by Nancy Rue
Ophelia’s right, I wrote. You are the worst actress ever!
“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Fickus said to her.
“I can prove when I wrote mine.” Kylie stuck her hand in her Pepto-Bismol pink backpack and pulled out something small. “It’s on my jump drive, and when you pull it up, it’ll show the last date I worked on it. Friday, March 27. That was after I . . . well, we don’t need to talk about that.”
She looked down at the desktop, all weepy and sweet. I was glad I hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
But I didn’t write that down. What I wrote was, Tori gave me her poem fifth period on March 27. When I looked up, Mrs. Fickus was watching me.
“Tori says you might be able to shed some light on this.”
I could. But I really wanted to talk to Lydia first.
“Mrs. Fickus?” Kylie said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you.”
“And that is?”
“My poem was missing for a while.”
“What do you mean ‘missing’?”
“First period Friday it wasn’t in my backpack where I put it, and I didn’t get it back until fifth period. It just showed up there again.”
“So what makes you think it was ever missing? It could have been there all along.”
“It wasn’t! That’s why I came in before school today to turn it in, before somebody stole it again.”
Mrs. Fickus’s cotton candy hair seemed to bristle. “There is no reason to believe it was stolen, Kylie.”
“Yes, there is. Only, I didn’t want to bring it up.”
I scribbled, Yes, you did! That’s the whole reason we’re here!
My heart was trying to crawl up my throat. Kylie was really kind of scary. Okay, way scary. Scarier than I thought. As in, I would rather be pounded in the face than have to deal with the way she twisted things.
“All right,” Mrs. Fickus said. Her voice was like a sigh. “What is your reason?”
“First period Friday, when my poem was in my backpack and not in my locker, Tori had to go into the locker room during P.E. class because she ‘accidentally’ fell in the mud and had to change.”
No, I wrote furiously, because one of your friends tripped her and made her fall.
Mrs. Fickus turned to Tori. “In the interest of fairness, was your poem ever out of your possession?”
Yes, I wrote. Friday fifth period after she gave it to me and those boys knocked over my backpack and papers went everywhere. You were THERE, Mrs. Fickus!
I wanted to say it. I almost did. I wanted Tori to say it. But neither one of us had any more proof than Kylie did. I looked miserably at the things I’d just written down, wishing I could say all of them.
And then I saw it. At the top, where I’d written things I’d hadn’t said to Kylie in the past, with her words first. Isn’t making a false accusation against your little Code? she’d said to me.
I raised my hand. “Um, Mrs. Fickus, can I say something?”
“You absolutely can.”
“I don’t even see what Ginger has to do with this,” Kylie said.
“You read Tori’s poem, didn’t you?” Mrs. Fickus said to me, as if Kylie hadn’t even spoken.
“Yes,” I said, “but this isn’t about that . . . exactly.”
“What is it about?”
Mrs. Fickus’s patience was looking as thin as Kleenex. I had to talk fast.
“So, Kylie,” I said, leaning out onto the desktop so I could see her. “One time you asked me if making a false accusation was against the Code and I didn’t get to answer. But just so you know, it is. That’s why I’m not saying when I think Tori’s poem wasn’t in my possession because it will sound like I’m accusing you. All I can say is that Tori gave me her poem to critique on Friday fifth period, and I e-mailed her Saturday and told her how good it was.”
Tori looked at me like someone had just poked her with something sharp.
“Ginger has a point,” Mrs. Fickus said.
The gold specks in Kylie’s eyes flashed. “I don’t think she has a point. Do teachers just let her get away with things because she doesn’t have a mother and her father is a—”
“That is enough, Kylie.” Mrs. Fickus stared her down until Kylie folded her arms and looked away. “Now, Tori, Kylie, I want you to go to opposite sides of the room and write down your poems. From memory.”
“Not fair!” Kylie said.
“I think it is entirely fair,” Mrs. Fickus said, “and if you don’t stop arguing with me, I’m going to lower your citizenship grade two letters.”
If I were ever going to see a person’s head explode, this was the time.
But I was more worried about Tori’s head. She moved to a desk on the other side of me, and she held her forehead in her hands and stared down at a blank sheet of paper.
“Don’t let her do that to you,” I whispered.
“She’s totally helping her!” Kylie said.
Mrs. Fickus opened her laptop. “You’re down to a B minus, Miss Steppe.” But she nodded to me, and I went for the door. Just as I was stepping out into the hall, I looked back. Tori was writing. Kylie wasn’t.
I leaned against the wall outside and closed my eyes and found myself praying for Tori. Please choose to help her remember her poem.
Although, even if she didn’t, who would ever believe Kylie could write those things about herself? She would never say she didn’t have the best hair or the brightest eyes.
“I can’t do this! It’s too much pressure!”
Kylie’s voice came right through the brick wall like she was standing next to me. Before she could fly out of the room and actually be there, I fled for the library.
When I got to the conference room, there were turkey wraps on our table and Mr. Devon was having one with Lydia.
“Hey, there,” Lydia said. “We saved one for you.”
“I can’t eat,” I said.
