by Maddy Wells
“Just talk to The Griffin!”
“Mercedes, this is no longer a suitable environment for you. You can’t live unsupervised with a suspected sex offender.”
Before this moment, Jane and I had written the official story of our life—The Two Cool Society. To hear our story perverted, to hear Mrs. Valliere matter-of-factly calling Jane a sex offender—a sex offender!—made my stomach spaz out which I had the feeling was going to be happening a lot from now on.
“It’s not your choice. It’s the law’s.” She clipped her pen on the end of my file as it that settled everything, and stood up. “I’ll give you a ride to school. Your grandmother will be here by the time you get out. And we already talked to Mr. Griffin. He told us that he and your mother aren’t married and he doesn’t want you to come to Texas.”
“Of course, my parents are married! Jeez. You misunderstood him. You have to be very specific with The Griffin. So, you asked him that specifically? ‘Do you want Mercy to live with you?’ Did you ask him that? You have to be very specific with The Griffin. He has a lot on his mind.”
Mrs. Valliere sneaked a look at her phone and waited for me by the open door. “Are you ready to go? You’re already late for school.”
Chapter 18
I walked slowly to Mrs. Valliere’s white SUV which had “Lehigh County Orphans and Children” stenciled in bold black letters on the side doors and hatch over the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Seal. Great. Just in case someone wasn’t sure who was in the vehicle. Orphans over here! Orphans!
Mr. Henning was standing on his porch, scratching his belly, shaking his head. Him disapproving of me? That was a joke. I opened the back door because the back windows were
tinted black.
“Sit up front with me,” Mrs.Valliere said.
I climbed into the passenger seat next to her.
` “I’m not going to jump out, if that’s what you think.”
“I don’t think that. Should I think that?”
Mrs. Tudesco was kneeling next to her four Pomeranians who were taking turns at the fire hydrant. She picked up one of her dogs, smootched it and stared—the SUVs front windows weren’t tinted—as Mrs. Valliere backed out of the driveway.
On my ninth grade summer reading list was a book called The Scarlet Letter. The way those Puritans made Hester feel so awful had seemed totally ridiculous to me then. I mean, it wasn’t even her fault. It was the guy who couldn’t control himself. I’d have to ask Jane if she’d ever made it assigned reading.
I turned to put on my seat belt and saw Captain Kirby and Tim hiding behind the overgrown
rhododendrons on the side of the house. As we pulled away from the curb I could see them in the side view mirror following us on their bikes. I smiled.
Mrs. Valliere smiled back. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. It’s going to be okay, see? This is just something to be gotten through. You’ll be better off with your grandmother. I spoke with her on the phone. You’ll see. A good dose of normal is just what you need.”
Whatever that meant. Considering it’s their supposed profession, people who are paid to tell you what to do seem to know nothing about what’s best for anyone but them.
I asked Mrs. Valliere to stop a block from school so no one would see me getting out of her Orphans and Children limousine, but “No, no,” she said, “I’ll take you right to the door” as if she were doing me some big favor. I was as inconspicuous as Cinderella getting out of the pumpkin coach. “Your grandmother will pick you up at three thirty,” she shouted as I slammed the door and faced the crowd of students waiting for the bell to ring.
Everyone’s eyes were on me. I had loved the feeling of being famous when I was with The Griffin at our house and I could feel the love pouring over us when we came down the stairs to the Trap. But this wasn’t love. It was blood lust and I felt really scared and I remembered I forgot my books at home. “Oh shit!” I said and closed my eyes. Which made everyone near me laugh and start chanting “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” I forced myself through the crowd. “Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse me. Excuse me.” “Excuse me. Excuse me,” the crowd chanted back. When I was halfway to the school steps a senior, Christine Kenealy, a cheerleader who everyone in school knew had the hots for the new football coach, stepped in front of me, blocking my way.
“Hot for teacher,” she said, stupidly.
“Get out of my way,” I said.
