by L. E. DeLano
“I’m not the one with the problem,” I retort. “Maybe you don’t recognize someone being a good person because you’re out of practice.”
“At least my family members aren’t driving people off the road!” She snarls.
“At least I don’t have to break into my boyfriend’s phone because I’m worried that he’s texting girls that he’d rather be talking to!” I shoot back.
“All right, let’s just calm down here!” Mr. Jones exclaims.
“Bitch!” Maya shrieks.
Mr. Jones turns to reprimand her just as I let out the word—the “C” word—and the entire class gasps.
“Girls!” Mr. Jones thunders. “Out! Both of you in the hall now!”
I wait for Maya to walk through the door first. No way am I turning my back to her. Mr. Jones gets between us and I follow him out. Once we’re in the hallway, he turns and shuts the door.
“Office time. Let’s go.” He starts walking and it finally sinks in that I’ve really done it now. I shoot Maya a look that is nothing but pure hatred and she returns it tenfold as we trail behind him.
Once we get there, Mrs. Logan, the assistant principal, ushers us into her office and closes the door.
Mr. Jones makes the whole thing sound a lot worse than it really was. The way he tells it, blood was spraying and we were lobbing grenades at each other. Maya and I sit in stony silence. My arms are folded across my chest, my legs are crossed, and my foot is swinging madly. I look over at Maya and realize we’re doing the exact same thing, so I change my position.
“I’ll be emailing your parents about today,” Mrs. Logan informs us both.
I bite my lip and stare at the carpet, but Maya, the perpetual victim, starts going off.
“Mrs. Logan, she started this,” she fumes. “She’s been harassing me since the day I got back! She wrote that presentation just to pick on me because I’m a scholarship student. She’s a bully and we have a school policy about that.”
My mouth drops open.
“Are you kidding me? I’m harassing you??” I can’t believe she has the nerve to even say it. “I’ve been putting up with your nasty posts and all the rotten remarks you’ve been making in class and behind my back!”
“Enough!” Mrs. Logan holds up a hand. “Girls, we all know that you both faced a very difficult situation last year. No one is expecting you to be best friends, but we do expect you to treat each other with respect while on this campus.”
I make a snorting sound and Maya tsks her tongue to her teeth, both of us making it clear what we think of that statement.
“It might be best if we bring Mrs. Ramsey in on this,” Mr. Jones suggests. “You know me, I’m not so great with the girl drama. And I need to get back to class.”
Mrs. Logan taps a finger to her chin. “Thank you, Mr. Jones. And I do think Mrs. Ramsey is a good idea, under the circumstances.”
I roll my eyes mentally. Ugh. Mrs. Ramsey is the school counselor. I have a feeling my mom will be emailed a list of anger management counselors in the area. Lucky for me she just started selling essential oils. She’ll have me dabbing bergamot and lavender on my wrists instead.
“After I email both of your parents,” Mrs. Logan goes on, “you can expect after-school detention.”
“But I have work!” I protest.
“And I have basketball,” says Maya.
“Your school obligations come first,” Mrs. Logan reminds us. “Perhaps next time you’ll consider the repercussions before you act irresponsibly. Tomorrow, you’re going to spend some time after school figuring out how to get along with each other.”
Maya’s eyes lock with mine. Tomorrow we’re going to spend some time after school figuring out how to keep Maya from splattering me against a wall.
Maybe my mom has an essential oil for that.
9
"You're not taking this seriously.”
My mother has gone into full hoverparent mode. The TV is off. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, carefully set with the notepad that recorded her thoughts on the email from Mrs. Logan, and two cups of chamomile tea. She even lit her serenity candle. God help me.
“Mom—” I begin carefully.
“What has gotten into you, Blue? You used to be such a good student.”
“I am a good student,” I remind her. “My GPA is doing just fine.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it,” she retorts. “We’re discussing your school experience. The interactions that shape and enhance your daily life.”
“You mean like this one?” I cross my arms. “Not feeling too enhanced.”
Her face turns crimson with anger, but she doesn’t raise her voice. It’s not her style.
“I just want you to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. You were completely out of line,” she insists.
“It was one little disagreement that’s being totally blown out of proportion,” I retort. “If they’d just move us to separate classes, Maya and I wouldn’t have to deal with each other.”
“I’ve already requested that,” Mom says. “But Audubon isn’t that large. Even if you don’t have a class together again, you’ll still see each other in the halls or at lunch. The two of you are going to have to learn how to deal with each other.”
“You can’t just lock us in a room together after school and expect us to be buddies.”
Mom raises a brow. “Mrs. Ramsey is a licensed counselor and I’m sure she’s dealt with harder cases than you.”
“So I’m stuck losing hours at work so I can sit in a desk next to Maya and write essays about conflict resolution and communication skills? How is that a good use of anybody’s time?”
I glare into my tea mug. I hate chamomile tea. It tastes like weeds you’d pull out of the backyard. It’s not soothing at all. I have a brief fantasy of pouring my tea all over mom’s lavender verbena serenity candle. Strangely, the mental image helps, so I guess chamomile is soothing after all.