Lydia pressed her hand on my shoulder until I sat in my chair. “What’s going on?”
I had come in there to tell her everything, and I did—at least about what had just happened in Mrs. Fickus’s room. I was all the way through it before I realized I had just spilled the whole thing in front of Mr. Devon. Wonderful. Now he was going to think I was a complete idiot to get myself into a mess like that.
But he was nodding, fingers rubbing his chin like an English detective. “It was madness in here fifth period Friday. That was the day we were photocopying poetry, and I completely lost control of the place.”
“Someone could have copied Tori’s poem and then gotten it back to you in the middle of it,” Lydia said to me. “I think you should tell Mrs. Fickus that.”
“But you said we shouldn’t fight back.”
“I said don’t do to her what she does to you. But you can defend yourself or a friend against an accusation.”
The door opened, like usual when something important was about to happen, and Mrs. Fickus came in. When I saw that she had my Things I Decided Not To Say notebook in her hand, I passed blotchy and went straight to bloodred. Scalp to toes, and I am not kidding.
“Sorry to interrupt y’all,” Mrs. Fickus said. “But, Ginger, you left this in my classroom, honey.”
I was honey again. Maybe she hadn’t read it.
“I just glanced at it to see who it belonged to, and I couldn’t help but see some of what you wrote.” She glanced at Lydia and then looked back at me. “Something good is happening in this room, because you have tremendous self-control. Very impressive.”
I couldn’t even say anything.
“If you want to confront Kylie with this—”
“Could you just give Tori credit for the poem?” I blurted out. “We can’t prove anything, so if you would just do that . . . that would be good and enough and, yeah, please do that.”
“Done,” Mrs. Fickus said. “And I’ll have Kylie write a different poem.” She cocked her head like a yellow-feathered bird. “I d
idn’t think that sonnet sounded like her. Ms. Kiriakos, may I speak with you?”
“Absolutely,” Lydia said, and she followed Mrs. Fickus out the door.
I looked down at my notebook. “I bet you hate girl drama, huh?” I said to Mr. Devon.
“What I dislike is deceit and manipulation.”
“Me too.”
Mr. Devon tilted his chin up at me. “And that, my dear, is what makes you a treasure of integrity.”
Chapter Twelve
I took the dictionary to bed with me that night and looked up the word integrity. Adherence to an ethical code, it said.
I had to look up adherence, too, and it meant “sticking to”.
I let the dictionary lay open on my chest and watched it go up and down as I breathed. Maybe that was true about me. We had a Code, and I stuck to it.
Or did I? The card I didn’t use when I should have was Report Alert. If bullying got so out of hand somebody could get hurt, we were supposed to tell an adult. That was what I was trying to do fifth period, but the whole thing with Mrs. Fickus happened, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Lydia.
You are a treasure of integrity, Mr. Devon said.
He didn’t know me that well, but at least the label he put on me sounded better than Weirdo and Freak.
I wanted to look up treasure, but I couldn’t get my hands to move. They were too heavy. Maybe if I closed my eyes for just a few minutes, I could turn to the T section and find . . . whatever . . .
The next thing I knew a dog was barking and he didn’t stop. I got my eyes open enough to see that the lamp beside my bed was off and a thin light was coming in between my curtains. The dog just kept on like he was about to become hysterical.
I climbed out of bed, and something hard hit the floor. Oh, yeah, the dictionary. It landed with its pages all crumpled underneath it, but I had to deal with yelling at the dog and closing my window first.
The barking went up into freak-out zone. I raised the window higher and opened my mouth to tell him to hush up, but I didn’t. A car, maybe silver, was pulling away from the curb in front of our house and the tires squealed even louder than the border collie. It was too dark—and too surprising—for me to see who was inside, but as the dog chased it down the street, snarling at the tires, the red lights in back flashed on, and I saw a black circle on the trunk with another circle inside it, blue and white, and the letters BM—
The lights flashed off, and the silver car screeched toward the end of our street and was swallowed down the hill.
The dog strutted back to his house with his head all high. I closed the window, but I didn’t go back to bed. Something bad had just happened; I could feel it in the tension wall that went up all around me. I would have just stood there, trapped in it, if I hadn’t heard Dad going down the hall toward the living room, grumbling, “What the Sam Hill?”
I knew if he saw me, he would make me get back in my bed, so I tiptoed down the hall and out the front door, which he’d left hanging open. Dad was already in the yard, swinging a flashlight beam up in the trees like he was looking for more toilet paper. I crept after him as he continued on toward the driveway. He sniffed the air, and I did too. It smelled like his work clothes and our bathroom right after he painted it, only stronger.
I had to climb over the tension wall as I followed him. I came crashing down from it when I saw what he saw as he shined the flashlight on the other side of the van.
DRUNK DRIVER!
Someone had painted that in red letters right on top of HOLLINGBERRY REMODELING.
Dad’s face turned the color of the ashes in our grill—I could see that even in the half dark. I could also see his mouth making a hard, sad line across his face. It looked like pain.
Me? I just screamed. I put my hands on my face to muffle it, but the sound still came, clawing its way up my throat on the way out, over and over. It kept on even when Dad put his arms around my waist and carried me inside with my feet banging against his legs.
