Liars' Games (Project Chameleon Book 1) (11 page)

“
I’m sorry, this is awkward, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “I’ve never dated anyone that I worked for either.” 

“I hope you don’t think I’m too old for you. Am I too much like your father?’

“You’re nothing like my father.” She would never date someone like her father, a man with sharp words and biting anger.

“I’m forty-six. Is eleven years too much of a difference?” He searched her face and she had the uncanny feeling he was trying to figure out if she really was thirty-five.

“
Let me think about it? I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

A
S SHE TRIED to get to sleep, she thought about Steve. She truly liked him—his easy-going attitude, quick wit, intelligence, and incredible self-confidence. But could she trust him? Was he setting some kind of trap for her?

She’d never been paranoid,
and she didn’t think she was now.

If she said no to Steve, he might assume she didn’t like him, which wasn’t true at all. Or worse, he might think she wasn’t really available. Had John Richmond spoken to him about his belief that she was the senator’s mistress? If he had, Steve might interpret her declining
of his advances as evidence that John was right and that she uses men to get what she wants.

On the other hand, she could be worrying over nothing. Maybe she was sabotaging herself. Wasn’t that possible? But then she thought about another possibility: that she might be afraid of getting involved with someone whom she might have to suddenly leave behind or who might hurt her fragile trust in people. Oh, bloody hell. She needed to get out
of this job.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CLAIRE KEPT HEARING Kate’s and Angie’s words about the stranger as she dressed for work Monday morning. Her nerves were on edge driving across town, and she couldn’t stop checking her rearview mirror to ensure she wasn’t being followed.

She arrived at school an hour and a half before the first bell because she needed to work on a weekly report mandated by Steve. The report took an hour to finish, leaving
less than half an hour at most to email her report and check her new emails. Opening her inbox, she was shocked to see thirty-six emails, far more than usual, unread and screaming for attention.

She groaned, sent out
the weekly report, and began opening the unread mails one by one. In the middle of reading one from Frank, Ron stuck his head into her office, clearing his throat to let her know he was there.

“Hey, sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but we’ve got another problem.”

“What now?” Claire asked brusquely, rubbing the back of her neck with her left hand as she closed the inbox with her right hand. She sighed and glanced up at Ron, who looked taken aback at her reply. Immediately realizing what she had done, she said, “Oh, Ron, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault about the problems. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

He nodded
, his face blank again. “Nancy Palmer got here fifteen minutes ago, grabbed a cup of coffee, and headed up to her classroom. That’s when she discovered a mess. Spray paint. Gang symbols. All over the hall floor and on the classroom doors. But that’s not the worst of it. They also hung liquid-filled condoms over all the doorknobs. At first she thought they were water balloons.”

Claire’s jaw dropped open. “
Oh my God, please tell me you’re kidding.”

Ron winced. “Afraid not.”

“It isn’t throughout the school, is it? I mean, is the vandalism confined?”

“We thoroughly checked the second floor, and did a quick scan of the other floors.
We didn’t see any vandalism in the rooms themselves and no fresh vandalism on the other floors.”

Ha. Fresh vandalism. That was the only way to describe the difference, wasn’t it?

“Well, at least that’s a bit of good news,” Claire said. She tilted her head, then thought aloud. “So, why that floor? What kind of message were they trying to send?”

“Damned if I know,” Ron said. “I’ll call Hector Minosa. Have him get his custodial staff to
start cleaning it up. I just don’t know how we’re going to prevent it from happening again.”

An hour later, while on her way back to her office, Claire heard a noise and turned to see where it was coming from. Something was happening outside the cafeteria. She rushed over in time to see five boys, all wearing orange bandanas, shoving two smaller boys, and laughing.

“Leave them alone,” she shouted. They turned at the sound of her voice, and then looked at each other.

“Did you hear what the pretty lady said?” one of the boys said.

While the gang members were distracted, the younger boys ran off.

One of the other members said, “Yeah. Ooh, I’m scared. Whatcha gonna do ‘bout it, huh? You
wanna take us on, mama?”

