Finding Hope in Texas (9 page)

“You got ISS for hitting that girl? Well,
that’s not too bad. It stands for In School Suspension. You are
suspended, but get to keep up with your work up sitting in a
cubical all day long.”
Oh, what fun this was going to be.
“It’s in an outbuilding across campus. Here is your pass. I’ll call
down there in five minutes to make sure you have arrived.” Did she
just refer to me as one for skipping school? I’m sure after I left,
she and Mrs. Tremble would place me on some sort of watch-list to
make sure I didn’t corrupt the rest of the student body.

As I began to leave, Mr. Peet came out of the
counselor’s office, looking a little worse for wear. She must have
given him a stern talking to about giving his honest opinion in
front of students. He smiled and opened the door for me as he
headed back to class and I headed toward my cubical.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

He looked at me. “Just doing my job, kid. Now
don’t make me regret it.” He turned and walked down the hall.

I smiled and looked at the exit door.
Somewhere across campus there was a cubicle with my name on it and
I only had four minutes to spare.

Chapter
Four

Particleboard boxes are not fun. They have
four corners, they are bland, and they are not good for looking at
or being stored in, away from humanity. The warden, some
paraprofessional working on their teaching degree with big bulgy
eyes, continually monitored the actions of us inmates, reminding us
frequently that we could not sleep or even lay our heads down. The
only good that came from being stuck within a box was that I could
do all the reading I wanted, so everyday I loaded up on the
classics to stack next to myself in my cube. It was probably weird
to the other convicted felons, as most of them didn’t even bring a
pen in with them, and they often glared at me as if I had done
something that agitated them. My only hope was that I wouldn’t be
shanked during my school prison sentence. Mr. Peet’s dual credit
class offered at least some release from the box. It was a MWF
class allowing those in the class TH an extra study hall for their
college classes. This week was just introduction to the course, and
since I was the only new student in the class, it was time not well
spent. He started his lecture and discussions on the Gilded Age on
Wednesday and would resume on Friday. Mark Twain hit the nail on
the head when he described that time period. My problems were
considerably smaller than all those poor Europeans arriving at
Ellis Island, not having a dime to their name and not being able to
speak a lick of English.
Lick?
Yes, that had to be another
Texas Freudian-slip of the dialect running into my system.

Mags received the counselor’s phone call and
gave me a stern talking on the Thursday I punched Jody in the face,
revoking my computer and television privileges until I got out of
ISS, but neither of them were too hard to do without. At school, I
was hoping my six days would pass with ease, and it mostly did
until the next Thursday, my last day in solitary confinement, when
Brad strolled into the ISS room with a grin on his face. My face
flushed immediately. The last time I had seen him, I sat right in
his lap and laid a big kiss on his awaiting lips, not because I had
any feelings toward him, even though he was attractive, but just to
get under the skin of the girl that had her heart set on destroying
me. Now he meandered over to the open cubicle next to me and
plopped down into the wooden chair, making a scene of himself,
leaning back so that everyone would catch his rebellious, uncaring
attitude. I leaned forward burying my face in Bronte, hoping he
wouldn’t try to talk to me about our last encounter. That hope died
after a few minutes.

“Psst. Hey, new girl, uh, Hope,” he
whispered.

I didn’t respond until I heard a small knock
on the wooden slate between us. Leaning back as well, I caught his
oh-so-charismatic gaze.

“Hey, you really got me in trouble with Jody
with that stunt you pulled last week.”

“I’m sorry,” I finally stammered.

“Yeah, and you gave her a bloody lip with
that right hook of yours, too.” I didn’t feel the need to apologize
for that. As if he’d read my mind, he continued. “I probably
would’ve done the same thing had she gone after my family like
that.” I nodded at his understanding. “So was your family really
all gunned down in an international drug trade gone wrong? I heard
your dad was some sort of king-pin involved with the Columbian
cartels or something.”

