The Book of Lost Friends(103)

She doesn’t even have a kid in this school. Hers are—no surprise—enrolled out at the lake.

The only thing more annoying than her condescending demeanor is her high-pitched voice. “What in the world such a thing has to do with the district-approved curriculum, which the district pays good money to have developed by an experienced curriculum specialist, I can’t even begin to see.” Her southern accent makes the words sound tactful and sugary sweet, but they’re not. “Our prescribed curriculum is something for which an inexperienced first-year teacher, like yourself, should be grateful. You would do well to follow it to the letter.”

I’m also realizing why she looked vaguely familiar to me in the Cluck and Oink. She was the one who passed right by me on the first day of school, when the pipe truck took the front bumper off my Bug. She looked straight at me, our gazes locked in shock and horror at what had almost happened. You don’t forget a moment like that. And then she drove on like she hadn’t seen a thing. The reason? That was a Gossett Industries truck. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but I do now. It means people can come within inches of mowing you over, and nobody sees a thing, nobody says a thing. Nobody dares.

Sitting here now, I’m clutching the seat of a poorly padded office chair, so hard my fingernails are bending backward. I want to jump up and say, Your truck almost ran me down in the street and nearly hit a six-year-old kid, and it didn’t stop, and you didn’t stop. Now, all of a sudden, you care about this school? These kids?

I can’t even get the classroom materials I need. I have to schlep cookies to school, so my kids won’t sit there hungry while they’re trying to learn.

But you just keep wagging your pricey manicure and that horse-choking diamond bracelet at me. That helps make it all seem so much more right. I grit my teeth against the words. They’re right there behind the barricade. Right, right, right…

There.

Principal Pevoto knows it. He looks at me, shakes his head almost imperceptibly. It’s not his fault. He’s trying to save jobs here. Mine and his. “Miss Silva is inexperienced,” he offers in the sort of soothing tone a nanny would use to placate a spoiled brat. “She didn’t have any way of really understanding the sort of approvals that might be needed before taking on a project of this…” He glances apologetically at me. He’s on my side…except that he can’t be. He’s not allowed. “Scale. In her defense, she did mention it to me. I should have asked further questions.”

I cling to the chair, but it’s about to become an ejection seat. I can’t take anymore. I can’t.

What do you care, lady? Your kids are too good for this school.

In my mind, I’m standing in the middle of the office, screaming those words with righteous indignation. Most of the board members don’t have kids here. They’re business owners, lawyers, doctors in town. They serve on the board for prestige and for control. They want to regulate things like the district’s dividing lines and requests for property tax hikes and bond issues and student transfers to the district’s flagship school on the lake—things that might cost them money, because they own property and most of the businesses here.

“We do provide every new teacher with a copy of the employee manual, which contains all the school policies and procedures.” The lovely Mrs. Gossett, who has not deemed me worthy of permission to use a first name, pops a shiny silver alligator-skin pump off her heel, lets it dangle on her toe as she twitches her foot. “The new employees sign the paper saying they’ve read it, don’t they? It goes in their file, doesn’t it?”

Her little lickspittle, a trim brunette, nods along.

“Of course,” Principal Pevoto answers.

“Well, it’s very plain in the manual that any off-campus activity involving a student group or club requires board approval.”

“To walk two blocks to the city library?” I spit out. Principal Pevoto delivers an eye flash my way. I am not to speak unless spoken to. I’ve been warned already.

The blonde swivels her pointed chin with robotic precision, click, click, click. I am now directly in her crosshairs. “To promise these children that they will be holding some sort of…pageant…off campus, after school hours, most certainly is flouting the rules. And flagrantly, I must say. And in the city graveyard, of all places. Good gracious. Really! It’s not only ridiculous, it’s obscene and disrespectful to the dearly departed.”

I’m losing it. Mayday. Mayday. “I’ve asked the cemetery’s residents. They don’t mind.”

Principal Pevoto draws a sharp breath.

Mrs. Gossett purses her lips. Her nostrils flare. She looks like a skinny Miss Piggy. “I wasn’t teasing; did you think I was? Though I am trying my very best to be nice about this. While that cemetery may not mean anything to you, being from…well, wherever you are from…it surely does matter to this community. For historic reasons, of course, but also because our family relations are laid there. Of course we don’t want them disturbed, their graves desecrated to…to entertain young miscreants. It’s hard enough to keep these kinds of kids from committing mischief out there, much less encouraging them to think of our cemetery as a playground. It’s careless and insensitive.”

“I was hardly—”

She doesn’t even let me finish before she stabs a pointy little finger toward the window. “Some years ago, several expensive grave markers were tipped over in that cemetery. Vandalized.”