Over the Tracks (Suspended)

by Heather Duffy Stone

  She hadn’t noticed. I didn’t hurt anyone. And I was closer to having the money I needed to not have to ask for anything.

  Like it was psychic, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out with my free hand. Jenny Bauer.

  Wanna make another sale? she wrote.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It wasn’t Jenny Bauer who wanted to buy, though. It was a friend of hers. Someone I was supposed to meet in the band room. A senior. I’d never heard of the guy, but Pete said: “He’s trouble, Lucy. If anyone even sees you near him, they’ll know you’re doing something you’re not supposed to.”

  “No one is going to see us,” I said to Pete. It was Sunday night. We were GChatting, but I could still picture Pete sighing and shaking his head.

  “Plus, one more sale and I can get new running shoes.”

  I stared at the screen for a long time waiting for Pete to respond, but after a while, I knew he wouldn’t. It’s not like I didn’t mind that he was mad at me. I just knew that there was no way I could make him understand why I had to do this.

  It had been easier to get the pot that time, now that I knew Mom wouldn’t wake up. And when I opened the bag in my mom’s drawer, it was full. Jeff had brought her more, and nobody noticed the missing bud.

  Pete wasn’t waiting for me on Monday morning, but I sort of knew he wouldn’t be. I sat down on the front steps and pulled my ripped running shoes out of my backpack and tied them on. I tightened my backpack over my shoulders and started to run.

  Running was my favorite place to be. Not like it was a place exactly, but I could be anywhere and do it. No matter what I was feeling, I could focus on breathing and on the ground in front of me and let everything else disappear. The path to school took less than twenty minutes to walk and just over ten minutes to run. Behind my house, through the woods, over the tracks, across the football field, and up the hill.

  The leaves crunched under my feet. Over the tracks, I could hear the river running low underneath me. My heart was racing. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the run or because of how scared I was.

  My hair was wet with sweat before I finished. I unzipped my hoodie and fanned my stomach with my T-shirt as I walked to the band room. The halls were mostly empty. I stuck my hand into the pocket of my jeans, wrapped my fingers around the plastic package. I kept my fist there while I walked.

  Carter Whatever-his-name-was didn’t even look up when I walked into the band room and closed the door behind me. He leaned against a keyboard, typing on his phone. We were both wearing jeans and black hoodies, like I had worn the drug dealer uniform without even knowing it. But Pete was right; Carter was kind of scary looking. He had a blurry tattoo on the back of his hand, and when he finally looked up at me, his eyes were sunk in gray-black circles.

  “You?” he said. “The runner?” He laughed a little bit and looked down at his phone and typed something else. The hand inside my pocket was shaking. I couldn’t help but wonder how he even knew who I was.

  “Um—”

  “Well? You got it?” he asked.

  “Sorry, I—I don’t do this a lot.” I pulled out the package.

  “No kidding.” He held out one hand, still looking at his phone. I dropped the package into his palm. And for the first time, he put the phone down on the desk behind him. He unwrapped the plastic and held the green up to his nose and breathed in. Then he finally looked at me.

  “Bauer said you’d come through, but I didn’t believe her,” he said.

  I felt something like pride. When Carter said that I came through, it was like I’d done something worth feeling good about. Even though somewhere else I knew I’d done something awful. I couldn’t stop picturing my mom, lying in bed with the sheet drawn up to her chin, breathing in and out while I stole something from her.

  “I need to go to class,” I said. Because I was scared of everything I was thinking.

  Carter nodded. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a folded pile of bills. “This should be enough.” I reached out and wrapped my hand around the bills. I wanted it all to be over with. I wanted the money to be in my pocket—I’d never do this again. I’d buy my sneakers, and I’d figure out something else for New York. Or I just wouldn’t go. I wasn’t cut out for this.

  But there I was, with my hands on Carter’s grimy money, when the voice spoke up from behind me.

  “Let’s just put everything in our hands down on the desk in front of you. Turn around and face me.”

