Table Of ContentTHIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Kate Hattemer
Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Alexei Aliyev; digital imaging by Brian Sheridan
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hattemer, Kate.
The vigilante poets of Selwyn Academy / Kate Hattemer.—First edition.
p. cm.
Summary: “When a sleazy reality television show takes over Ethan’s arts academy, he and his
friends concoct an artsy plan to take it down.”—Provided by publisher
ISBN 978-0-385-75378-4 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-385-75379-1 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-
38575380-7 (ebook)
[1. Reality television programs—Fiction. 2. Arts—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Creative ability
—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction. 6. Family life—Minnesota—Fiction. 7. Minnesota—Fiction.] I.
Title.
PZ7.H2847.Vig 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013014325
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
FOR GEORGE
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Preface-Slash-Disclaimer from Ethan Andrezejczak
One of the Ways I Could Possibly Begin
Another of the Ways I Could Possibly Begin
The Third Way I Could Begin, After Which I Will Begin (I Promise)
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
One of the Ways I Could Possibly End This Thing
Another of the Ways I Could Possibly End This
The Third Way to End This, Which Will Really Be the End (I Guess)
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A PREFACE-SLASH-DISCLAIMER FROM ETHAN
ANDREZEJCZAK
Just call me Ethan.
You’re reading this first, but I’m writing it last. I’m at a corner table in
this low-rent Starbucks a few blocks from my house. I had planned to
write this on the living-room couch, but I have triplet sisters, and they
are four years old.
“Ethan,” said Olivia, “sit on the floor.”
“Now,” said Lila.
“It is time for Candy Land,” said Tabitha.
“No. I’m writing.” I made my dad’s working-from-home face. “I’m
busy, girls.”
The face worked about as well for me as it does for him. Lila said,
“Please.”
Olivia said, “Please!”
Tabitha said, “Please. Or I will bite you.”
I said, “I call the blue piece.”
Starbucks may have provided a refuge, but I can’t say I’m upset my
time here is ending. Farewell, barista with the mongoose tattoo.
Farewell, double-shot mocha Frappuccino with extra whipped cream.
Farewell, the daily smirk I got when I asked the former for the latter.
Today is Labor Day, and tomorrow we’ll start our senior year at Selwyn
Academy, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We, by the way, equals me and my friends. Jackson, Elizabeth, Luke.
Jackson and I have been friends the longest. Back in middle school, we
were quite the pair. I hadn’t had my growth spurt yet (little did I know I
never would), and he’d just discovered his passion for computer science.
Together we redefined the upper limit of the seventh-grade awkwardness
curve. We were best friends by default.
Luke, meanwhile, was the most popular prepubescent on earth. He
was impossible to dislike. That’s not hyperbole: I tried. I have a strict
policy of holding automatic grudges against people everyone likes. But
Luke had a mouthful of braces and said “awesome” all the time, and he
was totally genuine. He liked everybody and he assumed that everybody
would like him back.
How did he become friends with us? Well, he chose us. He chose us at
a Saturday-morning math contest called MinneMATHolis. Jackson and I
were on a team with Luke and this kid called Miki Frigging Reagler.
(Okay, this kid I called Miki Frigging Reagler.) We finished up and went
out in the hall.
“Hey, we’re the only ones done,” said Luke. This happened a lot when
you were on Jackson’s team. “This is the best part—”
“I KNOW!” said Miki F.R. “We need to catch up, Luke. I’ve got so
much to tell you—”
“—since all the adults are occupied elsewhere—”
“—about this hilarious thing at Jenna’s party—”
“—and we are left to our own devices—”
“—which involved suspenders and a case of pop—”
“—alone in a university hallway—”
“—and do you want to go hang out by the water fountain down
there?”
“—and when will such an awesome opportunity come again?”
“I can do a flip around the stair railing,” I said, seizing my opening.
“No way,” said Luke.
I could, and did. It was the one perk to being an eighty-pound
thirteen-year-old.
“That’s awesome.”
“I can do that,” said Miki F.R. It was apparently not that easy, even if
you were trained in ballet, jazz, hip-hop, and contemporary. He bumped
his head and went to sulk in the corner.
