Eighteen (18) (2 page)

“Where the fuck do you think I got the shirt?” I snap.

He puts his hands up and smiles. I look away real fast, afraid that he will realize I’m about to start sobbing. I get by in school by being tough. Not mean, just tough. No one can hurt me. But crying in the counseling office does not scream tough. And snapping at a cute guy who was just trying to be nice screams bitch.

Despite my best efforts, my eyes begin to water and my nose starts to run. I start sniffling like crazy.

A thick folder thumps down on Mr. Bowman’s desk in front of me and I look up, startled. I stare into the most brilliant green eyes, the most handsome face. He’s got a two-day-old beard and I concentrate on his lips as he talks. “Can you let Bowman know that’s from me?”

I nod yes, like an idiot. He shoots me a grin and my eyes travel down to his leather jacket and then his hands, where tattoos peek out from under his sleeve. I look back up again, but he just turns away and walks off, his biker boots thudding on the cracked field floors.

What the hell is a guy like that doing in a high school? Probably a narc.

He stops just before turning to leave the outer office and talks to someone. Mr. Bowman peeks his head inside and looks at me.

Then the tattoo guy looks over at me too. What the hell? Definitely a narc.

Mr. Bowman smiles, shakes his hand, and then walks over to me as the biker guy leaves. “OK, well, I did not work a miracle, Shannon. But I did call the alternative school down on Gilbert. That’s where you’ll need to register for science and math.”

Oh, my God. This is really happening. I have to go to night school.

“Your science class is on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, but you need to get down there today and pre-register. If they don’t have enough students before the first day, they cancel the teachers and it’s tough getting kids to show up first semester, let alone the second one. We’ve arranged an exception for your trig class. You are the only student.”

“Wonderful.”

“I worked very hard to get you that class, Shannon.”

I look up at Bowman, feeling a little ashamed. “Sorry. And thank you.” But I’m still about to cry over this.

“Now, can you get a ride from your…” He looks down at my folder on his desk. “Brother?”

“Brother-in-law,” I correct him.

“Right. Can he take you over to Gilbert for registration after school today?”

I shake my head and look at my shoes.

“Can you ask him?”

I shake my head again.

“Why can’t you ask him?”

“He’s at work all day and he can’t take off for me.”

“Can you take the bus?”

“Bus?” Is he kidding? “I come from a small town in Ohio, OK? I took the bus once last year when I lived in San Diego. My best friend and I were trying to go to the mall, but we ended up in Rancho Bernardo. That’s a lot of miles in the opposite direction of Fashion Valley Mall, in case you’re wondering.”

Mr. Bowman laughs. “Well, Gilbert School is straight down Lincoln Avenue. No transfers or anything. Just get on outside the school and get off at Gilbert Street.”

I say nothing and just keep looking at my shoes.

“Can you do that, Shannon? Will you go register today?”

“Maybe I don’t need to graduate.”

“You do. You need to graduate and go to college. You’re bright, Shannon. Don’t throw your life away because you have a few challenging months ahead of you.”

The bell rings so I grab my backpack and stand up, one hundred percent defeated. “Do I at least get to sit out PE?”

“It’s this period, and yes. I put you in the modified class. They meet out at the picnic tables next to the bleachers.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, pushing my way past Taking Back Sunday.

“And Shannon?”

“What?” I say, looking into Sunday’s dark eyes as he stares back.

“Happy birthday. Welcome to eighteen.”

Chapter Two

After going into the bathroom
to smoke and calm down during the class break, I make my way over to the gym. There’s a bazillion other students waiting to get into the field and people are touching and jostling me as we wait. “What the fuck is going on?” I mutter to myself.

A short girl, who I recognize from the arcade across the street from the high school, smiles at me and starts talking in Spanish.

I scowl at her. “I’m not fucking Mexican.”

“Oh,” she says. “Sorry.” And then she realizes she should be offended by my tone, if not my words, and mutters something else in Spanish which I can only conclude is,
Bitch
.

Well, they’ve got me pegged. First day of the new semester and I’ve thrown a fit in the counseling office and insulted someone’s culture. I’m going to hell for that last one.

Someone finally unlocks the gate that leads to the athletics field and people start moving forward. The offended girl pushes past me and disappears.

Good going, Shannon.
I didn’t mean it to come out so rude, but I’m still upset about my counseling session. So yeah, it was rude. But I’m not used to people speaking another language. I’m from Ohio. No one spoke Spanish in my high school there. We had three nationalities—German, Polish, and Italian. And no one spoke any of those languages either. California has been one long string of culture shocks.

Here at Anaheim they have two major ethnic groups—Filipino and Hispanic. White people are few and far between. On my first day of school last month they had announcements in Tagalog and I seriously thought I was still high from the night before, that’s how dumbfounded I was.

I’ve gotten used to it though. Plus, it helps keep me on the outside and I like being on the outside. There are gangs here like crazy, and girls regularly beat the shit out of each other in the bathrooms.

No one even looks twice at me. Not one of them has ever come up and started shit. Which is more than I can say for my experience in San Diego. Those girls were intense. And that was a rich snobby school. Jill, my sister, was dating a Navy guy at the time and we were living in military housing attached to a wealthy neighborhood. So we had all kinds there. I had to use my tough card more than once.

