“I don’t believe in war.”

  “Not many soldiers do,” said Wiggin. “You could get killed doing that stuff. But you train to fight well, so that when a war does come, you can win and come home and find everything safe.”

  “There’s nothing safe at home.”

  “I bet that things are fine at home,” said Wiggin. “Because, see, with you not there, your mother doesn’t have any reason to stay with your father, does she? So I think she’s not going to put up with any more crap from him. Don’t you think so? She can’t be weak. If she were weak, she could never have produced somebody as tough as you. You couldn’t have gotten your toughness from your father—he doesn’t have much, if he can’t even keep himself from doing what he did. So your toughness comes from her, right? She’ll leave him if he raises his hand against her. She doesn’t have to stay to look out for you anymore.”

  It was as much the tone of Wiggin’s voice as the words he said that calmed him. Zeck pulled his body together, rolled himself up into a sitting position. “I keep expecting to see some teacher rush down the corridor demanding to know what’s going on.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Wiggin. “I think they know exactly what’s going on—probably watching it on a holo somewhere—and maybe they’re keeping any other kids from coming along here to see. But they’re going to let us work it out on our own.”

  “Work what out?” said Zeck. “I got no quarrel with you.”

  “You had a quarrel with everybody who stood between you and going home.”

  “I still hate this place. I want to get out of here.”

  “Welcome to the club,” said Wiggin. “Look, we’re missing lunch. You can do what you want, but I’m going to go eat.”

  “You still planning to limp on that left ankle?”

  “Yes,” said Wiggin. “After you kicked me? I won’t have to act.”

  “Chest okay? I didn’t break any ribs, did I?”

  “You sure have an inflated opinion of your own strength,” said Wiggin.

  Then he stepped into the elevator and held the bar as it drifted upward, carrying him along with it.

  Zeck sat there awhile longer, looking at nothing, thinking about what just happened. He wasn’t sure if anything had been decided. Zeck still hated Battle School. And everybody in Battle School hated him. And now he hated his father and didn’t believe in his father’s phony pacifism. Wiggin had pretty much convinced him that his father was no prophet. Hell, Zeck had known it all along. But believing in his father’s spirituality was the only way he could keep himself from hating him and fearing him. The only way he could bear it. Now he didn’t have to bear it anymore. Wiggin was right. Mother was free, now that she didn’t have to look out for Zeck.

  He unclenched his fist and saw what Wiggin had stuffed into it to stanch the bleeding. One of his socks, covered in blood.

  10

  GRACE

  Dink saw how Wiggin walked with his food tray and knew something was wrong. And it wasn’t just because his tray was double-loaded. Who was he getting lunch for? Didn’t matter—what mattered was that Wiggin was in pain. Dink pulled out the chair beside him.

  “What happened?” he asked as soon as Wiggin sat down.

  “Got lunch for Zeck,” said Wiggin.

  “I mean what happened to you,” said Dink.

  “Happened?” Wiggin’s voice was all innocence, but his eyes, lasering in at Dink’s eyes, were telling him to back off.

  “Suit yourself,” said Dink. “Keep your dandruff to yourself for all I care.”

  The conversation at the table flowed around them after that. Dink joined in now and then, but he noticed that Wiggin just ate, and that he was careful about how he breathed. Something had injured his chest. Broken rib? No, more likely a bruise. And he’d been favoring one leg when he walked. Trying not to show it, but favoring it all the same. And he was saving lunch for Zeck. They’d had a fight. The pacifist and the genius? Fighting each other? That was stupid. But what else could it have been? Who else but a pacifist would attack somebody as little as Wiggin?

  Half the soldiers were gone from the table by the time Zeck came in. The food line had already closed down, but Wiggin saw him and stood up and waved him over. He was slow raising his hand to wave, though, what with his chest hurting and all.

  Zeck approached. “Got lunch for you,” said Wiggin, stepping away from his chair so that Zeck could sit in it.

  The other kids at the table were obviously poising themselves to leave if Zeck sat down there.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” said Zeck.

