"Carl, you stay here. Go to your regular class. If there is any trouble from the teachers or the administration, let your Dad know and he will call me. Don't do one damn thing that will get you in trouble, okay?"
"Uh, yeah, sure.", I agreed.
"Is this for real?", asked my Dad.
"What the orders? Sure. I play golf with the judge. He'd have to recuse himself, but it will never get that far. Those two are so buffaloed it's not funny. It's like Carl said yesterday, a detective beats a bus driver any day of the week. The arrest just nailed them to the cross." He smiled at me. "Are you in the Boy Scouts, by any chance?"
Where the fuck did that come from? "Uh, yes sir, Troop 896."
"St. Paul's? Good for you? First Class yet?"
"Second, but almost to First. Why?"
"I'm the Adviser to an Explorer Post in Timonium. You can transfer when you turn fourteen. I want you to think about it."
Holy shit! Now I knew where I remembered him from! I had joined that Explorer Post anyway. All I remembered of the leadership was that the Adviser was a rich lawyer and his son was the Post President. Nobody cared, though, since he had a monstrously large SUV that could haul the trailer with all our gear. They specialized in white water rafting, which I thought was infinitely cool!
"What's the specialty?"
"White water canoeing and rafting. We even have our own canoes and rafts.", he replied.
"Cool! I promise, I'll give it some thought!"
"Good. We can use a guy like you." He shook our hands and headed out, followed closely by my father. His words were somewhat more succinct, telling me to stay out of trouble, 'or else!'
It was about half past when I finished with Dad and Mr. Steiner, already fifteen minutes into the second period. According to the schedule in my binder, I was supposed to be in English class in Room 214 with Mrs. Turnbull. I couldn't remember where 214 was and barely remembered her. First I had to find my locker and dump my crap off. I rooted out my binder and found my locker and combination taped to the front inside cover. High security, you bet!
I wandered around the halls getting familiarized to an extent and found my locker. Boy, that was like looking into a time capsule! I would need to sort through that at some point. I tossed my bag and jacket in there and went off in search of 214. Finding it, I looked through the window in the door and saw Mrs. Turnbull standing near a blackboard at one end of the room. I moved on to the other door and slid in through the back.
There was no hope of doing this secretively. Mrs. Turnbull stopped and stared at me as everyone in the room turned in their chairs and looked at me, goggle eyed and slack jawed. A memory came back and I realized that the empty chair in the fourth row on the right was mine. I made my way over and slid into it.
"Welcome back, Mr. Buckman. I had heard you were no longer with us.", said Mrs. Turnbull. She was a nondescript but witty and sharp woman in her forties.
"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.", I replied.
She smiled. "So I gather, Mr. Twain, so I gather. Might I assume you will continue to grace us with your presence in the foreseeable future?"
"And a most gracious presence it will be!" Mrs. Turnbull had enjoyed witty repartee back in the day. She didn't mind a student arguing or disagreeing with her, just so long as they used good English, proper phrasing, and refused to swear or insult.
She nodded at me. "We'll see about that." She went back towards the board and resumed her lecture.
As soon as Turnbull's back was turned, when she began to write something on the blackboard, Katie Lowenthal, who sat next to me turned and whispered, "What happened! I saw you go to jail!"
Without turning, Mrs. Turnbull loudly said, "Miss Lowenthal, questions such as that are best answered after school. Would you like a detention later on to allow you time to make a list?"
"No, ma'am."
"Then spare the discussion until after class."
Katie gave me a dirty look, but I just shrugged my shoulders. Katie was one of my best friends in school, and she was a girl, but she was never a girlfriend. We had known each other since our days at Hampton Elementary. She was another college prep kid, scary smart, and we could talk about anything. She was rather roly-poly throughout our time in school. We totally lost track of each other after graduation, when I moved hundreds of miles away and stayed away, but ran across each other at our twenty year reunion. She had become a doctor, was doing research in oncology, and was living in Southern California. She had slimmed down, gotten an amazing tan, and looked very foxy. I got the impression she might have been interested in a little reunion get-together on our own later, but I was with Marilyn and just smiled away the tentative approach.
Anyway, that was all years in the future, or the past, or something. We muddled through the remainder of the class, and I could feel the occasional stares as people wondered what I was doing here. The fight on the bus, the expulsion, and the three boys in the hospital would have been amazing in themselves, but add that I was arrested and hauled off in handcuffs and you just knew that I was the talk of the last couple of days. Now I show back up like nothing has happened.
As soon as I got out of the class to the hallway Katie was in my face, with some other friends around us. "What are you doing here!? You're supposed to be in jail!"
"Yeah, you escape or something?", asked somebody behind her.
I just gave a laugh. "It's nothing like that. I was never arrested. It was all a misunderstanding."
"No it wasn't! I saw the police put the cuffs on you!", she protested.
I just leaned against a wall of lockers. "Yeah, but that was because the bus driver screwed up. That's why the police were here later that morning. Did they talk to you then?", I asked.
She nodded. "Yeah, me and Betty and Ray. They wanted to know what happened. It was kind of cool. Ray said he asked if you were going to jail but the police officer wouldn't say. Mr. Warner stayed with us the entire time and the police officer kept telling him to let us talk. He kept trying to tell what happened, like he was there or something."
"Figures. Anyway, as soon as they knew what really happened I went home. It's no big deal."
"It is too a big deal! They had you in handcuffs like on TV. Did they fingerprint you? Take your picture?" Ray Shorn had come up next to Katie and was hitting me with all sorts of questions. He was one of the normal kids, but was a good guy anyway. He lived three houses up and across the street, and when we were little we had made a tree fort in the woods behind his house.
"Nope. None of that. They just asked me some questions and sent me home."
"What about the Strutters and Tewkesie? What happened to them?", asked Katie.
"Don't know. Haven't seen them? They haven't been to school?", I asked innocently.
She stared at me. "They all went off in a couple of ambulances. There was so much blood that Marcie fainted and little Billy Smith puked up breakfast all over his brother."
Ray laughed. "Yeah, it was so cool!"
So much for being innocent. That was pretty funny, in a black comedy sort of way. I had to smile at that and shrug. "Hey, they started it, not me."
"Where did you learn to fight like that?", asked Tommy Toner, another guy from the college prep crew. "What, you some kind of karate guy or something?" It was years before Kung Fu ever made it to television, so at least I didn't have to put up with that.