Leslie's Journal (9 page)

Anyway, Ms. Graham was going on about how this was one of her favorite scenes, and if everybody would just settle down and listen they’d really enjoy it. Her face was alive, like she meant it, like it mattered—and all of a sudden I got this flash of why she wanted to be a teacher. She actually cares about this stuff.

When I think that, I feel really bad. Caring about something so much it hurts and having everybody laugh at you—talk about brutal. I pictured Ms. Graham as a teenager with her nose in some book, and the whole school teasing her and being mean. Well, it’s thirty years later and nothing’s changed. How does she get out of bed in the morning?

My head filled with this crazy idea that I should stand on my desk and yell at everyone to shut up. Of course I didn’t. I’m not suicidal. But I had the idea.

As per usual, Nicky Wicks was the ringleader. He’s discovered he can make himself cross-eyed by touching his tongue to his nose, and he kept turning around to show the card players at the back, who found it majorly hilarious.

“Nicky!” Ms. Graham said. Nicky stopped. Two seconds later he was doing it again. “Nicky!!” Nicky stopped. Two seconds later, the same thing. “Nicky!!!” This went on until nobody was paying any attention to Ms. Graham’s favorite scene at all. They were just laughing at Nicky, who was basically daring her to do something.

She did.

Out of the blue, she wheeled to the blackboard, grabbed a yardstick, charged at Nicky and smashed it down. He leaned back just in time. The yardstick broke across his desk. Everyone froze. She could have cracked his head open.

Ms. Graham went white as chalk. The end of the yardstick fell out of her hand. She teetered there looking around the room at the silent faces. It was as if she wasn’t sure where she was or what had happened. And then this tear slid down her cheek and onto her neck. She didn’t say anything, just turned and wobbled out of the room slowly, like a robot.

Things stayed quiet for a long time. Then someone whispered, “Are you all right?” to Nicky. He nodded. In a few minutes, the talking was wild. Mr. Manley came in, and everything went silent again. He glared at us: “Get to work, people.” Everyone opened their binders and kept their heads down.

Poor Ms. Graham. She didn’t mean to lose it. If you ask me, it’s a miracle she hasn’t attacked someone before. Also a miracle that Nicky’s brains aren’t splattered all over the ceiling. If they were, there’d have been
TV
crews all over the place, and her picture would have been plastered everywhere. Now this’ll all be forgotten, except by our class. And Ms. Graham. I bet it haunts her till the day she dies.

“There but for the grace of God go I.” Katie’s started to say that a lot. It’s weird hearing it come from somebody under forty, but Katie says she doesn’t care. Her church told her it’s good to say it when you see somebody homeless or really sick. From now on I’m going to say it whenever I think of Ms. Graham.

Seventeen

T
hings happening with or without a reason, things we regret—maybe that’s why old people lose their minds. Their heads get too full of things they’d rather forget.

I know mine will. It’s packed already. There are so many things I’ve done that make me ashamed. Like never standing up for Ms. Graham. She may be a lousy teacher, but she tries. And how have I thanked her? By bad-mouthing her behind her back and sleeping in the middle of her lessons.

Mom wouldn’t do that. She sticks up for people. I remember buying groceries with her a couple of years back. At the checkout counter, there was a little boy ahead of us with his mother. He took a candy bar from the lowest rack by the cash register. His mother yelled, and he cried, and she started hitting him.

Mom said in a loud voice, “Stop it! What do you think you’re doing?” The woman said it was none of Mom’s business. Mom said, “Children being hit is everyone’s business.” The whole line was staring at us. I was so embarrassed. But the woman stopped beating on her kid, and afterwards I was proud of Mom for doing it.

That’s another thing I feel ashamed about: being so horrible to Mom. I love her. But I sure don’t act like I do. I slam my door in her face. I rub it in about Dad leaving. Sometimes I feel like I’m mean to everybody who cares about me.

I was worrying about all this when Katie came up to me before school. It’s like she has mental telepathy or something.

“I’ve been thinking over what you said a few weeks back, out by the bleachers,” she goes, all serious.

“Katie, please. I didn’t mean it.”

“No. You’re right. I’ve been so wrapped up in things I’ve ignored you. I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what to say, so I nod.