  Had he been crying? No. And what was with his hand? He kept it in a fist, but Dink could see that it had been injured. That there had been blood.

  “I just wanted to give you something,” said Zeck.

  He laid a stocking down on the table beside Wiggin’s tray.

  “Sorry it’s wet,” said Zeck. “I had to wash it.”

  “Toguro,” said Wiggin. “Now sit and eat.” He almost pushed Zeck down into the chair.

  It was the stocking that did it. Wiggin had given Zeck a gift—a Santa Claus gift, of all things—and Zeck had accepted it. Now Wiggin stood with his hands on Zeck’s shoulders, staring at each of the other Rat Army soldiers in turn, as if he was daring them to stand up and go.

  Dink knew that if he got up, the others would too. But he didn’t get up, and the others stayed.

  “So I’ve got this poem,” said Dink. “It really sucks, but sometimes you just gotta say it to get it out of your system.”

  “We’ve just eaten, Dink,” said Flip. “Couldn’t you wait till our food is digested?”

  “No, this will be good for you,” said Dink. “Your food’s turning to shit right now, and this will help.”

  That got him a laugh, which bought him enough time to finish coming up with the rhymes he needed.

  “What do you do with Zeck?

  You want to break his neck.

  But I warn you not to try

  Cause Zeck’s too stubborn to die.”

  As poems go, it was pretty weak. But as a symbol of Dink’s decision that Zeck should be given another chance, well, it did the job. Between Wiggin’s stocking and Dink’s poem, Zeck had returned to his previous status: barely tolerated.

  Dink looked up at Wiggin, who was still standing behind Zeck—who now seemed to be eating with some appetite.

  “Merry Christmas,” Dink mouthed silently.

  Wiggin smiled.

  Jamaica

  AP Chemistry was a complete scam and Jam Fisher knew it. Riddle High School was the cesspool of the county school system. Somebody in the superintendent’s office came up with a completely logical solution: Since statistics proved that high schools with the highest enrollment in Advanced Placement courses showed the highest rates of graduation and college placement, they would make all the students at Riddle High take AP courses.

  How dumb do you have to be to believe something like that? Dumb enough, apparently, to go to college, get an Ed.D., and then work in the Riddle County School System.

  Jam was one of the few kids at Riddle who would have taken AP Chemistry anyway. But now, instead of studying with other kids who were serious about learning something, he was stuck in a class with a bunch of goof-offs, dumbasses, and idiots.

  Which he knew wasn’t fair. They weren’t actually dumb, they were simply out of their depth. They didn’t have a college-grad Mom like Jam did, or have a small shelf of books in the living room which were written by relatives (but read by almost nobody).

  Fair or not, the result was predictable. In order to have a hope of teaching anybody anything, they were dumbing down the curriculum, and so Jam would have to work twice as hard to educate himself in order to do decently on the AP tests. Mom would go ballistic if he didn’t ace them all and come out of high school with a whole year of college credits. “If you don’t have a full ride scholarship you’ll be at Riddle Tech and that means you’ll be qualified—barely—for janitorial work.”

  And here he was on the first day of class in his junior year, listening to some overly-chummy teacher making chemistry into a joke.

  “What I have here,” said Mr. Laudon, “is a philosopher’s stone. Supposedly it could change any common metal into gold, back in the days of alchemy.” He handed it to Amahl Piercey in the first row. “So before we go any further, I want every one of you to hold it—squeeze it, taste it, stick it up your nose, I don’t care—”

  “If I’m spose to taste it, I don’t want it up Amahl’s nose,” said Ceena Robles. Which provoked laughter. Meanwhile, Amahl, not much of a clown, had merely squeezed it, shrugged, and passed it back.

  The stone was passed hand to hand up and down the rows. Jam saw that it looked like amber—yellowy and translucent. But nobody seemed to notice anything special about it, till it got to Rhonda Jones. She yelped when she got it handed to her and dropped it on the floor. It rolled crookedly under another desk.

  “It burned me!” she said.

  Shocked you, you mean, thought Jam. Amber builds up an electric charge. That’s the trick Mr. Laudon must mean to play on us.

