Principal Patricia Cookman, who gave Dumas Gellis the responsibility of direct oversight of her school, made a rare appearance. Most times she preferred sitting in her office behind closed doors to interacting with her faculty, staff and students.
Summer saw her as a middle-aged, nondescript woman with unflattering straight brown hair and dispassionate blue eyes. Miss Cookman had earned her reputation as an expert on curriculum. She believed students needed more than academics, which had led her to apply for and secure the cultural arts grant.
The principal’s cold stare swept over her teachers and staff, the lines bracketing her mouth deepening. She would have preferred if they had not come in costume. She had agreed to hold the Halloween dance not for the adults’ entertainment but the students.
“Weir is taking a big risk tonight by hosting this affair, but I’m willing to take the risk when we consider the alternatives of our children breaking the law when they do things they consider childish pranks.” Her inflection with the flat A’s identified her as a Midwesterner. “Turning over headstones and desecrating graves is a crime, and because my goal is to keep young adults in school and out of jail I fully support this undertaking. I thank you in advance for volunteering your time. Good night.”
That said, she turned and walked out of the gymnasium. There was a pregnant silence from the assembled as they stared at one another.
“It’s two months into the school year, and the old bat comes out of her cave for the first time on Halloween,” mumbled a man behind Summer.
Dumas clapped his hands once. “I hope everyone remembers their assignments for monitoring the halls and checking bathrooms. I have security personnel stationed on every floor by the stairwells, so if you see something that’s not correct, please alert them.” He smiled. “Let’s party, people.”
Summer met Gabriel’s gaze, then glanced away. Even though she wore his engagement ring, they had agreed to keep their liaison private. She looked for Desiree, and seeing her talking to one of the math teachers, she headed in her direction.
“Summer?”
Stopping, she turned to find Dumas bearing down on her. He had come as a pirate: eye patch, earring, pantaloons, boots and a wooden sword in a leather scabbard.
“Yes, Dumas.”
“Tina Turner?”
She nodded, smiling. “Yes.”
His dark eyes roamed over her body, lingering on her legs in the high heels. “I wanted to congratulate you on your engagement.” He caught her left hand, examining the ring. “That must have cost someone at least a year’s salary. I know he can’t be one of our teachers.”
“He isn’t.” Gabriel wasn’t a teacher, but a musician.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you, Dumas.” She tried pulling her hand away, but he tightened his grip. “Please let go of my hand.”
“Who’s the lucky man?”
“I’d rather not say. Now, I’m going to ask you once again to let go of my hand.”
He leaned closer. “Or what, Summer?”
The odor of stale tobacco on his breath threatened to make her sick. Even if she had not fallen in love with Gabriel, she never would’ve dated Dumas because he smoked. What she could not understand was that he was coming onto her in the workplace with dozens of witnesses.
A smile trembled over her lips. “I will knee you in your groin.” She had enunciated each word so he would not misconstrue her intent.
Dumas dropped her hand. His face was marked with a loathing that unnerved her. Within seconds, his expression of desire had changed to hate.
It had ended as quickly as it had begun. Nodding, he turned and walked away, leaving Summer staring at his back. She wasn’t aware that Gabriel had witnessed Dumas holding her hand, and when she met his gaze his dark face was set in a vicious expression.
The students poured into the school at eight and the partying began in earnest. Music blared from the massive speakers set up by the hired DJ and his crew. Most had lined up at the food and beverage tables, getting their “eat on” before dancing.
The costumes ranged from the ridiculous to the predictable witch, nurse, nun, skeleton, soldier, and vampire. Celebrities, past and present, were well represented: Michael Jackson, Elvis, Prince, Madonna, James Brown, Marilyn Monroe, Alice Cooper, Little Richard, Bob Marley, and Kiss. It was apparent many of the students had raided their parents’ attics for the vintage clothing.
The clothes may have been vintage, but the music was contemporary. Glancing at her watch, Summer headed out of the gym to monitor the second floor girls’ bathrooms.
She winked at Gabriel dancing with Desiree as she wound her way through the throng eating, dancing, or standing around talking in small groups.
“Nice outfit, Miss Monty.”
She smiled at a boy who had auditioned for her. “Thanks, Billy.” Most of the students had shortened her name to Monty because they said Montgomery took too long to say.
She headed for the stairwell, and climbed the staircase to the second floor. Her heels made click-clacking sounds on the waxed tiles. Each floor contained four bathrooms: two for girls and two for boys. She knocked on the door of the first one, pushing open the door. Two girls stood in front of a mirror applying kohl to their eyes.
“We’re vampires,” they said in unison.
Summer smiled. “I know.”
She rapped on a stall door, then pushed on it. It was locked. “Anyone in there?” There was no answer. “Did you see anyone go in here?” she asked the girls.
“No.”
“Not me.”
Sighing, she went into a neighboring stall, stood on the edge of the toilet, and peered into the locked one. It was empty. She checked the remaining stall, and it, too, was empty.
“Let’s go, ladies. Do your business and leave.”
They put away their makeup, then left, teetering on incredibly high heels, their wispy black dresses fluttering around them like bat wings.
