What Mr. Mattero Did (10 page)

“Did you see it on the news?”

“It was in the newspaper, too.”

“My father says he's not allowed at school anymore . . .”

“I'll bet one of those girls is Mandy. Yeah, she's such a slut. That one with the green hair?”

Suzanne wasn't on the bus that morning, only Jenna. But we didn't sit together. We never do in the morning. Bus is too crowded after my stop, and she gets on two stops later. I didn't talk to anyone. I spent the entire bus ride scraping the rest of the purple nail polish off my fingernails with the top of a Bic pen and thinking about Suzanne, how she would have to wear a kilt and go to Catholic school. She was so shy, and with her inhaler and her braces and her so-so complexion and all, it would take her years to make a new friend. And just when us three had such a good thing going.

Poor Suzanne, I thought, shaking my head. It didn't seem fair.
She
was the one who didn't want to say anything. “It'll just get us in trouble,” she kept warning in her whiny voice. But Jenna had already decided we had to say something. I rolled my eyes. I mean, I loved Jenna. She was cool and fun and all that, but I really had to wonder what it was going to be like, just her and me at Oakdale.

 

 

At school, Jenna caught up to me in the hallway. But even then, with the noise of slamming lockers, whoops, laughs, and bits of conversation, I kept hearing those same questions.
“Do you know who it is?” “What did he do?” “Did you see it on the news?”

I was surprised, but Jenna seemed like she was in a good mood. Her lips kind of curled up, and she was looking around. Like it was cool to have everyone talking about us.

“Hey there,” she finally said to me.

We walked a ways. “What happened after I left last night?” I asked her. “I mean with your dad?”

Jenna's good mood took a dive. “Oh, man,” she moaned. “My father was really,
really
mad.”

We stopped, and when I looked at Jenna close-up, I could see that she had dark smudges under her eyes, like she hadn't washed off her mascara. But she had on those same silver bar and rhinestone earrings, which were really pretty, and her hair was wrapped up, secured in a giant tortoiseshell clip, and she had on some kind of new pink lipstick. I felt my heart drop a little. Even when Jenna was tired, she looked great.

“My mom's coming home today,” Jenna said in a low voice, but I don't know why because no one was listening. “My parents are gonna talk. But don't tell anyone, okay, Claire? Don't tell anyone about what happened last night. Do you promise?”

I nodded. “Sure.” The great thing about us three is that we could trust each other with stuff we said. Suddenly, I realized I needed to put an elastic in my damp hair. “Will you hold these books for a minute?”

After Jenna took the books, I raked my fingers back through my hair to make a ponytail.

“I knew my mom was at that guy's house last night,” Jenna went on.

“You did?”

“Yeah. She's been seeing him for months. And
he's
married, too!”

I studied her while I pulled my hair through the elastic. She really looked disgusted. I was surprised she hadn't told us about that guy before.

“He sounds like a real loser,” I said, reaching into my sweatshirt pocket to get two barrettes, which I snapped in place on either side of my head, to hold back my growing-out bangs. I was also thinking that Jenna's mom was partly to blame for this, too, but I didn't say that out loud.

Jenna grew angrier. “Yeah. He's a freak. I
hate
him! And I don't want him to break up my family!”

I took my books back. “Then you did the right thing, Jenna,” I sympathized. “I mean, your dad had to know sooner or later, right?”

We never got beyond that because just then we saw some girls pointing at us, and Sabrina Coster, this eighth-grader we know from our old school, came over. “It was you guys, wasn't it?” she demanded. “My friend, Stefanie, she said she saw you in the office yesterday with Mrs. Fernandez.”

My eyes flicked to Jenna. What did she think? Because it wasn't clear whose side Sabrina was on. Her voice had a nasty edge to it.

Jenna lifted her chin. “Yeah, it was us,” she acknowledged. I'm telling you, Jenna is not afraid of anyone. “It was a bad thing what Mr. Mattero did.”