  I knew that voice, the voice of our assistant principal, terrifying and stern. My stomach dropped to the floor as I turned. Mrs. Leland stood in the doorway with a tired-eyed security guard. This was it.

  “You are both in very big trouble,” she said.

  “Mrs. Leland?” I said. She raised her eyebrows at me, like she couldn’t believe I spoke. But the world was getting blurry around me. Toppling down. And I couldn’t stop talking.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I might be sick.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I could see Mrs. Leland’s feet on the other side of the stall door. I was leaned over with my elbows on my knees. I wasn’t going to throw up exactly, but if I moved, if I lifted my head, it could be a possibility.

  “Lucy?” Mrs. Leland said. “You can’t stay in there forever, Lucy.”

  “I know,” I tried to say. But I couldn’t say anything. I don’t know what was worse, the way Mrs. Leland had looked at me when she walked into the band room or watching her on the phone with my mom, imagining what was happening on the other end of the line.

  But this isn’t me, I wanted to say when she had walked me from the band room to her office. This is a mistake. But I couldn’t say anything. I just sat, numb, across from her desk while she dialed the phone and then explained to Mom that she had to come to school and get me. That I was safe but I was in some trouble.

  “She can’t,” I’d said weakly, when Mrs. Leland hung up the phone. But I barely had time to get the words out before I had to run to the bathroom. I was sure I’d throw up. But nothing came. And even though Mrs. Leland had followed me there, it felt safer to be in the stall.

  “My mom can’t come,” I said through the door. I don’t think I’d said anything at all in the last ten minutes, since I’d said the same thing to her in her office.

  “Your mother is on her way, Lucy. Why don’t you come out here so we can go talk in my office? We can wait for her there.”

  “My mom can’t,” I said again. But I turned the lock and opened the bathroom door. Mrs. Leland was leaning against the sink. Her face didn’t change when she saw me.

  “She’s sick,” I said.

  Mrs. Leland nodded. “I know,” she said. “But she is coming here nonetheless.”

  So we were back in Mrs. Leland’s office. We sat across from each other, her desk in between us. Through the windows behind her, I stared at the tops of the cars. There was an empty chair next to me where Mom would sit.

  “This is a very serious thing. I want to be sure you know that.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know I have not called the police yet.”

  “Yes. I mean, thank you.”

  “I’m not saying, Lucy, that I won’t call them. I’m saying I haven’t.”

  “Okay.” I thought, right then, that I might rather be taken away by the police than face my mom.

  “I need to hear something from you, Lucy. What is going on here? What you are thinking? You have never been in my office in this capacity before.”

  “I—I needed new sneakers.”

  Mrs. Leland nodded, as if I’d just said the most normal thing. Then there was a tap on her door. I couldn’t turn around, but Mrs. Leland stood up. “Ms. Tarryton,” she said.

  I kept staring at the tops of the cars. My legs were shaking. Mrs. Leland walked around the desk and drew a chair forward. Someone helped Mom into the seat next to me. Jeff. He was wearing a blue flannel shirt folded at his elbows. He sat on the other side
of Mom. Mom was wearing her regular clothes. Black pants and a red turtleneck sweater, the clothes so loose on her, it was like she was disappearing inside them. She turned her head to look at me, but I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said softly to Mrs. Leland.

  “I am too,” Mrs. Leland said. “The truth is that I am shocked. I had my eye on the older student, so when it was reported to me early in the morning that he was spotted in a room where he didn’t have class, I was suspicious. When the guard and I entered the room and saw Lucy—surprised is not a strong enough word for what I felt.”

  “This certainly is not like her,” Jeff said. Shut up, I wanted to say. This is not your meeting. This is not your family. In all of the last several years, Jeff had never come to school. That was Mom’s territory. But then she reached over and took his hand.

  “We are going through a difficult time at home,” Mom said. “I am certainly not excusing Lucy, but . . . I know that this is not an easy year for her.”

