by Nancy Rue
“Is it all right if I ask Ginger some questions?” Mrs. Yeats said to Dad. “I’m very concerned about this situation.”
“Do you feel like it?” Dad said to me.
No, but what else was I going to do? Maybe it would be better if I told it to both of them. Dad wouldn’t yell at me in front of her.
“I had to do a retest on the wall climb so I can pass P.E.,” I said. “Coach sent me a note and told me to meet him there after school.”
“And did he meet you?” Mrs. Yeats said.
“No. I waited a long time, and he didn’t show up, so I might have had it wrong. The note’s in my backpack in the locker room, so I can’t show it to you right now.”
Dad made a twirling motion with his finger. That meant move the story along.
“I tried to go back inside, but the door was locked, and then this guy opened it and told me Coach said to do a practice run and he’d be right out. So I did it, but I couldn’t get down, and he never did show up.”
Mrs. Yeats held on to her chins for a few seconds. “Excuse me for just a moment, would you?” she said, and she slipped out through the part in the curtains.
“I just did what I was told,” I said to Dad.
“Yes, you did.”
I waited.
“I’ve taught you to do what your teachers say and that’s what you did.”
“So I’m not in trouble?”
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
“Then please don’t punish me!” I said. “Please let me do the presentation tomorrow, and then I’ll come home and go right to bed.”
He didn’t get to answer because Mrs. Yeats came back in. Nothing was wiggling. She looked stiff and grim.
“I just spoke with Coach Zabriski,” she said. “He never sent a note telling you to come after school. Was it handwritten?”
“No,” I said. “It was typed.”
“And not signed?”
I shook my head and then wished I hadn’t. Ouch.
“I’m going to need to see that tomorrow. For now, what did this young man look like who told you Coach said for you to do a practice run?”
I described him for her. If I hadn’t been all hurty and shaky and desperate, it might have been fun, like being on NCIS. Nothing was fun right then. Definitely not the iron look on Mrs. Yeats’s face.
“I will get to the bottom of this,” she said. “Mr. Hollingberry, may I call you at your work tomorrow once I have more information?”
“Call me at home,” Dad said. “I’ll be there with Ginger.”
My heart crashed. All the way. Down.
That was it then. No presentation. I didn’t even ask again, and when we got home, I went straight to bed and tried not to cry because it hurt too much.
A couple of times I woke up in the dark because I rolled over on the wrong side. Both times Dad was sitting beside the bed. More ice. More Tylenol.
The third time I didn’t move. I just opened my eyes and saw him in the thin early-morning light, still sitting there with Gandalf behind him, telling us both that all those who wandered were not lost. Dad’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Just as I drifted back off, I realized he was praying.
I tried too. Please, God . . . just, please.
The last time, when I woke up for good, Dad was at the window.
“What time is it?” I said.
He turned around and came to me. “Time for you to stand up and see how you feel.”
I didn’t lie and say I was fine. I hurt all over, especially my left side. The Hobbits and their friends rolled down hills and fell off cliffs, and they just got up like nothing ever happened. I was clearly not a Hobbit.
I climbed carefully out of bed. I was surprised that once I stood up, I didn’t feel as bad. I could hide the pain that was there because I was used to doing that.
“Let me see you walk around,” Dad said.
I did while he watched me. My room wasn’t that big, so I couldn’t go far. Finally he nodded.
“I ran a hot bath,” he said. “You go soak for a little bit, and then we’ll talk about this.”
I didn’t want to say anything to mess it up, so for once, I just did it. The whole time I was in the tub I prayed. I still had a hurting side and a bunch of bruises when I was done, but at least I didn’t freak and start bullhorning about how I had to go to school. Maybe like Mrs. Zabriski said, somebody else had taken over Ginger.
I put on Dad’s bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door and went to my room. But I didn’t go in. I just stood in the doorway.
The bed was made, and my Easter dress was spread out on it next to my costume for the presentation. Except for the green cloak, which was draped over the headboard like it was waiting to be put on the queen.
“Here’s the deal,” Dad said behind me. “Mrs. Yeats called and she wants us to meet her in her office. Then you do your presentation. Then we come straight home. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. My voice was all trembly.
“Look at me.”
I turned to face him. His eyes were baggy, and his freckles looked like they were fading as I watched.
“I’m only letting you do this because I think I know why it’s important. But when it’s over, you and I are going to have a talk.”
A good talk or a bad talk? I wanted to say. But I didn’t. This was enough for now. Baby Steps.
The fair was scheduled to start at ten o’clock, and all the sixth-graders involved were supposed to be in the gym at 9:30. At 8:30, Dad and I were in Mrs. Yeats’s office, after we stopped at the gym locker room for me to drop off my costume and get the note that was supposedly from Coach. When I got it to Mrs. Yeats, she sent her secretary out with it. Then as she handed me a piece of paper, even her chins looked like they had bad news.
“This is a photocopy of a driver’s license,” she said. “Is that the young man who told you to go ahead and climb the wall?”
I nodded. That was him all right. He didn’t even shave for the picture.
