“What’s going on, Misty?” Culter asked.
My gaze scanned the crowded cafeteria to find that almost everyone was watching our scene. Some people covered their mouths, other’s whispered to each other, some looked down at phones in their hands, and back up to us.
Tyler stepped back from Misty, his face expressionless. He stepped over to the nearest table, and patted a guy on the shoulder. “Hey, Mack, man. Can I see that?”
The guy turned to look up at us, his mouth pulled up in a straight line. “Hey, of course, Tyler. Just don’t smash my phone, all right? I didn’t want the text message.”
Tyler took the phone, his head ducked down and his eyes moved back and forth. As I stood directly beside him, the phone screen glared up at me. The article was dated a few years ago, and had the picture of a gaunt, dark-haired woman. Underneath her picture it read: Mary Fuller arrested for prostitution, possession of methamphetamine.
Tyler’s head came up and, sucking on a tooth, he nodded slowly. He handed the phone back to the Mack guy.
“Thanks, man,” he said, patting him on the shoulder.
Turning back to the cafeteria, that had hushed in the time that Tyler read the phone message, Tyler raised his hands. He turned slowly. “It’s not like you didn’t know! Isn’t that right?” He dropped his hands. “Yeah, that’s right.” Turning, Tyler walked out of the auditorium.
Spinning on my heel, I followed after him.
Tyler didn’t run, he walked slowly and I beside him. We pushed through the cafeteria doors, and headed up the stairs. When I peeked behind me, Culter walked a few feet behind.
As we pushed into Ms. Hamilton’s classroom, she looked up from her salad with a big smile on her face. “Hey guys, you here to work on your comic?”
Tyler’s hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Leaning down, a few tears dropped down to the ground.
I didn’t hesitate; I wrapped my arms around him.
Ms. Hamilton stood. “Hey guys, do you need help or do you just need a quiet place?”
“Quiet place,” Tyler whispered.
She nodded. “Okay, want me to get you something? Water?”
“Water would be good,” I said, just because Tyler probably would like a moment without a teacher in the room.
“Do you want me to go?” I asked him.
He patted my back. “No, please just stay, Cassie.”
As Ms. Hamilton stepped out of the classroom, she paused, holding the door open and saying, “Oh, hi Culter, what are you doing?”
“Just making sure that no one bothers them,” he replied.
She paused, still holding the door, and then said, “All right, just do it politely and without breaking school rules.”
Tyler and I sat at a computer stall, and we just sat. He stared forward at nothing, his mind clearly somewhere far away. Wherever his mind was, it was a dark and miserable place. All I had to go on was a picture and a headline, but truly, I had no idea what was going on, or anything I could say to make it better. I put an arm around his shoulders and rested my head against his arm.
Probably about fifteen minutes later, Ms. Hamilton came back. “Tyler, honey, they need you at the office.” Her voice broke as she said this. “This never should have happened. I am so sorry. School should be a safe place for you.”
“All right, thanks, Ms. Hamilton.” He stood.
“Can I go with you?” I asked, standing.
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
As we exited the classroom, we found not just Culter waiting out there. Spencer, Jake and Misty stood against the wall. The guys’ jaws were all clenched, anger clear on their faces, but they said nothing.
Misty covered her face and walked into Tyler.
He slung an arm over her shoulder, and we all walked down to the office together.
Ms. Vale stood as we entered, looking between us. “Okay, good, I was just calling for you guys . . . Misty, you can go ahead back into class. The rest of you are going to need to stay.”
“Can I stay?” Misty asked.
“Were you part of the Denver trip?” she asked.
“Nope,” Tyler said. “Misty, go to class.”
“But . . .” she whispered.
“Misty, go to class. This is just for the people who went on the Denver trip,” Culter reiterated, giving her a look.
“I’m going to call you, okay?” She hugged Tyler.
“Yeah, I’ll call you when I’m out of here.” He hugged her back.
“What’s going on, Ms. Vale?” Spencer asked.