  “I was very sorry to hear about your illness,” Mrs. Leland said. Mom looked at me again. I had to turn to her. She stared into my eyes as if she was trying to find something. She knew. I saw it then. She knew where I got it. She knew it was hers. Her eyes were not tired anymore, not even mad. They were sad.

  “Lucy,” she said.

  “I made a mistake.”

  “Yes, you did,” Mrs. Leland said. “And we need to know two things first. We need to know where you got the marijuana. And we need to know if you have more.”

  “I don’t have anything. You can search my locker. I—it was, I don’t have anything.” I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to be home. I wanted to hide.

  “Lucy—”

  “I’m not going to—it was someone who doesn’t even go here. I’ll never do it again.”

  Mrs. Leland moved some papers around on her desk. She sighed and then looked at Mom.

  “I deal with the local police more than I’d like to. I plan to report this incident to them without having to identify Lucy. We will have to search her locker, but assuming we find nothing else . . . Lucy, I expect much, much better from you. But I believe that a one-week suspension will be a strong enough lesson. Starting now, you will be suspended from school for five days.”

  Still feeling a little bit sick to my stomach but somehow relieved, I followed Mrs. Leland to my locker. The same security guard was already standing there. The two of them asked me to unlock it and stand back. I felt like a criminal as the guard searched through each item, shaking out the pages of books and stacking it all on the floor as he went. When he was done, he said to Mrs. Leland, “Looks clear.”

  I didn’t even have a bag, so I carried the contents of my locker to the car, where Mom and Jeff waited in silence. I got into the backseat and shut the door. I knew that I’d ruined things, that Mom was sick and exhausted . . . but I couldn’t talk while Jeff was in the car. It was between my mom and me.

  “I don’t even know what I’m feeling,” Mom said quietly from the front seat. “I don’t know what to say, Lucy. I—”

  That’s when I started to cry. From the bottom of my gut, the sobbing came, endless. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even tell you what it was that made me finally start, but once I did, I couldn’t stop. Nobody talked for the rest of the way home—the sound of me sobbing was the only thing filling the car.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I’d stopped crying by the time I got home. I couldn’t cry anymore because I was empty. My mom didn’t so much as turn around during the drive. I knew what she was thinking. I knew my mom wasn’t going to say anything until she had thought about every option. I wanted her to yell. I wanted her to roll her eyes and tell me I was ridiculous. But nothing was normal anymore. Her shoulders didn’t even look like her shoulders from the back.

  Even my house didn’t feel the same when we pulled up in front of it. I stayed in the backseat while Jeff helped Mom out of the car and up the steps. When the door shut behind them, I headed inside. The place was empty and quiet like no one was around.

  But I knew Jeff was there. With my mom. At the end of the hall. And she wasn’t going to come yell at me or take my phone or ground me or be disappointed. In the end, actually, it was Jeff who came to my door.

  The thing about Jeff is, he’s always been in our life. I can’t tell you a bad thing about him. It’s just—he wasn’t my dad. He wasn’t my parent. It had never been like that. Even Rosie was more like family. She was the person on my school contact card who they called if they couldn’t reach Mom. So when Jeff came into my room, I wanted to tell him to leave. I wanted to tell him to not even try to talk to me. Except I didn’t.

  “Lucy,” he said. He leaned in the doorway like he wasn’t exactly comfortable. “You know I’ve never been the person who tells you what to do. You and your mom have that figured out. I love her and I love you, but that’s not my place around here.”

  It was weird to hear him say he loved me. It was weird to hear him say it like I was part of my mom. Like of course loving one meant loving the other.

  “But the thing is, Lucy. You really messed up here. What you did was not only get yourself in big trouble, but you could get your mom in big-time trouble. Your teacher didn’t make you tell her where you got the pot. She’s not going to push it, and we are lucky. But this is serious business.” He stopped, but it wasn’t like he wanted me to say anything. It’s like he was thinking about what to say next.

