by Mikki Sadil
Coach Williams grabbed Celine by the arms and pulled her off and yanked me up from the ground. I could feel blood running down my chin. Celine had a red mark on her cheek from where I had slapped her, but her clothes weren’t even dirty. She stood quietly, with that malicious glint in her eyes and a small satisfied smirk on her face.
Coach looked at Celine’s cheek and my bleeding face. His face was hard and his scowl frightening. “Miss Devlin, would you care to explain this incident?”
What? I couldn’t believe he was asking me to explain when Celine had started the whole thing. Julie and Jaime slowly backed away from us. I looked at the coach and said bluntly, “No.”
His scowl got worse, if that’s possible. “I thought not. You will need to go to the office and get your lip and nose looked at. Get yourself cleaned up so you don’t spend the day looking like something the cat dragged in and then go to class. You are not excused from school, do you understand?”
Before I could answer, he looked at the crowd that had formed around Celine and me. “Everyone, off the field now! The show is over. There will be no cheerleading practice today, so everyone go to the library until your next class.” He turned to Celine. “Miss Carroll, since Miss Devlin doesn’t care to give an explanation, you can do so. Immediately.”
Celine gave me a triumphant smile and dusted off her perfect little rear. “It’s just a personal matter, Coach. You know, girl stuff.”
The coach glared fiercely at both of us. “Very well, you are both excused. I trust I will not see this behavior again.”
The other girls had already left the field. The J’s and Celine walked away without looking at me. I was hurt, bleeding, and felt completely alone. I sat down on the grass and put my head down on my knees. A moment later I heard a deep voice say softly, “Hey, you okay? Can I help?”
I looked up into the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. The boy from my math class. The one I wanted to notice me but never did. I wondered where he had come from.
He looked down at me and grinned. “Hi, I’m Cooper. In case you don’t remember me, I’m in your math class. My friends and I were walking across the field, and we saw the whole thing. Wow, you’ve got some left hand. What was going on, anyway?”
I tried to smile but my busted lip hurt so much it came out a groan. I managed to say, “Uh…nothing. I’ve got to go to the office.”
“Okay, come on. I’ll help you get up.”
He held out a hand and helped me to my feet. I was a little wobbly, but I don’t know if it was from the fight or from having the boy from my math class actually talking to me and…holding my hand. Of course, as soon as I got up, he dropped my hand.
“Um…is it okay if I walk to the office with you?”
I didn’t look at him. It seemed strange he was being so nice when he’d never spoken to me before. Be careful what you say, said that little voice.
I shrugged and wished I hadn’t. Cooper walked beside me, and after an uncomfortable silence, he said, “Uh, how come you guys were fighting? You don’t seem like that kind of girl.”
Huh? See? said my little voice. He doesn’t know what kind of girl you are so why is he saying that?
I started to blurt out what Celine had said, but I stopped just in time. He didn’t know me or Lisa and Amberley, so how would he understand what was happening? That little voice said, Don’t tell him anything. Maybe he’s friends with Celine.
For a minute I forgot that my shoulders hurt and I shrugged again, regretting it immediately. “It was nothing. Just a girl problem.”
Cooper looked like he didn’t believe me, but by then we were at the office. “Hey, I’ll come in with you if you want,” he offered. I didn’t want to look at him. “No, I’m fine. Thanks for walking me over here. See ya.”
I opened the door and walked into the reception/attendance/detention office, just as Mr. Fox stepped out of his private office. He took one look at me.
“AJ, Mrs. Pearle will get you cleaned up and see if you need a doctor’s care. Then I want you in my office.”
Mrs. Pearle, the receptionist who was as round as a pearl and almost as pretty, smiled at me sympathetically and told me to sit down on the other side of the counter. While she went to get a bowl of water, I looked over at her desk. There was a Lost and Found jar sitting there, full of mismatched earrings, a couple of cell phones, and an ugly pink fuzzy wallet. Cell phones? I didn’t even have one and here were two in the Lost and Found. In the middle of a bunch of papers there was a long tray with black pens, yellow pencils with chew marks on them, and a few stubby erasers. I wondered if Mrs. Pearle was the one who chewed on the pencils.
