_*_ 23 _*_
I wrote the stupid article.
I made up names of databases, I put in quotes from students who didn’t exist (Paige Turner and Art T. Ficial), and devoted a paragraph—deep in the story—to the “special shelves” where all the banned and challenged books were held. (“‘ That’s where you find all the sex stuff,’ said Art T. Ficial.”) By the time I was finished writing (and cracking myself up), I was actually in a less-than-cranky mood. The fact that Dad had woken up before noon and taken off in the truck was a good sign, I decided. A great one. He was coming out of the dark place where he’d been hiding for the last few weeks. It was all part of the big adjustment of living normal instead of moving around the country like we were being chased by phantoms. He was having a good day and I was going to have a good day and before I knew it, I’d written a sidebar piece to the library article filled with the URLs of made-up websites for students who wanted help with their homework.
Finn did my math, though I wasn’t quite sure how. Every few minutes a new horde of girls would buzz over and bug him about tickets or T-shirts or swim practice. I put in my earbuds and cranked the music.
“Are you a man-whore?” I asked as the loudest group of them teetered away on their high heels. (High heels? Really? At seven thirty in the morning? Shouldn’t you actually have breasts before you start wearing heels?) “Or does that stink spray make you irresistible to baby-zombie-bitches?”
“Yes.” Finn grinned, eyes glued to the b-z-b butts. “A nd yes.”
But he did my homework. And the look on Mr. Cleveland’s face was worth putting up with Finn. Cleveland hadn’t gotten around to grading our tests yet, so I left second period feeling almost, kind of, a little . . . happy.
Who says miracles don’t happen?
The day only got better after that. Brandon wasn’t in English, and Ms. Rogak showed a movie that lasted the entire period. I was awake enough in study hall to finish my Chinese homework and then health turned into an accidental study hall because the teacher was sick, so I was able to get a nap after all. The sub in forensics was a retired cop who told us real stories about blood-spatter patterns and estimating when a murder had been committed by the age of the maggots and flies on the corpse. Nobody fell asleep.
In Chinese, Ms. Neff gave me and a girl named Sasha extra points for our pinyin homework because we were the only people who had done it. As Sasha high-fived me, I decided that I might do more homework if they made it into a competitive sport.
Even social studies sort of rocked. Mr. Diaz was teaching about the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and he neglected to mention the Chickasaw people. I raised my hand (politely) and pointed out (respectfully) his error. His face turned angry red, but he spent a minute typing on his computer, then reading the screen, and then he said, “Thank you, Hayley. You are correct. The Chickasaw were forced to walk the Trail of Tears, too.”
I raised my hand. He grimaced, but called on me again.
“Because thousands of native people died on the Trail of Tears, shouldn’t we call it a ‘genocide’ instead of a ‘forced march’?” I asked. “If an African government today did the same thing to their indigenous people, we’d be screaming about it in the United Nations and raising money for the victims, wouldn’t we?”
The debate that followed was so awesome I didn’t doodle in my notebook once.
_*_ 24 _*_
I should have known better.
The laws of the universe dictate that for every positive action, there is an unequal and sucky reaction. So the fact that Thursday had been a somewhat decent day meant that Friday was required to go up in flames.
It started just after midnight. I’d been half sleeping on the couch, waiting, because Dad had gone out for milk and bread right after I got home from school and hadn’t returned. Spock barked, that’s what startled me awake. The lights of the pickup truck flashed through the front window as it pulled into the driveway.
Spock went to the door, tail wagging. A few moments later, the door opened. Dad smiled when he saw me, grin lopsided, eyes not quite focused. Drunk. When I asked him where he’d been, he called me his sweet girl. He sat down next to me on the couch, leaned his head back, and passed out.
I checked his face and hands; there were no scrapes or cuts to show he’d been in a fight. I threw on a jacket and my sneakers and went out to the truck. No marks on the bumpers, no new scratches in the paint. I opened the door and found empty Budweiser cans in the foot well and an extra hundred and fifteen miles on the odometer.
Finn hadn’t said that he’d pick me up on Friday. In fact, I hadn’t seen him since I gave him the library article. But I sort of watched for him while I was standing at the bus stop. He didn’t show.
The bus smelled like fresh puke.
The cafeteria was being fumigated so first period was wasted in the auditorium being supervised by a teacher I had never seen before who clearly forgot to take her medication.
Not only did I flunk my math test with a 0 percent (that’s right, he didn’t give me any points for putting my name on the paper and remembering the correct date), but I also flunked my homework by getting every problem right.
SEE ME! was scrawled at the top of my paper. In red.
Rogak forced a surprise quiz on the lotus-eaters down our throats, we had not one, but two lockdown drills during study hall (we were too loud during the first one), and then we had to go outside for gym because the janitors were doing something sticky to the gym floor.
I had dressed for fall, you know, long sleeves, jeans, boots. Summer had reappeared, choking us with eighty degrees instead of fifty. I had a heatstroke and that’s why I zoned in forensics and Chinese and didn’t rise to the bait when Diaz asked me what I thought about the legacy of Andrew Jackson.
The final bell rang and my classmates sprinted for the exits.
I trudged back down to the math wing.
“There’s cheating and then there’s felony cheating.” Cleveland shook my homework in my face. “It’s not even your handwriting, Hayley. How stupid do you think I am?”