“Hot for teacher,” she said again. “Oh yeah, I mean hot for students. What a slut!” Like a mantra, the chant reverberated through the crowd. “Hot for students. What a slut! Hot for students. What a slut!”
The blood had rushed to my head and I was having trouble seeing and my ears were ringing, and I wanted to just sink into the earth because I couldn’t move any more when two people hooked their arms through mine.
“Don’t let them see you cry,” Tim said from the right.
“Cork it till we get you inside,” Captain Kirby said from the left.
They lifted me, almost carrying me up the steps. The crowd started booing because their fun was being ruined.
“The men’s room,” Captain Kirby said, “Nobody will follow us in there.”
They put me down gently in front of the mirror where I just stared at myself, not really seeing anything.
“She can’t stay in school,” Tim said. “They’ll tear her apart.”
“Well, she can’t run away, because then she’ll never stop running. She’ll have to face it sooner or later.”
Tim hugged me and, when I didn’t feel his hug, I realized I was actually numb.
The men’s room door swung open and Mr. Dow stood there. I searched his face for the hatred I knew he must feel for me. But I saw something in his face that was much worse. He pitied me. I had betrayed everything he had tried to teach us about life. He always said that what he envied about us most was that we were young and to be young meant there was hope. But Mr. Dow was wrong. No hope here.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dow,” I said, finally breaking down and crying.
Mr. Dow came over to me and put his hand out. “This isn’t your fault, Mercy,” he said. “Come on. You don’t have to apologize for anything. I’ll take you to the principal’s office until someone comes for you. Is there someone Principal Thwaite can call? It’ll be in your file. Come on.”
“Call my father,” I said, suddenly. I pulled The Griffin’s number up on my phone and handed it to Mr. Dow.
“We’ll do it from the principal’s office,” he said. “Come on.”
Chapter 19
Mr. Dow led me to the Principal’s office where Principal Thwaite gave me a lecture on—surprise!—how the lack of a moral compass will always lead you down the wrong road and I found myself yearning to be torn to shreds by the pack of students in the hall rather than listen to her. “She wants us to call her father,” Mr. Dow said, handing my phone to Thwaite who shook her head
and motioned him into her office where she probably told him…what? That my father didn’t live with me? He already knew that. I’d written a million essays for his class this year.
When he came out of Thwaite’s office, he said, “Try to distract yourself by studying for exams, Mercedes. Keep focused on your studies. You have your whole life in front of you and you can’t allow this to sink your ship before you even leave the harbor,” whatever that meant and he put my phone—with The Griffin’s number still blinking on the screen—in my outstretched hand and went to teach his class. What did I expect? Mr. Dow had a pretty wife and a new son and they lived together in a ranch house—somewhere—and I’m sure no one ever called Code on them. So, how could he possibly know what my life was like, or do anything about it?
At lunch I asked Thwaite if I could go to my afternoon classes, but she said I should stay in her office for my own protection.
“Protection from what?” I asked her.
“We don’t need another incident, like your mother, Miss O’Reilly,” she said.
Tim
stopped by with a cheese sandwich and chocolate milk and we shared them on the hard bench in the secretary’s office with our free arms draped around one another. “You can stay at my house,” he said. “My dad won’t even notice.”
I knew about Tim’s house. His father was a retired Marine and his grandfather who lived with them was a retired Marine. His mother and grandmother had both deserted. So did his older brother who ran away to Scranton the day after his eighteenth birthday. No wonder Tim almost never laughed.
“That’s okay,” I said. “My grandmother is coming to take care of me. Then I have to go live with her. In Ohio.” The name sounded like a punishment.
“Why don’t you stay with your dad?”
Good question.
“And what’s going to happen to Have Mercy? Jeez, we were just starting to get good.”
“When you graduate, we’ll hook up,” I said, although I couldn’t imagine ever seeing him again.
“But I’m going to miss you in the meantime. Have Mercy was the most fun I ever had in my life. In my life.”