“That’s the janitor’s assistant,” Mrs. Yeats said, “and here’s the story he told me.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Not as hard as Mrs. Yeats was looking, like a suit of armor.
“He said he was emptying the garbage cans near the gym when a girl in a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up ran past him and tried to open the locker room door, but it was locked. He told her she couldn’t go in, and she said she had to get a message to somebody from the coach.” Mrs. Yeats made quotation marks in the air with her knotty fingers. “He said she was ‘freaking out’ and begged him to let her in. When he wouldn’t, she asked him to deliver the message.” Mrs. Yeats shrugged, something I’d never seen her do. “Didn’t seem like anything bad to him, he said, so he agreed to do it.”
Mrs. Yeats moved from the edge of her desk to the chair beside me. Evidently the story was getting harder to tell.
“I asked him to describe this girl to me, and the only thing he could remember was that she was wearing a hoodie with ‘a picture of a guy with wild hair on it and some kind of math problem.’ ” Quotation marks again. “He said, ‘Y’know, that really smart guy everybody has on posters?’ ” Mrs. Yeats sighed from someplace deep. “He meant Einstein.”
I knew that before she said it, and I was already shaking my head.
“Tori Taylor is the only one I know who wears a sweatshirt like that,” Mrs. Yeats said.
“I know,” I said, “but she would never do something like that. Ever.”
“I agree, but I have to pursue this, Ginger.”
On the other side of me, Dad coughed. Mrs. Yeats wrinkled her forehead.
“I need to go to my job site and make sure my people are there,” he said. “I’ll be back in time for the presentation. You have this part handled, yeah?”
Mrs. Yeats nodded. “Yes, I don’t think we’ll need you for this.”
She squeezed my shoulder when she said it. At least she understood, even if she d
id have to “pursue” it. No dad would get what this was about.
“I’ll be here,” Dad said to me.
He left, and Mrs. Yeats asked her secretary to call Tori down. While we waited, she sat next to me again and smoothed down the gold vest.
“I know something has happened between you and Tori and the girls you were doing so well with a few weeks ago. I watch these things, and I talk to the teachers. You’ve made a lot of progress, but even I have noticed that you’ve isolated yourself again.” The armor kind of came down some. “Please tell me the truth, Ginger. Could Tori be playing some joke on you? Maybe she’s upset because you aren’t friends anymore?”
“No!” I took a breath. “No, ma’am. I’m the one who stopped being friends with her, but she understands why. And she wouldn’t do that anyway. She’s the one who wrote the Code. She just . . . wouldn’t.”
“I hope not.” Mrs. Yeats looked over my head and sighed again. “If it turns out she did, or I can’t get to the bottom of this, I’m going to have to pull the Anti-Bullying booth from the fair. We can’t have false advertising. Especially if somehow the Code has made things worse instead of better.”
There was a soft tap on the door, and Mrs. Yeats told the person to enter.
“I got a note to come see you?” Tori said.
I closed my eyes and hoped when I opened them I wouldn’t be there.
“Thank you, Tori,” Mrs. Yeats said. “Have a seat here beside Ginger.”
She watched Tori sit next to me like we might start a fight right there. All I could think of was how glad I was Tori wasn’t wearing her Einstein sweatshirt. In fact, she was dressed in jean crops and frog-green tennis shoes and a top that matched them. She was looking her best for the fair.
“I don’t usually pry into students’ personal relationships,” Mrs. Yeats said, “but I have a reason for asking you, Tori: Have you and Ginger had any issues lately?”
Tori looked at me, brown eyes startled, and why wouldn’t they be? I wanted to help her, but Mrs. Yeats said, “Tori? Issues?”
Tori sat up straight in the chair. “The only thing I know is that Ginger seemed like she had some things she had to work out on her own, so she left our group. But we didn’t have a fight or anything.” She gave a very sure little nod. “We respect her, and she has a right to handle things the way she wants to.”
“I see.”
“But I miss her.”
Tori bit at her bottom lip and blinked fast. Tori hardly ever cried, but she was trying hard not to now.
“So you would have no reason to want Ginger to get hurt.”
She stopped blinking and stared at Mrs. Yeats. “No! Why would I? No!”
Tori held out both hands like she was saying, Ginger, what have you accused me of?
I shook my head and fought tears of my own.
“Can you tell me where you were yesterday afternoon around four o’clock?”
Mrs. Yeats’s voice wasn’t harsh or anything, but Tori still must have felt like she was being questioned by the FBI. My heart was slamming, and she wasn’t even interrogating me.
“I was at my house,” Tori said. “We were getting the rest of our stuff ready for the booth.”
“Who was with you?”
“Mitch. Ophelia. Winnie.”
“Were your parents there?”
Of course her dad was there. They didn’t let Tori have friends over without an adult there.
“No,” Tori said. “My mom was working, and my dad and Lydia had to leave unexpectedly, but Dad said we would be okay until six, when everybody’s parents came to get them.” Tori was talking calmly, but I could hear the clog in her throat.
“I see,” Mrs. Yeats said. “You’re not wearing your Einstein sweatshirt today. I don’t suppose you would with that nice outfit.”
“I couldn’t anyway,” Tori said. “I can’t find it.”
