Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(64)
As soon as Assembly was over, I pulled Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail out of their line back to class.
“Family emergency,” I told Sister Monica, who responded by looking relieved.
“What’s the matter, Aunt Suze?” Flopsy asked as I hurried them along the open-air corridor, past all the other classroom doors, until we got to where Becca’s geometry class was being held. “What’s the emergency?”
“The kind where I need you guys to go out into the courtyard and play quietly with your friend Lucy for a bit while I talk to her friend Becca. If you do that, without bothering us, I’ll buy you whatever you want for lunch.”
The girls exchanged excited glances. They couldn’t express their joy the way they wanted to, because shouting in the breezeway was forbidden, but their body language—they looked as if they were about to scream and do backflips—said it all. Chicken fingers and fries were infinitely preferable to the healthy lunch—turkey wraps and carrot sticks—their poor, long-suffering mother had made them.
There’s no getting around it: I might have helped a lot of people get into heaven, but I’m seriously starting to doubt my chances of ever getting there myself.
“Can we,” Mopsy whispered to me intensely, “play in the fountain?”
The ancient decorative fountain in the center of the mission’s courtyard, near which the students were expressly forbidden from going, was my stepnieces’ favorite place in all of creation. I’d like to have said this was due to their exquisite aesthetic taste, but I feared a different explanation.
“You may play near it,” I said. “Not in it.”
When all three girls began to pout, I gritted my teeth. “Listen, we are not going through this again. The people who put coins in that fountain made wishes as they threw them. If you fish them out and steal them, it’s like stealing people’s wishes, and that’s as wrong as stealing their money—which is against the law, by the way, as we have discussed repeatedly in the past.”
The three of them had been dragged into the office so many times for stealing coins from the fountain that they were known around the teacher’s lounge as the Three-K Banditos.
Mopsy opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off, asking, “What did Jiminy Cricket say about wishes?”
Cotton-tail promptly replied, “They come true when you wish upon a star.”
“There’s nothing in that song about fountains.” Mopsy always had an angle.
Realizing that I was never going to get them to play nicely unless I sweetened the bribe—fries were losing their currency—I said, “Look, just this one time you can fish for coins from the fountain, but only if you promise to put them back when you’re done.” Their faces fell, and I added, through gritted teeth, “Fine. I’ll reimburse you after school from my own wallet, you little swindlers.”
Their faces lit up once more. The idea of scooping slimy quarters and dimes from the bottom of an old fountain brought them such happiness (because it was free money), I now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were Paul Slater’s daughters. He loved money more than anyone I’d ever met.
“All right, be quiet and let me concentrate.”
I turned and rapped loudly on the door to Becca’s first-period classroom. No one had phoned in to say that she was staying home sick for the day, which surprised me. If the beloved principal of my school had nearly died at my house the day before, no way would I show up to class the morning after, if only to avoid nasty questions from the student body. This kid either had no common sense whatsoever, or a stepmother who wanted her out of the house. I suspected the latter.
Without waiting for anyone to answer my knock, I opened the door and entered the classroom.
“I’m Susannah Simon,” I said to the harassed-looking teacher, Ms. Temple. She wasn’t one I knew from my own days as a student at the Mission Academy. “I’m from the administrative office. Becca Walters is needed there. Now.”
As was typical when anyone was called to the office, the entire class began to catcall and hoot. All except for Becca, who was seated in the second-to-last row, near the windows, which looked out over the achingly blue sea. She seemed to be continuing her campaign to appear as inconspicuous as possible. She still had not brushed (or seemingly washed) her hair, her uniform was as ill-fitting as ever, and she wore the same bandage I’d affixed to her wrist two days earlier. It was now gray and frayed around the edges.
Lucia stood at her side, solemn-faced as always. Unlike Becca, Lucia did not seem surprised to see me, nor did her face turn bright red as she met my gaze.
“All right, students, simmer down,” Ms. Temple said, in a bored voice. “Becca, take your things in case you aren’t back by next period.”
Becca stood up, gathering her books with fingers that shook so nervously it was inevitable she’d drop one of them. This caused the hooting not only to increase, but for some of the boys to call out even ruder remarks than before, and the girls to smirk and whisper among themselves.
Ms. Temple, who appeared to be only a little older than I was, did nothing about any of this. Instead she took the interruption as an opportunity to pick up her cell phone and check her messages.
The only person in the room who looked the least bit concerned for Becca—besides me and her little ghost companion, who was one step behind her—was Sean Park, the tenth-grade computer whiz who’d saved my office desktop. He was sitting in the front row, gazing back at Becca with a look of compassion, while occasionally throwing his peers glances of disgust.