  “I know,” I said. I said it, but I wasn’t totally sure what I knew. Could my mom go to jail? Could I? None of this seemed real.

  “We’re all scared, Lucy. We all want your mom to be well. But I can’t imagine how it is for you. You need to get it together, though. For your mom. This one was bad.”

  He stood there for a second after he finished. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch tonight. You let me know if you need anything.” And then he walked away, pulling my door shut behind him.

  When my mom first got sick, it all felt fake. She was in the shower and she felt a lump and then she went to the doctor. I didn’t even know she was going. I didn’t know anything about it until she ordered olive pizza and sat across the table from me and told me she had cancer.

  “It’s okay!” she said, folding her pizza in half. “They think I can have surgery and it will be fine.” I didn’t believe her exactly. But I didn’t think it would be like this. And then the surgery didn’t work. And she started chemo. And it was like Mom started to disappear. And I just tried to get farther and farther away. Like if I didn’t have to see her too often, it didn’t have to be real too often.

  The rush I felt when I was going to meet Jenny or Carter—the excitement that almost made me nauseous. That was the most something I’d felt in as long as I could remember. I took my phone out of my pocket. Nobody had taken it away from me.

  I got suspended, I typed.

  Ya. I heard but I didn’t blve, Pete wrote.

  I messed up.

  Yep.

  Im sorry for being whatever these last few days.

  Im gonna give u a pass this time

  Im just kinda worried abt evrythng

  Well you shd talk to me and not sell drugs

  Ok

  Do you think I can come over tomorrow?

  Ill call you.

  night Lou

  nt

  When I put the phone down, I felt somewhere close to normal. I’d really messed up. But I felt like I had my friend back. And Jeff and Rosie were going to be here with me and my mom. And I wasn’t going to jail.

  I kicked my shoes off and lay down. Now I just had to make it through a week of suspension and I could start to make my life normal again. Or something like it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The note on the kitchen table when I woke up said:

  Don’t watch TV. Do homework.

  Don’t go ANYWHERE.

  It wasn’t signed, but I knew it had to be Aunt Rosie. But I had no
where to go. There was nothing good on TV. I might have even done homework anyway.

  I tried to text Pete a few times in the morning, but he was in class. I stared at my books and tried to read a history assignment, but it all felt blurry. Before I knew it, Rosie had brought Mom home and settled her into her room. As Rosie parked her car, I hid in my own room—I didn’t know who I wanted to face less, my mom or Rosie. But I reminded myself that it had to be one of them. When I heard Rosie in the kitchen, I walked down the hall to my mom’s room. Her door was cracked open. She was sitting up, her eyes fluttering at the TV we’d put in her room. It was turned to the local news, but the volume was off.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She rolled her head over on the pillow so she could look at me.

  “I didn’t mean to make things worse,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say. I didn’t even feel sorry necessarily, just more like I had been someone else. Mom nodded her head against the pillow.

  “I know you didn’t,” she said. But she didn’t smile. I wanted to go in. I wanted to lie down next to her. I wanted her to get up and come into the kitchen. I wanted her to tell me that I really messed up but that it was okay.

  “I’m gonna let you sleep,” I said.

  She nodded, and I turned to go. “Lucy.”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “I need to know you’re okay.”

  I realized she wasn’t going to get mad at me. She couldn’t right now. But I wasn’t ready to do all the scolding myself. I needed someone to tell me what to do. What not to do. It wasn’t fair to have a parent who was only sort of present.

  “Lucy?” Aunt Rosie called from the kitchen. “Get in here.” It was like, through the wall, she could see me standing in Mom’s room.

  “Sit,” Aunt Rosie said. She was stirring something on the stove, and she didn’t turn around.

  “I know I messed up. Jeff already told me,” I said.

  “You messed up big.” She pivoted against the counter, still holding the wooden spoon she’d been stirring with.

  “I don’t want to do your mom’s job, Luce. You need to grow up a little faster right now.”