The Taming of the Drew (38 page)

He was funny and interesting and caring and he made my stomach clench and my palms sweaty and my pulse thunder from head to toe.
 

And me? I knew I acted weird and miserable and freakish with him, but the more I tried not to, the worse it got. In that moment, it was so obvious. We were beauty and the beast, only he was the beauty.

“You want to hang onto the bud?” Drew’s voice rumbled beside me. “You can.”

So I turned away, sideways, my back to him, oddly comforted by holding the one earbud in my fist, like it tethered me to him, and went back to reading.

***

Nate stamped out of the side-tutor room, leaving Bianca behind. He didn’t bother to lower his voice when he said to Curtis, “You were right. She said she’s decided. She likes some guy named Luke.”

Drew loomed up, his voice also loud, “Luke?”

Poor Tio. When I stood, Tio had his face down, his hands under the edge of the cube desk, probably clenched together. I could see his ears go bright red.

Nate said, “let’s go,” to Curtis and they headed for Mrs. Tranio’s desk.
 

Bianca came to where Drew and I stood. Drew said, “Who the hell is
Luke
?”

“Oh you heard?” she said, and laughed.

It was so heartless, I gasped.

If that wasn’t bad enough, from behind us, right as the bell rang, Mrs. Tranio’s voice picked up volume. “No, young man, you cannot just come and go as you wish — we have strict rules about qualifications and access to this facility.”

Curtis looked baffled, “But I’m already an authorized tutor this year. If I want to pick up a few students during summer school, why can’t I?”

Mrs. Tranio didn’t even wait for him to finish. She clanged open a sliding file drawer and flapped open a folder on her desk. “Just as I thought. You’re here with special permission from,” she paused and her lip curled, “Dean Padua. We strictly follow the rules. Your eligibility expires.”

“That’s not true,” Curtis said, as Nate tugged at his arm. “The fact is, you let some
Academy
people bend the rules, but not University students. That’s how it works.”

I could see it coming, like a light that appears at the end of tunnel, an on-coming train, headed for Tio. And right after Tio had just been dumped by Bianca in the most unexpectedly careless way.

“WHO?” said Mrs. Tranio. “Who are you talking about that gets to bend the rules?”

Curtis seemed to wake up, and realize what he’d done. He took a step back, and said, “Nobody. No one.” He and Nate would have fled, but students, eager to be free at the end of the day, jammed the doorway.

Mrs. Tranio, raised her head, saw me, and Drew and Bianca and Tio standing there, frozen with horror, and then started pulling out files.
 

Mine. Drew’s. We could tell whose she examined because she looked from the paper to us, and back again. Her hands were shaking with anger, as though Curtis had publicly accused her of being a fraud and a cheat. Which, come to think about it, maybe he had.

Then Tio’s folder. When Mrs. Tranio looked up, her eyes were slits of anger. “You, young man, are in a whole world of trouble.” She closed the folder with a snap. “I expect to see you in Dean Verona’s office at brunch tomorrow.” She smiled a humorless, teeth-showing smile, “With your father. In person. I’m dying to meet a man who apparently fills out forms with a daisy dotting his i.”

Tio, as we exited into the sun, looked like he’d been hit with a Mack truck, scraped up with a spatula, and glued back together by a preschooler. Everything about him was flat.

He walked blindly away from us and I saw Bianca run to catch up with him, but he jerked his elbow out from her hand, turned blindly again, then broke into a trot.

She started to follow, but Drew shouted, “Bianca, that’s enough,” and she let Tio go.

I blinked hard, tears wavering at the edge of my sight. Poor Tio, poor poor Tio. I couldn’t imagine what he was going through.

That’s when Gonzo panted up, all the Greenbacks trailing behind him. Gonzo waited, hands on his kneecaps, catching his breath.
 

He gasped, “Kate, it’s bad.”

I felt a shudder ripple through me, the way a snake does when its skin is splitting. I swallowed, couldn’t find my voice, and Gonzo said, “Celia,” he raised stricken eyes, “She didn’t know, she didn’t mean to…”

“What?” said Drew, “She did
what
?”

Helena joined us, panting but more able to talk. “I’m not so sure she didn’t mean to…”

“Would somebody just tell us,” I said.

Bianca drifted back, her face blanched. Helena glanced at her, but thankfully stayed on subject. “Celia returned the camera.”

