The next morning on the bus, José hisses “Pendejo!” at Ryan, then turns to me, makes a kissy face, and croons, “Putaaaaa.” Drew shrinks back in terror, and José laughs. Ryan glares at the back of the bus driver’s head, and Drew buries her face against my side. Tina’s wearing a new-to-her outfit that nobody but me knows is second-hand. Michael Taylor looks like he hasn’t slept at all when he strolls down the center aisle. He mimes taking a drag off a joint and is greeted like he’s Michael Phelps at the Olympics.
We get to school, and Drew takes off for her classroom. I inhale as deeply as I can around the box of Pop Tarts that I snuck this morning before Mom and Drew woke up. I stuffed myself, but I can still appreciate the smell of cut grass because my new jeans allow me to breathe, and eventually my stomach will stop feeling like it’s going to explode. I’ve carefully chosen a shirt that I’m positive won’t attract criticism, and last night, I managed to do my life skills homework in spite of a killer headache.
I had no idea what Self-Worth Needs are, so I did an Internet search and came up with an answer: The need to feel important, capable, confident, respected, and recognized…I’m about as likely to feel any of these things as I am to be crowned Miss Texas.
I’m starting to think that since nothing unusual happened on the bus, maybe I’m wrong in assuming that everybody in the cafetorium heard what Ryan said about my dad. Then I walk into the building, and my day goes to shit.
Kayley and Kara are by the water fountain in the hallway. Kara wrinkles up her pointy rat-nose. “Hey, Hallister, when’s Reese’s trial?”
The Pop Tarts gurgle in my gut and jump toward my throat. “How?”
“Um, hellooo, have you heard of the Internet?” Kayley pulls lip gloss out of her purse and rolls it on, watching me the whole time. “That video of him running away with a newspaper over his head was awesome.” She narrows her eyes and tilts her head like she’s staring at a painting in a museum. “You look a lot like your dad, you know…what I could see of his face, anyway. The rest of his body’s sure not hard to miss.” She hulks up her shoulders and totters from side to side, then bursts into laughter.
Kara grins. “I checked my Facebook page a second ago, and that video has forty-six shares so far. Good stuff.”
She looks to Kayley, who nods in agreement. “Oh, yeah. Quality entertainment.”
It feels like all the blood rushes from my head. “You don’t understand: We didn’t know anything about what he was doing—”
Kayley runs a brush through her hair, checks her reflection in the library window, and spins back to me. “No, Hallister, you don’t understand. We don’t like your kind of people here. You and your snitch cousin—you’re not native Piney Creekers, and you’re not welcome…Wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find out that you’re all Satan worshippers…Like her.” She points at Anna, who has just come out of the restroom.
Anna doesn’t even break stride as she holds up her fingers like devil horns and waggles her tongue, then flips them the bird. Inspired by her bravery, I blurt, “Yeah. Fuck off, Abercrombie and Bitch.”
I start to walk away, but there’s a hand on my shoulder. “Come with me. Now.”
I turn, and Coach Allison’s beet red face is inches from mine. The pores on his nose are huge. I start to speak, but he shoves his palm in my face, turns on his heel, and jerks his index finger toward the office.
My throat feels like there are giant hands squeezing it. Over my heartbeat pounding in my ears, Kara calls, “Later, Hallister!”
I’m practically vibrating on the chair in the hallway outside the principal’s door. I hear Coach Allison repeating what I said to Kayley and Kara. But he doesn’t stop there; he complains about Ryan being in his classroom, too. “I have the right not to have disruptive people in my class, Howard, and that boy is out to destroy my football team. I can’t stand the sight of him!”
I don’t know what the principal, Mr. McDaniel, says to Coach Allison, but the coach must not like it because when he leaves, he throws open the door so hard that it bounces off the wall and closes again. A few seconds later, a tall, thin man who looks way too young to be a principal opens the door. He’s got a beard, but it doesn’t go with the rest of his face.
“Colby Denton?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Yes, sir.”
“Come in and have a seat.” He leans on the edge of his desk and crosses his arms, watching me.
