Maybe I should learn to stay out of other people's business.

Of course, meeting Claire Evans wasn't easy, as several people tried to keep her isolated from the rest of the school. I hate those kinds of people; they claim to be your friends, but they want you to be completely dependent on them and only them. I mean, it's already bad enough that you have a disability and people are known to take advantage of a disabled person. Why would you want to be around a person who claims to want to help you but wants to keep you helpless and trapped in your disability so you can never escape from them or your disability no matter how hard you try?

That's just rotten luck.

As for Claire, she didn't appear to be human, as she had ghost-pale skin, hair so light it was almost white, and light purple eyes. She preferred to wear purple clothes, as opposed to the black clothes the twins always wore. (She hates wearing T-shirts and jeans, which is what everyone else in the school wears.)

Anyway, I saw Claire sitting in her section of the school (a vacant area behind the cafeteria) reading some article from People Magazine, possibly about another celebrity breakup. Like come on! Why do these celebrities always have to break up? Can't they just learn to be together like everyone else?

Then again, not everyone can be together, so there's that.

Anyway, Claire looks up from her magazine and sees me, saying, "Not now, Tucker. Can't you go find someone else to bother, such as a dangerous kidnapper? I've had enough of you to last me the rest of the year and it's only February."

"I'm not Tucker Browne," I said.

"Then who are you?" she snapped as she stared at me. "Wait, don't answer that. I know who you are."

"You know who everyone is," I said.

"Sure I do," said Claire. "You're Jedidiah Hamilton and I see you hanging out with that John Holt and Clayton Bingham in front of the library every day."

"John likes to call himself Milton," I said.

"Indeed," said Claire. "He's the one with the straight-up crazy sister. Barbara, isn't it?"

"Well, I wouldn't know," I said. "But word on the street is that you might have some dirt on Adrian and Dorian Johansson."

"Oh, you mean those guys?" Claire laughed. "I know all their secrets, secrets they don't want revealed."

"Like what?" I found myself glancing around the place, hoping none of Claire's prison guards were watching. I knew they had beaten up over seven students and a student aide who tried to get Claire away from them. What was Clayton getting me into?

"They have a disabled sister named Lucy and they live in Hollowpond, where the rich folks live," said Claire. "They also have connections to several families living in Oakmoor and Norwood Village. I daresay they probably know the mayor of Charleston, if need may be."

So let me get this straight: a pair of filthy rich brats are tormenting us students at Lochland Middle School? Is that how the story goes?

Not in my story they don't.

Claire then said, "Are they bothering you?"

"Well, to be honest, they're harassing me because I'm friends with Milton Holt," I said.

"Well, those boys are a bunch of nutters," said Claire. "Seriously, though, we shouldn't have to put up with their crap. Now what is it that you wanted?"

Well, I'm not going to tell you how the rest of the conversation went, as Nathaniel Harrell (the ringleader of the group that isolates Claire from the school) showed up and told me to get away from her, as she has a mental disability and is allergic to "normal" people like me. Of course, some kid named Boris Popovitch showed up and slapped him, saying, "Claire doesn't belong to you or your cronies! You don't own her, and you don't have the right to keep her away from other people! She needs people, not dolls and stuffed animals!"

As I watched the fight between Nathaniel and Boris brewing and various students stopping whatever they were doing to watch the fight, Claire said to me, "I don't know half of what's going on and I could care less about who's kidnapping who, but I'm not a toy to be fought over and I'm not a prize to be won!"

"I never said you were," I said.

"I know," said Claire. "This is the first time someone I spoke to actually treats me like I'm human instead of a creature to be despised or pitied."

"I wonder if your parents know about this," I said.

"It doesn't matter," said Claire. "I haven't seen my parents since I was two years old."

Then it hit me. Claire didn't know who her parents were, nor did she live with them, so that accounted for her current disposition. Meaning that she had imaginary friends and stuffed toys to talk to, two things my parents wouldn't let me have.

In short, Claire Evans is what happens when you don't have parents (and siblings) to tell you what to do.

I spent the rest of the morning mulling over what I knew about Adrian and Dorian Johanssen. They were filthy rich boys with connections to high society, yet they chose to make life a living hell for everyone else. The fact that their father spends too much time at his job and their mother spends too much time with their younger sister, leaving them to be raised by a nanny is why they were the way they were.

What if they needed a friend and no one wanted to be around them, just as no one could go near Claire, who could certainly use a friend?

Milton noticed me being silent, as he said, "I heard you were talking to Crazy Claire today."

"Of course I was," I said. "What's it to you?"

"You and Clay have caused some serious trouble for those kids who hang out with her," said Milton.

"Of course we did," I snapped. "What are we going to do? Sit around and allow a group of kids to abuse another kid because she has a mental disability? The other students and teachers may pretend it's not happening, but Clayton and I are smarter than that. We can't ignore a helpless girl, not when she knows something about the twins that could make them shut up for good."

"If you say so," said Milton before he returned to his work.

I frowned as I stared at the assignment, which was to write an essay about what Dr. King's vision of equality meant to me. I mean, why should I talk about having equal rights when people living in this country don't have any rights because they have a disability? What's wrong with that picture?

I remembered Uncle Zach and why he can't do anything except for sit in a soft chair talking to imaginary friends all day. Nobody came to visit him or called him up. It's like nobody cares that he's alive.

Wait a minute.

Now I know why the rabbi had me recite the story about the king's dead son. It wasn't about me; it was about Uncle Zach. He "died" when he was 14 years old. Everyone in the family mourned his death, as they believed that he was an innocent little boy stolen from them by demons.

Plus, after his "death", the same mental illness that took Uncle Zach took the lives of several cousins, three uncles, five aunts, and one of my grandparents. My dad, reeling from the deaths of those relatives and his own father, had to harden his heart and keep going, making sure to never dwell on those deaths. He would have gone down the same path that destroyed his family had he not met mom.

Was it my destiny to meet people who were prone to being mentally ill?

Who knows?

~~~~~

Later at lunch, I saw the police taking Nathaniel, Tucker, and two other boys (along with two girls) out of the school. Apparently, someone had called the police on their cell phone, made up some random crap about some kids abusing a mentally disabled kid and keeping her prisoner, and claimed that the abusers were going to kill her and anyone who tried to help her. Well, that was certainly enough for the police to come and retrieve those kids, regardless if the rumors about them were true.

But who cares if they get arrested or not? In my opinion, it's a few less people for me to deal with. Yet, this story isn't over, not by a long shot.

~~~~~

That night, no one in the Hamilton household spoke about me helping Claire escape from her tormentors, but mom and dad were more interested in us telling them what our final readings were. Jem was to read a story about Mary Magdalene while I had to read a story about how King David lost one of his sons at birth (and similarly had Solomon the next year). How and why those stories were chosen for us, I don't know.

Yet Jem said to me when we were alone, "I don't know why you did what you did, but you can't just go around talking to whoever you want to talk to. Those kids kept Crazy Claire from the rest of the school for a reason."

"And you and I both know it's wrong to ignore a person who needs help," I said in turn. "How long until the next person shows up and possibly murders kids and tortures Claire?"

"Yeah, and that too," said Jem. "This school has done nothing to protect the disabled students that go there, and to isolate a child because of their disabilities is to abuse them. You're right, Jed. It's time for us to take a stand; either we all learn to get along with those who are disabled or we're going the way of the Roman Empire."

OK, so I'm kind of scared at this point. I already knew that the school is full of problems, but there's no way that Lochland is going to collapse like the Roman Empire. That place is much too big to fail.

Then again, not so fast.