by Anne Schraff
At midday, Sereeta was asked to talk to the PE chairman. “I have to see him at two o’clock,” Sereeta told Jaris. “I’m really nervous.”
After school, Jaris saw Sereeta. She looked as if she had been crying, although her eyes were now dry. They went across the street to the local teen hangout and sat in the corner drinking diet colas.
“They talked to me for about twenty minutes,” Sereeta told Jaris. “They were nice and everything. They just asked me how the money was being kept and stuff like that. I don’t know if they were thinking I took it. . . . I felt so horrible. I mean, nobody has ever suspected me of anything dishonest before . . . it feels so awful.”
“There’ve been a lot of rumors,” Jaris admitted. “But it’ll be over pretty soon. They’ll find out what really happened, and then you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, like the harness maker in ‘The String’ was fine,” Sereeta moaned.
“Sereeta,” Jaris said, “my sister Chelsea, she goes to school with Ryann’s sister, and you know those parents replaced that hundred for Ryann? They had to borrow the money from the credit union, but they replaced it. Then the other girl, Liza Ann, she wanted her money replaced, but her parents refused.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if the girls didn’t lose the money in the first place and just played a trick to get more money from their parents?” Sereeta suggested. “I mean, of course that didn’t happen, but it’d be some con, wouldn’t it?” A look of bitterness crossed Sereeta’s face. “You know, the rumors about me having something to do with the missing money got to my stepfather at his office. Somebody he works with has a daughter in the freshman class at Tubman. Anyway, he was really angry. He asked me if there was any truth to the accusations. He actually looked at me and asked me if I had done anything dishonest. He acted like he was the judge and I was the accused. He raved on and on about his wonderful reputation and how important that is for an executive who handles money. I’ve never liked him, but I hated him when he asked me all those questions. It was so humiliating. I cussed him out, Jaris. Then I went to my room and cried.”
Jaris reached across the table and covered Sereeta’s hand with his. “Lean on me, babe,” he urged her.
“I’m in their way,” Sereeta confided. “More than Jake. They can dump Jake in a day care for infants. He’ll be like a teddy bear in storage. They have him, but they don’t. They can look him up again when he’s seven or something. But I’m a messy teenager. I’m causing trouble. Now I’m even embarrassing Perry Manley by stealing money from the cheerleaders.”
“What did your mom say when he accused you?” Jaris asked.
“She tried to defend me—feebly. Then she got drunk,” Sereeta replied. “You know, I remember when everything was so good at my house. It seemed good to me anyway. My real father lived there, and we went on picnics and stuff. Mom didn’t drink much, just wine at meals. Every day was just really good. I liked school and I was doing okay. I had nice friends. I wonder sometimes why everyday I didn’t say, ‘Wow, I’m so happy.’ But I was too dumb to know how happy I was, how good it was.”
“It’ll be good again for you, Sereeta,” Jaris assured her.
“No, it won’t be like it was. Not ever. I’ll never have a family again. Not a kid’s family, I mean. I hope I get a family of my own that’ll be good. I’ll be a nice mom, and I’ll love my kids to pieces, and my husband will love me and the kids. We’ll post their drawings on the fridge with magnets . . . And we’ll make a big deal of everything they do.” Tears began to run down her face.
“Come home with me again tonight, Sereeta,” Jaris pleaded.
“No, I’m okay. I’m fine,” she said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jaris saw Quincy enter. In that same moment, Quincy spotted Jaris and Sereeta. A look of pure guilt and misery came over Quincy’s face. He walked, haltingly, over to where Sereeta and Jaris sat.
“Sereeta,” Quincy began, “my mom talked to the school people, but she didn’t say anything bad about you. Mom just said she was not good with money, and maybe she made some mistakes. But she couldn’t have made so many that two hundred dollars is gone . . . ”
Sereeta looked at Quincy but said nothing.