Sabrina narrowed her eyes. “We're going to miss the band competition next week now. We've been working for it all year.”

Jenna widened her eyes at me, as though to say, Do you believe this?

“We may not even get our money back if we don't go,” Sabrina said.

Jenna turned on her. “Well, what do you want
me
to do about it?”

A couple of other kids had stopped to listen.

“It was
you?
” one of the boys asked Jenna.

Jenna flashed her eyes at him but didn't say anything.

The boy came closer and smiled at her. “Man, you had a lot of guts to go in there and tell Fernandez.”

“What did he do?” another girl interrupted after pushing her way through the crowd. I recognized that girl from my gym class. “What did Mattero do?”

Jenna's head swung from the boy to the girl and then back to the boy.

“He's weird,” another girl piped up. “One time, he gave me a detention for, like, nothing, and I had to stay after school. Just him and me in the band room.”

“Yeah, and once me and Kristen were in there practicing flute,” another joined in, “and he asked us to stay and help him clean up. We didn't though. Uh-uh. I remember—I had to go to my brother's wrestling match.”

While they were all putting in their two cents' worth, I stepped back from the crowd while keeping an eye on that girl, Sabrina. She fixed her cold little beady eyes on me, too, and kept staring, even after she got pushed to the edge of the crowd. I lost sight of her, but then the next thing you know she was, like, right in my face. “I think you're a bunch of liars,” she accused icily.

I spun away from her and walked off. Fast. I glanced back once, and she was still staring at me. Ugh. It gave me the creeps. I mean, what did she want from me?

And did other people hear her?

 

 

In music class that day, there was a substitute teacher. A real ding-a-ling. We'd had her before. She's sort of fat, and she wore these loose brown old-lady pants and an oversized blouse that pulled so tight across her chest it popped open between the buttons. She was so gross. Even her hair—it looked like it just came off a set of rollers and she forgot to brush it. She was sipping a Coke and had an opened package of Fritos on her desk, which you could smell and which reminded me how hungry I was.

“Get out your recorders,” Mrs. Fatso said. She must have said it ten times, but never very loud, which is why no one was listening to her.

“Get out your recorders!” she finally yelled.

So we took our recorders out of their blue leather cases. A kid in my class, Aaron Brown, started playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and we laughed.

Spencer Leigh, behind me, had a lion puppet on his hand and pulled my ponytail. He growled when I turned around.

And that's what music class was like that day.

No one seemed to miss Mr. Mattero. We were so incredibly bored in his class. I can't even remember what we were studying—major and minor modes. Dynamics. Texture. Stuff like that. Oh yeah, and music where one voice has the melody, called homophony. Only Mr. Mattero had wrote it on the board before he pronounced it, and Travis Gilmore called out he had nothing against gay people and Mr. Mattero shouldn't be making fun of them. We all bust a gut laughing that day.
“Hoh-MAH-foh-nee, not homophobic!”
poor Mr. Mattero tried to explain. I don't think he ever did get control of our class after that.

During music I doodled inside the cover of my music notebook. Flowers, faces, long swirlie doodads. The kids should have been on their knees with gratitude for what Jenna, Suzanne, and I did.

The sub was pathetic. She didn't know squat about the recorder. Which, by the way, I could play “Ode to Joy” on, like, perfect. It's the first instrument I've ever played, too. When we blew into our instruments, we all played different songs.

“Stop! Stop the music!” the sub hollered. Now that I think of it, it was the last time all year we ever touched those recorders. Too bad, because we were going to play them in the spring concert. Mom was going to bring Corky and Izzy. And my grandmother even said she would come, to hear me play.

 

 

Word got around fast. At lunch, it was pretty obvious that everyone in school knew it was us who had told on Mr. Mattero. Everybody was whispering and pointing. Some other kids came right out and asked us. When we didn't answer, a teacher nearby told everybody to mind their own business.

At lunch, Jenna and I sat together, near a group of seventh-grade goody-goodies who made you want to puke. One of them, this girl, Emily, said to us, “It took a lot of courage to go in and report what Mr. Mattero did.”