But here, I’m ignored. Completely, one hundred percent ignored.

I scan the field for the picnic tables, find them, and wander over. “Hey,” I say to the two girls sitting on the bench. The Hispanic one has those crutches that attach to the arms. Her legs are bent in a weird way. The African-American one is wearing the thickest coke-bottle glasses I’ve ever seen and she’s holding a white cane between her legs, so I can only conclude she’s legally blind. “I’m Shannon. Is this the modified class?”

They both smile at me, the blind girl squinting. “Yeah,” the one with the arm crutches says. “I’m Mary and this is Josie. Those guys over there are Lewis and Albert.”

Lewis and Albert don’t have recognizable disabilities, and they don’t even acknowledge me, so I ignore them back. “Is this it?” I ask, looking around.

“This is it,” Josie says. “Why are you in here? We haven’t had a new student in… what?”

“Two years,” Mary says.

“Oh,” I say, pointing to my leg. “Bad knee. I faked the excuse, actually. I just don’t want to sweat during school, if you know what I mean.”

They both laugh and I take a seat next to Mary. “So what do we do? Do we have a teacher?”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler is always late. Sometimes he never even shows up.”

“Really?” I get a little excited as I wonder how much that happens. I could skip and go hang out at the arcade.

“We just throw darts or do lawn bowling,” Josie says.

I’d laugh, but I don’t think she’s joking.

“Drake!” a blond guy wearing cargo shorts with a preppy polo shirt yells as he walks up to us. “You Drake?”

“The one and only,” I say back.

“OK.” He looks over at my new friends. “Hey, girls. Looking good this semester. You know what to do, so choose your weapon.” He nods to a box of lawn bowling equipment. “Drake, run three laps around the track.”

“I’m not running laps. I’ve got a bad knee.”

Fowler looks up from his roster and scratches his head with a pen. “You’re lying. We all know you’re lying, we just don’t feel like fighting about it. So you’re here. Congratulations on making it into modified PE. Now you’re going around that track three times at the start of every class or you’re gonna fail. Got it?”

Jesus Christ. I cannot cut a break.

“Josie and I will walk with you,” Mary says.

I look at her legs dubiously.

“I can’t go fast though,” she says, noticing my gaze.

“OK,” I say. I’m up for company. I need friends and at least these girls are nice. So the three of us set off to walk laps. They talk incessantly and I half-heartedly listen to them as everyone stares at us. It takes the whole period to walk those three laps, but I can think of millions of worse ways to spend a morning. So I don’t complain.

Fowler disappears after attendance. Good to know. I will be cutting this class regularly.

After that my day is economics, then lunch, then English, science, and driver’s ed rounds out the day.

Everyone takes driver’s ed in tenth grade here, and I’m a senior, so that teacher makes me his assistant. I like driver’s ed. I can feel this guy’s very low expectations of us the minute he opens his mouth. Plus, the person in the seat next to me is interesting as fuck. She’s a tiny Filipino girl named Quinn who is married at fifteen. Last month, that might’ve shocked me. This month, no way. I’m so out of my league, I just accept it and move on.

Quinn looks like she’s in training to be a CEO with her skirt suit and black pumps and she spends the entire class complaining to me about her in-laws as we pretend to watch a movie.

When the final bell rings I make my way to the farthest building on campus where my locker is located. Usually the seniors get lockers in the main building where the offices are. But I’m new, and it was December when I got here, so I’m in no-man’s-land.

After that I walk all the way across campus to the front and start heading across the street to the arcade. I have a few acquaintances there from school and I’m just starting to wonder if any of them might have a joint to share when a horn honks and scares me half to death.

Mr. Bowman smiles as he eases his car alongside of me. “Going over to Gilbert, Miss Drake?”

“Shit,” I say.

“You forgot?”

“I did. Mr. Bowman, I don’t have a ride and I don’t even have bus fare—”

“Get in.”

“What?” I say, looking around.

“I’ll take you. But I can’t take you every day, Shannon. You’ll have to figure this out.”

I rub my head because it’s beginning to ache, but if he’s offering me an easy way to get there, I might as well take it. So I walk around and get in the passenger side.

“How’s your birthday going?” he asks, pulling onto Lincoln Avenue.

“Shitty. I might as well be invisible, that’s how much people give a fuck about my birthday.”

He laughs and I look over at him. I’d say he’s late forties, with blond hair that is just about to go gray, and he’s lean and athletic. Not a bad-looking guy for a guidance counselor. And he’s tolerant with my fucks. I sorta like that about him.

“It doesn’t get any easier, you know.”

“I figured as much.”

“But I’ve been in this school for ten years and I rarely see kids with so much potential come through needing help. So I’m taking a personal interest in you.”

“Great,” I mumble.

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

I swallow hard and look straight ahead as we ride down Lincoln.

“It’s got to be hard to be uprooted in the middle of your junior year, moved out to California, and then have to switch schools three times in nine months.”

“Well,” I say, rummaging through my backpack for a cigarette, “it wasn’t a picnic, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“So your brother-in-law?”

“What about him?” I ask, lighting up and blowing my smoke out the window.