The Spirit Keeper (3 page)

Priscilla wiggled out from under my arm and gave it a light punch. “So do you think Meg will freak out that you’ve got detention this afternoon?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “Hand over your phone.”

Priscilla hefted her bag onto her lap and rooted for her cell. “You know, most kids over the age of twelve have one of these.”

“Tell that to Meg. She’s convinced they cause brain tumors. And she says I have no reason for one. ‘If you need to make a call,’” I imitated in a motherly-sounding voice, “‘just use the phone in the office.’”

“But you’re almost seventeen!” Priscilla said, incredulous.

“I know, right? Don’t even get me started.”

I dialed my home phone number and got my Uncle David. “Why are you calling?” he said as soon as he heard my voice. “You’re supposed to be in school.”  

“Don’t spaz,” I said. “I’m at lunch. Is Meg around?”

“She’s with a customer. What’s up?”

I ground the toe of my sneaker into the pavement. “Well, I sort of have detention this afternoon. Can you tell her I’ll be late for work?”

David’s disappointed sigh came over the phone, loud and clear, and so I hurriedly told him to save the lecture because this was the first time I’d ever had detention and it would never happen again—
blah, blah, blah
.

“Getting detention is not how you get into a good college, Sarah.”

“Then maybe I’m not college material,” I joked. “Geez, David. I’ve never gotten below a B in any of my classes. That pretty much cancels out this one detention. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I had him there, and he knew it. “Fine. I’ll let Meg know. Oh hey,” he added, as though he’d just remembered something important. “Tell Priscilla she’s staying the night.”

He laughed then and jokingly added that they’d put her to work in my place while I was serving detention. I didn’t get the impression that he was really joking, though.

“Priscilla sort of has detention, too,” I said.

There was another loaded sigh. “I hope you guys didn’t plan this.”

“Give me a little credit, David. I have a stronger sense of integrity than that. And anyway, why in the world would we want to stay at school longer than absolutely necessary, especially on a Friday?”

“How do I know you’re not just ditching work and going out somewhere?”  

“Um, you’re forgetting one minor detail.”

“Which is?”

“That neither of us has a car.”

There was a slight pause, as if David was trying to determine whether or not I was really telling the truth. “All right,” he finally said. “But come straight home when you’re done.”

I ended the call and handed the phone back to Priscilla, shaking my head. David was worse than my father, or how I sometimes imagined my father might be.

“Crises managed,” I said. “Oh, and apparently you’re spending the night.”

Before Priscilla could respond, the distinctive clip-clop of sandals on pavement made us both turn around.

“Well look who we have here,” Katie said. “If it isn’t Bozo the Clown and her loser friend Pocahontas.”

Priscilla didn’t exactly share my philosophy of grinning and bearing Katie’s harassment, but she was smart enough not to do anything too reckless or impulsive. She bristled, however, and I reached out to put a restraining hand on her arm.

“She’s not worth it,” I reminded her under my breath.

“Buzz off,” Priscilla said to Katie, despite my warning. She pointed at Danielle and Devon Dixon, who we privately referred to as the Double Ds. “And take Dumb and Dumber with you.”

She raised her eyebrows at me and gave me an I-can-be-good sort of look, as though I should congratulate her for not resorting to violence.

Katie wrapped her hands around her hips, flipping her hair over her shoulder with a practiced shake of the head. “I know you’re not telling me what to do.”

Priscilla clenched her jaw and turned to face Katie again. “I realize you were born with only half a brain, so let me rephrase that in case you misunderstood the first time:
Get lost
.”

Katie squared her shoulders. “What did I ever do to you?” She looked at Danielle and Devon, and the three of them began to laugh as if she’d just cracked the funniest joke ever.

“You’re hilarious,” Priscilla said. “Now leave. In case you’re as blind as you are dumb, we’re having a private conversation here.”

Katie rolled her eyes and stepped forward until she was towering over Priscilla where she sat on the concrete step. “Chill out. In case
you
didn’t notice, this is a public space.”

Priscilla shot to her feet, all five feet and ten inches of her, causing Katie, who was quite a few inches shorter, to stumble back. She would have fallen flat on her butt if Devon hadn’t reflexively reached out to steady her.

Priscilla laughed. “What are you so nervous about? I wasn’t going to hit you. I would
never
do such a thing.” And then she added pointedly, “On school grounds.”

Katie narrowed her eyes until they were angry slits of blue. She pointed a finger at Priscilla with the obvious intent of saying something nasty, but then flinched when Priscilla raised her hand.

Priscilla laughed again and very deliberately scratched the top of her head. “Get a grip. I only had an itch. See?”

Katie tugged at the hem of her pink cami and lifted her chin. “I’m amazed you can actually find your thick head beneath that mess you call hair.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, her brow rising as she gave us a taunting sneer. “You know I can make your lives miserable these last few weeks of school. You’d better not forget that.”