I let out a both-lungs-full gust of air. “Oh thank God.”

“No,” said Gonzo, “Celia gave it to the Dean, and told the Dean she found it at your house.”

They stared at me.

“Well, that’s sort of true, isn’t it?” I said, the world feeling like it was constricting around me. Something itched at the edge of my thoughts.

“See,” said Gonzo to Helena, “I
told
you Celia didn’t mean to.”

“Kate,” said Helena, her voice sharp, “think about it. Dean Verona said this was all highly unusual. Why would you hang onto something valuable like that? And there was also the odd agreement you made with Eileen Bullard, where you, Kate, would keep Drew in line, and Ms. Bullard is donating funds for it to the school and also wasn’t Tio supposed to tutor someone, which, now that she thought about it, was definitely irregular. Then the Dean asked her admin person to go pull all the records for that club you started and then changed her mind and asked instead for a bank balance.”

“Oh no.” My voice dropped through the hollow place inside me.
 

The rest of the Greenbacks straggled up. Phoebe said, “Dean Verona then said the Greenbacks are sitting on, at the end of the year, more money than any school club has had, ever, except for Leadership at Uni.”

I put my hands over my ears and starting shaking my head as I sank to my heels. Nothing would stop it now. It was like trying to stop a train by waving at it. There was, as Mrs. Gleason would say, momentum carrying it forward.

Viola said, “So Dean Verona asked, then
why
would Greenbacks want all that money from Celia for one picture? And where were the pictures that had been in the camera?”

Drew said, in his own hollow voice from where he stood above me, “What did you just say? About my mom and some agreement and money?”

Gonzo, oblivious, talking over Drew, said, “And Kate, I found out something even worse than Dean Verona thinking that you’re money-laundering and fencing stolen goods.”

I blinked, unable to stand for fear I might fall. “Tell me,” I said, from where I rocked on my heels on the ground.

It was like everyone suddenly realized that, in their eagerness to tell the story, they might have gone too far. There was silence. Drew said, his voice louder, “What did you say about my mom?” Bianca tugged at his elbow, but Drew yanked it away. Robin waved a hand low down at Gonzo, and nodding, said, “Tell the rest,” in the same way you’d say
go ahead and put her out of her misery
.

Gonzo, looking stricken, said, “At the start, when we were still doing a sort-of photo shoot, I saw a form on Dean Verona’s desk. I’m sorry Kate.”

There was another painful silence, then Helena stepped in, “It was a work-order, sweetie. You know those things authorizing payment. This one’s to a tree company. For a big removal job. Tomorrow.”

Both my hands were pressed against my mouth as I stared at the pavement underneath me. I felt a hand on my elbow, raising me up. I stood, facing Drew, my kneecaps twitching and jumping.
 

“Money.” He said, just like that. “Now I get it. You asked my mother for money. You made a deal for money.”

I couldn’t look at him. I gave a short, sharp nod and it felt like my insides exploded, one of those slow-motion movie explosions of shards of glass that arrow out in all directions and keep going and going, no end in sight, splitting farther and farther apart.

I thought it couldn’t hurt worse, so I looked at him. His jaw clenched over and over like he flattened a bit of paper between his molars. His eyes had such hurt, such contempt, such
disappointment
that I gave a gasping hiccup of air. He turned and headed to the parking lot. Bianca stared at me for a second and then sprinted after him.
 

I had thought it couldn’t hurt worse. I was wrong.

The world swam and shifted and smeared, nothing the way it had been just a bell-ring ago. Hands reached out and patted my shoulders but I hunched inside myself, a dull roaring filling my head.
 

I had to get away.

Then Gonzo’s voice, harsh and shrill said, “You’ve got some nerve coming here.”

I blinked hard enough to see everyone now facing behind me. I sniffed, and wiped at my face to get it in some semblance of order.

Eventually I turned, to see…Celia.

Three heartbeats of silence. Deep thud thud thuds of anger and hurt. Then she spoke.

“The funny thing is,” Celia said, “I always thought Uni was better at everything. Better at sports, better at clothes, better at getting ahead. Better at everything that mattered. But then it turns out you guys could give tutoring lessons on how to be vicious. Those Uni girls aren’t even in the same league as you freaks.”

Her face was raccoon splotchy around the eyes and her hair, for the first time ever, looked stringy instead of sleek and glossy.