My doubts about Tim’s interest in me versus The Griffin dissolved, and I touched his arm and gave him a look that said, “Please kiss me,” and he did which was the first comforting thing to happen to me all day when a woman in a navy blue suit, five inch heels, a blond bob and—as Jane would say—“a little work around the jaw” came through the office door. I pulled away from Tim as if he was on fire.
“That’s about right,” the woman said “Necking in the principal’s office.”
“Listen lady,” Tim said and stood up.
I put an arm in front of him to stop him. “Tim, this is my Granny O’Reilly.”
Chapter 20
“Nice to meet you, Granny,” Tim said.
“Puhleez. Call me Judge O’Reilly. And you…” Granny looked at me, probably trying to remember my name. “I have to see what those legal morons are doing for your mother. What is so hard about posting bail? Ah. Why am I asking you? Is the principal in?”
I pointed to the closed door behind which Principal Thwaite had barricaded herself. Before the secretary could stop her, Granny let herself into Thwaite’s office and slammed the door behind her.
“Wow,” Tim said.
“I know,” I said. “She’s a judge in Akron. Well, a television judge on a local cable channel. It’s not like she went to law school or anything. She was the weather girl until she got too old to tell people it was going to rain.”
Granny was back in two minutes. “Are you her boyfriend?” she asked Tim and I was very happy that he nodded yes immediately. “Well, that’s very heart warming, but you should go back to class now. I don’t want my granddaughter dating a juvenile delinquent. No use everyone losing their footing in this little drama.”
Principal Thwaite emerged from her office. She was wringing her hands. “It’s not exactly a little drama. A young man, a student, was taken advantage of. His morals were corrupted.”
“A young man with a pregnant underage girlfriend,” Granny said, “cannot really be said to have had his morals corrupted.”
“That’s just a rumor.”
“Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Granny said. “Has his mother’s lawyer named a price yet?”
Tim picked up the remains of our lunch. “I’ll see you after school,” he said.
“No you won’t,” Granny said. “We have family matters to resolve. Don’t we, Mercedes? And
why aren’t you in class?”
“The kids were taunting her,” Principal Thwaite said.
Tim signaled with his thumbs that he would text me and slipped out.
“Is that why you’re hiding out here? Because you’re afraid? Is that how you were raised? To be a coward?”
“I’m not a coward,” I said. Although, I thought, maybe I am.
“Well, then get to class.”
Principal Thwaite seemed to find some resolve. “I don’t think…”
Granny said, “I will try to find out what they did with your mother and I will pick you up at three thirty. Where are your books?”
“In my locker.”
“Good.” And with that she was gone.
Although Jane made me talk to Granny O’Reilly on the phone on Christmas and Easter our conversations were always short and empty, and this was only the second time I had seen her in person. She was always busy with her television career, well, cable career, and Jane wasn’t breaking a leg to visit her and her new husband, Ron, who was a mayor or something. No kidding, I could honestly see why Jane ran away from home when she was sixteen.
“People who don’t deal with children think that everything is black and white. If it were only that easy,” Principal Thwaite said to me before darting back into her office. Her secretary had gone to the bathroom, so I peeked out into the hall and went down to the girl’s locker room to see if Captain Kirby was there.
Chapter 21
Tim found me and Captain Kirby in the girls’ locker room where we had spent a couple of hours lying on the benches, staring at the florescent lights.
“Is the coast clear?” Captain Kirby asked.
“It’s in the newspapers and there’s already a bunch of blogs about it,” Tim said.
“Shit.”
I sat up and turned on my phone, which I had refused to look at since the thing began. The Morning Clarion ran a blurry lead picture of Jane coming out of the courthouse shielding her face with her hat and another below that of her ducking into a black SUV. I couldn’t see who the driver was. The blogs mommysdirtylittlesecret and adultcybermart ran pictures of Jane taken from the last three Milltown yearbooks. Another blog named hototrot had the shot of Jane dancing with Rob with his hand on her ass. “Hot to Trot Teacher Makes Prom Weekend Something to Remember for 17 Year Old,” it blared. The Morning Clarion had an accompanying article on The Griffin and his connection, or lack of one, to Jane and to “an alleged fifteen year old minor female.”