She came back with water and a soft cloth. “I have to clean up that lip, AJ, and it’s probably going to hurt. Your nose, too. I’ll be as careful as I can.”
It did hurt, but she was gentle and got all the blood and dirt off my face. She put some antiseptic on my lip and said, “Okay, honey, you’re going to be fine, I don’t think you need a stitch in that lip but it’s going to be sore for a few days. You need to put ice on it and under your eyes as soon as you get home. You’re going to have some big bruises on your cheeks.” She patted my hand and told me to go in to see Mr. Fox.
Mr. Fox closed the door and motioned for me to sit down. “All right, young lady, I want to hear what happened on that field. Coach Williams called from his office and said you and Celine were in a fist fight. Tell me what happened.”
My head was pounding, my face was sore, and my lip throbbed, but I managed to tell him everything that had happened. When I finished my story, he said, “AJ, this really disturbs me. Fighting like this is not going to solve anything. You girls are all going through changes, deciding who you’re friends with and who you’re not, and that’s normal. I know you and the J’s have been close friends ever since you moved here, but now you’re all going in different directions. That’s just part of growing up.”
I looked at him in disbelief. He hadn’t heard one word I said. Celine started the fight, she pulled me down on the ground, she ruined my friendship first with the J’s and now with Lisa and Amberley, and all he can say is that we’re going in different directions?
“Mr. Fox, if it weren’t for Celine, none of this would have happened. She made Julie and Jaime stop liking me, and now she’s turned Lisa and Amberley against me. Celine is nothing but a troublemaker. Aren’t you even going to talk to her?” I felt hurt and betrayed that he didn’t recognize that this was all Celine’s fault.
He pulled on his mustache for a moment. “AJ, you all need to work this situation out for yourselves. I don’t condone this kind of behavior, and if you get into a physical fight again with Celine, you will both be suspended from school for one week. I will be talking to Celine, also, but you and she have to settle your problems without fighting. It will work out in the long run, AJ. Trust me, I know.”
Huh. Trust me. The two most untrustworthy words an adult can say.
I sighed. “Mr. Fox, I really feel awful. Coach Williams said I have to go to class, so can I go now?”
“I decide who goes to class and who doesn’t. If you don’t feel well enough, you may go home. There won’t be any penalties.”
I thanked him and left the office. Outside in the rotunda, a couple of boys came by. They pointed at me and started laughing. I knew my face probably looked like a Halloween mask but I really didn’t care. I stood still for a minute, undecided. I wanted to go home, but a gut feeling told me if I didn’t show up in my classes, things would only be worse. I shuffled down the hall to my first class.
The rest of the day was the worst of my life, and I didn’t think it was ever going to end. A lot of the kids snickered and whispered among themselves. No one said anything to me, but they didn’t have to. I was sure word was already all over campus about my fight with Celine. Jaime and Julie didn’t speak to me a single time, either, but that was okay. Since it was so obvious I wasn’t their friend any longer, I didn’t have any reason to talk to them. But
you want to, said that little voice.
When I thought about the looks on Lisa’s and Amberley’s faces, my stomach clenched. I had to talk to them at lunch. Somehow, I had to make things right again. It wasn’t because of cheerleading, either. I was so mad at myself because it had taken something like this to make me realize how much their friendship really meant to me. I had to let them know that. They weren’t in the cafeteria at lunch, so I decided to wait for them after school.
They walked out together, and Amberley stopped, but Lisa gave me a dirty look and ran down the steps before I could say anything.
Amberley looked at me with tears in her eyes. “AJ, why did you pretend to like us? Lisa and I are going to drop out of cheerleading. We don’t want to be your partners anymore. You’re just going to have to find someone else to pretend to like.”
“But I do like you. I want to be friends, please, Amberley. Please don’t go…”
But she was gone, walking down the school steps as quickly as she could with her wobbly gait.
