The Taming of the Drew

by Gurley, Jan

  I was so distracted by my thoughts that I didn’t notice Celia heading toward us until she was close. Drew walked on the other side of the road-width path, and Celia zoomed straight to him.

  She said, standing right next to Drew, with her hands on her hips, “You’re…you’re thick, you know that? That’s why you have to go to tutoring every single day!” Drew kept walking, as though Celia didn’t exist, not slowing or looking at her, nothing. Celia began to hop a bit, to keep up, “You’re not even a Uni student any more! You’ve got a slutty sister!”

  “Ex-cuse me?” Bianca said from about ten feet back, where she’d been drifting along with Tio.

  Celia gave Bianca an impatient shake of the head, “I’m not talking to you, it’s…just never mind, okay.” She turned back to Drew who continued striding along, “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Celia paused a second, watching Drew’s retreating back. She turned to go, caught sight of me and said, “Some help you are,” and left.

  Bianca watched with hands on her hips as Celia left, then turned toward Drew and blew one of those eardrum-rupturing whistle-shrieks. Tio and I both flinched. The girl was full of surprises.

  Drew, his back to us, slowed walking, leaned his face up to the sky in a God save me now gesture and swung a leg all the way around in a circle to reverse direction.

  “Whaddya want now?” he said to Bianca in an annoyed voice.

  “What,” she said in a huff, “was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “You’re joking, right? The psycho Uni blonde?” Drew still gave her a puzzled the look. “The one who just came through here?”

  “Oh that,” he said. “She just does that.”

  Bianca looked appalled. “All the time?”

  “Whenever she sees me.”

  “How long has this been going on?” she said, her voice rising in outrage.

  “Couple of weeks, maybe. I dunno.” He thought about it for a second. “Since I left Uni. Actually since that Leadership dance.”

  Tio gave me a look, and I gave him back the jerking eyebrow-raise sign that translates into: if I could be kicking you under the table I would, so keep your trap shut.

  My little freebie to Celia, where I told her Drew would talk if you got him angry enough — apparently, I’d created another monster.

  An inept, toothless, gummy kind of monster, but still a monster. Bianca and Drew walked off, and I could hear Bianca saying, “is she angry you left University? Why would she harass you after you left?”

  A woman’s voice shouted behind us, “You! You four — wait up!”

  We all turned to see the Mrs. Tranio, the aide who ran Tutoring Hall, clacking toward us. Mrs. Tranio passed out forms from a stack to each of us, “The golden-rod colored ones are for you two” (she handed one to me and one to Tio), “and the fuschia forms are for you two” (she handed them to Bianca and Drew). “Check to make sure I’ve got them right, because there has to be a tutor-student pair — goldenrod is tutor, fuschia is student. Are we square?” We all four nodded, “The problem is, you never should have been allowed into tutoring without the proper paperwork. I know you arrived late in the year, but that’s no excuse.”

  I stared at the paper — it was a standard school permission slip, this time for tutoring, with a space for a parent signature.

  “Get these to me by Monday, or I won’t be able to let you in again.” Mrs. Tranio turned and clacked back to tutoring hall as Bianca and Drew headed away to the parking lot. I folded my form and shoved it in my back pocket, thinking, no biggie, then looked up to see Tio vibrating in place. “You okay?” I asked, alarmed.

  Wordlessly, Tio pointed to the form, at the place I hadn’t noticed that required your parents to verify a minimum grade point average for all peer-tutors. Tio didn’t make the cut. Not by a long shot.

  “I told you this was a bad idea!” His voice cracked with emotion. He shoved a hand in his hair. “I told you I was a slacker student!” He made a fist and I thought for a second he might actually punch the brick wall of tutoring hall. “This is worse…this is even worse than never having talked to Bianca. Now I’m going to have to explain that I can’t be her tutor because I’m, I’m not only short and weird, I’m stupid!”

  Tio turned and headed blindly toward the track, the skin around his eyes mottled.