“I’m almost sixteen,” I said.
“At least they didn’t put your name in the paper,” Tim said.
“Only because they aren’t allowed to,” Captain Kirby said.
I handed my phone to Captain Kirby and went to the window to watch the students boarding the school buses. I would have given anything to be lining up with them instead of waiting for Granny O’Reilly. And where the hell was Jane? And why wasn’t The Griffin calling me? I grabbed my phone back from Captain Kirby and dialed Jane’s number. It went right to voice mail. Then I dialed The Griffin who didn’t answer. I threw the phone against the wall. Didn’t either of them care that I was being passed around like a stale sandwich?
“Hey, hey,” Captain Kirby said. “Don’t lose your lifeline.”
“You don’t have a phone so why do you care?”
“I’ll get one. One of those pay as you go things.”
“They don’t take rolls of quarters,” I said and began to cry. “I’m sorry, Kirby. I gotta go wait for my grandmother.”
“We’ll wait with you,” Tim said.
”That’s okay,” I said. “Why don’t you guys come by after Tim gets off of work and we’ll jam.”
“Awesome,” Tim said. “I wanted to do that all day.”
I thought how hard it must be to be boy. You never get to cry. You have to hit a ball or play in a grunge band or get into fights to rid yourself of all those feelings that don’t fit into any box.
“You’ll be okay?” Captain Kirby asked.
“Yeah. Sure. She’s my grandmother, not the wicked witch of the west, although that’s who she reminds me of.”
“You just got to keep that Orphan and Children’s lady happy, if she comes back,” Captain Kirby said. “Make her think you’re thrilled to death that grandma is living with you.”
I nodded and picked up my backpack and we wandered down the deserted hallway to the old part of the school then turned to the main entrance. The janitors were already washing the floors. We went outside where a group of
band kids were waiting for their parents to pick up them and their tubas and clarinets. Band kids were nerds and if they had heard about Jane’s and my problem at least none of them cared enough to say anything to me. Captain Kirby and Tim waved as they walked away and I sat down on the steps beside a tuba until I saw a black SUV pull up and Granny O’Reilly get out. She looked up at the roof of the school like she was reading the school motto Semper something or other then she surveyed the waiting students before she came wearily up the steps, seeming not quite as peppy as she did earlier.
“Oh, there you are,” she said, almost tripping over me. She sat down next to me. “You’ll be glad to move to Akron. This place is a dump.”
“Yeah, I hear stellar things about Akron,” I said.
“Really?”
“No. Not really. The only reason I’ve even heard of Akron is because you and Ron live there.”
“Oh.”
We watched a couple of cars drive up and students unfolding themselves to walk down to meet them. I thought it was funny that only a couple of band kids had ever wanted to join Have Mercy—only trumpet players, and I don’t like horns mixing with guitars. Pretty soon it was just me and Granny alone on the steps.
Finally she said as if we had been discussing it the whole time, “They kept telling me, ‘Imagine if this happened to your sixteen year old granddaughter, how would you feel?’ And I kept telling them, ‘It didn’t happen to my sixteen year old granddaughter. My granddaughter is fifteen and it happened to someone’s eighteen year old son.’ That makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?”
She looked at me, waiting for some teen wisdom I guess to come shooting out of me. But I didn’t have any. My teen wisdom box was empty.
“You’re fifteen, aren’t you? That’s what I told them. They found that so interesting that they sent for a clerk to write it down.”
“Where’s Jane,” I asked. “When is she coming home?”
Granny O’Reilly bit her lip. “Don’t call your mother, Jane. It’s disrespectful.”