“Sereeta,” he continued, “I’m sorry about everything. Nobody thinks you took the money, except maybe for some jerks. I’m sorry if I said anything that hurt you. I was just . . . just so scared for my mom.”
Sereeta said nothing, and Quincy eventually walked away.
“I may hang out with my grandmother,” Sereeta told Jaris. “That always helps.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Jaris agreed. “She’s your real dad’s mom I know, but I wonder if he ever tells her he’s coming around to see you and her . . .”
“No, she hasn’t seen him in a long time either,” Sereeta explained. “He’s changed, Jaris. His new wife is very domineering and sets the rules. Life is all about her two boys now.” Then Sereeta glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh, I’m riding home with Alonee tonight, remember? We’re both getting haircuts at that new place. We want it shorter for summer. Then Alonee’s dad will drop me home. So . . . see you in the morning, Jaris.”
Jaris watched Sereeta walk out.
Jaris racked his brain for a way to figure out what happened with the thefts at school. He had to find a way to clear Sereeta completely.
Jaris’s suspicions kept returning to Jasmine. She was nearby every time money disappeared. It would have been so easy for her to walk up to her mother at the car wash cash counter, distract her, and take the two hundred. Jasmine’s family was prosperous, but her father was pretty strict with money. Jasmine didn’t get everything she wanted.
When Jaris got home from school, his mother approached him. “Honey, Ms. McDowell just called. You didn’t turn in some important project that was due today. She was really surprised. You’ve never missed a deadline before.”
Jaris clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh man! That thing on Clinton. I totally forgot about that. I did most of the research on the Internet, and I read two books on it. I was almost done and then I let it go!” Jaris was between an A and a B in American history. If he did well on this project, he thought he had a good shot at an A.
“Ms. McDowell said if you turn it in before class tomorrow morning, you can still get credit, Jaris,” Mom told him.
“Okay Mom, thanks, I’ll get right at it,” Jaris assured her.
“Jaris,” Mom commented, worry lining her brow. “You have not been yourself the last few weeks. I talk to you, and your mind is a million miles away. Is everything all right?”
“You know, Mom,” Jaris answered, “this stealing at school and some jerks blaming Sereeta. It’s really gotten to me. She feels terrible and I feel terrible for her.”
“Sweetie,” Mom said, “I know you care deeply for Sereeta, but you can’t let her problems drive you over a cliff, okay?”
“If I could only find out who’s doing the stealing,” Jaris said.
“You aren’t the police, and you’re not a private investigator, Jaris,” Mom told him. “Sereeta has got to pull herself together. I feel sorry for her too. I wish Olivia could be more of a mother to her. But I’m concerned about you, sweetie. You’re my baby. I want you to do well in school and have a bright future. I don’t want you to be like your father, spending years regretting the things he never got to do. You’ve got to keep focused on your own future.”
Pop came into view then. He was getting dinner ready, and he had gravy all over his apron. “What’s wrong, Jaris?” he asked.
“Same old, Pop,” Jaris replied. “They haven’t solved those thefts at school, and they’re casting suspicion on Sereeta. The PE people questioned her today.”
“She’s getting a raw deal, that kid is,” Pop declared with a strong vein of righteous anger in his voice. “They got no right to be running a deal on her like that. They got no evidence. They’re way off base questioning her—a sixteen-year-old kid—like some criminal. What’
ve they got? Some punks saying she was near the little idiots who lost their money? What’s that mean? If I’m walking alongside a building that’s on fire, does that mean I started the freakin’ fire?”
Jaris appreciated his father getting angry. Jaris was angry too, and it made him feel better to see Pop riled up. That was one of the things that Jaris loved about his father—his sense of justice. Even if somebody else suffered an injustice, Pop was as angry as if he were the victim.
“Boy,” Pop went on, “you tell that little girl she doesn’t have to answer their stupid questions anymore. She didn’t do anything wrong. Those fools shoulda watched their purses better. The ladies who ran the money box during the car wash were idiots. How is any of that the fault of a sixteen-year-old kid who’s already got her plate full of trouble? Next time they want to talk to her, you tell her to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. You tell that little girl they’re just blowin’ smoke. They screwed up over there, putting a couple of crazy ladies in charge of a money box, and now they want to take it out of a kid’s hide.”
