Daddy’s Little Boy, Part 3
“Class, I would like you to meet our new student.”
Miss Berry was my homeroom teacher, which was pretty awesome. She looked like a 1950’s grandma, with silver, horn-rimmed glasses on a silver chain around her neck. She always wore a dress with a belt. Do dresses need belts? She was awesome as a homeroom teacher because I only had to look at her for fifteen minutes in the morning. If I had had her for a regular class, I would have had to slit my wrists.
Next to her stood the perky, blonde cheerleader type. She smiled with a row of perfectly white, straight teeth. Though I couldn’t see it from my spot in the back row, I would’ve bet she had blue eyes to go with that perfect tan. Nice, round breasts had every guy drooling. I bet the girls were burning holes in her Gap sweater.
“This is Nikki Winters. She’s a transfer, so be sure to help her find her way around. Nikki, dear, you can take your seat.”
She practically skipped to her desk in the front row. No one paid attention to my gagging noises, thank God. The last thing I needed was detention. Miss Berry started role. She warbled out a close pronouncement of our names and we would respond, “Here!” I always said, “Beer!” Don’t ask me how I got away with it since almost every day enough people laughed, but Miss Berry never said anything.
Nikki turned to stare at me after my name was called. I looked up at her for a minute, just to be sure. Girls who shopped in the mall never acknowledged that I existed. Fine by me, but yeah, she stared. Whatever.
* * *
“And you know what she said to me?” Maggie waved her arms as she talked. Mom said it was an Italian thing, but Maggie did it like she was adding proper punctuation. The French fry she held between two fingers had been twirled so much that I waited for it snap-off and go flying. It hung on by whatever little spuds it had left. If Maggie noticed, she gave no indication. “She said my poetry was too dark. Too dark! Hello! Can’t she see how I’m dressed? What the fuck am I supposed to write? About puppies and love sonnets?”
“And what’s wrong with dark poetry anyway?” I shoved a forkful of tots in my gob. Maggie’s poetry was funny because it was dark. She wrote about things no one would ever talk about, just to see the reactions. If people didn’t react, she probably would give up and do something else.
“That’s what I say! But do you think anyone gets that?”
“No.”
“No!”
As usual, she picked at her food. I don’t think she ate more than a few bites. Me, I cleaned my plate: sloppy joe day. It was about as good as I was ever going to get out of a high school cafeteria. Plus, I’d missed breakfast because I’d slept in. Mom said it was due to the shock of the limo fire. She didn’t know that I’d “borrowed” one of the school’s laptops and spent my nights chatting online. She would’ve totally freaked. Everyone online was a pedophile, according to her.
“Hey, who’s that?” Maggie pointed with her fork over my shoulder. She sat up straight to peek around me.
I glanced over my shoulder. Four tables down on the other side of the aisle, she sat with the other mindless bimbos, staring at me. Her fork rested in her perfectly arranged salad in a container she’d brought from home.
“That’s some new girl. She’s in my home room.” I tilted my head back to drain the last of my chocolate milk from the crappy container. Maggie had drawn a monocle and pirate beard on the picture of the missing kid.
“Why is she staring at you?”
“Hell if I know.” What was I supposed to say? The bitch was starting to freak me out.
“Huh.” Maggie had no problem staring back. Me, I hunkered down over my tray and did my best to ignore them both.
* * *
Gym class: torture for students. No one liked gym class, so I didn’t know why it was mandatory. Yet, for fifth period, I stood in stupid shorts and a tee shirt that I was forced to buy and tried not to sweat too much so I didn’t have to take a shower afterwards. The last thing I needed was a “fag attack” from the jocks and end up taped naked to a bench. It happened to Ted last semester and he cried when the tape pulled out his leg hair.
I was at the volleyball net, minding my own business. The ball flew past. I was doing my team a favor by not playing, even if they didn’t know it. The next thing I knew, I was face down on the stinky, wooden floor with the back of my head throbbing. The teacher blew his whistle and whatever was going on stopped.
“All right, who threw that?” The teacher barked like a marine drill sergeant. I picked myself up. My cheek hurt. I rubbed my head.
“Anyone? Anyone see anything?”
The gym was silent as I looked around. No one looked guilty, but kids learn at an early age how to look innocent. Most never lose that talent. The gym teacher blew his whistle twice to indicate that the games were back on.
Again, I was on the floor. I caught the blur of a red rubber ball before it bounced off my head at a high velocity – harder and faster than any teenager should be able to throw. I yelled out from the pain. Next thing I knew, Maggie was at my side. “It was her.”
After the whistle blow, the teacher followed my friend’s finger to confront the new girl. She gazed up at him with her big baby blues. She batted her long lashes. “I’m so sorry, sir. I must not be good at this.”
“Sit this session out, Miss Winters.” The teacher tweeted twice on the silver whistle. “You too, Nathaniel.”
Maggie helped me to my feet. Before she could spin me off towards the bleachers, I caught sight of Nikki. She was looking at me, but that goody-two-shoes face was gone. She smirked like a pro, as if she knew exactly what she was doing. Worse still, she liked that she’d beaned me.
Crazy bitch.
All Short Stories by Mary Lewys is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: short story