I gave Bench a look. He wasn’t defending her. He wasn’t friends with Ruby any more than I was; he was only playing devil’s advocate. We learned about the Bill of Rights in social studies earlier this year—from a droning Mr. Hostler. I didn’t pay too close attention. Most of the amendments only seemed to matter if you got arrested, which wasn’t in my foreseeable future (Mom would kill me), though Bench’s comment made me wonder if Mr. Jackson could have Ruby arrested for defamation of character or something. Verbal abuse. Assault with a deadly text. “The First Amendment says nothing about reasonable consequences for sending texts calling your science teacher a—” Deedee tried to muster the courage to repeat what he’d read, but it was too much for him to say out loud. He wasn’t exactly a rule breaker. None of us were. We weren’t total suck-ups either—we just tried to keep our noses clean. We flew under the radar. It was one of the many keys to survival. “I’m pretty sure it just keeps you from being arrested for saying what you think. Doesn’t mean you can’t get in trouble.” “I think she was better off keeping her opinion to herself,” Wolf said from behind me. Wolf. The voice of reason. We counted on him for that. Just like we counted on Deedee to find drama in everything and Bench to keep us from getting beat up. And counted on me . . . I’m not sure what we counted on me for.
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