Expelled(3)

“According to Jude, Parker’s testimony was something along the lines of ‘I was so drunk it could have been Tinkerbell under that head.’ He had no idea who was with him that night.” I kick halfheartedly at the cinder-block wall. “Principal Dekum’s zero tolerance policy blows.”

Sasha smiles. “I’m out, too. Does that make you feel better?”

“You are? What for?”

“It’s a long and boring story. The important thing is that this is a momentous occasion. They’ve never had this many expulsion hearings at once. Think of it—you’re part of Arlington High School history.”

“Great. Scandal and infamy is what I’ve always been after.”

Her blue eyes bore into mine. “What are you going to miss?”

“Uh, final exams?”

“No, I mean miss as in long for.”

What I longed for had nothing to do with school. I shrug.

Sasha nods like the matter’s settled. “There you go. You’re better off. Summer vacation starts three weeks early for you. You can, like, lie around in your basement with Jude and play Dark Souls 3 or whatever.”

“That’s not what I want to—”

“I said or whatever.” And then she pops her earbuds back in and opens her book, like I’ve just been dismissed. Which I guess I have.

As I walk away down the hall, though, I feel the tiniest bit better. If getting expelled could have a sliver of a silver lining, it’d be having something in common with Sasha Ellis.





3


I don’t expect a homemade birthday cake with seventeen candles waiting for me on the kitchen counter when I get home, which is good, because there isn’t one.

There’s only a note.


Theo,

I had to go back to work. I'm sorry, but the freezer's a wonderland of dinner options. Just don't eat all the salted caramel ice cream or there'll be hell to pay.

Love you to pieces,

Mom



I honestly don’t think she knows what day it is, and I don’t blame her—she’s seriously overextended. She works at a bank all day, and at night she does bookkeeping for a bunch of local churches. Once I asked her if she felt hypocritical, seeing as how she’d been a socialist atheist at UCLA, and she told me that if I had any more stupid questions I could keep them to my wiseass self.

Maybe I thought she’d hold on to me tighter now it’s just the two of us left. But mostly it seems like the opposite. Like she’s running away from the memory of him and the reality of me—both. Sometimes I think I’ll wake up one day and she’ll be gone. Not dead, like Dad. Just not here.

It’s probably not healthy, but I try not to think about him too much—otherwise, I don’t know if I could even get out of bed in the mornings. No one told me that sadness hurt. Like all the way into your bones.

I take a lot more Advil than I used to. I sleep more, too. Unconsciousness, like ignorance, is bliss.

I’m heating up a frozen burrito when a text comes in from my friend Jude.

So?

Just typing the word expelled makes my appetite instantly vanish. I don’t want to talk to him, either, so I turn off my phone, chuck my burrito into the trash, and head outside. It’s dark now, and everyone’s holed up in their little ranch houses, blue TV light flickering against the closed curtains.

I walk east toward the edge of town, feeling twitchy and depressed. For a long time it seemed like nothing had ever happened to me—that my life was a boring but fundamentally acceptable slog toward graduation and my supposed bright future, whatever that was.

But in the last few months it seems like a lot of things have happened, and none of them have been good. Some, on the other hand, have been downright horrific.

So what the hell am I supposed to do now? If I can’t take my exams, I’ll fail my junior year. And then what? Will I be stuck here forever? Probably the answer to that question is yes. Because what college wants a kid who flunked grade eleven? Certainly I won’t be scholarship material anymore—and without a scholarship, college is a financial impossibility.

My mood grows even darker. Maybe I should just give up and start working at the 7-Eleven with all the other juvies. Maybe it’d be less painful to crush my own dreams before the world does it for me.

My aimless, agitated wandering eventually brings me to the city park I used to play in. Someone’s shot out the streetlights again, so the sad little swing set and the plastic tube slide that’s knocked out the front teeth of generations of six-year-olds are just dim, lonely shadows.

At the far end of the park is the Pinewood water tower, surrounded by chain-link fencing and NO TRESPASSING signs. Jude says there’s a hole in the fence, hidden by blackberry bushes, and that if you can stand a few scratches you can get in.

And sure enough, he’s right. I make it through the chain link with only a little thorn-induced blood loss, and then I’m standing at the base of the water tower. The ladder stops about five feet above the ground, but I can grab the bottom rung and swing my legs up.

Now comes the hard part—the part I never thought I’d have the guts to try.

Gritting my teeth, I haul myself up the ladder, counting the rungs to keep from flipping out over how high I’m getting. Three-quarters of the way to the top, the wind picks up, and the porch lights seem to spin below me. I take a deep breath and keep going, 156, 157, 158.