Pop fumed his way back into the kitchen.
Jaris looked at his mother. “Pop is awesome,” he remarked.
Mom smiled. “Well, there had to be some reason I married him beside the fact that he was the handsomest boy who asked me out.”
After dinner that evening, Jaris hurried to his room then and got started on finishing his project on President Clinton. He sat at the computer for two hours and then printed it out. It was a good report. He had worked on it for two weeks, and he thought it deserved an A—if he hadn’t been late with it.
When Jaris went to bed, he couldn’t sleep. He was too tense. He’d put so much into winding up the report that he couldn’t slow down enough to sleep. And then there was Sereeta. He desperately wanted to do something to make it all better for her. But he sickeningly knew that he lacked the power to make any of it better.
CHAPTER SIX
The theft problem struck again on Wednesday of the following week, in American history. Ms. McDowell had not yet begun the class. She was just putting her briefcase down.
Bekka Crandall let out a shriek and began pawing furiously in her purse. “It’s missing!” she cried. “The fifty dollars Mom gave me this morning for shopping is missing!”
Ms. McDowell looked down at the junior who sat in the second row. She asked her calmly, “You’ve lost some money, Bekka?”
“No ma’am,” Bekka protested. “Somebody had to have stolen it, ma’am. It was right here in my purse. I showed it to my friends, Jenna and Luci right here. Mom gave it to me this morning. It was a birthday gift from my grandmother in South Carolina.”
“We saw the money,” the other girls said.
“I showed it to them, then I put it back in my wallet, Ms. McDowell,” Bekka explained. “Now there’s just a couple old dollars bouncing around in my wallet. I keep my purse under my desk, and most likely somebody reached in there and took it, ma’am.”
“Bekka,” the teacher asked, still calmly, “are you sure you didn’t put the fifty dollar bill in another compartment of your purse when you put it back?”
“No ma’am. I’m sure about what happened,” the student asserted.
“Bekka,” Ms. McDowell directed, “please come to my desk and bring your purse. Let’s make absolutely sure your fifty dollars didn’t slide into some crevice in your purse.”
“No need to do that ma’am, ’cause I’ve been robbed,” Bekka said sadly. “Just like them other girls.”
“Just humor me, Bekka,” Ms. McDowell said, “and bring your purse to my desk. Sometimes we’re sure of something and it turns out we’re mistaken. I’m always putting things in the wrong places in my purse.”
Bekka walked slowly up to the teacher’s desk. Ms. McDowell took a newspaper from her briefcase and spread it on the top of her desk. Then she explained, “When I lose something in my purse, I just upend it and spill everything out.” With that, she spilled the contents of Bekka’s purse onto her desktop.
“See,” Bekka sighed, “just a few old dollars spilled from my wallet. The fifty is gone.”
Ms. McDowell sorted through lipsticks, mirrors, packets of sugar and creamer, little booklets, and packets of tissues.
“See it ain’t anywhere,” Bekka repeated.
“What’s this little purse here?” Ms. McDowell asked.
“Oh, that’s for my lip balm, ma’am . . . chapped lips you know. I keep my lip balm in there,” Bekka replied.
“Well,” Ms. McDowell said, opening the little purse. “We’ll just take a quick peek in here and—eureka! We’ve found it. Look, a fifty dollar bill folded into a tight little cylinder right next to your lip balm.”
“Oh my gosh,” Bekka gasped. “How on earth did that happen? What was I thinking? I was sure I put the money in my wallet. I must’ve put it in there by mistake. Stupid me! I’m so sorry for causing such a fuss, Ms. McDowell.”
Alonee glanced over at Jaris. Her eyebrows shot up. Bekka was trying to fake being the victim of a theft.
