by Lisa Wingate
From behind the counter, Granmae grimaced as if I were causing her pain.
“Please?” I added. “We’ll pay extra.”
Mim’s hand fluttered into the air impatiently. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, take the girl’s dress. I’ll help you get it finished. You know I’m good with a needle.”
Granmae continued shaking her head, thumbing reluctantly through the yards and yards of discolored cloth. “Lord, oh, Lord, oh, Lord,” she muttered. “Lord, have mercy. I don’ know. Are these pins marking where you want the hem?”
“Yes.” I nodded hopefully. “And my mother marked a few small alterations to the bodice, as well. She used to be a seamstress, so when we get the dress back, if there are any other minor changes needed, she can take care of it.” I hope.
“Lord, have mercy,” Granmae said again, shaking her head. “You gonna git me in trouble with some folks who been waitin’ a lot longer than this for dresses to be ready.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Her nostrils flared with a long breath as she braced her hands on the counter. “You realize this gown ain’t gonna be white when I get through. It’ll be antique, a warm ivory color. That all right?” I nodded, and she returned to the dress. “I’ll have to dig through my scraps and find some lace to match this that’s missin’ here. That costs extra.”
“Just let me know how much.” I stopped short of saying, Anything, anything you want, it’s yours… .
Silence enveloped us as I stood holding my roses, waiting for—breathless for—Granmae’s verdict. Why it seemed like such a big deal, I couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the antique dresses in the window that gave me such confidence she could make my mother’s gown perfect for Bethany.
“All right,” she acquiesced finally. “You come by at the end a’ the day, and I’ll have a list with everything it’ll need and what it’s gonna cost.”
“Great,” I said, bouncing in place like I’d been picked for contestants’ row on The Price Is Right. I felt as if I’d just won the lotto, as if I should pump a hand in the air and scream, Yes, yes, yes! I’ve just accomplished something my mother thought I couldn’t handle. Woo-hoo!
Checking my watch, I realized that if I didn’t get going, I would be late for work. Even though I didn’t have hall duty this week, I still had to be there before the second bell rang. Mrs. Morris would, no doubt, be watching. “I’d better go,” I said, turning toward the door. “I work right down the road at Harrington, so I’ll come by after school and look at the estimate.” Granmae stiffened slightly at the mention of Harrington, and I sensed that, if I’d divulged that information earlier, she wouldn’t have taken the dress. As it was, she swept it off the counter less than carefully.
“Thanks,” I added, fishing for my keys. “Really. This means a lot.”
“Welcome,” she called, as she headed for the back room and I turned toward the door.
Mim craned her chin upward with a wicked twinkle in her eye. “She was going to take the dress all along,” she whispered behind her fingers. “She just likes to make sure her work will be properly appreciated.”
“It will be,” I promised, waving with the roses in my hand. “And thanks for the flowers.”
“My pleasure.”
“I’ll talk to my sister about the bouquets for the wedding.” The scent of the roses was all around me just before I opened the door and let in the cool morning air. I imagined that fragrance enveloping Bett’s wedding, saturating everyone and everything with the promise of something incredible and beautiful and new. “These flowers are absolutely lovely.”
Mim patted her bucket benevolently. “They know when someone loves them. Mine are sturdy flowers. Not like the ones that are grown in hothouses. I protect my plants, but not too much. A little adversity makes them strong.”
I wondered again where she grew the plants, but there was no time to ask, so I thanked her again and went on. The sounds and smells of the street assaulted me in a gust of brisk February air, chasing away the comfortable silence of the old shop, the scent of aging fabric, and the aroma of roses. Gazing down the street, I studied the bars and taco stands, watching vehicles come and go as I slipped into my car. Undoubtedly, some of them were from Harrington. But how deep did the problem go, and what was I going to do about it?
Chapter 10
The faculty parking lot was crowded by the time I pulled into an empty space by the back fence next to the student parking area. By seven forty-five, most of the staff members had already reported. The parent drop-off lane in front of the middle school was crowded bumper-to-bumper, and a steady stream of cars was headed around back to the high school building, as well. In the student parking area, the middle school music director, Mr. Verhaden, was trying to hustle sluggish kids toward the building. Obviously, he had been given the dreaded parking lot duty, an honor that fortunately, I had missed out on this week. Standing in a cold parking lot watching for fights, stopping kids from making out in backseats, and chasing loiterers from the bushes was everyone’s least favorite assignment.
Buttoning up my coat as I climbed out of my car, I studied the high school students’ vehicles, watching kids amble toward the building, girls in tight jeans, formfitting Tshirts, and bare feet with flip-flops, despite the fact that it was a typically chilly late-winter morning. The boys presented an opposite picture, their bodies draped in wrinkled Tshirts and oversize jeans hiked to just the right height—drooping, but not quite falling off. Both boys and girls struggled up the stairs carrying backpacks, instrument cases, art portfolios, and athletic bags.
Now I wondered what else they were carrying. What might be hidden among the paraphernalia they came and went with every day, and how would anyone know?