I had so much fun thinking about possible answers to that question that I didn’t hear much of what he said for the next five minutes. Then an alarm sounded in my brain.
“Excuse me, sir, could you please repeat that?” “I said I’ve arranged a tutor for you.”
“I don’t need a tutor.”
He picked up his red pen and circled my test grade again. “Okay,” I said. “I don’t want a tutor.”
“It’s the only way you’re going to pass this class, and
that’s assuming you work your tail off.”
“I’m actually kind of, you know, smart,” I said. “I don’t
need a tutor.”
He laughed so hard he could barely catch his breath.
“Wow.” He pulled a couple of tissues out of the box on his
desk and dabbed at his eyes. “Whew! I haven’t laughed like
that in a while.” He blew his nose and chucked the tissues in
the trash. “Finnegan Ramos has agreed to tutor you.” “No. I want somebody else.”
“You want a pony, too? Most of life is doing things we
don’t want to do, Hayley.”
“Thanks for the wisdom, sir, but it doesn’t apply here.” “Then I’ll set up a meeting with your,” he glanced at his
screen, “father and Ms. Benedetti so we can discuss which
lower-level math class you belong in.” He typed on his keyboard and looked at the screen again. “It says here that your
father’s phone number and email don’t work. How can I get
in touch with him?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. How would Dad react?
How would he handle himself in a meeting like that? What
if Benedetti mentioned Trish?”
“What do I have to do so that you don’t call my father?” He looked at me over the monitor, eyes serious. “Tutoring sessions until you catch up on the work you’ve blown off. Do your own homework and get your grade out of the toilet by the end of the semester and pass all tests.” He stood up. “Also, it wouldn’t hurt if you wrote a few more satire pieces for what we hope is going to be a newspaper one of
these days.”
“Excuse me?”
“Finn showed me your article. He said you wanted a
regular opinion column. It might be a good idea, as long as
your grade comes up and you don’t get controversial. No
abortion, no religion, and nothing about today’s botched
lockdown drill, okay? The board is on the fence about releasing the money for the paper; the last thing we need is
to upset them with an actual opinion about something that
matters.”
I opened my mouth, but words didn’t come out. He handed me back my fake homework. “Your first tutoring session starts now. He’s in the library.”
_*_ 25 _*_
I tried. I really did, but it was ten million degrees in the library, and Finn was being a obstinate jerk. The fans set up in the stacks sounded like jackhammers, and my brain was melting.
I might have said a few things to him that were less than nice.
Finn finally stood up and slammed his book closed. “This isn’t going to work.” he said. “I’ll email Cleveland.” “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean
that.”
“You’re not even trying.”
I almost argued with him about that, but then I remembered that screwing this up meant Dad would get involved and that would end badly.
“I stayed up too late gaming,” I said. “Sleep deprivation makes me cranky. It won’t happen again, I swear.”
He sat back down. “Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?”
“I don’t. I have a crappy attitude about everything.”
After that, I did a better job of listening and, eventually, the concept of rational functions started to make a little sense. At least it seemed like Finn was finally explaining it to me in English. The library slowly emptied and we both relaxed a little and before I knew it, an hour had gone by.
“Library closes in thirty minutes,” called the aide at the front desk.
Finn started shoving books into his backpack. “Did Cleveland talk to you about your next article?”
“More satire for a column I don’t want?”
“I didn’t get a chance to mention that, did I?”
I stared at the sea of equations on the page. “Do you really think he’ll cut me some slack?”
“He won’t pass you just for helping out with the paper.” Finn scratched his chin. “But let’s say you brought your F up to an almost C—”
“Impossible,” I said.
“Stranger things have happened,” he continued. “I bet a couple articles might take you from almost C into definite C territory. Or at least really-super-close to a C. Couldn’t hurt. What are you doing tonight?”
“Why?” I asked, hackles instantly up.
“Home football game, under the lights. I need you to cover it.”
“I don’t like high school football.”
“Neither does half the team.”
“I thought you were the sports writer.”
“And editor,” he reminded me.
“So why can’t you do it?’
He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Got a date.”
“Nobody says ‘date’ anymore.”
“Corner table,” scolded the library aide, waving her stapler at us. “Keep it down, please.”
We leaned our heads together. His body spray was at a less-than-toxic level.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he whispered, his lips close to my ear.
I tried to ignore the shiver that ran down my spine. “What?”
“I’ll pay you ten bucks if you cover the game.”
“Fifteen.”
“Done.” He stood up.
“We have another half hour,” I said in surprise. “Where are you going?”
“I have to get ready, remember? Big night.” He scribbled a number at the top of my problem sheet. “Call me tomorrow if you forget how to do polynomial functions.” He put his books in his backpack. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”
“How about ‘Keep your pants zipped’?”
“Do I have to?”
“First date?”
He nodded.
“If you want a second one with her, then, yeah, you should keep your pants zipped. And your belt buckled.”
“Do I get to kiss her, Grandma?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On if she feels like kissing you. God, Finn, haven’t you ever gone out on a date before?”
“Millions of them. I’m a world-class Casanova, women on five continents swoon at the mere sight of me, People magazine—”
I held up my hands. “Spare me the details. I’ll see you Monday.”