  I pulled out and stared at my form, looking for some way out of this corner. But the blanks on the page sat there, mocking me. The paper crackled and I realized my hand was shaking. I wished I could promise Tio it would be okay. I wished there was something I could do. I wished I’d never gotten him into this mess. But I couldn’t tell him any of that. I knew better than to follow him.

  As I stood, staring at my form, Bianca came to a screeching stop in front of me, a bit winded. “What?” she said, “I could see from the parking lot how upset you both are. Is it these stupid forms?” She snatched mine from my hand and gave mine and hers a side-by-side penetrating stare, top to bottom. She looked at me, daring me to keep something from her. Then Bianca turned and watched Tio half stumble in the field. “It’s Tio, isn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  When I stood there, mute, unable to think of a way to answer that wouldn’t make everything worse, Bianca turned and sprinted toward Tio.

  Oh. No.

  What if he was crying? He deserved to be warned. I put my hands on my mouth and bellowed, “Tio! Heads up!”

  Tio half-turned, saw Bianca heading toward him and veered away.

  But she caught up to him easily.

  I knew I shouldn’t watch, that I should give them some privacy, but I couldn’t help it. Bianca stood, holding his upper arm and laughing, tossing her hair and pretending to not see his face. She snatched his form out of his hand, fished a pen out of her back pocket and then made Tio face away from her. Bianca placed the form against the back of his shoulder and wrote rapidly, filling it out and signing it. I realized, watching them, that Tio was about the same size as Bianca, and his feet, the ones he’d just stumbled over, were huge. Giant tennis-shoe-clad puppy feet. How had I not noticed before? Bianca gave the back of his ear a flip with her finger and sprinted back toward me. Her hair lifted behind her. Tio stood in the field, watching her go.

  The look on his face. No one should see that look — except the person who inspired it. I suddenly wished I was anywhere else.

  I turned and started walking, and Bianca sped past me into the tutoring office, waving Tio’s form over her head like it was a victory flag. She wheeled back out again, and going past me, said, “You guys are wimps! Stick with me and I’ll teach you a few things!”

  Tio caught up to me at the far side of the parking lot. For a while we walked, side-by-side. I kept looking in front as I said, my voice flat, “Bianca’s pretty determined to keep you as a tutor.”

  “Yep.”

  “Bet she’d never do that for Nate or Curtis.”

  Long pause. “Maybe not.”

  We walked another four steps. “By the way, what exactly have you and Bianca been studying, in that room?”

  “Stuff she chooses.”

  “Like…”

  “Well, love sonnets.”

  I stopped. He kept going and I could see a half-smile on his face as he left me in the dust.

  I ran to catch up. “My God, Tio, how did you not fall over in shock when she asked you to tell her love sonnets?”

  Tio said, one eyebrow raised. “What else could I say? I told her I’d try, but it would be difficult.”

  I looked stricken, “But why? Tio, you know this stuff!”

  “Why else, ” he answered, “For ‘All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.’” Tio had a proud, pink smile on his face.

  “You said that to Bianca?!? You sly dog you!” I stopped, stock still, and gaped at him as I understood the enormity of the situation. “Does this mean you spend an entire tutoring session telling Bianca steamy, ignite-the-page love poetry? Every day?”
/>   He said, too casual, “Only if she wants me to.”

  I gasped. “Oh. My. God. Go, Tio, go, Tio, go Tio…”

  I gave his shoulder a shove, he staggered sideways, gave me a shove and we hooted and laughed our way across the campus.

  I dragged myself all the way to Dino-Dog to get the list of employee phone numbers so I could start wheeling and dealing, trading favors to get someone to come in early Saturday night so I could leave work before people started arriving at my home. It was the first step, before I even asked my mom about this party idea. Gremio’s response to any request to change an already assigned shift was “You want to change it, then you find the coverage.” He peered at me as he pulled out the stapled list of names and numbers. “I’m warning you, Baptista, you fall in with a bad crowd and you’re going to be working every Saturday night at the Dino-Dog. You hear me?”

  The suicide rate for Saturday night Dino-Dog employees has to be astronomical. It’s not that I generally had anything fun to do on Saturday nights, it’s just no one wants to be that big a loser.