I snickered out loud, catching the attention
of warden undergrad. “There is no talking in ISS. You sit there and
do your work, that’s it!” she exclaimed to the entire room, causing
me to duck back into my square hovel. The whole thought of my
family being New York drug traffickers now seemed more funny than
it was mean, and looking back at it, I may have gone too far to
punch Jody in front of everyone. What really set me off was the
orphan part, the part that was true. I was an orphan living with a
not-so-much but very distant relative that probably didn’t want me
there, anyway; who just felt obligated to step in because she was
my only kinship. With Jody parading my secret in front of the
entire student body, she was showing how alone I truly was, that I
had no one and that no one really wanted me at Jimmy Carter ISD.
The whole feeling of loneliness, of isolation, was main reason I
wanted to get away from New York. I wanted to start life over again
and not have every part of my past remind me of my loss, but my
solitary existence here was becoming permanent, especially after
the six days that I had stared into the front of my cubicle. Lizzy
was the only one who had invited me to have a seat with her at
lunch and now I wasn’t even sure that invitation was still open for
a known, convicted felon. Maybe Brad was my way out, not by kissing
him, but by helping him understand why I was here.

My chair creaked as I leaned back again, but
it didn’t catch the attention of the goggled-eyes undergrad. I
sighed, but relented to my heart. “My family was killed in a car
accident. They were hit by a drunk driver just a few days before
Christmas,” I whispered. The look on his face was one of seeing his
own life flash before his eyes and being totally confused. He sat
there for a moment before replying.

“Wow,” he whispered, leaning back farther in
his chair. “So, why did you come down here to Texas?”

“I wanted to... My aunt invited me. She lives
down here and is the only family I have left.”

He shook his head in acknowledgement.

“I guess I thought it important to be around
her right now.”

“Are y’all close?”

“No,” I said emphatically.

He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Sounds
like you’re going through heck right now. Tell you what. I’ll tell
Jody to lay off you. It’s not fair, you having to deal with this
with her on your back, but you can’t be fighting fire with fire
anymore, either. She has burned people a lot bolder than you.”

I shook my head. “No, please. I don’t want
her to know any more about me then she already does.”

Brad grinned. “Sweetie, Jody knows everything
about everyone. Not only are she and her friends the school
gossips, but also her mother is one of the assistant principals in
high school, and her father is some bigwig real estate developer.
She can get any information she wants in a blink of an eye.”

“That can’t be legal.”

“Legality only goes so far in teen drama and
a parent’s love for their daughter.”

“So, why do you like to hang out with her if
you know what she does?” I whispered this a little too loud and we
got another glare from the undergrad. And it was a pretty daring
question for me to ask, but Brad seemed like a nice guy, besides
calling me. So why would he be involved with someone as evil as
Jody?

He shrugged. “I guess I see past that. Jody
is completely different around me. She and her group, you know, the
Secundas
, they do a few good things for others. And she is
pretty, exciting to be around and fun. It’s just one of those
tradeoffs, you know?” he whispered. “Besides, who wouldn’t want to
date the most popular girl in school?” He gave me a serious look.
“She’s just very jealous and doesn’t want anything to come between
us.”

Gazing into his eyes, into his handsome
features, my instinct wanted me to blurt out, “And I can see why!”
But before I made a fool of myself again, my mind told me he was
making an excuse for her. Either way, I didn’t respond to him.

“Just some advice for you, Hope, but if I
were you, I would lay low until she moves past you to find some
other bug to squish. Like I said, she has burned better people than
you.”

Sadly enough, he was right. It wasn’t fair
for me or anyone else that she wanted to burn, but if life had been
fair, I would still have been in New York with my family, going to
school there, college there, having a life that was there. That
should’ve been my life. Not stuck in an outbuilding with zero
windows surrounded by juvenile delinquents and the goggle-eyed
undergrad.
Why did I ever make the choice to come to this
place?
Were the memories of my lost family really going to
bring me to such a point of despair that I had to run away from
them? Wouldn’t I have been able to continue with my life over time?
That’s what they say about grief, right? Time heals all wounds. Why
didn’t I give time a chance before I fled half-way across the
country? At least in New York it would have been just that, but
down here, dealing with my foreign aunt and the blonde psycho of
Jimmy Carter just seemed to add to my misery. I tried to get the
thoughts out of my head by changing the conversation.