Claire
struggled to keep from showing fear. She was alone with these boys and no one knew she was here. She studied them briefly, trying to keep her demeanor calm, and although she dearly wanted to take each of them by the ear, be the strict disciplinarian and march them out of the school, cooler thinking prevailed. This wasn’t the right time or conditions. Finally, she spun around on her heels and walked briskly back to her office, not daring to look over her shoulder. Please let them not be following, she thought.

Later, s
itting in her office, she replayed the morning’s events. As she slid from one scene to another, something clicked in her mind. Teachers need a discipline plan that encompasses clearly defined rules of conduct for all their students. It would make sense to develop and follow the same plan throughout the school, train the teachers, and then inform the students of the consequences and that they would be enforced.

A while later, she walked into Ron’s office and asked him to announce a second assembly. She would try again at ten o’clock today. Before the assembly, she searched through last year’s yearbook to see if she could identify the gang members she’d seen bullying the younger boys. She felt like she was looking at mug shots in the police station. Soon she found four of the five boys. Although she couldn’t do anything about them now, she would listen for any mention of their names among the faculty and students.

At five minutes before assembly time, Claire took a deep breath
, let it out, and walked briskly up onto the stage. She’d spoken before large audiences thousands of times before in lecture halls, but most of those students had attended willingly and that had given her confidence. Facing a hostile crowd was a completely different animal.

After a brief introduction and pause, she continued. “I’ve learnt a lot about Midland in the short time I’ve been here
. There are things that need to change.” 

There were some shouts, some
of them obscene, and much whispering among students. Stay calm, she told herself.

“This morning we had an incident of vandalism. After that I witnessed some students bullying other students. If you know who is responsible for the vandalism, please come to see Mr. Baker or me. If you are a victim o
f bullying, or know of someone who is, please also see myself or Mr. Baker. Don’t let the troublemakers ruin your education or your life. Over the next few weeks, this whole school will meet every other day in this auditorium.”

Again there were whispers and the occasional obnoxious, loud wise crack. Claire pushed on, raising her voice. “People here—students and faculty alike—have not been safe or happy. We have to change that. We have to fix our school’s problems. Fixing the problems is a huge task. No single person can do it alone, but with everyone working together, students and faculty alike, we can.”

As in her previous assembly, a ruckus broke out and Claire was forced to stop. She strained to decipher the sounds, and the best she could surmise,
was that it was a mixture of boos and cheers, with boos unfortunately still outweighing cheers.

Ron and several teachers
were busily intercepting students who left their seats.

Claire steeled herself,
and then spoke as loudly as she could into the microphone. “We will begin the next assembly with new procedures. Before then I want you to come forward and tell what you know about the vandalism, the bullying, the—”

Ignoring her, students jumped out of their seats and stampeded toward the doors. Ron and a few teachers prodded them like cows t
o go on to their next classes. Afterwards, Ron walked over to Claire and he said, “You’ll never get them to rat on each other. You’re a fool for thinking kids will do that. In places like this, you say nothing, you lie, you do whatever you need to survive.”

Claire stared at him. “Are you giving up?”

“No, I’ll do what I can to help, but don’t kid yourself. Don’t expect miracles.”

T
UESDAY MORNING, CLAIRE arrived at work groggy, having been up half the night with Marcus who’d had a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. She probably wouldn’t have slept well anyway, still worrying about the watcher and not having heard from Brad yet.

Walking
around to the front of the building from the faculty car park, she stared in horror at the building and leafless trees dressed with Maypole-like streamers of toilet paper and at the streaks of bright red spray-paint on the remnant snow blanketing the grounds in front of the building. Unfortunately, Gang symbols, ones that she’d come to recognize, were also painted on the snow-cleared sidewalk in black.

This was the worst she’d seen
yet. And this coming after she started trying to fix the school’s problems immediately made her believe the gangbangers were sending her a warning.

Brad Meyers’s words about John Richmond popped into her head. “He was trying to intimidate you. It was a power play. That’s all. He was letting you know that he was ticked off because someone usurped his power and told him who to hire.” Wasn’t that similar to what was happening here? Wasn’t she trying to usurp the troublemakers’ power?

