Ms. Fleece moved down the aisle and handed me the small pink slip of paper. It told me in scrawled blue ink to report to the principal’s office. I glanced up at her, the paper rustling in my shaking hand.
“Right now?”
She nodded. I gave my head a numb shake, scooped up my backpack, and headed for the door. Right as I crossed the threshold, I heard Daphne’s voice rise above the silence.
“Ooooo, you’re in trouble.”
I smiled, despite myself, as I left the class.
I crossed the gigantic quad and walked to the principal’s office. I’d never been sent to the principal’s office in my whole life. I’d received a few detentions in my time, but I’d never racked up the kind of points it takes to get a ticket to the Head Screw’s office. I wondered where I had acquired my prison lingo as I walked into the main office. I showed my slip to the plump secretary at the first desk—she waved me past her and pointed toward the right office. The door was open. Principal Ortiz sat in a typical educator’s brown suit behind his desk, and two people sat in the chairs opposite him. There wasn’t any room for me to sit.
Principal Ortiz gestured for me to enter—he looked as nervous as I felt. I folded my hands behind my back and glanced around nervously. Nowhere to sit. Awesome. I half-expected the people in the office to start making bids or something.
I recognized one of the people, I realized. Officer Sykes, his shades tucked into his shirt pocket, gave me the granite non-expression I’d come to know so well.
The other person I’d seen around campus. She was a round lady with a cute face and what looked to be an impeccable black suit with an A-line skirt. Her very curly brown hair was half-up and half-down, the top part held up by an intricate silver comb. When she turned to me, she offered me a huge smile and got out of her chair. She held out a hand, and I gave it an awkward shake. Her firm grip crushed mine, and when I leaned back against the wall, I massaged my fingers back to life.
“I’m Marian Crane,” she said, returning to her seat.
“Uh, hello.”
“You’re Lucy Day?” She said, and though her tone remained light, she looked me up and down like she'd expected me to be taller or something.
“That’s me.”
Principal Ortiz spoke up finally.
“Sorry to pull you out of your class, Lucy, but we heard about Friday night and we just have a couple of hoops to jump through.”
I smiled at that. He seemed to pick up on it, and he went on with a light tone.
“How are you feeling?”
I shrugged, “Fine. My head’s a little sore. But I’m okay, if that’s what you mean.”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair.
“That’s great, Lucy. Well, we’re all happy to hear that you’re safe and well. Officer Sykes is here to have you fill out a full police report, if you don’t mind.”
“Nope,” I said, and that wasn’t a lie. Though I hadn’t thought about it much, I did wish those guys would get caught. The only part of me that didn’t was the part that still knew the truth. It was shrinking by the minute it seemed. “Don’t mind.”
“Good, good,” Principal Ortiz said. “And Ms. Crane is one of our guidance counselors.”
And there we are. I nodded and tried to teleport to another country. No luck.
“It’s part of our policy to counsel any of our students who have been assaulted, involved in, or witnessed crime, or violence,” Ms. Crane said, her crisp voice belying little emotion. “You’ll be seeing me for the next couple weeks. Just to be safe, of course.”
I nodded again. My lips tightened. They phrased it like policy and if you don’t mind and all that, but I knew that none of this was voluntary. When I expressed doubts about missing English so often, they assured me that my daily trips to the counseling office would fall on a different class period every day. Every. Day. How nice of them. As they talked, I inspected the floor for escape hatches.
“I know this may seem silly,” Principal Ortiz said. “But I think it’s best to make sure everything is fine. Just a check under the hood is all.”
Officer Sykes took me into a conference room and laid out the police report papers in a perfect little arc in front of me. He explained every line, every box, and what was required of me to fill them out. He didn’t look at me until I’d finished.
I filled out the reports in my neatest handwriting, which is sort of like a wolverine doing his best knitting. In that particular aspect, I was more Dad than Mom—typical, almost mannish serial killer loops with a maniacal slant. I was a talker, not a scribbler. At least, that’s how I explained eleven years’ worth of miserable penmanship grades.
My story hadn’t changed, and I wrote it down the same. When I handed it back to him, he shuffled the papers together and slipped them into a notebook tucked under his arm, all business. That’s why when he reached out and squeezed my shoulder, I nearly jumped out of my boots.
“Lucy?”
“Yeah?”
His face changed—it became briefly human. Here comes the pity.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” Sykes said. “But we found the gun.”
Sinking. Blackness swam at the edge of my eyes, and for one horrific moment I was sure I was going to faint. Not good. Not good. I took a few long, deep, hopefully clandestine breaths to steady myself.
“You did?”
Sykes nodded, “It wasn’t far from where you reported waking up. You didn’t see it?”
“I…I didn’t really look for it,” I said. “I felt pretty weird when I woke up.”
“I believe it,” he said, and took his hand off my shoulder. He even managed a tiny, efficient Sykes-like smile, “Have a good one, Lucy Day.”
“I’ll see you around, Sykes.”
“I hope not,” Sykes said.
I laughed and scooted out into the reception area. Right as I crossed the threshold I noticed plump little Ms. Crane sitting on one of the chairs just outside the conference room. My shoulders slumped.
“We start today, don’t we?” I breathed.
Ms. Crane smiled and stood up. I followed her to her office with all the Sykes-inspired goodwill leaking out of me. By the time I sat down in her oddly colorless office, it had hemorrhaged completely. She shuffled through a stack of papers on her desk before standing up, shutting her office door, and dropping back into her cushy-looking leather chair.
She gave me a tight little smile.
“Tell me about yourself, Lucy.”
I slumped in my chair and started in.
I’d been all crossed-arms and pinched face when she started, like I was waiting for a wave to crash me into. For the hammer to fall. Crane kept it light, though. Asked about my parents, what they did, how often I saw them. Was she trying to pin it on them? Runaway, product of a broken home? She was too damn pleasant and mild and unassuming to be mad at, though. It was like being interviewed by Mundane-Crap Magazine.
The session passed faster than I thought it would. The intro with the principal and the time with Sykes had taken a chunk already, and I just began describing my home situation when the bell rang. She shook my hand and wished me a good day. I left the office in a slightly better mood—I hadn’t expected everyone to be so nice. Going to the principal’s office rarely foreshadowed a good day. I mean, so I’d read in books.
I didn’t think of myself as a goody two-shoes—I’d managed plenty of mischief in my day. I guess the only difference between me and the problem kids was that I knew how to avoid getting caught.
Art passed by in a blur—both Wanda and I were way too behind in our fruit bowl projects to be distracted by any talk. I was grateful, honestly—I wanted, more than anything, for everything to go back to normal. I was tired of being congratulated or pitied or fawned over or hugged.