All Adults Here(33)

Ms. Skolnick was pacing the narrow corridor between her large desk and the blackboard. She was short and smiley, with an unseasonably bulky sweater. She held a piece of chalk in one hand, balanced in between her fingers like a cigarette. Some students grunted greetings when they came into the classroom, but most didn’t. Cecelia watched from her seat. An air-conditioning vent was directly above her, blowing freezing cold air, and Cecelia was glad, finally, to have worn the jumpsuit.

“I have an extra sweater, if you need one.” It was Ms. Skolnick, who had somehow made her way down the side of the room to Cecelia’s desk. “This seat is the Arctic Circle. I’ve complained to maintenance a thousand times, but there just doesn’t seem to be a way to temper the temperature, if you know what I mean.”

“Okay,” Cecelia said. “I didn’t know, but I’m warm enough.”

“Didn’t know that your assigned seat would be a Popsicle stand? Four demerits! I’m kidding,” Ms. Skolnick said, looking at Cecelia’s face. “We don’t have demerits here. We have detention, but no demerits.”

“Am I in trouble for something?” Cecelia asked.

“No! Why? Have you done something?” Ms. Skolnick widened her eyes. “I am just introducing myself, saying hello, offering a port in the storm. It’s cool. Welcome! I moved a few times as a kid, too, so I know the whole new-school-yikes feeling.”

Behind Ms. Skolnick, a bell rang, and at the same time, Sidney and one of her cohorts—Bailey, the blonde—appeared in the doorway, which startled Cecelia, but the expressions on the girls’ faces didn’t flicker; they split up without a word, homing pigeons who knew the way. Cecelia had never felt that confident, not even in her old school. Even if her desk had had a photograph of her printed on the seat, she probably still would have asked if she was in the right place.

“That’s my cue,” Ms. Skolnick said. “Morning, Sidney.” Cecelia watched as Sidney slid into the seat right next to her. She made eye contact with Cecelia, but when Cecelia smiled in what she hoped was a very normal and friendly way, Sidney kept her lips in a tight, flat line and turned toward the blackboard.

Cecelia shivered. Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she took it out as little as possible, just to see who had written. Dad, it said, in those big block letters, as if her dad was the same as anyone else’s, as if he were a sitcom dad, with a basketball hoop and unflattering jeans and a toolbox full of things that weren’t weed or other herbs to be used medicinally. Hey, the message read. I miss you, sweet pie. Sweet pie. He couldn’t even call her a normal nickname. Cecelia felt her eyes fill with tears and daubed the corners of her eyes in a way that she hoped looked nonchalant. Her father had flown back to New Mexico, probably sitting cross-legged somewhere with his eyes closed. It was weird, to be a part of a whole that was no longer whole, and to be the part that was missing. Cecelia didn’t want to be missing. She wanted to be in her pretend room in her small apartment with her parents, and to push a button and to rewind a little bit, so that everyone could handle things differently. She wanted her mother to join the PTA and to bake American apple pies and to scream at the top of her lungs when an absurd suggestion was made, like Katherine’s parents.

“I’m not a witch,” Cecelia said. Sidney raised an eyebrow, as did a few other kids sitting nearby. “I mean, obviously.”

Sidney leaned over. “You know who would say that? A witch.” She laughed and turned toward the front of the room with her arms crossed over her chest. Cecelia started to sweat.

That was why they’d sent her to Gammy’s, Cecelia thought. She wasn’t good at handling things on her own, and neither was anyone else in her family. If her father had been sitting next to her, he would have nodded, or even chuckled. He wouldn’t have made a cutting remark back. Her mother—a teenage version of her mother—would have scared Sidney to death. But her actual mother would just have rolled her eyes and thought it beneath Cecelia to feel stung. Her parents—her loving, delusional parents—seemed to believe that if Cecelia was at Astrid’s, it would feel almost like an extralong Christmas vacation, a cozy nap on the couch, but clearly that wasn’t true. She was here because no one had said or done the right thing. When the guidance counselor had suggested that another school might be healthier for her, for the bullied, in order to prevent more bullying, her parents had nodded. She was thirteen. There was no world in which the decision was up to her. And so when her parents had sat there the next morning, at their tiny kitchen table, and asked if she was okay with the idea, she had nodded too—what else could she do?



* * *



—

A book landed on her desk with a soft thud. The Catcher in the Rye. Ms. Skolnick was handing them out one by one.

“This looks boring,” said Sidney. “It doesn’t even have a picture on the cover. What’s it about, baseball?”

Some of the other kids chuckled, not wanting to seem dumb for not knowing, but equally clueless and willing to scoff.

“No,” Cecelia said. She’d read it the previous year. “It’s about a kid who gets expelled from school and wanders around New York City and he’s kind of crazy but he’s also funny and it’s a really good book.”

“Spoiler alert, Cecelia!” Ms. Skolnick laughed. “But yes. Not about baseball, strictly speaking. Everyone read the first two chapters tonight, and we’ll get started.”