Mom taps a perfectly manicured finger—complete with the custom nail wrap design that’s on sale this month—on the table.
“You know,” she says, “when I’m faced with challenges or objections, I try to take a step back and ask myself: what’s the lesson here?” Her hands move elegantly as she falls into one of her marketing presentations. “What’s the takeaway—and how do we use this to energize our authentic selves into forward motion?”
My eyes roll hard enough that I can feel them bouncing against the back of my skull.
“Save it, please. I’m not selling Maya any diet shakes.”
“You’re not even listening to what I’m trying to get across—” Mom starts, but I interrupt.
“Are we done?”
She lets out a sigh, then takes a lengthy pull of her chamomile tea. “You’re excused,” she says, waving me off. She’ll probably grab a wineglass as soon as I clear the doorway.
I stomp down the hallway, grabbing my coat out of the hall closet.
“You’re not taking the car anywhere but work and school for a week,” she calls out.
“I’m going for a walk,” I snarl and slam out the door.
I am still so angry I vibrate with it. This is all so freaking unfair. I’m getting all the fallout for this when hardly anything I did deserved it.
Tears burn my eyes as I walk briskly through the neighborhood. I’m so furious, it takes me a minute to realize it’s snowing heavily. The playground is deserted, of course, so I let myself in through the gate on the chain link fence. The slide has a layer of snow over it, which I brush off before I climb the platform and lay down, with my feet dangling down the slide, feeling the cold plastic through the thin layer of my jeans.
I need to come up with a warmer place to be alone with my thoughts. Most teenage girls would just go to their room, but they don’t live with my mot
her. If she heard so much as a sniffle from behind my closed door, she’d be busting in with an essential oil diffuser, a gratitude journal, and more freaking chamomile tea.
I swipe the angry tears from my eyes, refusing to cry over this. It really pisses me off when I get angry enough to cry. Guys don’t do that stuff—they just hit things. The crack is still there on the slide where my fist connected. It didn’t make me feel any better then, and repeating it wouldn’t make me feel any better now.
The snow is really coming down, and my ears soak in the delicious quiet that comes with it. Everything is so still and the air is cold and fresh. I pull it in through my nose, breathing it out slowly from my mouth, repeating the action for a long time—until I can’t feel my face anymore. Maybe I should take up meditation. I’m sure Mom has plenty of mantras I can recite to myself over and over.
My phone vibrates. Probably Jules, or Mom wanting to know where the hell I am, I’ve been gone so long. I’m debating whether or not to look at it when someone opens the gate to the playground.
It’s Devon. I know that beanie anywhere. He’s got his head down, so he doesn’t see me wave. I’m about to call out to him when walks over, knocks the snow off one of the swings, and sits down. His shoulders slump, and he faces away from the gate, staring at the ground. His hands wrap around the chains on each side, and one foot pushes him slowly back and forth, back and forth.
Devon takes a deep, shuddering breath so loud I can hear it from here. I feel like I’m spying on a private moment, and pull myself a little further down the slide so that I’m blocked by the low wall around the platform. Only my eyes look over.
Back and forth, back and forth. He removes his hand from the chain, and rubs it across his nose, lifting his head to do so.
Is he crying? I think he might be crying.
I am intruding horribly. Part of me feels like I should let him know I’m here—if only to offer a shoulder if he needs it. God knows he’s been my sounding board for a while now. But what if he’s embarrassed instead? Or worse—really pissed at me for spying on him?
I’m reminded that we met in this exact circumstance and he was spying on me.
I should go over to him. I should let him know I’m here and then he can decide if he wants to talk to me or tell me to mind my own business.
What if he tells me to mind my own business?
I’m overthinking this. I’m going sit up and call his name, but just as I start to, he stands up. I chicken out and shrink back down again with my eyes barely above the edge of the slide. Devon takes in another long breath, stretching out his legs and shaking his arms as if he’s putting feeling back into them. He cradles his injured hand, rubbing it lightly to get it warm.
Finally, he walks over and lets himself out the gate, and I watch him go, berating myself for not saying something. Even if he had known I was there, he clearly didn’t want to talk to anyone. Still, he looked like he needed a friend, and God knows I could really use one, too. One who doesn’t talk behind my back. One who isn’t in jail.
I really want to know what Devon is going through. Whatever it is has broken through his sunny exterior and done some damage.
It occurs to me again that I don’t know him, really. There’s a pang in my stomach at the thought. I’ve been so busy dealing with all my crap and he never seems to be bothered by anything. Maybe he’s just better at dealing with things than I am.
Or maybe that’s just what he wants everyone to think.
No one gets to read my book, he’d said, not until I kill the villain.
What did he mean by that? What sort of villain does he have in his life? Mine roams the halls and stalks me all over social media, standing behind a victim shield that I don’t dare hurl anything against. Devon’s villain is hiding in the shadows, painted over with a layer of sunshine and rainbows.
Something about that makes me feel even colder, and I watch the snow swirl around him until he’s just a blur, fading into the darkness.
