Blind Spot (9 page)

I shoved his jacket at him and flew over to the living room curtains. Greg’s purple hovercraft sat in the driveway. “Why’s he here?”

Jonathan looked over my shoulder. “What the hell kind of car is that? Is that that loser?” He flew downstairs and ripped the door open. “What do you want?”

I could hear Greg’s awkward surprise. “I . . . need to talk to Roz.”

“Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jonathan said.

I felt embarrassed for Greg standing there, all uncomfortable. But I was annoyed at him for spouting that ridiculous quote and ditching me in the cafeteria. I stepped up to the door and looped my arm in Jonathan’s. “I’m busy, Greg.” I focused my dots on his face to fake eye contact so he’d know I meant it.

“That means get lost,” Jonathan added.

Greg shoved a stack of papers at me. “If you don’t show for class, the deal’s off.”

“What deal?” Jonathan asked, slamming the door shut.

“Class notes.” I flipped through the notes as we walked back upstairs. Every single day was in there. Dated, categorized by topic. Typed. Large font. Bold.

This had taken time, effort. All for me. And I was a total bitch to him.

Suddenly I didn’t want Jonathan there anymore.

I just wanted to be alone.

The next morning, my Life Skills class headed to the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, the first step toward Dellian’s job program. Everyone was excited. Ruth even brought croissants for the road. But I was distracted. Yesterday I’d been so quick to skip with Jonathan. The sight of Dellian, however, reminded me that he’d be asking for a pass in sixth hour.

“In the van, Miss Hart,” Dellian said to me, and then to everyone, “Sit with your partners, please.”

“But I always sit in the front,” Jeffrey said. “I have to sit in the front.”

“Not today, Jeffrey. Go sit in the middle bench with JJ.”

“No! I. Sit. In. The. Front.”

I ignored Jeffrey’s outburst—it was pretty much routine anytime something was out of order or not what he expected—and headed to the back, where Tricia sat sprawled across the bench, spraying whipped cream on her croissant and licking it off. I flung her cloak off the corner of the seat and sat down.

Tricia clutched the material to her body. “You rip it, I kill you.”

“Why do you wear that stupid thing anyway?” I said. “You attend a lot of impromptu Star Wars conventions?”

“Star Wars conventions?” Jeffrey said. He dropped his battle with Dellian and climbed into the middle seat. “Where?”

“Go away!” we yelled in unison. He turned back around.

“My mom made this.” Tricia smoothed her cloak. “Before she went to prison.”

“Prison?” I echoed, sure this was yet another lie to get a reaction from me.

Tricia squirted another blob of Insta-Whip from the canister, pushed the cap on, and shoved it in her pocket. “For killing her dealer.”

“Lovely,” I said.

“It was. All that blood on her Tahitian-brown satin sheets.” Tricia’s eyes glossed over. “Spreading out like petals on a flower.”

“You saw it happen?” I still wasn’t buying this. Tricia loved drama.

“Yeah.” She breathed on the window until a little circle of fog formed. Slowly, she traced her finger through it, forming a smiley face. “Wayne was on top of me when she stabbed him.”

“Jesus, Tricia!” My stomach wrenched. “That’s, that’s—”

She whirled around. “That’s what?”

I stared back, at a loss for words. “That’s . . . awful.” There was nothing else to say. Whether true or another one of her lies, it was awful.

“So’s your breath.” She turned back to making smiley faces on the window.

Maybe it was the sickening revelation that drugs weren’t Tricia’s only demons; maybe it was shame over the notes Greg had painstakingly typed out for me; or maybe it was simply selfish fear because I didn’t have an excuse for missing class the day before. Whatever nudged me, I decided right before lunch that it was time to talk to the principal.

“Mr. Dellian has been marking me absent—” I began.

“Yes.” Principal Ratner leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Dellian informed me of this situation. Our tardy policy is clear. If you’re more than fifteen minutes late, you’re marked absent, whether you eventually make it to class or not.”

Wait, what?
“No, see, I was never tardy!”

“You’ve never been tardy?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Well, yeah, I was late the first day because I got lost . . .” And I flat out skipped yesterday. “For most of those absences, I was there the whole time. He’s lying.”

“Roswell, when someone won’t even make eye contact with me, it usually means
she
is lying.”

