The Rule of Won (22 page)

Then, for some reason I'll never, ever get, or maybe for some wild, brazen
lack
of reason, I turned, faced Ethan with my one eye, and said, “No.”

He didn't seem surprised. “Suit yourself.”

He took a few lightning-quick steps to cover the distance between us.

As I watched him, my mind went blank, not in terror or anything, but in a totally calm way. It was like for a single,
shining moment, I didn't picture
anything
at all, like all this time I'd really only been pretending to have an empty open mind, and this, out of nowhere and from nowhere, was the real deal. No spork. No nothing.

It was the Ultimate Slacker Moment.

For that second, I really didn't want anything. I didn't want to escape. I didn't want not to escape. I didn't want to lose (nobrainer there), but I also didn't want to win. I was just there. The world was just there, and there we were, together.

I heard the chanting crowd like it was in slow motion. I heard Ethan's heavy breathing, smelled his sweat. I even heard the slight rush of air as he launched his body into the air for his perfectly placed final kick. His foot came up toward my face with what looked like enough force to send me through the wall. Then . . .

I floated.

Actually, I just dropped, gently and completely and totally out of the way.

Ethan's foot hit air. His eyes were just beginning to widen when his body found itself pulled forward by the force of his own kick. He went past me—out of the circle, where his heel hit right in the center of that unfinished wall. A few chunks of cinder block and dust flew from the point of impact.

It could have been my skull.

When everybody saw that, instead of erupting into a cheer, the crowd went, “Urgh!” figuring Ethan had broken his foot.

I realized what it meant before he did, so through my one open eye I could watch the realization dawn on his face.

I'd won.

At first he looked surprised, then angry, then shocked, then just . . . lost.

No one said another word. The echo of their last chant died against the walls. The only thing I could hear was breathing—my own.

That is, until a few bits of plaster trickled from the wall and the ceiling. Some tumbled into Ethan's open mouth, making him grimace and spit. When the flow didn't stop and a loud creaking noise, like a giant door opening on giant rusty hinges, began, I looked up at the wall.

The first thing that came to mind was the phrase “Uh-oh.”

I got to my feet and backed away.

“Ethan,” I said. “Get out of there. The wall's coming down.”

Smug and defiant as ever, he shook his head. “No,” he said. He turned to the crowd. “We can
stop
it. We can imanifest and stop it!”

You have to remember that all these people had just seen how well their imanifesting worked on the outcome of the big fight between me and Ethan, which, let's face it, was as close to a sure thing as you can get. Now, as Ethan stood in front of a really big pile of trembling cinder block, wood, and concrete, they looked collectively dubious.

Me, I kept backing slowly away.

“Come on!” Ethan commanded. He turned to the wall, a huge grin on his face. “This wall will not fall! This wall will not fall!” He turned back to the crowd. “Everyone! Concentrate! This wall will not fall!”

Landon, who owed this man his Xbox 360, after all, stepped up and chanted with him. Now it was the two of them crying out, “This wall will not fall!”

When no one else stepped up and the plaster from the collapsing drywall started to rain harder, Ethan again faced the crowd. “Vicky! Come on!”

She looked around for a moment, pretending not to know who he was speaking to, then with a sigh walked up and stood by her man.

Now it was the three of them versus gravity. “This wall will not fall! This wall will not fall!”

Everyone was so busy looking at them, I made it to the door. Dylan stood there, half blocking my exit. All he had to do was breathe on me to stop me. Instead, he hesitated only a second, gave me a bewildered look, then stepped aside.

I went out into the Screech Neck night, the frigid air stinging my each and every wound. I had enough left in me to climb back up that little hill and watch. I remember wishing, not very hard, but wishing nonetheless, that I had someone to share it with.

That's when a black-haired girl came running up out of the darkness. She was wearing Guy's leather jacket over a hospital gown. Her feet were in slippers.

“Erica?” I said hoarsely.

