Twisted (14 page)

I stayed in Yoda’s car during homeroom on Monday and signed in ten minutes after Calc began. The call for me to go to Mr. Hughes’s office came half an hour into gym class, second period. Pissed me off. We were doing a personal-fitness unit. Most of the girls were yoga-ing and gossiping. Some guys were jogging laps. I had a corner all to myself where I alternated between sets of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats. The back of my shirt was dark with sweat, and the spot on my abs was growing.

I asked if I had time to change my clothes. The teacher said no.

The secretary waved me in with a nod of her head. She and I were going to be on a first-name basis soon.

I opened the door. Hughes looked up from his desk without smiling. So did my parents, sitting directly across from him in the nice chairs.

“Hi,” I said.

“Have a seat,” Mr. Hughes said. “I was just telling your parents how grateful I am that they took the time to come here personally and discuss the situation.”

“Of course,” Dad said.

Mom had a yellow pad on her lap and a pen in her right hand.

I sat on the hard plastic chair under the clock.

Hughes started talking and blew a lot of smoke out of his butt, but what it boiled down to was this: he didn’t know what to do with me.

“But he’s not suspended,” Dad pointed out.

“No,” Hughes admitted.

“And you let him go to class this morning,” Mom said. “Obviously.”

“That was something of an oversight,” Hughes said. “Tyler was supposed to report to the office when he arrived.”

“So I’m in trouble for going to class?” I asked.

Hughes straightened his blotter. “I didn’t say that. This is an unusual circumstance—one that, frankly, our handbook doesn’t cover.”

Mom leaned forward. “I must admit, I’m a little confused.”

Dad’s eyes rolled up to heaven just a fraction.

“Has Tyler broken any rules this semester?” she continued.

“No,” Hughes admitted.

“And Officer Adams has explained that he has not been arrested.”

“But the police are talking to him,” Hughes said.

“The police are talking to a lot of kids,” Dad said. “Why is Tyler the only one being singled out?”

“Because Tyler is the one we’re worried about. I’m told there were several incidents last week, not just what happened on Friday. We want to protect him from students who may not yet understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty.”

Mom nodded. She was scribbling on the pad as fast as I had ever seen anyone write.

“How will he keep up with his classes if you stuff him in isolation?” Dad asked. “This semester is critical to his chances of getting into the right school.”

“His teachers have agreed to tutor him in their free periods and provide him with class notes, whatever he needs. We don’t anticipate this will go on too long. A few days, maybe a week.”

Mom raised her hand a little. “And why is it he can’t stay at home, exactly?”

Hughes relaxed, now that it was clear that my parents weren’t going to attack him. “Keeping him at home would have to be considered a suspension. We don’t have the grounds for that. This compromise will work best for everyone concerned.”

Dad glanced at the clock. Mom finished writing the last words that Hughes said, then raised her finger, said, “Hold on a sec,” and drew a business card out of her purse. She stood slightly and passed it across the desk to Hughes. He read it with a frown.

“That’s the name of my lawyer,” Mom explained.

“You called Pete Satterfield?” Dad asked. “I told you we could handle this.”

Mom smiled. “I didn’t call Pete. That’s from Hewson, Heiligman, and Keehn.
My
lawyers.”

“Since when do you have a lawyer?”

Mom ignored the question. “I spoke to Jill Hewson this morning. She said to tell you that if you isolate Tyler and single him out for doing absolutely nothing, then you should notify the school district’s attorney that we’ll be filing suit for unlawfully denying him his education.”

Dad threw his hands in the air. “For Christ’s sake, Linda, they’re trying to help him. Do you want him beat up every day?”

“Do we want our kids in a school that would allow that to happen?” she responded. She pointed at Hughes. “If you do this, you’re admitting that you don’t have control over your own students. How is that going to look in the newspaper?”

“Now, wait just a minute—” Hughes’s face was turning red.

“You’re way off base,” Dad said.

“Excuse me,” I tried.

Mom wasn’t smiling anymore. “My son has done nothing wrong.”

“Hello?” I demanded. “Do I get an opinion here?”

They all turned to me.

“Of course you do,” Mom said. Mr. Hughes nodded.

“I don’t mind it,” I said. “If they want to put me in a study hall, or just take me out of class until this all dies down, I’m cool with it.”

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

“Yeah.”

“This wouldn’t be an excuse for you to slack off,” Dad warned.

“Oh, God,” Mom sighed.

“No, it’s okay. Mr. Hughes is right.” (Yeah, I said that.) “It’s not worth the aggravation. And this is hard enough on Bethany. Maybe it’ll be easier on her if I’m not around.”

Dad smiled slightly at Mom.

“I don’t want to cause trouble,” I finished.

“Well, then,” Hughes said.

“Are you sure?” Mom repeated. “Are you one hundred percent sure this is what you want?”

I shifted in my chair, pulling my sweat-sticky legs off the plastic. Dad glanced at the clock again.

“Yeah,” I said.

Mom and Dad left in separate cars. Hughes gave me time to change back into my clothes and get my stuff out of my locker.

My new room was just down the hall from the administration office. It had a table and three chairs, an empty bookshelf, a trash can, and a door with a window in it. They used it for tutoring or as a holding cell, depending on the situation.

I opened my English book to finish the
Faustus
play. It was written in 1588.

Oh, yeah, that made sense.

The bell rang and the halls filled, then emptied. A few curious faces stared in at me. I could hear the whispers through the walls. They were saying that I was part of a network of Internet perverts.

They were saying that I had a trench coat.

They were saying that I was heavily medicated.

