Big Fat Disaster (20 page)

Coach Allison crosses his arms over his chest. “Is that a response?”

I glance sideways at Ryan; he’s scowling, as usual. “N-no, sir.”

“What did you say to Mr. Ellis?”

I swallow and choke on my own spit. “I—was telling Ryan—that—he doesn’t have a problem.”

Ryan plants his elbows on his desk and leans his forehead on his palms.

Coach Allison’s face is bright red. “Now
that’s
where you’re wrong, Miss Denton.” He steps to Ryan’s desk and addresses the top of his head. “Look at me, boy.”

The room is so silent that when my stomach gurgles, it’s like an alarm going off. I press my hand against my abdomen and try to silence it.

“I said, ‘
Look at me,’
boy.” Coach Allison’s fists are on Ryan’s desk, and I see that even his
hands
are bright red. He’s pissed off from head to toe.

When Ryan won’t raise his eyes, Coach Allison bends down and aligns his face a few feet from Ryan’s, so that he has to meet his stony stare. His voice is low but somehow loud at the same time. “I do not want you in this class, and I am going to do everything in my power to see that you are removed. What you did to Jared Moore was inexcusable. The idea of him sitting in a jail cell instead of on the fifty-yard line makes me
sick
.” He leans forward until the two of them are practically nose to nose. “Chief Taylor and I are buddies.”

He backs up the slightest bit; watches Ryan’s face for a reaction. “I know about the false police report your mother filed on Michael for the misunderstanding you boys had in here on the last day of school. Now, I wasn’t present, of course, but I don’t buy that pack of lies you told. You try to make any more problems for my players this year, and you’ll be sorry. Got it?”

Ryan’s jaw muscles flex beneath Coach Allison’s death stare, and his eyes are so dark, they look like charcoal briquettes. Through clenched teeth, he seethes, “Yes.”

The man breathes the words, “Yes…what?”

Ryan’s chest is rising and falling; his flat voice drips hatred from every word, just like it does any time he talks to me. “Sir…Yes…
Sir
.”

The coach rises and walks hurriedly to the hallway. He looks left and right, then steps back, closes the door, and gestures to a stack of math workbooks by the wall. “Rodriguez and Miller, distribute those to your classmates.” He strides to the whiteboard, writes “Unit 1, Exercises A-E. Due tomorrow,” then plops into his chair and pulls up Solitaire on the computer.

The first thing I notice on the wall outside the life skills classroom is a poster:
Normal People Worry Me
. The teacher, a young woman with blue eyes and chin-length strawberry blonde hair, shakes the hand of each person as they come through the door. She’s dressed in a long blue tunic and white leggings. “Good morning! Welcome! Sit anywhere.”

Other than Kyle from Fun Math, I don’t recognize anyone from my earlier classes. I slide my backpack onto a chair and sit at a table by myself. There’s a girl sitting alone at another table. She looks familiar: She has a splatter of freckles across her nose, her skin is the color of coffee ice cream, and she has shaggy brownish-black hair. I catch her eye and give her a close-mouthed smile, but she immediately looks away.

The teacher pulls the door closed and moves to stand between our tables. “We’re going to be doing a partner activity today, so I need you two to sit together, please.” When the girl makes no move toward me, I gather my stuff and join her. The teacher smiles, “Thanks…and your name is?”

“Colby.”

“Nice to meet you, Colby. I’m Mrs. Lowe. And you are…?” She glances at my shy table mate, who says softly, “Becca Schuler.”

Becca slouches in her seat, tucks her hair behind her ears, and fingers the pearl buttons on the plaid western shirt she’s wearing. It looks like a man’s shirt, and it’s way too big for her. Her jeans are faded with holes worn in the knees, and she’s the only student I’ve seen so far wearing cowboy boots. Even though Piney Creek is country, the kids dress mostly like they did at my old school in a suburb of Dallas.

I realize where I’ve seen her before: the Goodwill store. She’s the girl that Drew nearly mowed down in her rush to get away from the mangy rabbit vest.

Mrs. Lowe distributes a worksheet with a triangle on it, strides to the whiteboard, and draws a huge triangle. She labels it
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
, divides it into five sections, and turns to us. “This class is called life skills, and it’s about learning how to take care of yourself so that you not only survive—you
thrive
. I’m not going to waste our first day talking to you about how I
need
you to act in my class; you’re young adults and you know what you need to do at school. But…how do you get
your
needs met? What are the most important things
in life
? Go ahead: call out what you think you need to survive.”

One kid says, “Money!”

Mrs. Lowe writes it outside of the triangle. As each person calls out something, she adds to the list: “A car. I
need
to get off the bus.”…“A smartphone!”…“A laptop.”…“My little brother needs to stay out of my room. Like, forever.”

She makes the time-out sign, then turns and labels the bottom section of the triangle,
Physical Needs
. “Okay, let’s narrow our focus to this part only, which we could also call
Survival Needs
. Think: if you don’t have these three things, you die.”

The same kid yells out, “Money!” and everybody laughs. But he wasn’t joking. “Well, don’t you die without it? If you don’t have money, you can’t buy food—”

Mrs. Lowe exclaims, “Ding-ding-ding! Yes!” She jots
Food
on the board and turns to us. “Exactly how long one can survive without food depends on several things, such as how much a person weighs, their genetics, how good their health is to begin with, and, most importantly, whether or not they are sufficiently hydrated. So, another essential of life is…”

“Water!”

