks in Jeremy’s bag; all that mattered was that a new nickname had been born. From that moment on, Jeremy Draper had become Diapers.
    The eighth grader with the soccer ball dribbled by, and once again the coast looked clear. After a nod from Jeremy, Charlie started forward, inching out of the relative safety provided by the yellow garbage