“Anyway,” she continues, “I have to get some new tops and I wondered if maybe you want to go shopping with me.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Some day after school.”

I hesitate. What would I say to Jason? If I don’t see him every day, he gets in one of his moods. Then I remember he has a dentist appointment tomorrow. “What about tomorrow afternoon?”

“I have choir practice.”

“Oh, right.”

I guess I look disappointed, because Katie takes a deep breath. “Okay. Tomorrow. Missing one practice won’t hurt.”

I’m amazed. For Katie, missing choir is almost worse than murder. I’m even more amazed next day when Ashley lays on this guilt trip and Katie says, “Look, Ashley, God’s hardly going to strike me dead or anything.”

Our trip starts out great: we’re playing spy up and down the mall, laughing at all the sales clerks who go on Red Alert when they see a teenager come near their store. We put on accents, pretending to be rich people. It’s pretty stupid, but it gives us the giggles all the same.

The fun stops when we start trying on tops. Lots of girls are embarrassed about getting undressed—after gym, some even change with a towel wrapped around them—but me and Katie have seen each other naked so many times we don’t care. So anyway, we’re squashed together in this tiny changeroom tossing stuff on and off when all of a sudden Katie goes, “Oh my god! What’s that on your back?”

I get really scared. I imagine I have this malignant growth or something. But when I look in the mirror, all I see is a bruise. It’s not hurting. I’d even forgotten I had it.

“Oh, that,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s huge. How did you get it?”

“Who knows?”

Katie goes really quiet. “It was Jason, wasn’t it?”

“No! Look, just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’s a wife beater or anything.”

“How did it happen, then? It’s all big and purple and brown. Don’t tell me you can’t remember.”

“Okay, if it makes you happier, I fell backwards and hit my back on a doorknob.”

“Nobody falls backwards unless they’re pushed.”

“Quit with the social worker crap.”

“I’ll quit when you tell me who pushed you.”

“It wasn’t a push. Anyway, it was my fault. I was being mouthy and Jason just accidentally sort of bumped into me.”

“Oh my god! What if you’d hit your spine? What if you’d broken your back?”

“Well, I didn’t. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s only been once, anyway, and if you tell anyone—”

“What about those marks on your arms?”

“No big deal.”

“Is this why you haven’t been coming to gym?”

She’s got me. I don’t like getting hit, even if it’s only been a couple of times and even if it’s to teach me a lesson, like Jason says. But even worse than getting hit is the idea that other people might find out about it. They wouldn’t understand. So I’ve been hiding my bruises with long-sleeved sweaters and jeans, which I’ve started to wear anyhow, on account of Jason doesn’t like other guys staring at me. And I’ve also stopped going to gym. (Apparently Ms. Patrick thinks cramps can go on forever. Personal experience, no doubt.)

“I just bruise easy,” I shrug.

“You do not. Leslie, you’ve got to stop going out with him.”

I grab her by the elbows. “Mind your own business. Stuff between me and Jason is private. Okay?”

“You’re getting beat up.”

“Shut up!” I give her my hardest, hardest look. “Besides, aren’t you supposed to be the big Christian? Whatever happened to forgive and forget?”

“This is different.”

“It is not. Now swear you’ll never blab.” Her eyes are big and pleading, but no way I’m taking no for an answer. “Katie, if you don’t swear, I’ll never speak to you again. I mean it.”

She bites her lip. “Okay,” she says softly. She’s almost crying. “But is it all right if I pray for you?”

“Fine. If it makes you feel better. Just don’t tell me about it or I’ll barf.”

For the next few days, Katie keeps coming up to me all soulful and whispering, “Are you okay?”

Of course I’m not okay. I’ve never been okay. What’s okay, anyway?

Life sucks. I want it to end.

Eighteen

I
t’s one in the morning. I’m in my room writing this down, cuz if I don’t I’ll never sleep.

I am in unbelievably deep shit. It’s about my journal. I should maybe just kill myself.

Breathe. Breathe.

Okay. To start at the beginning. Ms. Tracey James.

Ms. James arrived a week ago, last week of October. She’s taking over from Ms. Graham, who won’t be back until after Christmas. (Make that Christmas a couple of hundred years from now.)

