Spider Brains: A Love Story (Book One) (18 page)

"Don't get any ideas." The soapy water felt warm on my hands and smelled fresher than the air around us. I looked up and out of the window above Matt and
Paul's
sink. The evening had begun to throw a light blue veil over the day as I gazed across to our house, into our open garage. Seeing only mom's car parked inside, pulled at some trigger located directly behind my eyes.

But, I foiled my emotions by talking more. "I just thought you might need a little help around here. I mean, I already finished practicing my sax, my homework and my chores and thought, hey, I wonder if Matt and
Paul
might need some help around their place, and so here I am. Do
not
think I'm be your maid or that I'll be doing this again anytime soon."

"I'll clean off the table."

"Do you too ever clean this house?" My question sounded worse than what I had hoped it to sound like.

"Nah."

"Nah?"

"Dad likes to be alone."

"What makes you say that?" I stopped washing the mountain of dishes that had accumulated from around the kitchen and that were now sitting next to the sink waiting to be washed. When he didn't say anything I pressed him with hands on hips and the whole shebang. Like, when mom wanted me to answer her. "I just asked you a question. I expect an answer. What makes you say that?" I repeated.

"He cries." Matt gave me a side glance. His face went red from his ear lobe that poked out from under his crazy wild hair to the tip of his nose. I'd hit a sore subject.

I turned back to the sink. "Mom cries too." Then, I slammed my hands on the rim making soapy water splatter in all directions. "Not so much anymore!" But, refused to look at him because if I had, I knew I would say 'Because of your stupid father!' I mean, that would just be cruel. No?

"She's dealing with it, then."

"I'll say." I plunged my hands deep into the orange-scented, bubbly dishwater and washed those words out of my mouth. "Sorry."

We both became consumed in the tasks at hand and our conversation stalled out for a few minutes. All you could hear was me sloshing in dishes and Matt adjusting the chairs properly underneath the table, the
phfft phfft phfft
pumping out from the Windex bottle, and the muted swipes of his rag as he wiped down the table top.

Then, my mind spun to school. In Morlson's class. "Thanks for the save."

"Hmm."

I'd broken his concentration. When I looked over, he turned away and wiped his arm across his eyes.

I turned back fast to my job. "Saving me." I stared straight out through the window. "You know. By lying to Morlson." I snickered, not so much because my statement was funny but because my nerves had tackled me from behind.

"Sure." He stifled a sniffle and placed the last stray chair into place. "You gotta big job there."

"How much do you two eat by yourselves?"

"Huh." He walked up directly to my left shoulder. "A lot."

"No lie."

I watched after he passed behind me and headed for the closet. He pulled out a broom.

When he closed the door our eyes connected. I'd placed one hand on one hip and nodded my head at him.

"I'll start sweeping."

"Brilliant." More dish washing ensued. "I'll use this water to mop behind you. K?"

"K."

I smiled as I pulled out another plate and rinsed it. I mean. How helpless
were
these guys.

"Matt?"

"Yuh."

"Really. Thanks for the rescue."

He looked down at his feet. Then he looked back up at me. "Anytime."

Just what I liked. A man of few words.

THIRTY ONE - A Crime of Pedagogy

Paybacks are a U-know-what!

Even after I helped him with some housework. Even after I stooped to the lowest rung and thanked him for speaking up for me in class a, one someone who will remain nameless. Okay, Matthew Ryder, has really done it, now!

I mean, enough already! That was more than anything I could stand at that precise moment in
time
!

As requested, I'd arrived between first period, Morlson's class, and second period.

"Miss Speider. Thanks for coming in today."

Mr. Haggert, Haggert the Swaggert--we kids call him--the principal leaned his buttOCKS against his desk. It wasn't the first time I'd been called to his office. Morlson had me on the weekly schedule of students she enjoyed seeing tortured.

Anyway, all I could see was Haggert's greasy comb-over, even though I stared intently into his eyes, looking sincere as I avoided becoming too mesmerized by the fashion statement on the top of his head.

As one person who has spent a bit of time with Haggert, I anticipated the air to smell in that slight tinge of salty, oily peanuts wafting around through his coffee breath hot and billowing out as he spoke. I sat listening in front of him, as I did often, with a mix of faux fear (not to be confused with faux fur... skwee!) and amusement--an interesting combo, if ever.

I expected him to drone on in his usual ineffective manner, speaking to speak because he could, because he was King of Ronkonkoma High. A lofty title. Wow. I wanna climb THAT ladder. Not.

"Certainly, Mr. Haggert." I responded. My hands twitched on my lap, wanting to whisk up to my face with split fingers to peer through them at his marvelous coif!

"Miss Speider." Then, the thing he always did after referring to students with that polite address, "May I call you, Susie?"