“But I’m not!” This was not going well. “My eyesight—”

“Mr. Dellian said you’d try to use your disability to get out of this. Let me guess. He’s not accommodating your IEP?”

My mouth dropped open.

“He said you’d say that too.” He gave me a look of pity. “Mr. Dellian knows his students very well, Roswell, including you. He thinks you may be feeling overwhelmed with the AP class but are afraid to admit it. No one will think any less of you if you transfer out, okay? But skipping or arriving unacceptably late, that’s a disruption and not fair to the rest of the class.”

My mouth was still open. Dellian had thought of everything. It was all twisted, distorted. “You don’t understand—”

“I do understand. And if I had my way, you’d be suspended for these absences, but Mr. Dellian requested that nothing be done at this time. He’s given you a second chance, Roswell. Use it wisely.” As I stood up to go, he added, “If you need to get out of that AP class, I can send you to the counselor right now.”

I didn’t answer—my body was caught between crying and screaming, and I really wasn’t sure what would’ve come out of my mouth if I had answered. I left, feeling powerless and trapped, and desperate to talk to Greg. He was the only person who seemed to understand. Maybe he’d have an idea of what to do next.

If he’d talk to me.

I hurried toward Heather and Greg at our usual lunch table. “Greg—”

“Hey, Roz!” Fritz said as my face began to burn. I’d mistaken him and Ricky for Greg and Heather. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so embarrassing. “Heather sick again?”

I frowned, disoriented by my mistake. “Not sure,” I said, searching now for Greg. “Is she at
Grease
tryouts?”

Fritz shook his head. “Those aren’t until Thursday.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t spoken to her since Friday.
Was
she sick? Or was skipping two days in a row normal for her? “Have you seen Greg Martin anywhere?”

Fritz pointed to the far corner of the cafeteria. “Tell Heather I said hey.”

“Thanks. I will.” I made my way to where Greg sat studying. “I talked to Ratner just now,” I said, sitting down. “Dellian sold him some story about my being supertardy every day because I can’t hack an AP class.”

“That’s too bad,” Greg mumbled without looking up.

Not the response I’d hoped for. “Thanks for the notes. They’re very thorough and neat and . . . thanks.”

Greg gave a half nod, still not looking at me.

“I won’t miss class again,” I continued. “Jonathan and I—”

“I don’t want to hear about him.”

“’Kay.” I shrugged. “I won’t talk about him.”

“Good.” He pretended to read his notebook.

I stared at his ear. “I know you’re not reading,” I said. “I’m the queen of fake reading. The trick is to move your head a teensy bit from left to right to look legit. And turn the page in a timely fashion. That’s a must.”

“I’m studying. I don’t need to turn the page.”

“Oh. Are you studying the same word over and over? ’Cause you’re not moving your eyes that I can see. That could be because I can’t see . . . ” I was making a fool of myself. I just wanted to apologize. I ripped the notebook from under his nose, ignoring his outcry, flipped to a clean page, scribbled “I’m sorry,” and shoved it back at him.

He shrugged and gave me a blank stare.

I rolled my eyes. Of course he wasn’t going to make this easy. “I was a bitch yesterday. Forgive me?” I wrote.

He took the pen from me: “Yes. I’m sorry too for being a jerk.”

“You weren’t a jerk. I was,” I said.

“We both were.” He smiled. “It would’ve been difficult ignoring you during our presentation.”

“What presentation?”

“That’s what I wanted to tell you last night. Dellian said we have to present what we learned at the exhibit to the class today if we want our extra credit.”

“Why does he want me to fail so badly?” I said, my voice catching.

Greg shook his head. “He tried to get me to present yesterday. I’m sure because you weren’t there. I lied and said you had all our notes.” He tapped his notebook. “I made us bullet points.”

I imagined him in class freaking out, stressing, lying. Meanwhile, where was I? At home with Jonathan’s tongue down my throat? “Sorry you had to lie.” I sighed, feeling defeated and deflated. Everything had spun so out of control. “Maybe I should just sit in that back seat, huh?”

Greg sighed too. “It might be the only way to stay above water at this point.”

“I guess he wins.”

“No,” Greg said softly, “he hasn’t, Roz. We’ll find another way to win.”