A silver Lexus whipped into the parking lot, and Mr. Verhaden wagged a finger, honing in on the car as if he were tracking it with a radar gun. The driver, a high school boy with shaggy dyed-black hair, hit the brakes, then lifted his hands in apology. Rolling down the window, he stuck his head out, grinning.
“Sorry, Mr. Verhaden.”
Verhaden glanced skeptically at his watch. “Working on another tardy today, Sebastian?”
“No, sir,” Sebastian replied, leaning farther out the window as Mr. Verhaden peered at the backseat passengers, then reached down and opened the back door.
“Boys, you’d better hop out here and hustle to class,” he commanded, ushering out the passengers, a couple of my eighth-grade students from last Friday’s algebra class. Cameron, the student council vice president who couldn’t stay awake in algebra, seemed plenty chipper this morning. Stuffing breakfast in his mouth while grabbing his backpack, saxophone, and lunch bag, he posed for a moment with his hand on the car door, glancing around to make sure his middle school friends noticed that he’d arrived in an ultracool high schooler’s car, rather than with his mom or dad, as was usually the case.
“All right, get moving,” Verhaden insisted, pointing sternly toward the steps. Cameron and his friend backed away from the car.
“OK, Mr. Verhaden,” Cameron mumbled with part of a tortilla hanging down his chin.
Breakfast tacos, I thought, studying the car. Had the boys gone by the taco stands this morning? Was Sebastian’s silver Lexus one of the cars I’d seen driving down Division Street?
Cameron noticed me watching as he jogged toward the building. “Hey, Ms. C. You teaching algebra today?”
“I hope not,” I called back, glancing toward the high schooler’s car a second time.
“You’re missing your parking permit again,” Verhaden was telling the driver. “Sebastian, you get one more ticket from the security officer, you’re going to be parking off campus. Get going. One more tardy and you’ll be on probation during the district contest.”
Sebastian ducked back in the window. “Yes, sir!” With an overzealous salute, he piloted the car around the corner while hanging his parking pass on the rearview mirror.
Had he taken it down so that it wouldn’t be noticed
at some taco stand on Division Street? When I was in high school, the parking decals were huge and permanently affixed to the car windows. Everywhere we went, we were marked as Harrington students, whether we wanted to be or not. When had the school changed to removable parking permits, and why?
Turning the questions over in my head, I hurried up the side stairs and through the entrance next to Mrs. Morris’s classroom. Fortunately, she was busy haranguing some student about chewing gum. Halfway down the hall, Cameron was stuffing his things into his locker, laughing and flirting with a couple of girls as he squirted breath freshener in his mouth, then offered it around.
“Hey, Barry,” he called, as my third-period office assistant frumped by in his oversize clothes, which did nothing to hide the spare tire his mom had been in to talk to me about already. She wanted us to regulate what Barry ate in the cafeteria, which, of course, we couldn’t.
Barry glanced up just as Cameron tossed a grease-stained paper sack at him. “Here, have some breakfast.” Cameron laughed, and the girls giggled. “You look hungry.”
Dropping his binder, Barry caught the sack, then bent over to pick up his belongings, his pants sliding down to show the fleshy roll at the top of his rear end.
“Hey, dude, say no to crack,” Cameron quipped.
The girls laughed maliciously.
Barry hiked up his pants and pretended to laugh along with them. Shifting the breakfast sack to the other hand, he pitched it into the trash, muttering, “No, thanks,” as he slouched off to his first-period class.
“He-hey!” Cameron complained, jogging toward the trash can. “Dude, that was my lunch.”
I strode up the hall with my teeth clenched and I met up with Cameron as he tried to fish his lunch from the refuse container. “Leave it,” I hissed, watching Barry disappear around the corner, hugging his notebook. “Next time, be more careful what you do with your lunch.”
Grinning in a way he no doubt thought was charming, Cameron leaned over to reach into the trash can again.
“I believe you heard me, Mr. Ansler,” I ground out. “Go to class. And leave Barry alone. He’s my main man third hour in the office.”
Cameron looked me up and down in a way that was shockingly improper, considering that he was usually a well-behaved kid, polite to the point that it was disconcerting. “You could do better, Ms. C.”
One of the girls by the lockers drew an audible breath, her eyes widening. Cameron grinned impishly.
Leaning close, I pointed a finger between my face and his. “You’re right there on the line, young man, and I am not in the mood today.” The gravel in those words surprised even me. Where did that voice come from?
Cameron snapped his lips shut, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. The girls stood frozen.
From somewhere nearby, Mrs. Morris’s voice squawked, “What is going on out here?”
“It’s under control,” I snapped in my new go-ahead-make-my-day counselor voice before I turned back to Cameron. “Go to class.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Grabbing his books, he scooted away like a dog who’d just been bitten by a much bigger dog. Waiting until he was gone and the halls were cleared, I fished the lunch sack out of the trash and looked through it.
Nothing but soft tacos in plain paper wrappings. I dropped it back in the trash.