  Generally, the Greenbacks were a get-together on Friday night crowd. This was the first Saturday night party we’d ever had. Our Friday nights were low-key gatherings. By definition, Friday means, “hey, come on over after school.” Seventh period or the parking lot at school might be when we all planned to do it. We’d rent a movie, order pizza, maybe play a ridiculous board game or two.

  But Saturday nights were the kind of thing the University crowd did. Saturday nights mean you have to call or text people and ask them to come, which makes it more formal, and somehow more pressured than bumping into them in the hall and deciding on the spot. Saturday nights go later into the evening, which means you don’t stay in one person’s house the whole time. On a Saturday, you have all day to get dressed up, and before the party you go out to a movie, or dinner, or both. In other words, Saturday night party means, even if you’re in a crowd, you date, or are looking to date.

  Which is why we stuck to Fridays.

  I hoped my mom was clueless about all this. Probably she assumed I didn’t do much Saturdays because I was tired after work.

  But now I had to head home and get a Saturday night party at my house lined up — a party that (gulp) included University and ex-University students. I hoped mom was in a good mood.

  ***

  I barely got my bag on the kitchen table before she popped out of the living room doorway like an angry Jack-in-Box.

  “You see this paper I’m holding in my hand?”

  Was this a trick question? “Um. Yeah?”

  “Guess. Go ahead, guess what it is?”

  Was this another trick question? “A piece of paper?” I said it hopefully.

  She glared. Okay, wrong choice.

  Lots of times I can tease my mom out of bad moods, but when she put both fists on hips, with the paper crumpled in one, I knew it was really bad.

  “This piece of paper is a message from Mrs. Bullard. You remember Eileen Bullard?”

  Another trick question? Why, oh why, do parents do this?

  “Yes?”

  “Of course you do,” my mom stormed, even angrier now. “She’s the person you promised to send a report to every night, right? To avoid expulsion?”

  Eek.

  I swallowed hard. “Mom, I’ve been kind of busy.” Too late I realized that, even though it was the truth, being “too busy” to keep commitments was exactly the wrong thing to say right before you ask about throwing a party.

  “Go on,” she said, her voice ominous, “you were just explaining how you’re too busy to avoid suspension.”

  “See, the thing is…” Then I realized that only a guilty person says the thing is. It never sounds good. “Let me start over,” I said. I pulled out one of our wobbly kitchen-table chairs. “Can we sit?” I stood, waiting for her answer, my eyes (hopefully) looking sweet and pleading. My mom glared at me. “That bad, huh?”

  I let out a sigh and plopped in the chair, which Jello-ed underneath me. “Yep.”

  My mother didn’t sit. “Well it’s about to get worse.”

  I put my head on the table. “Go ahead.”

  “The school called to tell me they can’t find that camera. Do you know anything about that?”

  I sat up. “Nope. Except that pretty much everyone knows the Academy camera’s missing — they put a reward announcement in the pod’s daily bulletin.”

  My mom put both fists back on hips and said, “Are you telling me the truth,” which hurt way more than I expected it to.

  “Mom,” I said, offended.

  “That’s not a yes.”

  “Sheesh. I don’t know anything about the camera. And of course I’m telling you the truth. Why wouldn’t I?” I folded my arms across my chest right back at her. I realized then, that if she hadn’t hurt my feelings by accusing me of lying, I probably would have told her how the Greenbacks had been hunting for the camera, even about Gonzo’s upcoming photo shoot to look for clues. We’d have laughed about Celia being a stylist. That’s how my mom and I used to talk about things, before the whole nearly-naked-photo episode in the Dean’s office.

  “So why would I think you might not be telling me the truth? Maybe because I’ve noticed that you squirm every time someone mentions those photos you took — the ones that got you into all this trouble? If there’s anyone who would want that camera to just disappear, it’s probably you.”

  “Are you actually, really and truly, accusing me of stealing it?”

