Here So Far Away(65)

I wasn’t going to get through the day. I needed a reason to go home—flu, allergies, political dissention. I’d think of something by the time I got to the office. I would impale myself on the metal divider in my pencil case, if need be.

Lisa caught my wrist as I passed her. “How well did you know him?”

She obviously wanted to keep talking about it, this little brush she’d had with celebrity, which was irritating only because she didn’t know what she was scratching at.

“Not well,” I said.

“But you worked for him?”

“Mostly I helped out his landlord when he wasn’t around.”

Nat was shaking her head at Lisa, who released my wrist and leaned back into Keith.

“He was nice. He didn’t have to let us go,” Christina said, grabbing her bag and following me to the door. “’Course, George probably sucked him off.”

I’d never hit anyone before and had no idea it would hurt so much. Hurt me, that is. I assume it hurt Christina from the noise her face made as my fist made contact and the way she gasped and Lisa crying, “You bitch!” I looked down at my throbbing knuckles, astonished that they had done what they had done.

“We do not tolerate violence in this school, as you well know,” Mr. Humphreys said over the sound of my mother’s weeping. “But . . .” He sighed. “There are two sides to every story, and experience tells me that students, especially female students, rarely lash out like this without being provoked.”

We were sitting in his office, my mother and me on hard wooden chairs designed for maximum discomfort. The back on mine felt like it could eject me at any moment.

“No, I deserve to be suspended,” I said a little too sincerely.

Shit. Now he was looking at me with even more interest.

“Mr. Humphreys is giving you a chance to explain yourself,” Mum said. “So explain yourself.”

I shrugged. “Christina has had it in for me all year cuz her boyfriend used to have a crush on me. I got sick of it.”

The truth is, just before my knuckles slammed into her cheekbone, it registered that Christina was sort of smiling when she said what she said. The tiniest possibility that she had been teasing was threatening to sink in.

“Mrs. Warren, do you know what the other students call your daughter? The Enforcer.”

So that was a thing. Bill and Sid were the only ones who called me that to my face.

“Because her father is in law enforcement?”

“It’s a hockey term. Means the heavy. The tough guy. But enforcers don’t pick fights on the ice for fun. They’re usually protecting someone.”

“Who were you protecting, Georgie?”

I had nothing. The easy lies, the quick comebacks—gone.

“I’m trying to help you,” said Mr. Humphreys.

“Thank you, sir. But I just want to go home.”

He sighed another Nat-like sigh, so drawn out that he seemed to be emptying his lungs entirely. “Two weeks. You’ll apologize to Christina in this office on the day you return.”

“You will not leave the house,” Mum said in the car.

“Fine.”

“You will not make phone calls. You will not have guests.”

“No problem.”

Mum was a nervous driver, terrified of taking her eyes off the road, and her furtive, machine-gun glances at me were almost comical.

“I’m glad you’re taking this so seriously.”

“Whatever you want to do is okay by me. I’m not going to start drinking the Listerine as soon as your back is turned.”

“Why would you drink the Listerine?”

“For the alcohol.”

“How would you know that?!”

“I said I wouldn’t drink the . . . Never mind. God, I get into one fight and suddenly I’m a delinquent.”

She pulled over. “Not suddenly. Not suddenly at all. You’ve been acting strangely for months. Out all the time. Your grades up and down and up again. Look at your clothes falling off you! I would say you were in knots about your father’s situation except you don’t show any compassion for him, not anymore. Nothing seems to affect you—except that pig. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that we never see Lisa anymore.”

“Did it occur to you to ask me what’s wrong, if this is all such suspicious behavior?”

“What’s wrong? What is it? Is it drugs?”

“I’m probably the only person who gets peer-pressured not to do drugs.”

“Then what? What?”

“I’m just . . . tired. Tired of being here. School. The valley. Dad. All of it.”

She turned on her signal light to pull back onto the road. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “For someone so hell-bent on getting away, you’re doing a very good job of jeopardizing your future.”

There was nothing harder than Dad’s anger. Hard like a slab of thick, cold glass. You could see in, but you couldn’t get past it; you didn’t even try. You watched him talking with Matthew at the dinner table and gesturing to Mum with his bandaged finger to pass the scalloped potatoes as though you were watching a TV show about a place you’d like to travel to but couldn’t afford. You dug your socked toes into the shag area rug and told yourself that you’d had a good run, but sooner or later the law catches up to everyone. Like Al Capone getting sent up for tax evasion, the suspension was just the thing that helped the Sergeant bring you in. It sucked, but you couldn’t do anything about it. You told yourself that, though you didn’t quite feel it in your bones.