Dull Boy by Sarah Cross Page B

you want to tell me then, you can. If not . . . well, we’ll talk about something else.”
    I get up to buy my drink, keeping alert as I approach the graffiti’d Coke machine: prime lunchroom real estate. The overprivileged Bonecrushers hold court there. I’ve already seen them slam one kid against the wall and steal his lunch money, but mostly they use this time to refuel.
    Today they’re focused on their . . . uh, arts-and-crafts projects? I guess their history class had an assignment where they had to build models or something. One of them constructed the Colosseum out of Popsicle sticks. Big Dawg baked and frosted a cake shaped like the Sphinx (although it looks more like a dog). He keeps yelling at his friends not to eat it, knocking their hands away when they try to swipe some frosting.
    How . . . educational.
    I slip my money into the Coke machine, push the only button that isn’t broken, and wait for that satisfying clunkthump that means a frosty drink is on its way.
    Nothing.
    “Check out my diorama,” booms a proud voice behind me. It’s Butch, the ten-o’clock-shadow guy from my Remedial English class. He’s the biggest dumb-ass of all: at fifteen he’s like six-foot-two, two hundred pounds. Plus he’s already been arrested for driving drunk without a license, which is as good as being royalty in his crowd.
    “Dude, you already showed us.”
    It’s midafternoon, so by now Butch is rocking a partial beard. He strokes it like some wise guru as he says, “Miss Watson’s gonna love it. Look at the tiny elephants.”
    “Get it off the table—put it on the floor by Big Dawg’s cake.”
    I press the button again, wait for my drink. Still nothing.
    So I try the coin-return button. Wait for the reassuring jingle of my money being returned.
    Nope.
    Press it again.
    There’s a line of kids behind me. One of the Thugs is getting antsy. “Are you almost done , holmes?”
    This stupid machine ate my money.
    I don’t have another dollar-fifty. My mom only gives me exactly what I need, and my allowance is ancient history, confiscated for the next eight hundred years to pay for the damages to Henry’s parents’ car.
    “In a minute,” I say. I’m getting agitated now—I hate when vending machines steal my money. And to top it off, some of the girls behind me, for whom a Diet Coke is, like, their sole sustenance, are threatening to cut me. So I’m in a hurry; I grab the machine by either side and start shaking it. I mean, everyone does that. It’s totally expected.
    And then I look down. And see that, um, the Coke machine?
    Is no longer touching the floor.
    I panic and drop it, jump back like it burned me, but the machine hits at an awkward angle, tips to one side, and BOOM! Slams onto the floor with a rumble, snap, SMOOSH! Cake frosting squirts out the side, and the Sphinx’s ass is sticking out like the Wicked Witch’s ruby slippers. The rest of it?
    Demolished.
    It took down the Popsicle-stick Colosseum, the Hannibalcrossing-the-Alps thingie—the whole row of Bonecrusher history projects, lined up on the floor next to their table.
    “MY DIORAMA!!” Butch bashes his seat to the ground. “I’m gonna kill you, Pirzwick!”
    He lurches toward me like a drunken Frankenstein. His man-boobs are trembling beneath his Budweiser T-shirt, his ruddy face is burning, and I can smell his breath from here. Sausage, my death—nice combo.
    “Uh, sorry guys,” I say, moving to put some distance between the Bonecrushers and me. “That thing just fell. I don’t know what happened.”
    “You just signed your own death warrant!” Big Dawg says. “It’s onnnnn, Pirzwick! It’s ON! My mom spent all day baking that Sphinx!”
    “To be fair,” I say, climbing over a table backward and stumbling over a chair and a tuna sandwich and almost falling on my ass, “this isn’t fifth grade. You’re supposed to do your own homework. So maybe this is—”
    “You’re gonna get cut!” some girl says, flipping a