We both looked around again once we were at Dustin’s locker. It really did smell like gym socks and old Doritos.

Talia looked at me for a moment, one eyebrow raised. Then she smiled again and handed me one of the green shovels. She scooped up a shovelful of sand, then slowly and carefully poured the sand through the slots in Dustin’s locker.

A tiny stream of sand trickled through the crack in the bottom, but not much. Not so much you’d notice.

There was no turning back now.

I shoveled up another batch of sand and poured it through. I wasn’t as neat about it as Talia was, and some fell out onto the floor. Talia glanced around, checking again that we were alone, and spread the fallen sand across the hall with her foot.

We scooped and scooped, looking at each other and glancing around the hall. Nobody came. I didn’t hear a sound except for the shifting sand. (Although Talia would have heard someone coming before I did anyway.) It was almost too easy.

When we’d poured as much sand as we could through the slots, Talia picked up the chocolate frosting. She popped open the lid.

“It’s almost too good to waste on a turd like him,” she said. Then she winked at me and dug out a big glob with her fingers.

PLOP! Straight onto the locker door went the frosting, leaving a mark of Talia’s chocolaty handprint. She held the frosting tub out to me and I took my own big scoop.

PLOP! There was my hand, too.

Talia took another wad of frosting with her finger and started writing on the locker with the chocolate ink. She turned our handprints into two big piles of poop. She smeared more across the bottom of the locker and it stopped some of the sand from drizzling out. Then she wrote a big BB.

Take that, her face said.

I did my best to draw a small Frankenstein in the middle of my chocolate handprint, complete with scarred chin. It wasn’t very good, but I thought the point got across.

Talia and I looked at our artwork. Then she looked at her hand, then at me, and then raised her messy, chocolaty hand. I raised mine. We gave each other a splatting, goopy, chocolaty high five.

We grabbed our stuff and ran into the girls’ bathroom down the hall, laughing like maniacs. Friend maniacs.

Friends and Consequences

There’s a first time for everything, I guess.

Even a trip to the principal’s office.

Talia and I sat on the other side of her desk, our hands between our knees. Principal Lopez looked at us, her bright red nails drumming on the desk.

“Girls,” she said. “I know you two are smarter than this. Talia, I haven’t known you very long but I know you are a smart girl. And Libby.” She sighed. “I’ve known you since you were in kindergarten. This is not behavior I thought I’d see from you.”