“You can’t find it.”
“I took it off in the gym yesterday when we were setting up the booth first period, and I must have left it. I hope it’s still there because my dad checked online last night and they don’t make them like that anymore.”
Tori sounded wounded. Mrs. Yeats just nodded. I wanted to scream, What more do you want? She didn’t do it!
“Can I ask what’s going on?” Tori said.
“Later,” Mrs. Yeats said. “I think that’s all I need for now. Can I trust you not to discuss this with anyone?”
“Yes,” Tori said.
I tried to catch her eye before she left, so I could at least try to show her that I wasn’t the one who accused her. But she went in a hurry without looking at me. She might never look at me again.
When she was gone, Mrs. Yeats got up and leaned against her desk, probably so she could look down at me. I always liked her, and she was nice to me, but right then . . . she wasn’t my favorite person.
“Who would go to all this trouble?” she said. “Sending a false note. Trying to make it look like Tori was involved. Someone who knew you well enough to think you’d do whatever you were told by a teacher. Who would that be?”
“I can’t make any false accusations,” I said.
“But you can tell me what you know.”
What I knew was that Kylie and Those Girls were so good at being sneaky I couldn’t prove anything they’d done to me or Tori or my dad and my brother.
“Are you still being bullied?” Mrs. Yeats said.
That I knew.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then I want you to tell me about it so I can help you.” The chins were still. “You see, if it’s this insidious—do you know what that means?”
“Like, doing something to hurt somebody, only doing it sort of, stealthy, so nobody knows about it?”
“Of course you know what it means. This is what I don’t understand.” She spread out both hands. “You are one of our brightest students, Ginger. Too smart to let other people take advantage of you. But you are also intelligent enough to know when you can’t handle something on your own.”
She waited. I thought about it.
I could tell her about Kylie taking one innocent thing I said about my mom’s accident so far, it got all the way to practically telling the whole town my dad was a drunk driver and killed her.
I could. But somehow I knew if I did, my dad would end up losing his big job with Kylie’s father. I knew it.
I could also tell her that Kylie was using all of that to control me, to get back at Tori and make her whole anti-bullying campaign look like a joke, just because she wasn’t the boss of everyone anymore. But I couldn’t prove any of it, so it would just go on and on.
Unless I did something about it. Something where everyone could see it.
“Ginger?”
“Sorry,” I said. I looked straight at her. “I’m going to tell you everything.”
“Good.”
“In the presentation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Everything that happened is in the story Colin and I are going to tell at the fair. And when we tell it—in front of everybody—you’ll know. And I think . . . well, I think something’s going to happen. Only, will you make sure Mr. Jett or somebody like that is near the Anti-Bullying booth when it’s over?”
Mrs. Yeats sighed. “You are a different young lady than you were when you came here, so I’m going to trust you. But if I don’t know more after your presentation than I do right now, we’ll be back here in my office, and you will tell me everything you know or even suspect. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” I said. “Can—may I go now? I need to get into my costume.”
“I’ll have someone escort you to the gym,” she said. “I don’t want anyone bumping your poor rib.”
Mr. Devon was my escort, which made everything at least a few notches better. He got me to the locker room without a single jostle. Best of all, he didn’t ask me any questions.
When I got in there, though, I didn’t know how I was going to get out of my
Easter dress without stretching and making my side feel like it was splitting open. I was standing there, probably looking forlorn, when somebody grunted and said, “You want some help?”
So Mitch helped me get out of my dress and hung it up on the hanger my costume was on and hooked it onto the top of the lockers. She also got me into my tunic and jeans and boots and even buckled the belt. By the time we were done, I was breathing like I’d done ten sprints.
“I heard you got hurt. Is it true?” Mitch said.
“Kind of,” I said. “Thanks for helping me.”
“It’s okay. I kind of miss helping you. Y’know, since we’re friends and stuff.”
She left before I could start to cry. Okay, no tears. I couldn’t mess this up. I just couldn’t.
Chapter Seventeen
When I got out to the gym, Mr. Devon and Lydia and Colin were waiting for me near the door. The gym was already full of kids who were shorter and louder and wigglier than us sixth-graders, which was saying something. I could feel myself starting to blotch.
“Don’t go there, Ginger,” Lydia said. “You two are going to kick some serious tail out there.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Devon said. “You’ll be brilliant.”
He smiled at us, which was unusual enough, but when he smiled down at Lydia, it was different. Wait, was there something happening with them?
I couldn’t think about that right then. I looked at Colin, and my mouth broke the record for how far it could come open.
His silky blond hair was swooped back, and it must have been sprayed into place because it didn’t move. He had on a tunic like me, only his didn’t have sleeves. They were on his shirt instead and they were white and billowy and made him look like a poet, only tougher, because he was also wearing boots that came up to his knees. With both of us in jeans too, we looked like we belonged together.
“Hi, Frank,” I said.
“Hey, Samantha,” he said.
“Let’s get to our seats,” Mr. Devon said. “You’re last on the program, so I suggest you don your cloaks at the very last minute.” He sniffed. “I think it’s going to get hot and malodorous in here.”