In my office, I pulled out the antidrug leaflets the task force had left, then logged onto the Web sites and began composing a list of things that needed to be checked into around the school. An hour later, Mrs. Jorgenson called about some problems with achievement-testing report sheets from last year, and I spent time in the basement helping her sort through boxes Mrs. Kazinski had mistakenly sent to long-term storage. A textbook company representative was waiting in the admin office when we returned, and I was trapped into listening to a sales pitch and taking samples, because the principal was nowhere to be found. By the time I returned to my computer and logged on to the antidrug Web sites again, I’d completely lost my place. Mr. Stafford stopped by my door just as I was getting back in sync.
“That press release ready for this weekend’s sidewalk jazz review?” he asked casually, giving the mess on my desk a pleasant but detached once-over.
Something I’d been about to write down flew from my head and buzzed around the room like a fly. “No, sorry,” I answered, still trying to regrasp the thought. In my study of taco stands and other drug-related issues, I’d completely forgotten that press releases were due at the city desk by five p.m. Monday. Harrington sent out notices about some performance or other nearly every week. This week it was the Harrington Jazz Players giving a concert at the mall. “But I’ll have it done by the end of the day, I promise.” One thing I had learned in Mrs. Morris’s English class was to whip up paragraphs of nice-sounding drivel in a flash.
“Good enough. I’ll get Verhaden to e-mail you a few notes about the performance.” Mr. Stafford nodded approvingly, as if I were the world’s finest high school counselor because I could put together press releases in time to make the newspaper. Apparently, he’d had trouble getting even that much out of Ms. Kazinski.
“Grant application coming along?” He leaned against my door, seeming content to stay there and chat awhile. Stafford was hard to figure out. One minute, he was locking everyone out of his office, too engrossed in school budgets to be bothered, and the next minute, he had all the time in the world to stand around and visit.
“It’s coming along.” I nodded to make it sound more convincing. “I worked on it some this weekend.” So not true. Between Jumpkids on Friday and Bett’s wedding plans the rest of the weekend, I’d spent about twenty minutes on the grant. Mental note—take grant materials home tonight.
“Good … Good.” Tipping his head back, Stafford narrowed his eyes, and I realized he was ogling the materials on my desk. Luckily, it was such a mishmash of student records, attendance sheets, grants, scholarships, state achievement tests, and drug prevention information, that he probably couldn’t tell I was scanning student files, trying to decide if this drug issue was real or imaginary. According to the files, there hadn’t been anyone at Harrington’s middle school reported, disciplined, investigated, or suspended for drug use or possession in the recent past. But, in the back of my mind, there was Shamika’s comment, and also Sergeant Reuper looking at me with emphasis when he said, “The thing about a smart kid with some resources is, he can keep up appearances for a longtime… .”
The thought I’d lost when Mr. Stafford came in returned, and I jotted it on my notepad: Drug dog.
Tapping the pen on the desk, I looked up at Mr. Stafford. “I noticed in the Harrington handbook that the school is searched regularly by a drug-sniffing dog.” I tried to sound casual, not accusatory. “When does that happen? I’ve been here seven weeks and I’ve never even noticed.” Any tone added a ditzy, Isn’t that a funny thing? But I was thinking, If there’s a drug dog here, it’s invisible.
Mr. Stafford shrugged. “They come through on the weekends, when the students are out of the way.”
“Why on the weekends?” Whoops, watch out. Question way too direct.
Pushing off the door frame, Stafford shifted to a defensive posture. “Certainly, we can’t have dogs and uniformed handlers wandering the halls during instructional time. How would that look if a parent or a reporter or a visitor came in?” Obviously, he’d been asked the question before, and it was a sore spot. “There’s never been a drug problem at Harrington.”
How would we know? I thought. The drugs come and go with the kids. You have to look for them when the kids are here. Duh.
“This is a high-profile school, Ms. Costell,” he added, pulling off his glasses and using them to punctuate the air between us. “Public funding being what it is, and with support for the arts dwindling all the time, we have an image to maintain. That image brings in the grants and fellowships and private endowments we need to survive. There are plenty of important people out there who would say that the time of the ar
ts magnet school has come and gone, that it’s all about drilling kids on reading, writing, and arithmetic until they can pass some idiotic state-mandated test. There are plenty who would like to see some scandal bring this school down. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Harrington comes first.”
Which means the kids come second, third, or somewhere down the line. As long as they look good on the outside, nothing else matters. “Of course it does,” I replied, doing a surprisingly adept job of hiding my emotions. “By the way—unrelated subject.” Not exactly so. “I was wondering, when did the student parking passes change? I remember the old ones with the big purple sticker that took up half of the back windshield.”
Stafford chuckled, relieved that we’d tacked to a safer subject. “Oh, that’s been”—rolling his eyes upward, he thought for a moment—“three or four years ago now. Our kids drive nice cars, and some of the parents didn’t like those big stickers junking up the windshields. There was also some discussion as to whether the display of a Harrington sticker might provoke harassment by students who attend school at Simmons-Haley High, down the block. There certainly are some latent resentments from locals. This way, our students can come and go in relative anonymity.”
I wondered if Harrington parents had any clue what their kids were doing with that anonymity. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
In the hallway, the lunch bell rang, and the corridor began to fill up with students. Mr. Stafford took a step backward. “You’ll e-mail me the press release for approval when it’s finished?”
“Always do,” I said, falsely cheerful.