Twisted Fate(14)

I try to be a good example, but my office is pretty cluttered. They keep us busy at RHS and I had stacks of folders nearly dwarfing my desk. I always kept a jar of black licorice candy out for students, which for some reason was still three-quarters full.

“Tate, how’s things?” I asked, and then went on without waiting for her usual smart-aleck answer. “I got this report here from your social studies teacher that says you’ve already missed six classes this quarter. What’s up, girl?”

“Six classes? Sure you’re not talking about my sister?”

“Ha! C’mon, don’t give me that line again. I mean it, what’s up? You’re a straight-A student at risk of failing because of absences, detentions, and mouthing off. Doesn’t quite make sense somehow. What can we do to fix it?”

She shrugged. “It’s sixth period. Sometimes I take a long lunch.”

I laughed. “Oh, I hear you, sometimes I want to take a long lunch too, but you know what?”

“What?” Tate asked.

“I don’t.”

Tate didn’t know what to say for once. She smiled awkwardly and shrugged. I really liked this kid. She was one person who I thought about when the last bell rang. Wondered how she was doing and if she was going to make it out of Rockland High okay.

I leaned in close to her and whispered. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” I said. “Everyone kinda hates high school. Unless they are a little bent. But once you’re out, you’re out, and it’s a whole new world. You fail social studies, I mean, you do something stupid and just stop showing up, and you’re gonna miss getting to that new world fast. You’ll end up trapped somewhere you can’t stand for even longer. Does that make sense?”

She rolled her eyes. I’d been telling her similar things last year too, until she came in with a list of successful high-school dropouts and handed it to me. “I hung this over my desk at home,” she’d said. “Thought you might want a copy.” Still, I wasn’t about to give up trying. I got it about why she didn’t want to be in school. She wanted to live in the world instead of sit at a desk. And she didn’t know why she had to show up at all if she was getting good grades. And nobody had yet been able to make her see the logic in it. I also knew Tate got high, which, honestly, as long as she still did her work and didn’t become a slacker, I didn’t really care that much about. The thing I wanted her to do was show up. I wanted her to pass. I’d seen enough kids go through the system, and seen enough friends still working at Pizza Hut, to know that there were plenty of ways some seemingly innocuous drug could drag you down, but Tate’s problem was being there at all.

“Well, look,” I told her. “Whether it makes sense or not, promise me you’ll go to class tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She looked up and nodded at me. “All right.”

Tate left the office but lingered around outside. She really didn’t want to go back to class—there were only fifteen more minutes anyway, and she could just as easily study a little right now by herself. And besides, something about hanging around Richards’s office made her feel more relaxed. Syd liked Richards because she often saw her smoking on the way from the parking lot to the school, had a loud musical laugh that you could hear in the hallways, and wore black skinny jeans every day. Jeans and a pretty designer blouse. You could tell she didn’t want to dress up at all.

And Tate could easily picture her wearing black lipstick and a ball-chain necklace back when Richards was in high school herself. Now the woman wore a small string of pearls every day, but Syd considered it just a professional costume. She knew that Ally actually admired the pearls and blouse—tried to dress like that herself. Ally described her as “caring but professional,” and Syd had to admit it was a good description. There was something about Richards that both girls liked.

Syd sat on the floor across the hall, where she could still look through the door. She watched Richards pull a file out of her drawer and look at it.

Principal Fitzgerald peeked his head into her office. And Syd watched from the hallway—waiting for him to tell her to get back to class—but he didn’t seem to see her at all.

“Still pondering the fate of Tate?” he asked her.

Richards looked up. “She’s a good kid, Dan,” she said.

“That’s the attitude we hired you for, Mandy.”

“She is, though. I really think she could go on to a top ten. If something besides skateboarding could hold her interest for more than a week and she’d get herself to classes.” She played absently with her pearls as she looked back down at the file. “Her standardized-test scores are high. Her teachers say this kid could be half there or dominate the class, bringing in all kinds of information or doing special reading or extra-credit projects. She’s smart as hell. And she’s always got that joke, ‘You must be thinking of my sister,’ when she’s getting in trouble or getting particular praise. She’s an interesting kid. Mercurial.”

Syd could feel her heart beating harder listening to their conversation. She wanted to hear more and wanted to get up and leave before they said anything that might be upsetting or weird.

Fitz put his hand on the doorframe and leaned there. “Yeah,” he said. “Her best friend Declan—maybe he’s her boyfriend—has the same attitude. Kid’s an incredible wiseass but clearly headed to Harvard. He’s one of those geniuses who goes on to be a professor or gets scooped up to work on a government project. I wish they could be like their friend Becky. She’s such a sweetheart, never in trouble.”