“Hey guys, this is a very serious matter. A police officer is here and he needs to speak with you all. Now, Cassie, Spencer, and Culter, you’re eighteen so you can talk to him without your parents, but I recommend you have me call them. Jake, your mother is on the way, so I’ll have you wait out here. Tyler, sweetheart, your mother is here.”
We all just stood there for a second.
“What’s this about, Ms. Vale?”
She looked deeper into the office. “Honey, you’re going to need to find out from the principal. I just really think you should all have your parents here.”
“Yeah, call my mom,” Spencer said.
Culter nodded. “Mine too.”
She nodded. “All right. Tyler, you can go on back there. Down to the end in that room down there.” She stood, pointing with her manicured hands. “And you guys go ahead and take a seat.”
“I’m dead,” Jake said as he sat beside me.
Spencer leaned in beside me. “Cassie, don’t say anything and listen to whatever my mom says. She’s a defense attorney.”
I nodded, focusing on keeping my breaths even. My head felt like it floated somewhere near the tile ceiling, while the rest of me literally shook with tension.
Culter’s fingers threaded through mine, squeezing.
I squeezed him back, even knowing that I should pull away.
“Spencer and Culter, your moms are on their way.”
“Yes!” Spencer said, half jumping from the seat.
A big, beautiful blonde woman pushed through the front door. Her gaze immediately found Jake’s, then looked over to Ms. Vale. “What’s going on?” she asked, defensively.
“Jake,” Spencer whispered, with an unspoken warning in his voice.
“Got it,” Jake whispered back. He turned to Ms. Vale, saying, “Can I talk to my mom for a minute before we go back there?”
Ms. Vale seemed to consider before she nodded.
His mother already looked pissed off at him, even before they walked outside. After Tyler, somehow Jake got the short end of the stick all around here. It wasn’t even his idea to have people over, he was just being nice. He paid probably a hundred dollars in alcohol, then sixty-five for the lamp, those girls treated him like shit, and then he gets in trouble with his parents because Lily had a temper tantrum. The worst part was both Tyler and Jake were completely innocent in all this stuff, not to mention two of the sweetest people ever. I mean, the worst crime Tyler committed was signing his name big on that petition, but we all signed. Honestly, though, I knew his true crime was being Culter and my best friend, and perhaps being Misty’s crush too. Maybe Lily truly was crazy.
At the end of the office, a uniformed officer stepped out of the door on the end. His salt-and-pepper hair put him at about forty, but he stood at six-five with a wide stature. Even without his height, the stern set of his expression as he scanned over us sent a new bout of nervousness skittering through me. He was the kind of guy that would intimidate me even if he wasn’t carrying a firearm.
“How are things going out here?” he asked in a deep voice.
“We’re just waiting for two more parents,” Ms. Vale said, nodding back with a smile that appeared a little intimidated too.
The officer stepped back into the office.
Ms. Vale turned to us, her hand held up in a conciliatory gesture. “Just wait here.”
A couple minutes later, Jake and his mother walked bac
k in with another woman in a suit that had to be Spencer’s mother. One glance told me that they had the same height, complexion and quicksilver eyes. Her hair was even cropped to the same length, though it suited her. She was as gorgeous as her son and walked with that, ‘I eat suckers like you for breakfast’ stride that quelled the riot going on in my stomach a little bit.
Behind her, Jen pushed through the doors, dressed in her yoga pants. Likely, that meant she left in the middle of teaching at the gym, and didn’t stop to change. As Jen turned toward us, I remembered and pulled my hand from Culter’s.
He didn’t seem to want to let me go, but he did.
When we all stood, Jen crossed over to both of us, putting one of her hands on each of our shoulders. Her gaze flicked between ours. “What’s going on guys? The police are here?”
“Sorry you had to get called out of work, Jen,” I said.
“I’m just worried, what’s going on?”
“We don’t know yet,” I whispered.
“Hey guys, you should probably be heading to the back office now. If that’s all right?”