I wanted to run after her, but my feet felt like they were in quicksand. I watched her disappear in the crowd of kids rushing out of the building.
Before I could move, Celine and the J’s were standing in front of me.
Celine smirked. “Gee, AJ, you don’t look like you feel very good. I guess you and your…friends…won’t be coming to practice today, will you? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have any friends now, do you?”
She and Jaime laughed as they continued down the steps, but Julie lagged behind. “AJ, I’m so sorry about…” Before she could finish, Jaime looked over her shoulder and yelled.
“Julie, come on, we have to go. Why are you wasting time?”
Julie gave me a kind of half smile but she went after them, letting Jaime jerk her around as usual.
By the time I got home, I was really sore and hurting all over. I stumbled up the stairs to my room, but as soon as I saw myself in the mirror, I groaned. What a mess! My clothes were filthy, my face was bruised and scratched, my nose had started to bleed again, and my lip looked like I’d had a Botox injection. I had to do something or Mom was going to have an aneurism when she saw me.
I took a long, hot shower and washed the bits of grass and dirt out of my hair. I dried off, put on relatively clean jeans, a sweat shirt, and tied my hair as neatly into a ponytail as it would go. Still damp, it didn’t want to do anything but curl up. I surveyed myself in the mirror. Hmm. I couldn’t do anything about my face, but at least the rest of me didn’t look like I was living on the streets.
I was getting sorer by the minute, but I had to go out and take care of Sunni’s leg. Jim had drained the abscess and put the extra pad on her shoe, so she was walking better. I kept the ointment and ice packs on her leg, and the swelling was almost gone. Dr. Cross talked to me on the phone, and he said he was proud of me for how well I was taking care of her. For once, I was doing something right.
I heard the twins come in from school. I hoped they wouldn’t come out to the barn, but a few minutes later I heard their noisy bantering as they slammed the kitchen door. Their footsteps told me they were racing each other to the barn, but the sound stopped abruptly.
Suzanne said, “Oh my gosh, what happened…”
“…to your face?” Sarah said. “How did…”
“…you get hurt?” Suzanne asked.
“Does Mom know…”
“…and is she coming home?” finished Suzanne.
For Pete’s sake, were they ever going to grow out of this two-part conversation stuff, and finish their own sentences? My head was pounding worse than ever. “Look, you guys go get your chores done and just leave me alone. I’ll tell everyone at dinner what happened so I don’t have to go through it but once. Go, get your stuff done before Mom gets home.”
Sarah started to say something, but I glared at her. “Go! Now! Don’t. Ask. Any. More. Questions.”
I threw Sunni fresh alfalfa and started mixing up her grain. I was thinking about having to tell the family about my fight. Mom was going to be furious. She would think it was my fault for saying what I had said to Celine. On the other hand, if I made up a story and she found out I was lying, I’d be grounded until I was thirty.
* * * *
Mom and Andrew got home about the same time. They walked into the kitchen and stared at me, shock written all over their faces. “Alyson Joanne, what in the name of heaven happened to you? Were you hit by a car? Did you go to the hospital? Why didn’t you call me?” Mom was on the verge of tears as she dropped her purse on the floor and ran over to put her arms around me.
Andrew seemed speechless for once in his life, but he came over and gave me a hug, too.
“Look, Mom, Andrew, I’m okay. No, I didn’t get hit by a car and I didn’t go to the hospital. Come on, let’s have dinner, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Mom held me by the shoulders to look at me, but when I winced, she dropped her hands. “Honey, are you sure you’re okay? Are you hurting all over?”
“Mom, honest, I’m okay. Please can we sit down, and then I’ll tell you what happened.”
I had made a salad and heated the casserole that Mom had made the night before, so everything was ready to put on the table. The twins had set the table and were already sitting down, very quietly. I think I had scared the spit out of them when I yelled in the barn.