I start babbling the way I do when I get nervous. “I really am sorry—I’ve never been in trouble before and I promise it won’t happen again—I’m not the type of person who usually does things like this.” I gasp for air.
He frowns. “Well, you managed to send Coach Allison’s blood pressure through the roof this morning. Are you happy with yourself?”
I don’t know what to say to that; what I did had nothing to do with Coach Allison or his blood pressure. “I…I was just…mad.”
His eyebrows make a V over his eyes and he rubs his beard. “And the best way to deal with that was dropping the F-bomb in my hallway?”
I choke out, “No, sir.”
His face softens and he rubs one eye. “Let’s hear your side: I’d love to know the circumstances that led you to being in my office on the second day of school.”
There’s a knock on his door and his secretary sticks her head in. “The air conditioner’s not working in the art room. I’ve put a call in to maintenance.” She glances at me. “You’re the one who left campus without permission yesterday, aren’t you?”
Mr. McDaniel’s eyebrows shoot up. “Is that so? I knew we had a runner, but I didn’t know it was you.”
I visualize a person in a foot race. “A…runner?”
“Yes, a student who runs away from campus. That kind of runner.”
I close my eyes and nod slowly. I shoot a quick prayer up to God: Kill me now. Please. Just…kill me now.
He narrows his eyes like he’s connecting the dots. “I heard about some disturbance at lunch. Would you like to tell me about that?” He glances at his secretary. “Bring me Colby’s file, please.” He circles to his chair and falls into it, then picks up a coffee mug and takes a sip. He’s not careful when he places the mug on his desk calendar, and coffee sloshes over the sides. “Dang it!”
Mr. McDaniel reaches across his desk for the tissue box and bumps the framed photo of his wife in her bridal gown. It teeters off the edge of the desk, and I catch it just before it hits the floor. The next thing I know, I can’t even see the photo in my hands because I’m crying so hard.
“Well, bless your heart.” Mr. McDaniel leans forward in his chair and offers me the tissue box when I finish telling him everything. “That’s quite a lot of change to go through in about a little over a month’s time. I’ve seen the news stories about your father, but I didn’t make the connection.”
I pluck a couple of tissues and mumble, “I wish everybody else hadn’t, either.” My throat is closing up. I’m sure of it. Maybe I’ll drop dead soon. Hope so.
He pages through my file. “Looks like you’re a strong student in just about everything except math. That right?”
I drag my eyes up to meet his and nod silently.
He closes the file and places it atop a stack of papers. “Thanks for being honest with me about what’s going on in your life. I’ll speak with Kayley and Kara about their behavior, but I need you to promise me that you’re not going to go off on anybody else. Can you do that?”
I thread the tissue between my fingers and nod. I feel nearly as tired as I was when I woke up in the ambulance.
“Okay, I’m just going to give your mom a quick call to let her know that I’m addressing the problems you’re having with Kayley and Kara.”
I sit up straight. “But she doesn’t even know about them. You don’t need to do that.”
Mr. McDaniel shakes his head. “Nope; I’m a big believer in that old adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
He dials the
number to Sugar’s. “Yes, may I speak to Sonya Denton, please?…Oh, hello, Mrs. Denton. I’m Howard McDaniel, principal of Piney Creek High School. Colby’s here in my office; she had a verbal altercation with some other students this morning, and—” He glances at me and traces the coffee stains on his calendar with his finger. “—No, ma’am, I wouldn’t say it’s Colby’s fault; actually, these other students have been harassing her in part because of her, um, clothes…” He sits up slightly in his chair and peers over his desk at me. “What she’s wearing today is fine, completely within dress code…No, they’re not too tight; not at all…Actually, I think the other girls’ main focus today was on your husband’s…issues.” He leans back in his chair and looks at the ceiling.
I don’t know what Mom says to him, but his face turns red and he rotates his chair away from me. He lowers his voice, which is pretty useless seeing as how I’m sitting right across from him in his small office.