Summer followed them, making her way down the hall to the next bathroom. She stopped short when she heard loud voices coming from the boy’s bathroom. Moving closer to the door, she listened intently. The voices were lower, and she took a step, but stopped again when she heard someone moaning in pain.
Reacting quickly, she braced her hands on the door, pushing it open. The scene that greeted her stopped Summer in her tracks. Dumas Gellis’s right hand gripped a boy’s throat as he pressed him against a wall. She would never forget the fear in the kid’s eyes as he pleaded with Dumas to let him go.
“I’ll get it for you, Mr. Gellis. I swear I will.”
Summer had seen enough. “Let him go, Dumas.”
Dumas’s head spun around, and when he stared at her, Summer saw the simmering rage in his gaze. “Get the hell out of here and mind your business, Miss Montgomery.”
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving until you let him go.”
“Please, Mr. Gellis,” the boy pleaded. His face was drenched with his tears.
Summer moved closer, her hands tightening into fists. She measured how close she could get to him to land a well-aimed kick to the back of his knees. She had to remember Dumas was a former athlete who had played semi-pro football. He was tall, large and strong.
She blinked and before she could blink again Dumas had released the boy, who ran out the bathroom, nearly knocking her down in his haste to escape.
Summer and Dumas stared at each other in what had become a face-off. “If that kid tells his parents that you put your hands on him you know the consequences.”
One corner of his mouth twisted upward. “He’s not going to tell his parents a damn thing, Miss Montgomery. Do you know why?
“Why?”
“Because I believe he’s been dealing drugs at Weir. I’ve been watching him for a long time.”
“Do you have proof he’s been dealing?”
“Not yet.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your responsibility to—”
&nbs
p; “Don’t you dare stand in my face and tell me my responsibility!” he shouted, interrupting her. The veins in his neck bulged. “This is my school.”
Summer wanted to tell him Weir wasn’t his school. It was Patricia Cookman’s school. She was the principal.
“I want you to know that if his parents file a complaint against you for assault and I’m called as a witness, I will tell the truth.”
She left the bathroom, stood in the hall, trying to understand the change in Dumas’s personality. She’d found him popular with the students and staff. Whenever he walked the halls, most students gave him high-fives. Teachers found him approachable and supportive.
She wanted to believe he was having a bad day, but his display of violence directed at her and the student was unconscionable and unacceptable.
Pushing off the wall, she checked the remaining bathrooms before returning to the gymnasium.
Nineteen
Summer balanced a small Styrofoam plate filled with Swedish meatballs, hot wings, miniature spicy beef patties, and potato salad in one hand, while attempting to take a sip of cranberry juice in a cup from the other.
“Do you need some help with that?”
Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled at Gabriel. “Yes, thank you. Please hold my plate.”
He took her plate, while she took a swallow of her drink. His gaze shifted to the middle of the gym, where students gyrated to 2Pac’s “California Love.”
He smiled, swaying in time with the infectious rhythm. “Dance, Miss Montgomery?”
Summer put her cup on a table. “Let’s do it.”
Gabriel placed her plate next to the cup, captured her hand and led her to the middle of gym. Snapping his fingers, he closed his eyes, and rolled his leather-clad hips in a movement reminiscent of riding a horse. Her fiancé was bumping and grinding as if he were a dancer in a hip-hop video. Summer turned her back to him, unable to believe his suggestive body language. She gasped when she felt his groin graze her hips.
“Show me what you got, baby,” he whispered in her ear.
Accepting his challenge, she raised her right hand, spread her legs, and wiggled her hips, then dropped her hips until they were inches from the floor before she wiggled her hips again without moving her feet. A loud roar erupted from the students as they formed a circle to watch two teachers who quickly had become favorites challenge each other in a dance-off.
Summer strutted in her heels, her hips moving as if they had taken on a life of their own as she smiled seductively over her shoulder at her colleague and lover. Executing a quick spin on her toes, she faced him, spread her arms, and thrust her chest at him.
Gabriel’s right arm snaked around her waist, pulling her flush against his body, right leg anchored between her knees, and dipped her low enough for the untamed wig to sweep the floor.
The boys howled, pumping their fists in the air and giving one another high-fives.
“Don’t let him do that to you, Miss Monty,” a girl screamed over the blaring music.
Smiling, Summer pushed Gabriel back. Within seconds she became Tina Turner as the DJ segued into “Proud Mary.” Half a dozen girls joined in, becoming Ikettes as they spun around, then executed high kicks.
The dancing became infectious as other teachers and staff joined the students in what had become a montage of music that overlapped generations.
The fever-pitched dance music continued non-stop for the next half hour, until it finally slowed once a ballad by Sade came through the speakers. A collective sigh of relief went up by everyone.
Summer walked off the dance floor, her skin moist from the unaccustomed exertion. It had been years since she’d danced that much. She was breathing heavily, her heart racing; she was so wrapped in a silken cocoon of euphoria that she did not want to acknowledge that she wasn’t in the best physical shape she could be.