We sat down, and everyone looked at me. I cleared my throat. This was going to be harder than I thought. “Um…well…it happened at practice this morning.” Okay, that part was true. “See, Amberley has been sick and out of school for a few days. Nobody answered her phone or the door when Lisa went over, so we were really worried about her. Then today she showed up for practice.”
Still true, I hadn’t crossed the line…yet. “We were so glad to see her that we ran over to give her a hug.” I took a deep breath. That was the start of my lie. Now I had to finish it so Mom would believe me.
“Well, uh, she was standing on a little hill and when we hugged her, we all fell and Lisa and Amberley fell on top of me and I went face down in the dirt and there were some rocks there and that’s how I got my lip and nose scratched up and my face got bruises.” I had to get that whole story out without taking a breath or I wouldn’t have been able to lie like that.
Andrew looked at me with disbelief written all over his face. He started to say something, but Mom raised her hand to shut him up. She looked at me, and I knew right then that she didn’t believe one word I had said. “Okay, AJ, that’s your story?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Fine. Not another word from anyone. Let’s eat dinner.”
Dinner was silent and uncomfortable. Everyone seemed to be concentrating on eating. Except me. The salad dressing stung my swollen lip like a bee digging for honey and my jaw felt like it operated on rusty hinges. I couldn’t get my mouth open wide enough to get a fork full of noodles in.
When the twins finished, Mom said, “All right, girls. Go to your room and do your homework. You can come down later and watch TV.”
As soon as they went upstairs, Mom put down her folk. “Alyson Joanne, you will now tell Andrew and me the truth about what happened at school today. If you don’t, I will take you by the hand and march you over to Mr. Fox’s tonight, do you hear me?”
Oh yes, I heard her loud and clear. When my mother called me Alyson Joanne, I knew I had better do whatever she wanted now. Aaghh!
I sighed loudly. “Okay. The first part was true, about Amberley being out of school and then coming back today. When I gave her a hug, Jaime and Celine started in on me. I yelled at Celine and told her to stay out of our business, and then I tried to leave. Honest, Mom, I did try to walk away.”
Mom looked at me for a long moment. “Okay, so what happened then? Obviously you didn’t walk away.”
“Celine grabbed my arm and pulled it behind my back, so I turned around and slapped her in the face. She knocked me down and started beating on me. I couldn’t get up or
do anything to her. The kids all started yelling about a ‘girl fight,’ and Coach ran over and pulled her off me.”
“I guess you had to go to Mr. Fox’s office. So are you and Celine suspended?”
“No. All he said was that if we had a fight again, we’d be suspended. Mom, he wouldn’t even take my side. I told him it was Celine who started it, but all he said was that we were going in diff…different directions.”
I was trying not to cry, but I was hurting, and I didn’t know which was worse — the pain from my bruised face, or the fact that the J’s were siding with Celine in all of this.
Mom came around to my chair. She knelt and put her arms around me. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. You just cry all you want. I’m going take care of this situation immediately.”
I pulled away and looked at her. Her hazel eyes had tears in them, but there was a look of fierce determination on her face.
“Wha…what do you mean, you’ll take care of it?” I snuffled, tears still flowing down my cheeks.
Mom stood up with her hand gently on my shoulder. “I mean, I am going to see Conrad Fox right now and demand that he do something about that awful girl. Expel her or something. I will not have my daughter used as a punching bag.”
I stopped crying abruptly. “No! Mom, no. I don’t want you to talk to Mr. Fox. I don’t want you to do anything.”
“But, AJ, this is a terrible thing to have happen. Physical fighting is just not to be tolerated, for any reason. She started it, so I’m going to talk to Conrad.”
“Mom, this is my problem. I’ll take care of it. I’m not a baby you have to go running around protecting. I’m almost fourteen years old and I can stand up for myself. Promise me you won’t talk to Mr. Fox. Please, Mom.”
She put her hands on her hips and gave a long sigh. “I’ll always want to protect you, AJ. Okay, for now I promise I won’t say anything to Conrad. But if there is any more fighting, I am going to step in.”
