Nothing happened. No one was interested enough to see what was going on in the janitorial closet.
HE WAS SUPPOSED to have cleaned a week earlier, but Diondra had whined it was officially Christmas break, leave it. So the cafeteria trash was filled with old soda cans dripping syrup, sandwich wrappers covered in chicken salad, and moldy helpings of 1984’s final lunch special, a hamburger casserole with sweet tomato sauce. All of it rotten. He got a little bit of everything on his sweater and jeans, so in addition to ammonia and B.O. he smelled like old food. He couldn’t go to Diondra’s like this, he was an i***t to have planned it like this in the first place. He’d have to bike home, deal with his mom—that was a thirty-minute lecture right there—shower, and bike back over to her place. If h