She sputtered as she raced toward me. “They had the fight on in Moore's room. I thought it was just some stupid YouTube clip. As soon as I realized it was live . . . Caleb, my God! What happened?”

“Uh . . . I won?”

She stood beside me, looking like she wanted to hug me but afraid it would hurt me too much. “That's winning? Are you crazy?”

I managed to shrug. “Sure. A little. You?”

“Yeah. A little.”

A louder creaking turned us both back toward the gym. Erica took a step closer and leaned into me. I put an arm around her and we warmed each other up as words floated up from the gym.

“This wall will not fall. This wall will not fall.”

Erica couldn't believe it. “Are they chanting?”

“Yeah. Ethan's holding up the school.”

The creaking turned into the loud moan of inanimate materials stretched to breaking.

“Or not.”

“I called the police,” she said. “They'll be here soon.”

I squeezed her shoulder a little. “Good,” I said. “Let's watch.”

We stood there, my arm around her, until a small section of roof wobbled and fell inward. We heard the dulcet voice of Ethan crack as he screamed, “Oh, crap!”

And the chanting stopped.

Ethan was the first out the door, leading a swarm of people into the night. The place was empty by the time the police arrived, the white circle buried in rubble, the new bleachers open to the starry sky.

I later heard that when the gym collapsed and the webcam
went dead, Moore, his jaw newly unwired, shook his head and said, “Vanuatu.”

Either out of a newfound respect, embarrassment, or fear of being arrested themselves, no one ratted me out about the fight.

In fact, no one who was there ever spoke about it again.

Moore, whom I've counted as a friend ever since he finally published that article about the flaws in the gym, tells me that in 2007, in Katmandu, Nepal, the state-run airline sacrificed two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab, because of some technical trouble they were having with a Boeing 747. Did it work? Who knows, but something tells me they let trained engineers look at the plane, too.

Nothing wrong with taking a risk based on what you believe in, but like Joey would say, you gotta know where to draw the line. Ethan didn't, for instance, when he, acting as a tool of
The Rule
, broke into the GameStore at the local mall and stole that Xbox 360 he gave to Landon. No mere math teacher, GameStore had way cooler security cameras, so the full-color hi-res images they captured were quickly and easily identified. Poor Landon had to give the Xbox back, but the police believed his story, probably because he sounded so damned disappointed.

The police, on a roll, also managed to match the Game-Store images to the ones from Eldridge's driveway. When Ethan's lawyer dad saw how closely they matched his son's size, body type, and predilection for shiny white shoelaces, he stopped talking about suing and started making arrangements for a long vacation for Ethan at an out-of-state facility guaranteed to knock some sense into him.

In a way, Ethan did everyone a favor by kicking down the gym. Moore, back from suspension, discovered that the structure was flawed the same way it had been the first two times and that it probably would've collapsed on its own during the next heavy snow. This time they had insurance, though, and the gym was quickly rebuilt a third time, with a lot of inspectors watching. So far, it hasn't fallen down again. And
The Otus
won some sort of journalism award.

Maybe part of Ethan planned it all that way. Really, who knows?

As for what the hell the bamboo plane–building Vanuatu had to do with any of this, it took Mr. Eldridge to finally clear that up for me. We were chatting after trig his first week back when I mentioned the documentary. I was surprised to learn he'd seen it. A lot of
Mondo Cane
was what he called “arrogantly Eurocentric,” meaning it defined weird as what a European would look down on because he didn't understand it. Really, the man should be teaching social studies if he weren't so good at math.

He also said the Vanuatu were interesting because they were imitating something true and important (airplanes) but
didn't “get” it because they made it about their greed. Their bamboo planes didn't fly because the cargo cult wasn't interested in flying—they just wanted the cargo, the stuff.

Whammo! It hit me. Moore had been saying that
The Rule of Won
and the people who followed it were just like the Vanuatu, imitating the edge of something true and important, but missing the point entirely by making it about their own petty ideas about what they thought they should have.