“Did you have fun,” she said, “stringing me along with promises you never meant to keep, waiting until I was stupid enough to,” she waved her hand in the air, “somehow let down my guard so you knew that I don’t have a secret, tight group of people
dying
to hang out with me in Uni?”

Phoebe said, “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, let’s review, shall we?” Celia’s voice etched like acid with sarcasm, “First, there was never any plan to take a photo for me. Why even care about shooting it? Probably only blurred shots. That’s why there’s been no pictures that anyone’s
ever
seen except that silly old Eileen Bullard who’d believe a shadow was the Loch Ness monster if her precious prince of a son was in trouble. Hey, let’s just take Celia’s money and make fun of her. Second, now let’s trick Celia with a get-the-Dog-angry-and-then-he’ll-talk-to-you group joke. Funny, huh? Third, there’s the ‘ooh-watch-the-Dog-will-do-anything-I-say’ gag. That was a nice set-up to get me to agree to anything. But did he give me that interview? Nooo. Because then, best of all, we’ve got Celia manning the Dino-Dog counter for the day. Wasn’t that a laughingstock.” Celia imitated the girl at Sander’s party, “’Oooh, what’s that smell, what’s that smell?’”

By now all of us were looking ashamed, no one meeting anyone else’s eyes.

“Finally, let’s not forget the last two. They’re the best. We’ll get Celia to be our cook for a week, ‘cause she’s too gullible and pathetic to object.”
 

She let slip a snubbing sound, the kind a baby makes when it’s been crying too long, then hardened her face, her arms crossed tight across her waist, “And last. How’d you pick Gonzo to play his part? Did he draw the short straw?”

Gonzo said, “If you believe all that, then why did you even come here?”

Celia burst out, refusing to look at him, “Because I’m sick of this high school crap” (only she didn’t say crap). “I’m not going to take it any more and smile and edge away and never say
anything
because saying the truth might make you an even bigger target. I don’t have to see you freaks any more. Why shouldn’t I tell you off?”

Alex said, “If you’re planning on living the truth, why start with a lie?”

Celia whirled, “Don’t you dare call me a liar.”

“Well you are. You’re not here to tell us off. Not entirely. You’re here because there’s some tiny part of you that’s still not sure. You need to know, before you can let it go.”

“I don’t need to know anything. I don’t need anything from you people.”

Helena said, picking at her fingernails, “What about lunch tomorrow?”

“You think I’m stupid enough to fall for another vicious game?”

“Nope. I flubbed it, and we all starved today. Wasn’t right to expect you to bring lunch when you didn’t know how the system works. Doing this week will make it two weeks in a row for me, but heck, I figure I owe it to everyone to pull a second week. Penance, you know. Besides, Phoebe has done two weeks back-to-back before.”

Groans of
don’t remind me!
and
ugh-I’ll never eat a banana again
bounced in low voices around the group.

I knew that feeling Celia had right then, the look of naked horror and panic and pain, and wanting oh-so-much for a chance, just one chance, to turn back the clock. Watching it jerk across her face, her lower lip suddenly trembling, I felt my eyes get hot and my nose sting. It was too painful to see, when I’d just felt it myself with Drew. Because now, for Celia, it was like the absolute, worst-ever, epic-disaster possibility was coming true. That the Greenbacks had been, well, Greenbacks, to her. That she’d been one of us and she had destroyed it all with her own two hands.

And Gonzo, pink-eared, asparagus-haired, gourmet-making,
adoring
Gonzo…

I couldn’t help it, and anyone who’d seen the pain on her face would have done the same thing too. I said, “Celia, you didn’t know.”

She went ramrod straight and raised a shaking finger at me, “Don’t you, don’t you
dare
be nice to me.” Her face looked like it was swelling, like if she didn’t let the tears out soon, tears would seep out her eyes from the pressure and run over the dam of her eyelids and down her face without her actually crying. “I do not — I repeat — do
not
have to take this.”

Everyone froze. Then Gonzo, his mouth tight and his eyes blotchy, put a hand on her shoulder and Celia jerked away. She still had not once looked at him.

She clapped a palm on the spot on her shoulder that Gonzo had touched, like it burned, and said to all of us, in a shaking voice. “I will
not
be an object of pity. You watch me. I’ ll, I’ll,
so help me God
, I’ll fix this. I’ll fix it all.” She gave a huge, blind sweep of her arm, “And then we’ll see who’s NICE!”