Jack Adrift Read Online Free Page B

SECRET in red ink. She flipped it open and set aside a Respect Detective identification card. “Here,” she said after writing my name on it. “I had this made up for your new position.”
    â€œShould I pin it on my shirt?” I asked.
    â€œHeavens no,” she said sharply. “It’s just between us. Keep it hidden. Don’t let anyone see it. Not even the teachers. They chew gum, too.”
    â€œOkay,” I said, and shoved it down into my back pocket.
    â€œNow get going,” she instructed. “I’ll make the gum-chewing announcement today. Then I want you to keep your eyes open for the perpetrator.”
    â€œWhat will you do when you catch him?” I asked.
    â€œI’ll make him the new Respect Detective,” she said, smiling broadly. “I think it will be rehabilitative for each perpetrator to have to catch the next violator.”
    How clever, I thought. No wonder she was the principal.
    When I left her office I was so relieved I wasn’t in trouble that I didn’t think a lot about what it meant to be her Respect Detective. I shrugged it off as one of
those weird yearbook categories like Dress-Code Coordinator or Manners Monitor. I was mostly thinking about Miss Noelle and getting back to the class so I could dream about our perfect life together and occasionally do a little work on the writing assignment.
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    By recess I still hadn’t written anything about what I wished for, because I wasn’t quite sure Miss Noelle and I were thinking alike. I sat in the shade under the sliding board and simply wished that somehow we lived together, that she was my teacher, my mom, my big sister, and my girlfriend rolled into one. I wished we lived on a yacht. I wished we were CIA spies. I wished we were on game shows together and won sensational vacation trips and stacks of cash. All my wishing was confusing and made me blush when just thinking about nothing more than holding her hand. So I tried not to think about it, and I certainly couldn’t write about it, because what I had in mind was so disrespectful I’d have to turn myself in to Mrs. Nivlash.
    Suddenly the gym teacher blew his chrome whistle. Our heads snapped around toward him. “Everyone off the playground and back to your classrooms!” he instructed, waving toward the side entrance. “Now!” he barked, as if a cloud of enraged killer bees were swarming toward us. We froze for a second, then followed his orders. He was young and energetic and wore tight
white T-shirts to show off his muscles. I didn’t like him because he was always poking his sunburned nose into our classroom and asking Miss Noelle if she needed help disciplining any of the boys or had time after school for some extra tutoring. Some kid told me he had been a pro football player who had received a terrible career-ending injury. Whatever the injury was, I couldn’t locate it. Perhaps it was deep inside his head. As my dad would say, “Too many games without a helmet.”
    On my way back toward the building I looked over my shoulder and saw why recess was being cut short. A row of black limousines, lined up like a chain of fallen dominoes, slowly pulled to a halt along the street. I knew it wasn’t the president coming to visit our school because all the cars had small purple-and-white flags flying from their front fenders. Their headlights were on. It was a funeral procession. Our playground was separated by a chain-link fence from the cemetery I’d seen that first night in Cape Hatteras. The school had an agreement with the cemetery that during a weekday burial service all the schoolkids would be called inside rather than be allowed to hang over the fence and point and gawk at the polished casket and the family members looking as sad and crumpled as balled-up laundry.
    Just then I spotted Mrs. Nivlash at her office window. She held a pair of binoculars to her eyes and scanned
the