There's a joke that I think makes the point nicely. It's got God in it, but it works even if you don't believe in God.

There's this guy who hears the news on the radio about a coming flood. Rather than panic, he reminds himself that all is well, God will provide. A while later, the flood's so bad he has to go up to the second floor of his house. Outside, he sees his neighbors in a boat.

They call out to him, “Come with us!”

“No thanks,” he says. “God will provide.”

A little later, the water's still rising and he's up on the roof. A police helicopter flies by to rescue him. “No thanks,” he says. “God will provide.”

So, he drowns. When he meets God in heaven, he says, “I don't understand. Why didn't you provide?” To which God replies, “What, are you kidding? I sent you a message, a boat, and a he li copter!”

Get it?

I heard Vicky and Grace tried to have one more Crave, to try to make the charges against Ethan go away, but only three people showed. A local band of Screech Neck dropouts had a
video on YouTube that was getting, like, a million hits, and kids were much more interested in that than an Xbox 360 thief. I don't know if people lost faith in the book or just lost interest. Probably a combination of both.

Me? No big surprise, but it turns out I really do have major feelings for Erica. We're seeing each other now and I'm pretty happy about it, though whenever I see her writing, I get a little twinge. I try not to peek, but sometimes I do anyway, just to make sure. Twice a week, we get together to study algebra. She passed her first big exam last week.

Business for GP Joey, meanwhile, has been booming. Biodiesel, it turns out, is the wave of the future, so now he has a new rush of diesel engines to practice his skills on. Things are going so well, he's thinking of hiring Mom full-time to help out with the books. There's talk of an actual vacation.

And yes, this summer I plan to get a job, just to help out a little.

I've got only one question left. I asked Alden and Mr. Eldridge about it, but even they had no idea. They did think it was a good question, though.

If the Cravers are all just Vanuatu, who's flying the real airplane?

• The board's been quiet lately, but I'm not giving up! I imanifest for an hour every night that everyone's coming back big-time! Sure, there are bound to be a few stumbling blocks on the road to success, but everyone knows deep down the basic ideas we were practicing are good ones! Never give up and you never lose! And guess what? Jasper Trelawney has a new book coming out,
The Rule of Won for Teens
. I just know I'll find all the answers there. —Grace

Sunlight, slicing the Screech Neck gray, cut into Alyssa Skin-son's room, making burning white rectangles on her drafting table. She still had her lamp on, though, just to make certain she could see exactly what she was working on.

Dad out shopping, she was alone, wearing her mother's old bathrobe over her newly washed pink and green leggings. She was hunched over, putting the final touches on a drawing of a new set of Prismacolor markers, the set her father laughed about when he saw how much they were. They were supposed to be the best in the world.

She'd been at it for hours, using pencil and crayon, marker, paint and pen, getting the lines, the lettering, even the light reflecting on the metal box just right. It was the first drawing she'd tried since the one of Caleb Dunne getting that video he was looking for. Ethan would be so angry if he knew about that.

But Ethan never understood. It was silly to believe the world was built just to give you whatever you wanted. More
like you could ask, and it could still say no, and then you could say, “Well, how about this instead?” And it could say, “Well, maybe.”

She hoped when he came back he wouldn't be so crazy, if he didn't die in that camp. She hoped he'd slip his feet in and out of his sneakers the old way, without bothering to untie the laces. Things could still be good again. Never perfect without Mom, but still good.

There. Finished. It was as close as she was going to get anyway.

The doorbell rang. Who could that be?

She scampered down the stairs, opened the door, and smiled at the white-haired delivery man as he handed her a box.

Her name wasn't on it, no name was, but she opened it just the same. She hated the Styrofoam popcorn, but at least it was the good kind, the green kind, the kind that dissolved in water and ran down the drain.

When she saw what was in it, her mouth curved into a perfect circle. Her heart beat faster and her body actually shook from the happy surprise. The markers! The full set! So much like the picture she'd drawn.