She missed lifting weights, pounding the heavy bag, and sparring with a partner trained in marital arts. What she did do was jog for endurance and go for marksmanship qualifying training at least four times each year.
What she refused to acknowledge was that she missed being on stage. Whenever she performed in front of an audience she wasn’t Summer, but the role she had assumed.
She had come to Weir Memorial as Summer Montgomery, drama teacher, and that was who she was and wanted to be again. She wanted to work with young people to help them recognize their talents.
Although some of the students who had auditioned for lead parts for the spring musical would not get the roles of their choice, they still had talent and ambition—enough to come on stage to become the subject of ridicule and rejection.
She had selected her principal singers and dancers, but none of the eighty-four who had auditioned would be rejected outright. She would utilize them either in the chorus or in crowd scenes. Desiree had offered to take several and train them to change sets, help with costume changes, lighting, and sound.
Summer went over to the table where a waiter poured drinks, asking for water. Smiling, he screwed the top off a bottle of water and handed it to her. “Nice performance.”
“Thanks.” She took a deep swallow, enjoying its iciness bathing her parched throat.
“I’m impressed, Summer.”
She forced herself not to glare at Dumas. The image of him holding that boy by the throat against a wall was still too fresh in her mind for her to be civil to the assistant principal.
Cutting her eyes at him, she said, “You should be.” Turning on her heel, she strutted away, feeling the heat of his eyes boring into her back.
She had met a lot of men she did not like because of how they’d earned their money, but this was the first time she had met one who did not sell or traffic in drugs that made her want to cause him pain—intense pain.
To her, children were gifts to love, protect, nurture, and inspire, not beat, threaten or intimidate. If Dumas suspected the boy was dealing, then he should have alerted the authorities responsible for authenticating his suspicions.
Dumas followed Summer as she walked out of the gym. She may have been an artist-in-residence, but she was still a part of the faculty, and that meant she answered to him.
The first time he saw her he couldn’t believe how much she looked like his ex-wife: tall, slender, with a drop-dead gorgeous, in-your-face body. Even her coloring and hair was similar to Beverly’s. The only difference was that Summer looked young, too young for thirty-three, while Beverly looked like a woman—a woman under whose spell he had fallen the first time he saw her waiting for him after a college football game.
And when he’d looked at the ring on Summer’s hand, in that instant she had become Beverly. It was a ring his ex-wife would’ve been willing to sell one of her ovaries to flaunt.
He had been at the top of his game when he met Beverly, and a lot of women were throwing their panties at him. He deflected all of the others, and caught Beverly’s.
They dated each other exclusively for a year, became engaged, and married a week following his being drafted by the NFL. He’d sat on the bench the first season, but life threw him a vicious curve when two weeks before the start of the next season he hurt his knee when he tripped over a toy his wife had neglected to pick up after playing with their young son. He underwent arthroscopic surgery to repair a shattered kneecap. He’d gained sixty pounds while convalescing, which compromised his recovery. He missed a second season, and his contract wasn’t renewed, neither was he picked up by any other team.
Having a wife, and now two children to support, Dumas signed with a Canadian semi-pro team, earning just enough money to keep his head above water. It was when Beverly came to him, saying she wanted out of the marriage and that she was taking his sons that Dumas thought about taking her out, then himself. She said she’d married him because she thought he would get product endorsements that would permit them to live in a mansion, drive luxury cars and wear expensive jewelry. The Gellises were living in a three-bedroom split-level and traveled ar
ound in a minivan in a country where winter temperatures were comparable to those in the Arctic.
He’d called his minister, who counseled him about losing his soul. His thoughts of murder-suicide were quickly dashed, and he granted Beverly her divorce. After meeting with their respective lawyers, she told him she would take him back if he ever had enough money to give her want she wanted.
And he wanted his ex-wife. He wanted to see his sons every day, not just during school holidays and summer months. What he wanted was his family back. He was close, so very close to achieving his greatest wish.
Dumas Gellis knew he had two things going for him: intelligence and patience. He had found a way to amass a small fortune without declaring any of it. He had fooled them all: the police, IRS, and the DEA.
But all of that had been jeopardized because Summer Montgomery had come into the boys’ bathroom. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw her staring at him with his hand around Omar Knight’s throat.
Quickening his pace, he caught up with her. He touched her arm. “Wait, Summer. Please.” He dropped his hand.
She stopped, but did not turn around. “What do you want?”
“Look, can we go somewhere and talk?”
She closed her eyes. “No, Dumas. Not tonight.”
“When?”
“Monday. I’ll come to your office after classes.”
He smiled, his gaze admiring her straight back, the womanly flare of her hips in the short skirt, and the perfection of her incredibly long legs in the heels. Hell, Tina Turner had nothing on Summer Montgomery in the legs department.
“Thank you.” He continued to stare at her until he heard approaching footsteps. Shifting, he saw Gabriel Cole. Affecting a smile, he said, “Hey.”
Gabriel slowed, placing one booted foot in front of the other in what had become a swaggering stroll. He lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “Hey, Dumas. I just came to ask Summer if she needed a ride home.”
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