I hated taking that seat, and the way Dellian gloated over my sudden compliance made me sick. He noted my presence with a loud “Hart, present!,” gave Greg and me an enthusiastic “Well done!” after our presentation, and remained uncharacteristically upbeat throughout his lecture.

“Miss Hart?” he said after class ended. “Now that you are sitting where you belong, are there any accommodations I can provide you? Prewritten notes perhaps?”

“Whatever.” I started to leave.

“One more thing.” He picked up his attendance book. “With the number of absences, yesterday’s puts you at risk of suspension. Do you have a note excusing you?”

“Suspended? That’s the first time I’ve missed!”

“I’m not going to discuss the number of days you have or have not missed, Miss Hart. Do you have an excuse for yesterday?”

“No.” I didn’t know how to fight anymore.
Go ahead,
I thought,
I give up.

Mr. Dellian leaned back in his chair. “Were you by any chance with Ms. Torres?”

“Ms. Torres? You mean Heather? How do you . . . ? You don’t—”

“No, I don’t have her in any classes, if that’s what you’re asking, but I am aware that she has been absent these past two days and that you two are friends. How is she?”

“She’s . . . hanging in there?” Why was
he
asking about Heather? Had something happened to her?

“Please tell her I asked about her. I’ll erase this absence for now, but if you miss again without an excuse, you’ll be suspended. Understood?”

“Yes.” He was erasing it? That didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. I yanked my cell phone out and dialed Heather’s cell as I left the room.

Greg was waiting. “What happened?”

The call went straight to voice mail. “Heather, this is Roz. Call me.” I shut the phone and looked at Greg. “I need to find Heather’s address.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe. I need a phone book.” We walked down to the main office and borrowed the white pages. “What’s her dad’s name?” Greg asked. “There are tons of Torreses.”

Crud. I had no idea. “Wait!” I said as he closed the book. “Look up Dellian!”

“Mr. Dellian? I thought you wanted—”

“He lives below her! Find his address and we can—”

“Find hers,” Greg finished, his head already scanning the book again. “Got it, and”—he flipped back to the
T
section—“got it. Let’s go!”

When we’d pulled onto the highway, Greg asked, “So why the urgency?”

“Mr. Dellian asked if I was with Heather when I skipped class yesterday.”

“Reasonable assumption—you were both absent, and you’re friends.”

“You don’t understand. She doesn’t have him for any classes. She didn’t even know he was a teacher. She thought he was Tricia’s boyfriend because Tricia’s there all the time.”

“At his apartment? Yuck!”

“I know. Anyway, Dellian told me to tell Heather he’d asked about her.”

“So he’s being neighborly.”

“No!” I cried. “She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t talk to him. How would he know she was sick if she isn’t in any of his classes and she doesn’t talk to him?”

“Okay.” Greg nodded. “That is a little weird.”

“More than a little.” I tried Heather’s cell phone. Again it went to voice mail. I dialed the home number Greg had copied from the phone book. It rang and rang.

“When was the last time you talked to her?” Greg asked.

“Friday afternoon. I asked her to go to the museum with me.”

“You haven’t talked to her since Friday?” Greg glanced at me. “And you’re just now getting worried?”

“I’ve been busy!” I said. “And I don’t know her
that
well. I thought maybe skipping was routine for her.” But his question shamed me. I was a lousy friend. “I’m worried now, though.
Really
worried.”

We climbed the stairs to Heather’s third-floor apartment and knocked. No answer.

I put my ear near the door and listened. “She’s in there.”

Greg pushed his head up against the door and listened. “I don’t hear anything.”

“Well, I do. I have sonic ears; trust me. She’s on the other side of the door. Heather?” I said into the door. “Come on, open up. It’s Roz.”

The chain clanked. Heather slowly opened the door. Dark half-moons covered the skin below her eyes, rubbed mascara maybe, or lack of sleep, or both. Her hair was tangled and matted.

“Hey.” She stiffened when she saw Greg. “What’s he doing here?”

“I drove,” Greg explained. “But I don’t have to stay.”

“Okay,” Heather said.

Greg shrugged at me. “I guess I’m going. Call when you’re ready to go home.”

“You have football practice, right? I’ll take the bus.”

“No, call me.” He took my cell and began pushing buttons. “I’m programming me into your speed dial.” He handed it back. “Number 2 for my cell, number 3 for my home.”

“Only number 2?” I asked. “Why not number 1?”