“I think this is a good time for a little lecture not directly related to our course of study,” Ms. McDowell began, once Bekka was back in her seat. “There have apparently been some thefts from purses here at school, and proceeds from the cheerleader car wash is missing. Events like that can foster hysteria and mistrust, which is sad. Some people might even use the situation to pretend money was taken when it was not. If the money is from parents, often their mom and dad will replace it. Then the culprit has twice as much money. We don’t want that to happen.”
“Oh,” Bekka exclaimed, “that would be terrible to fake such a thing.”
“Indeed,” Ms. McDowell agreed.
The teacher then began passing out the corrected class projects. Jaris held his breath. He’d worked very hard on his project, but maybe he could have done even better if he wasn’t so worried about Sereeta. When Ms. McDowell put the folder on the edge of his desk, Jaris was afraid to look at the grade. How much was his tardiness going to cost him? Then he took a deep breath and looked.
A minus! Jaris heaved a deep sigh of relief. McDowell had taken off only part of a point for being late.
After class, Jaris saw Bekka arguing with another girl. “I told you it wouldn’t work,” Bekka hissed. “Now the teacher thinks I’m a cheat. She knows what I did. And it’s all your fault!”
Jaris heard just one more phrase. This came from the lips of the other girl.
“It worked for Ryann.”
Jaris felt rage pulsing through his body. The first “theft” had been a ruse from the beginning—greedy little teenagers wanting to squeeze more money from their parents by pretending they had been robbed. The words ran through Jaris’s mind again and again. “It worked for Ryann. . . . It worked for Ryann.” All the ugliness, all the suspicions, and all the accusations—innocent people suffered through all that.
At lunchtime, Jaris looked for Ryann and Leticia. They always found a little corner to eat in. Jaris spotted them, noticing that Ryann was sporting a new tank top with alternating bright white and black stripes. “Hi Ryann, did you ever find that hundred dollars that was missing from your purse?” Jaris asked.
“Of course not,” Ryann answered. “Some thief took it.”
Leticia glared at Jaris and said, “What a stupid question. You know what happened.”
“Yeah,” Jaris said. “I know exactly what happened. A couple girls spilled the beans.” Jaris looked directly into Ryann’s eyes and spoke in a clear, harsh voice. “Ryann, I know what you did. I know what you did standing there in front of Harriet Tubman’s statue. You should be ashamed to stand by the statue of a good, honest, brave woman like Harriet Tubman and run a dirty con job like you did.”
Ryann jumped up, looking frightened. “W-what are you talking about?” she stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything.”
“Ryann, shhh,” Leticia cautioned. “Don’t say anything!”
Leticia grabbed Ryann’s hand. Ryann was shaking. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Leticia said to her. “He’s just guessing. He doesn’t know anything. Don’t panic, girl.”
“You wanted to buy more than a hundred dollars worth of rags, girl,” Jaris continued. “So you came up with a way to double your fun, and you didn’t care who got hurt.”
“It’s all lies,” Ryann asserted, clamping her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to no more lies.”
“Then your cousin Liza caught on to the scam and tried to double her money too,” Jaris went on.
Jaris dropped to one knee in the grass and stared at both girls. “Listen up and listen good. You’re going to tell your parents that you found the hundred dollars you thought was stolen. I don’t care what kind of story you cook up, but you’re going to fess up to finding the money. The whole school is going to know it was a mistake, that Sereeta didn’t take your freakin’ money. Nobody did. I know you tried to cheat your parents, but that’s not my business. I’m giving you guys a way out so you don’t have to admit to the crooks you are. Pass the word to your cousin too.”
“He can’t make you do anything,” Leticia said. “He’s just blowin’ smoke, Ryann. You get out of our faces, Jaris Spain. You don’t scare us!”
“Fine,” Jaris said. “After school today I’m going over to your house, Ryann, and tell your parents what you did. Then I’m telling Liza’s parents what she did.”
“They w-won’t believe you,” Ryann gasped.