Jenna snorted a little. She can't stand that group.

But really, it was a nice thing to say to us.

“Thanks,” I told her, good and loud so Jenna could hear. “We really appreciate it.”

Still, we didn't strike up any more of a conversation with them or anything. We went back to eating, which for Jenna was a hot lunch: lasagna, green beans, a roll with butter, and sliced, canned peaches. It looked delicious. Me, I had an old chocolate cherry Luna bar—smashed—that I'd found in the bottom of my backpack because I forgot to pack an apple. I had money, sure. My mother gave me lunch money every day. But eating lunch is a total waste of calories, and besides, that's where I got money for clothes and stuff. So a Luna and a bottle of water. I probably should have skipped lunch, but that day we ate late with eighth grade, and I was absolutely starving.

Suddenly, there was this food fight in another corner of the cafeteria. We heard kids laughing and saw some boys stand up to throw something. Then a girl sprang up out of her chair and ran from the cafeteria.

I heard one of the seventh-graders near us lean forward into her group and say, “That's Melody. Yeah. That's Mr. Mattero's daughter.”

12

Melody

“Who reported him?”

“Do you know who told?”

“Is he in, like, big trouble?”

The questions pummeled me as soon as I got to school. Mom had given me a quick hug and headed to the office to deliver Dad's letter, but my locker was in the opposite direction. I had to go on alone, shouldering my way through the thick and boisterous morning crowd, teeth clenched, stomach in a knot, ignoring every question and comment that came in my direction.
Kept
coming in my direction, even as I spun the dial on my locker trying to find the right numbers, but kept missing and so had to keep spinning.

Thank God for Annie. She is everything a best friend could be. As soon as she saw my hunched shoulders and the tears creeping into my eyes, she took over.

“Beat it!”
she hollered at everyone clustered around me. She even waved her arm around as though threatening to smack anyone who got too close. “It's not Melody's fault! Leave her alone!”

People backed off.

“Bunch of animals,” Annie muttered, her eyes sweeping the hallway, on the lookout for anyone even thinking about coming toward us. “They're like vultures, aren't they? Disgusting vultures!”

I flipped my braid back over my shoulder, and I might have laughed at Annie's reaction if I wasn't trying so hard not to cry.

“Hey, are you okay?” Annie asked, bending her head close to mine. She had a burst of curly, frizzy black hair that seemed extra wild that morning.

“Yeah. I'm okay. I just didn't know what to say to anyone.”

“God, it's awful, Melody. We saw it on the news last night and in the paper this morning. How come you didn't call me?”

“I couldn't. I didn't know what to tell you.”

“Do you know who those girls are?” she asked. It was the same question everyone else had asked, but Annie wanting to know was different.

“I know one's named Jenna somebody. Dad said the other names but they weren't familiar. Oh, there's a Claire—I
think.
They're seventh-graders.”

“Seventh grade! That is
such
a creepy class. A total bunch of losers.”

I felt better now with Annie beside me, verbally bashing the entire seventh grade because of what three girls had done. I pushed my glasses back up on my nose and went back to the combination on my locker, finally finding the right numbers. Metal clicked. My locker opened. “Thanks,” I told her.

“Sure.” She scanned the hallway again. “Get your stuff and let's go.”

We headed to homeroom, but first, I had to stop in the music room to drop off my father's planner so the substitute would know what to do. It was painful opening his door. No one had arrived yet; the room was dark.

I flipped the switch, and, as the lights flickered on above the carpeted, tiered steps of the rehearsal room, I walked over to my father's desk. As usual, it was a mess. Piles of music books. The CDs we'd stacked up the day before. A copy of
Great Songs of the 60s
beside a tape of Vivaldi's
Four Seasons.
A container of keyboard cleaner. A vial of clear slide oil for the trombones. And among the scattered pens, pencil halves, and assorted pieces of paper, an open can of Diet Coke.