I nodded, like I'd done the bazillion times before, sitting in this very chair. This time however, Haggert was smiling at me. Like I'd mentioned way back when, my grades had been improving so I couldn't believe I was going to be scolded by the King for that, not this time. And, then, all the smiling. Unnerving.

He had a wee bit of peanut kernel wedged in between his his two incisors, like a bull's-eye. It was so hard not to stare. I squinted, looking at it but, his speaking brought my attention back to the matter at hand.

"Your grades, Miss Speider, have improved greatly."

"Uh huh." I sat, legs dangling, swinging, in the stiff steel chair he used on students who visited him. All he needed to add to the effect of the inquisition was a dark room and a spotlight.

"You've been studying hard and it's paying off, Susie." There. He actually used my first name and so long after asking... "We're wondering if you might help us out."

"Sure. What?" My hands laid across my lap in that church-to-steeple mode as I listened.

"Well, we need your help with another student." He walked back around to his chair and sat down. It moved slightly back, rolling away from his desk but then he grabbed the rim of tan metal desktop and pulled himself closer bringing his legs and lap fully under it. He grabbed a sheet of paper and spoke as he reviewed it. "You know about our tutoring/mentoring program, don't you, Susie?"

"Well. Yeah. I mean. I had a tutor last year."

"That's right. Of course you did. Oh, ho ho, the aging mind is a forgetful thing, isn't it?" He coughed hard and long then he started to hack and gag. I looked around for help.

"Can I get you some water, Mr. Haggert." I thought he might have a myocardial inFARCion right there in front of me.

He took a few deep breaths and then started to speak again. Thank God 'cause it's been, like, forever since we had Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation classes in PhysEd.

I sat back and, again, placed my hands in my lap steeple-style. While he recapped what had just been said, my fingers inadvertently began playing the
Itsy-Bitsy Spider
--first finger to thumb, then thumb to first finger. They stopped when his droning took on words I recognized, words like "Matthew Ryder" and "his tutor" and "for the next semester!"

"What!"

"Yes. He's requested you as his tutor." He tried to make it sound like a good thing.

"
Matt
Ryder?"

"Why, yes. Susie." He looked down at the sheet, looked up at me and then handed the paper across the desk. He had to shake it once for me to take it.

I bent forward as if I were a school kid made of taffy--it was that slooooooowww and kind of sticky.

Reading the title at the top of the page: REQUEST FOR TUTORIAL STUDY, the form proved Haggert right. Matt had requested I help him out with his studies.

Oh, the cruelest of cruelties hath been bestowed upon my aching head. Yay. The night was long and the moon henceforth behind an evil black sky.

"So," He said in his overly chipper way, "You start this evening at the venue of your choice."

The venue of my choice.

That would be in the desert with stakes, leather straps, thousands of red ants and sugar water to pour over Matt's head as he writhed to get free from his soon-to-be painful and extremely slow death. As I watched on, while he screamed my name,
"Susie Speider!"
Over and over. And, I? Well, I would just turn and walk away, like John Wayne (except much smaller, younger, not dead, and a girl) in an old b&w western, my jangling spurs spinning behind my dirty leather tanned boots, my gun shoved back into my holster, brought as a gesture of mercy, stowed away,
unused
. Walking in a silhouette made by a bright golden rising sun against a tomato soup sky. And, I'd just wipe at my brow and adjust my creased dusty Stetson as I ambled slow-like toward my faithful Paint (who I would call... Paint) with a grim smile lifting on only one side of my mouth as I enjoyed his dwindling plea for me to come back and release him.

"Miss Speider?"

I breathed in, fast. "But, Mr. Haggert?"

"Hmm?" He looked at his watch at the precise moment his secretary, Carol, walked in.

"You have line number one holding for you, sir." He put up his finger and looked at me. "Sir, it's the board. They say it's urgent." His head tipped, conceding to her.

"Anything else, Miss Speider?" And, he picked up the receiver. "Hello, Harv." He leaned back in his chair and swiveled around spinning the back of his head to me, showing off his monkish circle void of any hair whatsoever, and, basically, giving me the brush off.

I stood, feeling every molecule in my entire body getting shoved out.

Carol stood in front of the door and gestured with her arm for me to move through it and out of Haggert's office.

My arm, the one holding the tutorial form fell to my side and I walked like my limbs had been tied to my body and like I was dragging my feet through the deepest of deep riverbed silt,
upstream
.

That cretin, Matt would pay for this.

THIRTY TWO - Knock. Knock. Are You in There?

"He did this on purpose!"

Mom continued slapping slices of turkey breast, cheese and tomatoes onto the bread that she'd painted with an extra dollop of mustard.

"There's no need to yell, young lady." As she pressed the wide chef's knife down into the top piece of bread cutting it in half, mom mirrored the pain in my heart with her action.