When he got me to the couch, the screaming stopped and Jackson stumbled into the living room with his hair hanging in his face.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Vandalism,” Dad said.
“Huh?”
“They painted ‘Drunk Driver’ on the van!” I said.
Jackson came awake fast, like I’d just slapped him. He bolted for the door and dodged as Dad tried to grab his arm. Then they were both outside, and there was yelling and shushing and stomping back up the front steps. Dad had his hand on Jackson’s back when they came through the door.
“Tell me, Jackson,” Dad said.
Jackson pulled away. “I said I don’t know!”
“I think you do. Does this have anything to do with the fight you got into?”
Jackson’s eyes were wild. He held out his arms. “How should I know? I don’t even know who did it.”
“Dad!” I said.
He stuck his hand up without looking at me because his eyes were so hard on Jackson, my brother backed into the TV stand.
“What would even put that idea into somebody’s head?”
“People just start stuff up—”
“Dad!”
“It has to start from somewhere. Who said what to you when you punched that guy?”
“It was stupid . . .”
“What was it?”
“Dad!”
“Ginger, would you just back off? This has nothing to do with you.”
Dad’s whole face blazed at me, but I still said, “Yes, it does.”
“No.” Jackson’s voice was all of a sudden low and hard and flat. So was the look he brought down on me. “It’s my thing. Stay out of it.”
“You don’t know,” I barely whispered.
“Yes, I do.”
I stopped talking completely, because in Jackson’s eyes, I saw that he did know. He knew everything.
Dad was standing with his hand high up on the door, looking down at the floor. If he’d heard any of that, I couldn’t tell. He turned to us and smeared his hand all over his face.
“All right,” he said. “I’m not blaming either one of you. I’ll get this taken care of, and we’ll move on. Now both of you, back to bed. You can get a little more sleep before you have to get up for school.”
Sleep? He expected us to sleep? I crawled under my covers, but I couldn’t even close my eyes. Every time I tried, I saw those ugly red letters blotting out our name. The van was the only car we had, and Dad drove it all over Grass Valley like an advertisement to get more work. Who was going to hire him now?
The worse question was: why didn’t I talk to Lydia sooner? Why did I think I could do this alone?
It was totally light out when I heard Dad on the phone.
“I’ll be there late . . . got some graffiti on my van . . . yeah, I do have to get it taken care of first . . . Look, I’ll be there as soon as I can . . . Yes, I’m going to meet your deadline.”
Dad’s voice got lower and tighter the more he talked. I folded my pillow around my ears, but I could still hear something in my head: Lydia asking him if he’d ever worked for a difficult boss, and Dad saying he had one right now.
He could get fired for this.
My stomach hurt so bad, I could hardly breathe.
But I went to school that day and the next, and I tried to block everything out except working with Colin and waiting to see Lydia on Thursday. Maybe people were whispering about me and my dad, but I didn’t hear. I just kept my head down.
Which was why I almost ran into Mrs. Yeats, the principal, in the front hall Wednesday morning before school. She had to put both hands on my shoulders to keep me from stepping on the toes of her sturdy brown shoes.
“Ginger,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No need to be. You looked like you were lost in thought.” Her chins jiggled a little. “Anything I can help with?”
I shook my head. I had already thought about doing a Report Alert on Dad’s
van, but I knew Kylie was right for once, back when she said whatever happened off the school grounds wasn’t the school’s business. Besides, I didn’t want Mrs. Yeats knowing what they wrote about my dad. Once stuff was in someone’s head, it was hard to get it out. Even for a grown-up.
“You really seem to have something on your mind,” Mrs. Yeats said. “You’re not being bullied like you were before, are you?”
“No,” I said. That was the truth. This was not like before. Nothing was.
Mrs. Yeats nodded, her helmet of graying hair not moving. “You’ll come see me if I can do anything for you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She smiled. “I like those nice manners.”
Yeah, that was me, I thought as I hurried toward the gym. A treasure of integrity with nice manners . . . and a broken-in-half heart.
At least the next day I could see Lydia. Dad was going to be late getting home Wednesday night because his van was being repainted, and Jackson was holed up in his room like the creature Gollum. He’d been like that since Tuesday, except for going to school, which he did wearing black jeans, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a squinty expression. I had my homework done, and I could hardly stand to be alone with myself, so I decided to e-mail Lydia and maybe get started on what I wanted to tell her.
When I got to my inbox, I already had an e-mail from her and my whole body sagged as I read it.
My dear Ginger,
I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to meet with you this Thursday or next. I have doctors’ appointments, follow-ups from my surgery. I tried to get them at another time, but they didn’t have any other openings. Since we didn’t get to talk much Monday either, I feel bad about this, and I hope you’ll understand.
But you don’t have to stop making good progress like you’re doing. I would love for you to start a new list: Things I Like About Me. I know you’re going to say that sounds conceited, but it isn’t. It’s important to know your good qualities, especially right now. That’s the start of Step Three, finding a place for yourself so you’re better able to handle others not having a place for you. Show someone one of those qualities on your list and see what happens.