Don’t let them intimidate. Don’t let them win. Not John, and not the troublemakers here in the school.
She glanced at the clock, then sent out a message over the school’s intercom, advising the faculty to report immediately to the school’s music room for a brief before-school meeting.

Fifteen minutes later, s
itting on a stool on the music room stage, she said to the faculty, “We’re going to continue the school assemblies.” She’d selected this room because it had stadium-style seating and was cozier than the auditorium, yet able to accommodate one-hundred-twenty employees. Everyone faced her, allowing her to watch their reactions and also engage them in conversation. “We’ll hold them every other day until we don’t need them anymore. They’re working. It may not seem like it yet, but what we see today is retaliation by the school’s troublemakers. We’ve rattled them, and we’ll keep on rattling them.”

“And they’ll keep on retaliating,” one of the teachers said. “I don’t want to come to work in fear.”

Several other teachers nodded agreement.

“
What, you don’t come to work in fear now? We can’t give in,” Claire said. “We have to keep trying.” She paused. History teacher Jerome Shaw was sitting off to the side, looking down at his lap. His fingers tapped on his iPhone, probably texting someone across the room. Claire’s eyes swept the rest of the room. History teacher Jill Barnes, who was Jerome’s ‘friend’, was doing likewise in the back of the room. They might be discussing the meeting, but more likely planning a hot date. Best let it go.

Claire took a sip of the tea she’d brought with her from her office, then said, “We can’t
continue to allow a quarter of the student body to run this place. We must not let them intimidate the other students or us. They are robbing the other students of a good education. They are robbing each of you the chance to educate and to have a safe work place. This school can and must change for the better. We must make it happen for everyone’s sake.”

About a third of the employees smiled or gave some form of approval but the others whispered to one another, or fussed with their hair, their neckties, or their phones. Clearly, she still hadn’t convinced them. What would it take
to get through?

“Those of you who are interested
in fixing the problems, stay here and we’ll discuss ways to handle school fights. The rest of you may leave, but please think about what this environment is doing to your lives and the future lives of your students.” She’d done enough homework that she could give a brief lesson on school fights.

Roughly forty percent of them stayed and
spent the next thirty-five minutes discussing the primary reasons teens fought in school, and the techniques for dealing with those fights: restraining techniques, getting back-up assistance, using firm nonverbal and paraverbal communication, etc. Everyone agreed that the team-restraining techniques, while usually suggested to be used as a last resort, would be invaluable at Midland. At the end of the meeting, she told them she would have another, more in-depth training session the following week.

When she returned to her office, she called Frank and
informed him about the vandalism and the results of the faculty meeting.

Later in the day Ron came into Claire’s office, and said, “I heard from some teachers that someone wrote a threatening message on the mirror in the ladies’ faculty restroom near the main faculty lounge.”

Claire said, “Crap.”

She stood up, and together they walked to the restroom. Claire entered first, then stepped out and motioned to Ron that it was empty. They both stared at the large messy red lipstick message: STOP MESSING IN OUR BUSINESS OR YOU WILL DIE.

Ron looked as shaken as she felt. Her earlier resolve to not let them intimidate, to not let them win, flew out the window.

“What
do we do?” she asked.

“Damned if I know,” Ron said, rubbing the back of his bald head. “
Think we should we notify the police?”

She sighed. “I
hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. But—” She looked back at the bloody-looking message. “I’ll call Frank. He’ll know what to do.”

Within half an hour, Frank arrived and met Claire and Ron in Claire’s office. They took him into the restroom and showed him the mirror, and he was angrier than Claire had even seen
him. When they returned to the school’s Admin. Office, three teachers were waiting for them.

“Someone slashed my car tires,” Jim said. “I went out to go to lunch and couldn’t go anywhere. Fucking delinquents.”

“My car windows were broken out,” Millie said.

“Mine, too,” Charlie said.

Claire looked at Frank. He shook his head and rubbed his hand through his hair.

“Better show us the damage,” he said.

Outside, they all stood in the car park looking at the three vehicles.