Cool. Well. I’ll read it tomorrow after school, I guess.

• • •

“Mr. Page,” said Hink at the end of the next day’s English lesson. I was sitting at my usual desk in the front row, between La and a girl named Mackenzie who’d once asked me if very was spelled with one or two r’s. “A word, if you will.”

“Sure.”

I stayed at my desk as the rest of the class filed out to lunch, trying to guess if Hink was going to chew me out for a) not doing the homework assignment, b) staring at the dandruff dusting his shoulders and imagining them as Sea-Monkeys trapped in a tar pit for the entirety of the lesson, or c) both.

Once the classroom was empty, Hink walked around to the front of his desk and sat on it with his legs crossed, his hands resting on his knee. I wondered if, in the bizarro world of Alistair Hink, this was supposed to be a sign of intimidation. “Do you want to explain to me where your essay is?”

“Essay?”

“The one that was due last week. The one that you failed to hand in.”

“Oh.” Shit. That essay. The one I’d eschewed in favor of nearly getting killed in a national park and writing a stupid grandiose love letter.

“What’s going on with you, Henry? You’re missing newspaper meetings, you haven’t done any of the required reading or homework assignments for class this week, and now this. I had a chat with Mrs. Beady and Señor Sanchez and some of your other teachers as well, and everyone is concerned. Mr. Hotchkiss says you’re frequently distracted in math.”

God, Hotchkiss, what a dick. “That’s nothing out of the ordinary, to be honest.”

“I know we expect a lot from you. Maybe more than we expect of most other students. So if things are getting to be too much—if everything is piling up and you can’t handle it—you need to tell me. We can find ways to help you.”

“It’s fine, really. I’m fine.”

“Miss Leung came to see me yesterday. She subtly implied that the newspaper might be suffering due to a misguided relationship between you and Miss Town.”

Damn it. She actually did it. “I doubt Lola ‘subtly implied’ anything.”

“Well, yes, her exact words were ‘they’re destroying the very fabric of this publication with their wantonness,’ but I thought it best left unsaid. She actually said ‘wantonness’ so much that I had to Google it after she’d left to check it was a real word. ‘Their wantonness, Mr. Hink, their wantonness. They’re ruining everything with their wantonness!’”

“Please stop saying wantonness.”

“You and Grace have missed or rescheduled every meeting I’ve planned to discuss the newspaper. Without a theme or enough content, Lola can’t finish the design on time. I’m starting to get worried.”

“I’ll get it under control. I promise.”

“Good. Because if the two of you can’t get it sorted out by the end of the month, I’m going to have to replace you as editor.”

“But . . . I worked my ass off for two years.”

“You did. But that doesn’t mean you get to stop working your ass off now. Now go adjust your attitude. And for God’s sake, butter Hotchkiss up a little bit, won’t you?”

• • •

“Judas,” I hissed when I walked into the newspaper office after school and found Lola lazing on the sex couch, reading a dictionary.

“Which would imply that you’re Jesus?” she said. “Ego much?”

“I can’t believe you went to Hink. Also, did you know we had an essay due last week? I totally spaced on that one.”

“I told you I was going to rat you out if you didn’t get your act together.” Lola stood and walked over to me and grabbed my shoulders. “I know you’re the captain of a sinking ship and you’re determined to go down with it. That’s admirable as fuck, but when this baby goes belly-up, I’m going to be on a goddamn lifeboat.”

“Who’s Grace in this analogy?”

“Those dudes on the Titanic who played violin until the very end.”

“Strangely accurate.”

La picked up the dictionary and smacked it into my chest. “Pick a theme. Just close your eyes and open it up to any page and point at something. It’s my birthday tomorrow and all I want from you is. One. Goddamn. Word.”

Grace came in then and looked from Lola to me to the dictionary aggressively forced into my chest. “A strange tableau,” she said as she put her bag down and leaned on her cane and waited.

“Lola’s forcing me to pick a theme for the paper.” I took the dictionary from her and scrunched my eyes closed and did as she instructed. “Fail,” I read. “Verb. Definition one: ‘To be unsuccessful.’ Definition two: ‘To be less than expected.’ Sounds about right.”

“I don’t know if you did that on purpose or not, but that’s actually a good theme, so damn well use it. You,” said Lola, letting go of me and digging her talons into Grace’s shoulders instead. “Life is a crapfest and you’re having a really, really tough time, but you can’t go down with the ship. Get in a lifeboat. Shape up or ship out.” Lola did the “I’m watching you” gesture to Grace and me in turn, then grabbed her backpack and stalked out of the office, grumbling something under her breath that sounded very much like “wantonness.”

“Well, that was incredibly surreal,” Grace said. “What was all that about lifeboats?”

“Hink’s pissed because we’ve done jack on the newspaper.”

“Have we?”

“Christ, Grace, I need help with this. You’re supposed to be assistant editor, so why don’t you assist me with editing?”