Spencer and his mother headed in first and we followed.
I’d expected to enter a principal’s office, but the room we entered looked like it might be the teacher’s lounge. A long table stretched out, chairs spaced unevenly around it. The smell of popcorn lingered heavily in the room, turning my stomach even though I loved popcorn.
On one side, Lily sat with a man who looked very much like her, both pale as white snow with blood red lips and hair as dark as ebony, well, that was an exaggeration, but they both had the Snow White look to them. Next to her was the blonde I recognized as Mel, whose face and nose flamed, puffed and splotched so much, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she’d been crying tears of acid.
Tyler sat at the other end of the table with a dark-haired woman I immediately recognized from her picture, even though I only saw it on the phone screen. Little resemblance lingered between the two; actually, I couldn’t pick out a single characteristic aside from their hair color—kind of. She looked too old to have a son Tyler’s age, her skin holding a gray tone to it. Usually, I’d think chemo, seeing her exhausted eyes and lackluster dark hair, but obviously this time it wasn’t the case.
Jen moved to sit between Culter and me, but after she sat, Culter went to my other side so that I was sandwiched between them.
“It’ll be okay,” Jen whispered, taking my hand in hers as she looked across to the officer who sat at one end of the table with a bald man I’d never seen before.
Spencer’s mother walked over to where the two men sat. Reaching her hand out to the stout, middle-aged man beside the officer, she said, “Nice to see you Principal Colman.” After she shook the principal’s hand, she turned to the officer and offered her hand to him. “Ms. Shilland, Spencer’s mother, nice to meet you.”
The officer sat straight from where he was leaning back into his chair. “Officer Marks, nice to meet you.”
She took the seat directly to his left and immediately asked, “Officer, is this being recorded?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“Thank you, would you mind telling us what this is about?” Her fingers threaded together in front of her on the table. The whole thing felt suddenly very official, like a court movie or something.
The officer leaned forward as well, looking a lot more official himself all the sudden. “I’ll let the principal explain the situation to you, ma’am.”
She nodded, her gaze zeroing in on the principal who she’d called Mr. Coleman.
He leaned back, tapping the long plastic table, not looking at all like he was enjoying this. “Unfortunately, we had a serious situation where two students used the school’s emergency communication system to cyber bully another student. As we looked into this, it was discovered that there was a recent trip with heavy underage drinking that might have incited the incident.” He lifted a piece of paper from the table, and passed it to Spencer’s mom.
Fucking Lily and Mel. Obviously they used anything they could, throwing all of us under the bus just so we could share in the shit situation they landed themselves in.
Ms. Shilland read over it, before setting it down. “I see. It says here that Lily and Melissa . . .” she pointed across the table, obviously knowing them, “Were underage drinking. I don’t see anything on here about these other kids.”
“Ms. Cameron and Ms. Jones already admitted that the entire group had been drinking heavily,” the officer said.
“So these girls illegally used a school emergency system to bully another student, then when they were caught, they accused another group of students of drinking?” she asked, looking around. Obviously, Ms. Shilland and I were on the exact same page.
This was bullshit.
“Clara, this is obviously a much bigger issue. They said one girl drank an entire bottle of rum,” said Snow White Sr., gesturing between all of us.
I ground my teeth together so I couldn’t yell out loud that this was bullshit. Seriously? Yeah, I drank way too much, but Tyler and I shared probably half of that bottle and that was after everyone had drinks from it. Obviously, I was a particular target of their shit-throwing-fest.
“Did anyone but Lily and Mel admit to drinking?” Spencer’s mom asked, her brows high on her forehead.
No one answered her.
“We need to ask them about what happened in Denver, Ms. Shilland,” the officer said.
She nodded, slowly. “You can ask them, but they have the right not to answer you.” She turned to look around at us. “Do you guys have anything you want to tell the officer about last weekend?”
Jen’s hand squeezed mine under the table, and I thought she was saying, don’t say anything, but she could have been trying to communicate the opposite.