They were saying that the cops were looking at a couple of other guys, too.

But they were still saying I was a piece of garbage.

Tuesday I sat on my chair at my table in my cell. Day two of limbo. In school, but not in school. Suspended, but not really. Every time the bell rang, kids passing in the hall would slap and kick my door. Every time it happened, I jumped.

I had been here before, stuck in between worlds. Last spring, I was stuck in court limbo while the judge and the D.A. and Hughes threw dice to decide my fate. I’d spent weeks in Bethany limbo, wondering if she liked me.

Come to think of it, all of high school had been limbo—middle school, too. As soon as my zits popped—
wham
—drop Tyler Miller in limbo. Change the rules daily so he never knows how to act or talk or dress. Nail him with the longest, slowest puberty mankind has ever known. Let’s see how much damage one dumb jerk will put up with before he snaps. That sounds like a fun game, doesn’t it?

I translated ten pages of
L’Étranger
for French. They were absurd. I read the Constitution, too. Tried to translate it into French. That was ridiculous.

Yoda didn’t kick my door. He knocked politely after the last bell rang, then opened it and stuck his head in. “Want to go to the mall?”

“With you and Hannah? No, thanks.”

“She has weightlifting.”

“And so you want to go to the mall alone? You never go to the mall alone.”

“That’s why I’m asking you. Come on. I need the moral support. I have to get a job.”

He needed a job because my sister was expensive. She was still grounded, so he couldn’t take her anyplace. Instead, he bought her presents. Lots of presents. His bank account was almost tapped out.

Yoda drove. He never shut up, going on and on about the road trip he was going to take with his parents, looking at colleges.

The mall looked like one of my mother’s Christmas fantasies on steroids. The constant caroling made a headache stab at my brain stem with a collection of stainless-steel kitchen knives, $49.95, on sale.

Yoda collected applications from two department stores, a shoe store, the bookstore, and the kiosk that sold sausage and orange cheese. I thought that the people who handed him the applications were totally blowing him off, but he didn’t think so. He was the polite job candidate, with copies of his transcript, four statements from personal references, and two recommendations from teachers.

I paged through one of his packets as we walked away from the kiosk. “Why didn’t you ask Mr. Pirelli for a reference?”

“He hates me because of the equipment I broke.”

“No, he doesn’t.” I flipped to page three as we stepped on the escalator. “Nobody cares that you were a freshman library aide.”

“Yes, they do,” he said. “It shows initiative. You should try it some time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m hungry. Taco Bell or King Wok?”

He bought four burritos with the extra-hot sauce. I bought something that had cheese in it. No hot sauce. My stomach was already on fire. My headache hovered around a Terrorist Threat intensity.

“Can we go?” I asked after he finished the second burrito.

“I’m not done yet.”

“You could eat it in the car.”

“Or I could eat it here.” He unwrapped another one. “What’s wrong?”

“That is the funniest question you’ve ever asked me. ‘What’s wrong?’ I’ll have to remember that.”

“You know what I mean. Things are crappy, yeah, but I was asking, is there anything crappier than the rest?”

His phone rang. It was Hannah, so I ceased to exist for him.

I poured all of the hot-sauce packets onto the tray and sprinkled pepper in it.

Yoda laughed into the phone.

I studied the beams that arched high over the food court. A lost balloon floated up and bounced between them. A kid wailed.

I could see myself hanging from a rope tied to the beams, tongue sticking out, legs dangling in the air. But it would be hard to get up there without anyone noticing.

“Hey!” Yoda waved his phone an inch from my nose. “Wake up. Want to talk to your sister?”

“No.”

The kid pointing to his balloon stomped his feet and cried louder. He had a snotty nose and was stuffed into a winter jacket. His mother was focused on cramming as much pizza into her mouth as humanly possible. The red balloon bounced along the ceiling.

“Come o-o-o-on,” Yoda whined. He shoved the phone in my face again. “Talk to her or she’ll be mad at me.”

I smacked the phone out of his hand. It hit the floor and skittered to the wall. The battery popped off.

Yoda didn’t move. I stood up, walked over, picked up the two pieces, and brought them back to the table. I replaced the battery and turned the phone back on. I didn’t look at him when I gave it back.

“Still works,” I said. “Sorry.”

He rubbed a scratch on the cover of the phone with his thumb. “Why did you do that?”

The kid alternated between wailing and sobbing.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Yeah, well, don’t. It just makes it worse. Everyone acting like everything is normal, you laughing on the phone, handing out résumés.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Erase the last ten days of my life.”

“Impossible, that is.”

I stood up. The boy was punching his mother’s leg and screaming so loud I thought all of the glass in the mall would shatter.

“Can’t you shut that kid up?” I hollered.

Everyone in the food court stopped talking and stared at me. A new song came on the loudspeaker, “Silent Night.”

Yoda put his last burrito in the bag and picked up the tray.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re going home.”

“Make up your mind. You want to stay. You want to go. What’s it going to be?”

He carried the tray to the trash can, pushed the papers in, wiped up the hot-sauce mess with a napkin, and put the tray on top. He walked back to my side of the table. People had stopped staring. Now they were whispering to each other.

“I’m trying to help you,” Yoda said quietly.

“You’re trying to stay on my good side so you can get into my sister’s pants.”

He took a deep breath. He flipped open his cell phone, brushed off some dust that wasn’t there, then closed it and stuck it into his pocket.

“At some point, you’re going to feel like a real asshole for saying that to me,” he said. “When that happens, you give me a call.”

As he disappeared down the escalator, that stupid kid finally stopped crying.