The Slither Sisters

TEN





At lunchtime, Ms. Lavinia invited Robert, Glenn, and Karina to her office in the back of the library, where they met with the shades drawn and the doors locked. “If my brother learns I’m helping you, he’ll rip my head off,” she said. “And that’s not what your language arts teachers call hyperbole.”

They had gathered to make campaign posters. Ms. Lavinia had prepared a large worktable and supplies—different colors of paper, magic markers, glue sticks, scissors. “We’re going to start by identifying your message. The thing that makes you different from the other candidates. Sarah Price is pretty and popular. Howard Mergler is smart with big ideas. Robert Arthur needs to give students a third choice.” She leaned over a poster with a marker, scrawled a single word, and then held it up for them to read: STRENGTH.

“I don’t get it,” Robert said.

“This is your message,” Ms. Lavinia explained. “You’re strong.”

Glenn laughed. “Have you seen his biceps? They’re like chicken wings! My grandmother has more meat on her bones!”

Robert cringed at the jokes but knew they were true. Yesterday’s incident in the swimming pool was only the most recent demonstration of his weakness. In gym class, whenever Coach Glandis led the students through their daily dozen push-ups, Robert could never keep pace. He was always far behind the other boys.

“Glenn’s right,” he admitted. “I don’t think I should brag about my muscles.”

“You’re confusing muscles with strength,” Ms. Lavinia said. “They’re two different things. Muscle is animal tissue that contracts to produce force or motion. Strength is a character trait. It’s resolution, determination, making difficult choices …”

Robert had already stopped listening. Nothing Ms. Lavinia said would change the fact that he weighed ninety pounds and still needed help opening jars of spaghetti sauce. In the world of seventh-graders, this made him a grade-A weakling.

Together they formed an assembly line. Ms. Lavinia began each poster by writing a slogan in large block letters. Karina offered color suggestions, and Robert and Glenn inked the letters with different shades of magic marker. Each time a poster was finished, Pip and Squeak would emerge from a tray of glitter glue and walk its perimeter, framing it with sparkles. The work was slow and tedious, and after just ten posters, Glenn complained that his fingers were cramping.

“If you think you’re cramped now, try spending the rest of your life in a one-gallon jar,” Ms. Lavinia said, slapping another piece of paper in front of him. “Keep coloring.”

They worked through lunch, and after school Robert and Karina returned to make more. Each poster offered a different message about Robert’s extraordinary strength. ROBERT ARTHUR FIGHTS FOR YOU. ROBERT ARTHUR WILL NOT BACK DOWN. ROBERT ARTHUR WILL NOT GIVE UP. Robert felt like the posters were describing someone other than himself—a fictional Super-Robert who was bigger and braver than his real-life counterpart.

At the end of the afternoon, Robert and Karina walked to the nearest exit.

Since there were no other students around, he allowed Pip and Squeak to walk freely behind them. The rats loved any opportunity to get out of the backpack.

“So what do you do at night?” he asked Karina. “After everyone leaves?”

“I spend a lot of time hiding from janitors,” she said. “Once they leave, I can listen to music in the band room. Or I’ll read in the library. The nurse’s office has a nice cot for lying down.” It sounded awfully lonely to Robert. He didn’t say anything, but Karina spoke as if she’d read his mind. “The nights aren’t bad, but the weekends are terrible. Saturdays and Sundays drag on forever.”

“Maybe you can come to my house sometime,” he suggested.

“I wish I could,” she said, “but it doesn’t work that way.”

She didn’t elaborate and Robert didn’t press for details. He knew she was confined to the grounds of Lovecraft Middle School but didn’t understand why. Whenever he asked Karina about her life as a ghost, she always changed the subject, as if she preferred to be seen as a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood girl.

“Let me ask you something,” Karina said. “What are you wearing tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Clothes?”

“You can’t wear just anything. You’re running for office now. You need to dress like a leader.”

“What, like a suit?”

“Wear your red shirt with the little squares. And tuck it in, okay?”

Robert saluted her. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

She scowled and swatted his arm. Her fingers passed right through him, raising goose bumps on his flesh, and he fought the urge to shiver. “You can win this thing,” she said. “I know you don’t think so, but I do. I believe in you.”

An awkward moment passed. Robert had recently decided that ghost kids were different from regular kids. Karina talked more than any human friend he’d ever had. She offered advice on what clothes he should wear and often she surprised him by saying the nicest things, like “I believe in you.” The kids at his old school would never say things like “I believe in you.” Sometimes Robert didn’t know how to answer her.

“Well, good night,” he finally said. “Watch out for janitors.”

“You, too.”

“Me, too?”

“Good night to you, too,” Karina said, flustered, already retreating into the shadowy hallways of the school. “See you tomorrow.”