  But Jam kept his thoughts to himself. The last thing he needed was to have Laudon as an enemy. He’d done a year where he antagonized a teacher and it wasn’t fun—or good for the grades.

  “Pick it up,” said Laudon. “No, not you, her. The one who dropped it.”

  “My name is Rhonda,” she said, “and I’m not picking it up.”

  “Rhonda.” Laudon scanned the roll sheet. “Jones. Yes you will pick it up, and now, and squeeze it tightly.”

  Rhonda got that stubborn look and folded her arms across her chest.

  And with a resigned feeling, Jam spoke up to take the heat off her. “Is this an experiment or something?” asked Jam.

  Laudon glared at him. Good start, Jam. “I’m talking to Miz Jones here.”

  “I’m just wondering what’s so important,” said Jam. “It’s not as if there’s such a thing as a philosopher’s stone. It’s just amber that builds up an electric charge and it shocked her when she got it.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” said Laudon, looking at the roll. “Yep, I checked, and right here it says that I’m the teacher here. Who are you?”

  “Jam Fisher.”

  “Jam? Oh, I see. That’s a nickname for Jamaica Fisher. I’ve never heard of a boy named Jamaica.”

  Some titters from the class, but not many, because in the lower grades Jam had been through bloody fights with anybody who said Jamaica was a girl’s name.

  “And yet you have the evidence right there in your hands,” said Jam. “Doesn’t the roll have a little M or F by our names?”

  “It’s gallant of you, Mr. Fisher, to try to rescue Miz Jones, but she will pick up that stone.”

  Jam knew he was committing academic suicide, but there was something in him that would not tolerate a bully. He got up, strode forward. Laudon backed away a step, probably afraid Jam intended to hit him. But all Jam did was reach down under the desk where the stone had rolled and reach out to pick it up.

  The next thing he was aware of was somebody slapping his face. It stung, and Jam lashed out to slap back. Only has hand barely moved. He was so weak he couldn’t lift his arm more than an inch before it fell back to the floor, spent.

  The floor? What was he doing, lying on his back on the floor?

  “Open your eyes, Mr. Fisher,” commanded Laudon. “I need to see if your pupils are dilated.”

  What is this, a drug test?

  Jam meant to say it. But his mouth didn’t move.

  Another slap.

  “Stop it!” he shouted.

  Or, rather, whispered.

  “Open your eyes.”

  With some fluttering, Jam finally complied.

  “No concussion. No doubt your brain is in its original condition, despite having hit the floor. You—the two of you—help him stand up.”

  “No thanks,” murmured Jam.

  But the two students delegated to help him were more afraid of Laudon’s glare than Jam’s protest.

  “I’ll throw up,” Jam said. Or started to say. But the last part came out in a gush of lunch. By good fortune, it landed between desks, but it still got all over Jam’s shoes, and the shoes and pantlegs of everyone near him.

  “I think he needs to go to the nurse,” said Rhonda.

  “Need to lie down,” Jam said. Whereupon he fainted again, which accomplished his stated objective.

  He woke up the next time in the nurse’s office. He heard her talking on the phone. “I can call an ambulance for him,” the nurse was saying, “but school policy does not allow us to transport a sick or injured student in private vehicles. Yes, I know you wouldn’t sue me, but I’m not worried about getting sued, I’m worried about losing my job. You don’t have a job for a fired nurse, do you? Then let’s not argue about the policy. Either I call an ambulance, or you come get him, Miz Fisher, or I keep him here to infect every other student who comes in here.”

  “I’m not sick,” murmured Jam.

  “Now he’s saying he’s not sick,” said the nurse, “even though he still has puke on his shoes. Yes, ma’am, ‘puke’ is official nurse lingo for vomitus. We speak English nowadays, even in the best nursing schools.”

  “Tell her not to come I’m okay,” whispered Jam.

  “He says for you not to come, he’s okay. Weak as a baby, probably delirious, but by no means should you leave work to come get him.”

  Within twenty minutes, Mother was there.