“Ma’am, I simply called to let you know that it’s being dealt with, in the event that you were concerned that she was being bullied.” He leans back in his chair but immediately lurches forward and lowers his voice even more. “No, I don’t think your daughter is telling, well, anyone, about finding a photo.”
Mr. McDaniel turns his chair back to his desk but won’t make eye contact. He retrieves my file, picks up a pen, and jots some notes on the outside of it, but I can’t read them from where I am.
“I think your perception of this situation is inaccurate, Mrs. Denton. Colby is not causing problems; my impression of her is that she is a good student…yes, except for math. That’s why she was placed in our remedial math class.” He listens a while longer, nodding in response to what she’s saying. “…Yes, and I appreciate you giving me all that information about Colby…No, we don’t do that here; we’d have no way to monitor what she’s eating at lunch. If you’re concerned that Colby has an eating disorder, perhaps you can contact the counseling office. No, ma’am, you’d need to do that. Well, you have a nice day, too…Mmm-hmm.”
He hangs up the phone, stares at it for what feels like a long time, then blinks a few times. “Wow. Wow-wow-wow.” He finally looks up at me and gives a forced smile.
“Hey, Colby, I’m…going to give you just a little advice that somebody once gave me, because I think that you and I might have a lot in common in the parent department. What I’m going to say is directed at the issues with your dad…and, maybe, with your mom, too. Sometimes, you’ve got to succeed in spite of your parents, instead of because of them. Parents have their own problems, but those are about them. They’re not a reflection of you. And that can be hard, especially when a parent does something spectacularly stupid, or, you know, maybe, they don’t seem very…supportive. No offense.”
I wave my hand and shake my head. My eyes are so swollen that I can barely blink.
“You’re going to have to stand tall and let all the bull crap that people throw at you just bounce off. I’ll do what I can on my end to see that Kayley and Kara lay off, but your cousin Ryan can tell you that I can’t be everywhere. If I could, what happened on the last day of school…” He shakes his head and looks away.
“What exactly did happen, anyway?”
He purses his lips. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He glances at me. “It was awful. Some other boys retaliated against Ryan for reporting the sexual assault of a girl at a party he attended, and—”
“Michael, José, and Fredrick?”
“I can’t divulge their names.”
“But I already know—”
He shrugs. “Sorry, I can’t do it. The attackers set Ryan up. The one who actually did the beating waited in an empty classroom, while the other two told Ryan that the teacher wanted to see him. There was a smartphone video of Mi—of the attacker—preparing himself. Actually, they caught the whole attack on video. It was uploaded to YouTube by 5:00 P.M. that afternoon.”
“Why are those boys still here, then? Why aren’t they in jail?”
Mr. McDaniel leans his chair back and steeples his index fingers under his chin.
“I can’t discuss the investigation or administrative side of the issue, but I can tell you this: It’s my second year as principal here. I’m not a native of Piney Creek, so I’m learning the political system as I go along.”
I’m confused. “Isn’t it the same system as the rest of the United States? They have the same president, right?”
He smiles, but it’s not a genuine grin. “I don’t mean those kind of politics. I’m talking about the system of who you know and who they are.” His eyes widen. “I didn’t say that, and if you repeat it, I’ll deny it.”
“I won’t say anything.”
He stands, strides to his door, and opens it. “That’s a good policy to have when people say rude things, too: Don’t say a thing; just walk away. We’ll consider this a warning, Colby. Read your student handbook, and you’ll see the flowchart of consequences for breaking the rules.”
Maybe my head’s so full of snot that my mouth overrides my brain. I blurt, “So, since I’m a nobody, if I cuss in the hall I’ll get in trouble, but if I was a somebody, I could beat another person half to death and nothing happens?”
Mr. McDaniel grimaces and pulls me back into his office. He closes his door but keeps his hand on the knob. “That’s not what I said. Administrative decisions are made on an individual basis, given the information I have. In your case, a staff member overheard profanity. In Ryan’s case, there were no adult witnesses, which hampered the investigation.”
I whisper, “But there was a video. It was on YouTube.”