10
Devon wasn't in first block today, or at lunch. He must be out sick. Only, he didn’t look sick last night. Heartsick, maybe. Maybe he took a mental health day, to deal with whatever he’s dealing with. I’ve needed mental health days every so often. Believe it or not, Mom is fine with it every time I do. She makes me chamomile tea and talks to me about the importance of hydration and proper sleep. I don’t do it very often, mostly because by the end of the day she’s driven me completely insane.
So yeah, he’s probably just taking a mental health day. Which is a good thing.
Unless you look as sad as he did last night. The memory of his tears and his drooping shoulders pulls at me, and I have a hard time concentrating all day because of it. I mean, he barely knows anybody here, other than me. At least, I’ve never seen him hang out with anybody. Maybe that’s why he was sad—he misses his friends back in Florida. Maybe he hates it here. Maybe he left a girl behind.
That thought slides from my head right down into my gut with a hollow clang. Not that I’m crushing on him or anything. I know people are talking because we sit together at lunch every day, but he’s a good friend. He’s a really good friend. I just don’t like to think about him being lonely, and missing some girl.
Some girl who’s probably pretty, and laughs a lot, and isn’t so damn miserable all the time.
I catch Jules in the hall between third and fourth block.
“Hey, was Devon in class today?” I ask her.
“Florida man? Nah, he’s out today.”
I frown at the use of her new nickname for him. “Oh. Okay.” I shrug like it was nothing, but she’s not going to let it go.
“Why—you missing him?”
“I borrowed his pen. I need to get it back to him.”
“It’s a pen.”
“It’s his favorite. It’s got a really smooth roller.” It’s all I can think of, but she buys it.
“You should keep it, then.”
“I’ll just give it to him when he comes back.”
“Or, you could drop it by his house,” she suggests. “He lives over on Willow Court.”
“I know that. And it can wait.”
“If you change your mind and go, let me know what his house looks like inside.” She pushes open the door to a nearby bathroom and steps inside. I follow her.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Dude, I’ve got to pee.” She tosses her backpack at my feet and steps into a stall.
I bend over to look under the other two stalls. “Nobody else is in here and I’ve heard you pee before. What makes you think I’m going to see something crazy if I go to his house?”
“Word around the neighborhood is that his family is antisocial.” She raises her voice so I can hear her over the peeing. “Like, his parents are almost never there, and when they are there, they barely talk to anybody. You remember Olivia Farrell?” She flushes and then wipes her hands on me as she passes me on her way to the sink.
“Yuck! Jules!”
“Listen to me pee, pay the price,” she says matter-of-factly.
I suppress a shudder and stick to the subject. “Is Olivia that girl on the bus that wore the hot pink rubber bands on her braces?”
“That’s her,” she confirms as she washes her hands. “The Princess chick with all the glitter. Her family lives next door to Devon and they went over to say hello right after they moved in. Olivia told me her mom said his parents both looked like they’d been dragged behind a truck. Bags under their eyes, didn’t talk much. I just wondered if they had a meth lab in the basement.”
“That’s a rotten thing to say.” I pick up her backpack and handed it to her. “Maybe they were just tired from unpacking boxes. Jesus, even the neighborhood loves to gossip.”
“All the moms in the neighborhood gossip,” Jules says. “You’ve seen enough home jewelry p
arties to know that.”
“Since when did you become buddies with Olivia?”
“Since Olivia saw me at the movies and suddenly remembered that I went to Audubon,” Jules says. “She wanted to know if I knew Devon.”
“Oh she did, did she?” That comes out a lot harder than I intended. Jules gives me a knowing look.
“Come on, you had to notice he’s hot.”
“Of course, I noticed. And if she’s stalking him, then talking smack about his family is probably not the best way to get his attention,” I point out.
She shrugs. “Just passing along the info.”
“He’s probably got a girlfriend back in Florida.”
Jules makes a non-committal sound as she reaches for the door, and I put my hand out to stop her.
“Does he?” I ask.
“How would I know?”
“You guys talk in second block—or so he tells me. I thought he might have mentioned it, is all.”
“Nope. Gotta go.” She opens the door and says over her shoulder, “Nice peeing for you. Perv.”
Well, that conversation got me nowhere. I’m concerned about Devon. Not worried, exactly. Just . . . wondering. About lots of things.
I could drive by his house after school, if I knew which house it was. Or which house Olivia lives in, for reference. I could text Jules and ask, but that would only have her assuming things again.
It’s a stupid idea. I’ve got detention after school, anyway.
My mood is not improved by that thought.
11
"All right, you two,” Mrs. Ramsey says as she leans against her closed office door and stares us both down. “I knew there was a chance we’d end up in this room, but I was hoping you’d both take the high road.” She levels a glance first at Maya and then over at me and I bristle inwardly at the fact that she’s looking at both of us the same way. I didn’t do that much. And I only did it in reaction to Maya but I’m the one getting strapped in and forced to take the ride with her.
“So who wants to go first?” Mrs. Ramsey asks. “And no interrupting each other. I need to know what’s happening here from both points of view.”