  So was Mr. Laudon. “Before you take him, I want it back,” he said to Jam.

  “Want what?” asked Mother. “Are you accusing my son of stealing?” Jam didn’t even have to open his eyes to see his mother right up in Laudon’s face.

  “He picked up something of mine from the floor and he still has it.”

  Jam noticed that Laudon didn’t seem to want to tell Mother or the nurse that what he was looking for was a stone. “Search me,” Jam whispered.

  Mother immediately was stroking his head, cooing at him. “Oh, Jamaica, baby, don’t you try to talk, I know you don’t have it.”

  “He offered to let me search,” said Mr. Laudon.

  “So this boy of mine, this straight A student who comes home from school every day and takes care of his handicapped brother and prepares dinner for his mother, this is the boy you want to treat like a criminal?”

  “I’m not saying he stole it,” said Mr. Laudon, backing down—but not giving up, either. “He might not even know he has it.”

  “Search me,” Jam insisted. “I don’t want your philosopher’s stone.”

  “What did he say?” said Mother.

  “He’s delirious,” said Laudon. Jam could feel his hands now, patting his pockets.

  Jam opened his hands to show they were empty.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Mr. Laudon. “I could have sworn he had it. It wasn’t in the room when they carried him out.”

  “Then I suggest you take a good hard look at some other child,” said Mother. “Jamaica, baby, can you sit up? Can you walk? Or shall I have Mr. I-Lost-My-Rock-So-Somebody-Must-Have-Stolen-It help you out to the car?”

  Rather than have Laudon touch him again, Jam rolled to one side and found he could do it. He could even push himself into an upright position. He wasn’t so weak anymore. But he wasn’t strong, either. He leaned heavily on his mother as she helped him out to the car.

  “What a great first day of school,” he said.

  “Tell me the truth now,” said Mother. “Did somebody hit you?”

  “Nobody hits me anymore, Mama,” said Jam.

  “Damn well better not. That teacher—what was that about?”

  “He’s an idiot,” said Jam.

  “Why is he an idiot who’s already on your case on the first day of school? Answer me, or I’ll tell the principal he touched you indecently when he was patting you down and that’ll get his ass fired.”

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’ Mama,” said Jam.

  “Ass ass ass,” said Mother. “Who’s the parent here, you or me?”

  It was an old ritual, and Jam finished it. “Must be me, cause it sure ain’t you.”

  “Now get in that car, baby.”

  By the time they got home, Jam was recovered enough that he didn’t have to lean on anybody. “Maybe you should take me back to school, Mama, I feel a lot better.”

  “So does that mean you were faking it before?” asked Mother. “What’s so bad that you want to get out of it and jeopardize your whole future by skipping school, not to mention jeopardizing my job by making me leave all in a rush to take you home?”

  “If I could’ve talked I would have told the nurse not to call you.”

  “Answer my question, Jamaica.”

  “Mama, he was passing around a stupid stone, talking about alchemy as the forerunner of chemistry, and claiming it was a philosopher’s stone. Only it picked up a static charge and zapped Rhonda Jones’s hand and she dropped it, and Mr. Laudon was having a hissy fit, trying to make her pick it up even though she had already touched it and what’s the point anyway, he was just going to tell us that alchemy doesn’t work but chemistry does, so why should we all touch the stupid rock?”

  “Let me guess. You saw injustice being done so you had to put your face right in it.”

  “I just bent over to pick up the stone and I must have passed out because I woke up on the floor.”

  “You didn’t pick it up?”

  “No, Mama. You accusing me of stealing now?”

  “No, I’m accusing you of having something seriously wrong with your health and having visions of getting called out of work next time because you turned out to have a faulty valve in your heart or something and you keeled over dead on a basketball court.”

  “The only way I’ll ever get on a basketball court is if I’m already dead and they’re using me for a freethrow line.”

  “I got too many hopes pinned on you, you poor boy. If only—I should have killed him instead of marrying him.”

  “Don’t go off on Daddy now, Mama.”

  “Don’t you call him Daddy. He’s nothing to you or to me.”