“I don’t want to share anything,” Spencer said.
“Me neither,” Jake said.
“Me neither,” both Culter and I said.
“Not me either,” Tyler said.
Tyler’s mom turned to Jen, her nostrils flared. “This is against the law, Jennifer. You don’t have custody of him, this was probably considered kidnapping.” She turned back to the police officer. Her stick-thin finger pointed across the table. “They have no right to have Tyler over at their house; I never gave permission for that.”
Jen shook her head. “No. He didn’t come to our house, Mary. They were in Denver.”
Mary’s gaunt finger moved to point directly at me. “He shouldn’t have been hanging out with her, that’s illegal.”
“It’s not illegal, Mom.” Tyler sunk down, his shoulders low and face miserable. His dark eyes found mine across the table. “I’m so sorry, Cassie.”
Tyler’s mother stood from her chair, still pointing at me. “That is Frank’s daughter; she shouldn’t be taking Tyler anywhere. That is illegal. That is kidnapping.”
Everyone looked between Mary and me now, looking as confused as I felt. But at the same time, a strange realization was forming in my mind. I’d thought from the first moment that I met Tyler that he looked familiar. But, then he’d just become Tyler to me, so I hadn’t considered it again. But, looking at his face now, I saw it. Tyler looked a little like Culter, but a lot like me.
Jen shook her head. “They’re kids, Mary. They just want to hang out together,” her voice brimmed with emotion.
“Well, I don’t know how you run things at your house, your son telling everyone that he’s in love with Frank’s daughter. All of them drinking and partying, but that’s not my Tyler.” She smacked the table. “He doesn’t do stuff like that. That’s your sick family. You don’t have custody!”
“They’re siblings?” the officer asked, looking between Tyler and me.
No one said anything for a few seconds, while everyone in the room stared at us in shock.
“Cassie is my half-sister,” Tyler whispered, his gaze on the table, before he wiped another tear from his cheek.
“S
he shouldn’t be allowed to attend this school. Someone should have told me that she was here,” Mary said, directing her words at the principal, her finger now pointing so hard into the table, the joints threatened to turn the wrong way.
The principal shook his head, his bald spot reflecting the halogen lights. “Ms. Fuller, that’s not how things are run around here. Custody is a legal guardian issue, it doesn’t pertain to siblings.”
Spencer’s mom stood, and buttoned her suit jacket. “All right. This is personal and not related to the issues we’re dealing with here. Are these kids under arrest?”
“This isn’t about arresting these kids, Ms. Shilland. This is about their safety, underage drinking, and a serious cyber bullying issue,” the principal said.
“Our kids have a right to not self-incriminate about events that occurred outside of the school’s hours and property, and I believe every parent here has a right to deal out their children’s discipline. I understand the need to deal with the issues that occurred at school.” She gestured to Lily and Mel.
“Like the petition,” Lily’s dad said, pointing right back to the paper.
“This is an opinion poll. It sounds like these girls acted intentionally inappropriate and caused damage. Sixty-five dollars is a lot of money to a seventeen-year-old.” Ms. Shilland held up the petition. “And, this didn’t misuse a school safety system to maliciously bully a student.”
The officer looked around at us and then sighed, he leaned his elbows on the table. “Your son is free to go, Ms. Shilland. You four students are free to go as well.” He pointed across to Culter, me, Jake and Tyler. “But . . .” he held up a hand, “I don’t want to hear about any more underage drinking from you guys. Binge-drinking is not only illegal, it is incredibly dangerous and can be deadly. Also, please, no more opinion polls or whatever you want to call this.” He gestured to the paper. “These type of pranks can snowball, and when the police get involved, consequences become serious for things you originally thought of as a joke.”
After we stood from the table, Culter immediately pulled me into a hug. “I told you my aunt was a fucking bitch, but no one is going to stop you from hanging out with Tyler,” he whispered to me.
Making Bad Choices Page 28