Then she pivoted on her heel and snapped her fingers, and Danielle and Devon took off after her.

“Great,” I said to Priscilla. “That’s all we need. Way to get us even more on her bad side.”

“Does she even have a
good
side?” Priscilla said, gathering our trays to dump them.

“Not really,” I said, all the while wondering what Katie would eventually do to get back at us. I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the end of it.

The bell rang then, signaling the end of lunch.

“Don’t worry about her,” Priscilla said, nudging me in the shoulder when she saw the expression on my face. “And don’t be late to detention.”   

The teacher in charge of detention gave Priscilla and me the death stare the minute we walked through the door, probably assuming we were just another couple of teenage degenerates. We handed her our slips, and she seemed to take a lot of enjoyment in informing us that a copy would go into our
permanent
files (her emphasis on permanent). If I were Priscilla, I might be worried at the thickness of that file. But since it was my first time getting in trouble in my entire academic history, I wasn’t sweating it. At least not too much.

There were five other kids, all of them known troublemakers, spread well away from each other throughout the room and in various states of zoning out. Priscilla and I made our way to the very back of the class and snagged two seats in the last row. I could feel the teacher’s beady eyes boring into the back of my head the entire time we were walking down the aisle, so it came as no great surprise when she got up and headed straight for us.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said.

Priscilla and I looked at each other, and I shrugged my shoulders.  

“Um, we’re here for detention,” Priscilla said, as though it were perfectly obvious.

“Don’t be smart.” The teacher pointed at the mess of books on Priscilla’s desk. “Pack this up and find a seat up front. No one is allowed to sit together in here, and you two strike me as being particularly,” she narrowed her eyes at us, “
chummy
.”

I was slightly offended and felt the need to inform her of my 3.75 GPA, but I kept my mouth shut to keep from making things worse. Priscilla, on the other hand, made a disgruntled face along with some offhand comment about how this was totally uncalled for and went against her constitutional right to sit where she pleased.   

“I make the rules in here,” the teacher said, her lips tight. “I have my eyes on you, so don’t test me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Priscilla, batting her auburn eyelashes.

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Priscilla was asking for it, in my opinion, and the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble by association. No way was I going to serve another afternoon detention if I could help it.

The teacher finally took a seat behind her desk and gave the seven of us a silent look of warning. Then she slid her glasses in place, picked up her red pen, and turned her attention to the stack of papers in front of her.

The hour passed at a snail’s pace, the minute hand on the clock seeming to barely move. But, finally, detention came to an end.

I was just finishing up the last of my Spanish homework when the teacher called time and told us to pack up and go home. And according to her, that didn’t mean loitering on school grounds if we had no good reason to be there. I shoved my books in my bag and got out of there as quickly as I could.

Priscilla was already waiting for me in the hall, a wad of purple Bubblicious stuck in her mouth. “Detention is such a waste of time,” she said. “When are they going to learn that?”

“Nice to see you learned your lesson,” I said with a nod to her gum. 

“There’s no rule that says I can’t chew it outside of gym. Besides, I’m way beyond redemption.”

We walked slowly down the abandoned hallway and left by way of the double doors leading out to the student parking lot. No one was at the school except us and a few straggling teachers and custodians. Everyone was ready for the weekend, and more than ready for the end of the year.

“I’m going to be fifty by the time I save up enough money to buy a car,” I moaned, which was my standard gripe for whenever I had to walk in extreme weather conditions.

Like the cell phone, David and Meg didn’t see why I should have a car when we lived less than a mile from the school and a block from the nearest city bus stop.

We started across the lot, and after only a few minutes Priscilla began complaining about the oppressive humidity and the fact her hair felt like it weighed a ton. I didn’t disagree about the heat. The end of the school year was just around the corner, and the day was stifling for early June in upstate New York. 

“So cut it off,” I suggested about her hair, and not for the first time. For as long as I’d known Priscilla, she’d worn her naturally curly hair halfway down her back. It was almost as long as mine.

“Are you kidding? In the third grade my mom got it in her head that I would look cute with a bob. What a disaster
that
was. I’m telling you, I had a freaking afro until it grew out.”

I laughed, even though I’d heard some variation of the same story before from several different classmates. “I seriously would have given anything to see that.”

“Yeah, well. There’s a reason why that particular school photo went missing.”

Priscilla stopped suddenly and dropped her bag to the ground. She squatted to rummage through it, her hand finally emerging with a plastic bottle of sunscreen.

“Sunburns and orange hair kind of clash,” she said.

She squirted a dollop of lotion into her hand and spread it liberally over her exposed arms and legs until she was caked in white, the pasty color not a far cry from her normal complexion. She was easily the whitest person I knew.