  Mom plopped in a chair, which did a sideways Slinky movement under her. She put a hand over her eyes, then took a deep breath and sat up. “I’m going to be honest with you.” She held out a hand to interrupt, before I could start, my protest of aren’t we always honest? “I’m going to be adult honest with you. This time, I’m afraid.”

  It was so quiet, I could hear the Betty Boop wall-clock’s eyes tick tock left and right.

  “You’re afraid…of me?”

  “I’m afraid for you. And I’m getting afraid that I don’t know you, or know anything about what’s going on in your life any more. That camera and sports-quality telephoto lens is worth over six thousand dollars.”

  My mouth suddenly dried. “Six…?”

  “That’s right. What’s going around is that apparently Dean Padua is in trouble for interfering in police business on behalf of the University football team, so one of the things he said to defend himself is that it was standard school policy to protect students. He mentioned, as proof, the fact that Dean Verona covered up the theft of an expensive Academy camera.”

  “Ooooh,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We both thought about how well that must have gone down with Dean Verona.

  My mother continued. “Dean Verona’s response was that most likely the camera was only misplaced, but as time has passed, that seems very unlikely, and it looks really bad that it wasn’t reported, so now the school feels they have no choice but to contact the police.” My mother gave a huge sigh and stood up. “Which means that, because the camera’s so expensive, whoever took it could be facing a felony charge. Unless they return it.”

  I could feel my heartbeat thudding in time to Betty Boop. “Tio?” I said.

  “I’m sure, since Tio’s the one who took the camera out of the equipment storage, his parents got a phone call today too. But you and I both know Tio is unlikely to have done any of this without you getting him involved. The only thing keeping the school from pressing charges against Tio is the fact that the camera was last seen in the Dean’s office. I’m asking you one last time. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  What could I say? That she was right. I was the one who screwed up Tio’s life. That she was right. I never wanted anyone to see those photos. That she was right. She probably had no clue what my life was like anymore, not since I made that deal with Mrs. Bullard.

  But I couldn’t tell her any of that, because then I’d have to tell her I wanted to buy th
e trees, and my mother would be forced to point out — as a reasonable adult would — that I’d probably pissed off the school enough already, and that I should stop being obsessed about a few doomed trees.

  I tried to swallow the cold hard lump that sat in my chest. But it wouldn’t go down. I absolutely couldn’t tell mom the one thing she desperately wanted to hear, that I somehow knew where the camera was, and I’d go get it so we could return it to the school. The fact was, even if she didn’t quite believe me when I said I didn’t have it, none of the Greenbacks had any clue where the camera had gone.

  There was almost nothing left to discuss.

  So I said the one thing I could say, my voice low and trembly, “Can I have a party?”

  ***

  The Greenbacks were noisy when they arrived in the circle early the next morning, chattering — before the sun was fully up — like insomniac squirrels.

  I gave up on trying to get some peace. “Guuuuys,” I said, sitting up. “We can’t be this loud so early in the morning — old lady Hathaway’s house is right over there. She’ll never sell the trees to us if she thinks we’re a bunch of vandals.”

  Tio said, sullen, “You’re the one bellowing.”

  “It’s Friday! And we’re excited about tomorrow’s party,” Helena said, giving Tio a darting glare. “It’s so great you’re doing this.”

  Helena would never know the half of it. My mom had agreed to the party, but only after giving me such a searching look that I wondered if this was some invisible test of hers. And then, when she demanded I write down the names of everyone coming, did that mean I’d passed the test, or failed it? I couldn’t decide.

  I was determined to do all the work for the party and I threw myself into it. I worked until long after midnight, even scrubbing cabinets and clearing out the worst of our overstuffed kitchen drawers — ones that I was afraid someone might accidentally open.

  Then before I went to bed, I remembered with a sinking feeling that I still had to send a report to Mrs. Bullard. Trying to juggle the twitter posts plus reports meant I’d forgotten to send her a message for a couple of days. Maybe I could combine them. The twitter thread was getting popular too — we were up to 1,386 followers. I texted Mrs. Bullard the link to the tweets, sent a personal message for the week, and fell into bed, only to get up a couple of hours later to meet everyone at the trees.