Luke and Jackson and I performed various feats of rail-somersaulting,
head-standing, and pencil-throwing. We also told horrible math jokes.
“Got one,” said Luke. “What did the zero say to the eight?”
“ ‘You’re gonna get fat,’ ” said Jackson.
“Uh, what?”
“ ‘Because you eight more than me.’ ”
Luke and I were laughing so hard we were crying. Jackson seemed
much funnier with Luke around.
“Not what I was thinking,” Luke finally managed to say.
“Which was?”
“ ‘Nice belt.’ ”
I went home wanting just one thing: to be friends with Luke. And then
it turned out that I was friends with Luke. It was a miracle.
Four years passed, and we hung out all the time. Jackson’s cousin
Elizabeth, who lives down the street from him, would come over too. We
were a pretty tight foursome. We all went to Selwyn, a highbrow arts
school where I belonged to the Untalented caste.
Then junior year happened.
Early this summer, I didn’t know where I should start this thing. Life’s
not a TV show, with easy divisions between seasons and episodes. When
did stuff begin? I couldn’t decide.
Enter tricolon. I’m sort of obsessed with tricolon.
It’s a rhetorical device. It means “the succession of three elements.” I
came, I saw, I conquered. Government of the people, by the people, for
the people. Get it?
If you are sophomoric, like all the male juniors in BradLee’s English
class, let me tell you that yes, “tricolon” and “colon” are related words.
We were all sniggering, and then Jake Wall said, “So it’s like, plop, plop,
plop?” BradLee couldn’t help laughing. And then he sat on his desk,
clutching his forehead, after he explained tricolon crescens. That’s when
the elements are progressively longer or more intense. Plop. PLOP.
PLOP.
I’ve dumped several tricolons into this narrative. I could blame it on
my indecisiveness. I could give you a Wikipedia-sourced essay on the
importance of threes in the literary tradition. Or I could tell you that the
memory of those plops, back when BradLee was just our earnest and
embarrassable teacher, and Luke sat laughing next to me, and Maura
Heldsman flinched at the sudden sound, her mind spinning off in
pirouettes—well, I could tell you that some days, that memory was all I
had.
Remember: this is not a novel, not a memoir, not produced by anyone
with artistic skill. It’s just about what happened last year. It’s about
reality TV, a desperate crush on a ballerina, and a heroic gerbil named
Baconnaise. But mostly it’s about my friends. Please remember: not art,
just life.
ONE OF THE WAYS I COULD POSSIBLY BEGIN
I was in a locker.
Perhaps you have some questions for me.
Where was the locker?
It was in the math hallway. The hallway also contained TV cameras
and reality stars and the love of my life.
Was the locker locked?
We’ll get to that.
Oh, and by the way, WHY? Why, in the name of God-slash-Buddha-
slash-Zeus, in the name of all things holy, WHY, why why why? WHY
were you IN A LOCKER?
Yeah. That was going through my head too.
It started because I’d been stuck at school all afternoon. Usually I’ll
catch a ride home in the Appelvan, the child-molester vehicle (white
van, tinted windows) that’s piloted by my friend Jackson Appelman. But
Jackson couldn’t drive me because he had to whiz off to the University
of Minnesota for an emergency meeting; the chess players were trying to
secede from the Board Game Society, and there was some major civil
unrest to be quelled. The bus wasn’t an option since I needed to stay
after for bio help night. My mom had been my last resort.
“Would you pick me up at three-thirty?” I’d asked her before I left that
morning. The Appelvan was already sitting in our driveway. Either
Jackson or Elizabeth was honking to the rhythm of “Glory, Glory,
Hallelujah.”
“Ethan, it’s January. The school year’s halfway over. And you still
can’t remember to tell me these things the night before.”
“You could just get me a car.”
“How could I entrust a car to a kid who can’t remember to ask for a
ride?”
Obviously, a car would solve that issue, but it wasn’t a good time to
point that out.
“The triplets have dentist appointments this afternoon. I won’t be able