Ms. James is under thirty. Real skinny, organized and scary. Like, when she introduced herself, Nicky Wicks made a fart sound with his armpit. Ms. Graham would’ve gotten flustered and the card players would’ve gone berserk. Ms. James just glanced at the seating plan and eyeballed him with a glare that’d stop a truck.

“Nicky,” she said with this thin, crisp voice, “we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next few months. This experience can be pleasant or unpleasant. Your choice. What’s it to be?”

Nicky shrunk into his desk.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pleasant,” he whispered.

Ms. James eyeballed him for another five seconds, then looked at the rest of us. “Are we all understood?” We stared at our desks, except for the card players, who quietly hid their decks.

“As for your mid-term reports,” Ms. James said, “they’re due at the end of next week. I’ll be entering your grades for English once I receive a copy of your marks from Ms. Graham.” Nobody’s talking, but we’re shifting in our seats. “What seems to be the problem?”

Cindy Williams flapped her arm like a wounded seagull. “Ms. James, we don’t have any marks.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have any marks?”

“Ms. Graham never gave any tests or essays or anything, except for a content quiz and these question and answer sheets she never collected.” Here Cindy showed off her binder, knowing the rest of ours were empty.

“If that’s the case,” Ms. James said, “tomorrow we’ll have a test on
Mockingbird
, followed by an in-class essay, with automatic zeros for anyone missing without a doctor’s note.”

“But we haven’t finished reading it,” someone cried from the back.

“Then you’ll have a busy night.”

She got our tests and essays back to us within a day, which should put her in the
Guinness Book of World
Records.
All the same, I only realized how big a marking maniac she is this afternoon. At the end of the period, she says she’d like to see me privately. Once we’re alone, she tells me it’s no secret she needs marks for our reports, so she’s started to grade our journals.

“You’re reading them?”

“Yes. And as you might guess, I find yours very disturbing.”

“What?” I blurt out. “Ms. Graham promised they’d be private!”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t told.”

“What kind of excuse is that?” I act all tough, but my stomach’s heaving. Ms. James knows about me and Jason having sex, about me getting beat up, about, well, everything!

Ms. James pauses. “Leslie, do you understand the meaning of the word ‘rape’?”

I can’t breathe. “Yeah. So? What’s it got to do with me?”

“It’s what you wrote about.”

“No, it’s not.” I struggle to my feet. “That journal is my property. Where is it? Give it back!”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can! Give it back or else!”

Ms. James stays calm. She’s not mad, just very serious. “Leslie,” she says, “I’ve given your journal to the principal. After this discussion, Ms. Barker wants to see us in her office.”

“No!” I sink back into my seat.

Ms. James leans against the desk opposite. She looks concerned, but I hate her like I’ve never hated anyone. “I have an obligation to report abuse,” she says. “You’ve been hurt. You need help.”

“What’s going to happen to Jason?”

“Leave that to the authorities.”

That’s when I throw up.

Because I’m sick, they let me go home. But the meeting with Principal Barker’s still on for tomorrow.

Breathe, breathe.

I have to get my journal back. I have to make sure Barker keeps quiet about it.

If she doesn’t, what’ll it do to Mom?

And Jason. If I get him in trouble, what’ll he do to me?

Nineteen

I
’m in the office, on the bench opposite the secretaries’ counter. It’s where you wait till the principal’s ready to see you. I stayed outside on the street till the bell, so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone in the halls. And I came to the office first thing so there wouldn’t be any gossip about me getting called down. Please let no one guess anything’s wrong.

I keep my head down, writing in my binder, pretending I’m invisible. God, please let Ms. James get here fast, so we can get this over with. And please—please—let Ms. Barker give me a break.

At our school, retired principals get places like the gym or the library named after them. In Ms. Barker’s case it should be the office washroom. I picture this plaque over the flush toilet: “The Stella Barker Memorial Problem Solver.”

Ms. Stella Barker. I call her Beachball.

I don’t call her Beachball because she’s all puffed up— which she is on account of I think she likes to drink. No, I call her Beachball because she rolls whichever way the wind is blowing. If it’s convenient to say, “The grass is green,” that’s what she’ll say. But if it’s convenient to say, “The grass is blue,” well, she’ll say that too. She calls it being “flexible.” I call it being a weasel.