His voice is so low that I can barely hear him. “Deleted within an hour, and the phone was somehow run over by a car.” He opens the door. “Again: consider this a warning. I don’t want to see you in my office again for swearing at other students.”
I’m late to Fun Math. Coach Allison doesn’t even notice when I come in. He’s talking to his computer screen, and it takes me a second to realize he’s Skyping with somebody about the Friday night football game. I pull my workbook off the corner of his desk and pretend that I don’t hear Kayley whisper, “Thief!”
I steal a glance at Ryan; he’s got his head on his desk, sleeping. I check the board for the assignment, flip the workbook open to the assigned page, and stare blankly at it until the bell rings.
As soon as the tardy bell rings, Mrs. Lowe starts life skills class. “So? Did everybody figure out five ways to meet the need for self-worth?”
Oh, crap. I didn’t search for how to do it, just what self-worth is. I slide down in my chair and try to become invisible; swallow hard and shake my head. Why did I even bother getting out of bed today? Shit!
Mrs. Lowe apparently notices. “Are you okay?”
“I…don’t think I did the assignment the way you wanted it done.”
“Just breathe, okay? It’s not about being perfect.” She leans against her desk and folds her arms. Today she’s wearing a T-shirt dress that’s embroidered with the words Chloe’s Mom along the neckline. The stitches look like flowers. Her necklace is made of unevenly shaped clay beads on a length of yarn, and her leggings of the day are hot pink. I can’t stop staring at the necklace; some of the beads look like dried dog doo.
She catches me staring. “You like it? My four-year-old”—she points to the stitched name on her dress—“Chloe, made it for me in Pre-K.” She fingers a bead and smiles. “The style is primitive, and that’s one of the things I love about it.”
I try to imagine my mom wearing a dog-doo necklace. Her reaction to the fabric-painted T-shirt I made for her birthday two years ago was, “Where exactly do you picture me wearing this? People expect me to be well put-together at all times. Maybe if you’d taken your time in making this, it wouldn’t look so homemade.”
Later, I saw the T-shirt at the bottom of a box of stuff marked for Goodwill in Mom’s closet. When she gave me weight loss books for my birthday, I pulled the shirt out of the box, wra
pped it around the books, and put it back in the bottom of the box. A few days later, my dad took the box to Goodwill.
She asks me once in a while if I’ve read the books yet so that I can lose weight. I ask her when she’s going to wear the shirt I made her, and she shuts up.
Mrs. Lowe says one word: “Listen.” She pulls a small boom box from a counter behind her desk, places it on the center table, and pushes Play.
“What is it?” the girl next to Kyle from Fun Math asks. “I’m not allowed to listen to anything but Christian music.”
“It’ll be okay,” Mrs. Lowe whispers.
The song is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. It’s about a guy who is trying to be who someone else wants him to be, and he realizes that even though they love each other, he can’t fix the person, and the other person can’t make him a whole person, either.
The music fades out and Mrs. Lowe says, “I’m going to play it once more, and I want you to think of a time that you felt empty inside and tried to fill that feeling in ways that didn’t work.”
“I thought we were talking about self-worth,” the girl next to Kyle says impatiently.
“We are. Self-worth is about believing that you as a person have value. If you are depending on others to provide that feeling for you,” Mrs. Lowe shrugs, “you’re going to be just like a broken cup. No matter what other people say or do, it’ll just leak out through the cracks in your self-worth.” She glances at me. “People try to seal up the cracks in all kinds of ways.”
I cringe and automatically run my hand over my lips as if there are still telltale crumbs from the box of store-brand Pop Tarts that I pigged out on before school. I’d pretended that I didn’t know what she was talking about when Mom asked me if I knew what happened to the brand-new box of toaster pastries.
My head is so full of thoughts about how much I hate myself for eating like I do that I barely realize the song is ending again. Mrs. Lowe makes a T-Chart on the whiteboard with the headings “Yes” and “No.” Under “Yes,” she writes “Volunteering to teach someone to read.” Under “No,” she writes “Abusing alcohol or drugs.”
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