“That’s right: Humans
need
water to live. We lose water when we sweat, go to the bathroom, and even when we breathe. Your body needs water to survive. That said, some doctors say that people can go three to five days without water. But don’t try it. Don’t even go a day without—” She turns to the board and adds
Water
to the
Physical Needs
section of the triangle. “And the last necessity of life is?”

Kyle from Fun Math says, “TV?”

Mrs. Lowe rolls her eyes but smiles. After a few moments of silence, she prompts, “Tell me this, Kyle: Are you going to watch your television inside a cardboard box under a bridge?”

He looks confused at first; then a slow grin spreads across his face. “Oooooh…a place to live.”

“Right.” Mrs. Lowe completes the
Physical Needs
section with
Shelter
. “You have to have some kind of structure that protects you from the elements, you know, like freezing weather, Texas heat, tornadoes, hail, and so on.” She steps away and gestures to the triangle like she’s Vanna White on
Wheel of Fortune
. “Physiological needs come first. If your body’s not having its needs met in a healthy way, it’s hard to focus on anything else. Let’s move up to the next level:
Safety Needs
, the need to feel safe and to trust. Turn to your table partner and come up with three ways that people’s safety needs are met. You have five minutes.” She sets a timer. “Go.”

I try a joke to break the ice with Becca. “Well, I guess
one
way to feel safe when shopping is to not be knocked over by a seven-year-old.”

She furrows her brow, clearly confused.

“Two Saturdays ago? My little sister plowed into you?” I lean down and whisper, “At the Goodwill store? Remember? I caught you just before you hit the ground and went
‘Splat’
?”

Becca looks at me—
really looks at me
—for the first time, and I see that she remembers. She doesn’t smile. “Oh, yeah.”

“Sorry about that. I told my sister that the rabbit vest she was wearing had a disease, and she freaked out.”

Becca nods and looks down again.

I write my name on my paper. “So, we’re supposed to come up with three ways to feel safe and to trust. Do you have one?”

“I’m finished.” She slides her paper toward me. She’s listed:
Mom & Dad
,
Home
, and
Best Friend
.

I grimace and remember tucking the picture of Dad and that lady—Marcy—into my bra so that no one else would see it. My chest hurts with pangs of jealousy that Becca has parents she can count on. My mom thinks of me as a big fat disaster; I haven’t seen or heard from my father since the day he walked out the door—unless I count the video of him being chased by news reporters as he raced to a motel room where his girlfriend pulled the curtains closed—and now I’m living in a shitty little trailer with a plastic star taped to my ceiling. And…best friend? Of course I’ve had friends, but I’ve never had anybody I was super close to.

“You have a minute and a half,” Mrs. Lowe calls.

I grit my teeth.
I can’t write what Becca wrote.
“I think Mrs. Lowe means like, you know, smoke alarms or locks on the front door.”

Becca sets her pen on the table and folds her arms.

I write,
smoke alarms, locks, and
…that’s safety. What about trust?

I picture my dad sliding his arms around my mom and spewing some bullshit about being like honeymooners again in a few years.
Package deal, my ass.

My stomach clenches. I close my eyes.

Mrs. Lowe warns, “Thirty seconds.” Most everyone else is finished and they’re talking about what they did over the summer.
I
helped destroy my family, and it only took spilling coffee and finding a photo to do it.

I slam down my pen and claw my head. The hum of conversation stops and I feel people staring. Mrs. Lowe puts her hand on my shoulder, leans down, and whispers, “Don’t stress about this, Colby. It’s not for a grade, and there are no wrong answers.”

Tears fill my eyes, and I feel like a kid on the first day of kindergarten. I hate the lump in my throat. I tell myself that it’s stupid to get this upset about an answer on a worksheet, even though I know that’s not what it’s about.

It takes all my self-control not to reach under the table and unfasten the top button on my jeans. I look down and see that my shirt has bunched up against the table, revealing the roll of fat around my middle. I feel myself being watched; I glance up and see that a boy at the table next to mine is staring at my bare skin. He’s got his hand over his mouth, leaning over to the girl by his side. I pull the shirt down and lower my head so that he can’t see me cry. I wish I was home—but the home I picture is the one in Northside: the one that Dad took from us when he forgot that
honesty is everything
to our family.

I tune out the class discussion of
Safety Needs
, and I’m relieved when Mrs. Lowe explains
Love and Friendship Needs
without requiring that I work with Becca. I’m gathering my things to leave class when Mrs. Lowe asks, “Colby? Did you hear the homework assignment?”

I shake my head and pretend to adjust my backpack strap.

“I asked you to consider what Self-Worth Needs are. Just come up with five things that you think a person can do to feel self-worth.” She watches the last few kids leave. “You’re new, right?”

I nod. My eyes fill up again and I lower my head.

“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?”

I’m trying so hard not to cry that it feels like my skull is going to come apart. A sob comes out as a snort, and she mistakes it for a giggle. I’ll take it.

“What’s so funny?”

“J-just the idea that talking about my problems is going to make it easier to…” I try to inhale but find it’s impossible. I’m in too much pain.

“To what, Colby?”

I can’t think of any other answer. “Breathe.”