“So what brought you to ISS?”

“Oh, I mooned the girls’ basketball coach
after she ran me out of their practice. The girls didn’t seem to
mind, though.” He smirked giving me a small wink. I rolled my eyes
but didn’t say anything.

“Brad Reynolds, if I have to warn you again,
you’ll be going back to the principal’s office and expelled,”
crabbed the warden.

“Understood, mine fuehrer.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

The next day, I was pardoned. Classes seemed
more lively than usual, probably because I had not seen a large
gaggle of students together for over a week. Mr. Peet had hit fine
form during his college class, bouncing around the room while
talking about Thomas Edison and the rat-paralyzer that he’d
invented out of sheer boredom. It seemed Edison was one of Mr.
Peet’s favorite “characters” and he went on to compare him to Sears
and Harvey, other great entrepreneurs of the time period.

“Alright class, my time is running out, so
before I sing Green Day’s
Good Riddance
, I wanted to let you
all know that this weekend is your first chance for a little extra
credit in my class. Remember, you only have three tests and a
paper, so if you want to jump on this opportunity, now is the time.
As you probably all know, I will be marching in the Ft. Worth Stock
Show Parade this weekend. If you would like to participate and gain
a few points on your first test, then let me know and we, my
daughter and I, will pick you up tomorrow early in the morning. All
right? Y’all have a good weekend.” He laid down the permission
slips on his desk in front of us and went back to the podium.

The bell sounded on cue and students began to
leave for their next class. No one approached his desk about the
extra credit, which made me more apprehensive to talk to him
myself. With the next class already filtering in the door and Mr.
Peet going off to meet them, I quickly grabbed a slip from his desk
and headed for the door and on with the rest of my day. Being in a
parade didn’t sound too bad and it was for extra credit. As I
entered the traffic, Jody passed to the left of me, and I waited
for some attack to fall upon me. Her lip must have healed in the
week that I was incarcerated, for her face showed no blemishes at
all. She only gave me a darting glare for a moment or two before
she moved on through the crowd. Maybe I had reached the level of
crap that was not to be acknowledged, or even though I told him not
to, maybe Brad said something to her, or quite possibly there were
just too many witnesses for her to commit homicide in front of.
Either way, I continued with my day, enjoying the classes that I
didn’t have her to contend with and sitting on the opposite side of
the room in the ones that she attended. At least switching to the
history duel-credit class in fifth period got me two additional
bypasses away from her.

Friday seemed to fly by, which was fine by
me. Lunch introduced the student body to the exotic provisions of
Old World Italy: ravioli and cheese bread. I slowly sat in front of
Lizzy with my meal, hoping that she wouldn’t ask me to leave or
just get up and remove herself from my company. With my loss of
television and the computer, I hadn’t spoken to her in over a week
and was just hoping she wasn’t angry with me.

“Well if it isn’t the old jail bird herself,”
she quipped much to my relief. I smiled but didn’t respond. “So you
punched out Jody right at the beginning of school?”

“Yes, in your dad’s class.”

“Yeah, he told me all about it that
afternoon,” she leaned in and whispered the second part, “and
thought she had it coming, anyway.”

“Well, I owe him big time. They were going to
expel me, but he got me a lighter punishment.”

“He doesn’t mind going to bat for students he
thinks a lot of. Said you give some of the best answers to his
history questions. Have you enjoyed his college class?”

“For the most part, yes. He enjoys the
subject and that helps me like it, too.”

“He practically lives the subject,” Lizzy
stated. “Did he do his annual invite to the Stock Show Parade?”