Linked

I open my locker, and there it is, the world’s oldest phone. I probably shouldn’t have called it eleven times, because it’s sitting on a tray of poster paints, and all that vibrating has made the blue and yellow leak out together, raining green blobs down on my geography textbook. I’m president of the art club, so I’ve always got supplies in my locker-and stains on my gym clothes, books, etc. Last year, I got charged a fifty-dollar cleaning fee to remove the melted pastel from my iPad screen. Like it’s my fault the temperature went up to a hundred the weekend before the last day of school.

I check the phone. Dead. Just like I suspected. I shut my locker and turn to
leave.

Only I don’t leave. I freeze.

I blink and blink again, struggling to wrap my mind around what I’m seeing.

It’s spray-painted in red on the blank expanse of wall above the staircase leading to the second story-that large X with each arm continued at a right angle.

I stare at it in horror and disbelief, hoping that my eyes are deceiving me and this ugly red symbol is something other than what I know it is.

A swastika.

“Michael?”

Mr. Kennedy’s voice startles me out of my state of shock. I drop my phone, which bounces on the floor. It’s probably cracked, possibly ruined, but I can’t tear my gaze from the symbol on the wall.

“What did you forget this time?” the custodian asks in exasperation.

All I can do is point up. When Mr. Kennedy sees it, a sharp gasp is torn from him.

He turns to me. “You didn’t-” he begins. “I mean, you wouldn’t-”

“Of course not!” I answer. Why would the only Dominican kid in the whole school be the one to draw a racist symbol? I almost add, “Nobody would.” But there’s the evidence right in front of us.

Somebody did.

I reach down to pick up my phone and almost drop it again. The screen is fractured. But even through the spiderweb of damage, I can see that awful thing on the wall reflected in the glass.

The custodian takes out his own phone. “I’m calling the police.”