“Well,” Principal Hix said, “would you be cooperative if he wasn’t?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t really have anything to hide. I just don’t like pigs. You can understand?”
The cop snarled at me, but Principal Hix nodded toward the door, and with a huff, the police officer left the office, slamming the door behind him. Principal Hix settled down into the tall leather chair behind his desk and flipped open a folder on his desk. “I’m sure it goes without saying, Mr. Keane, that you have found yourself in quite the precarious position.”
I nodded. “I am painfully aware of that.”
“So, let’s just start at the beginning, and the more truthful you are, the easier this will all be.”
“Yeah, okay.” I took a deep breath before starting. There were two major conflicts with me telling me the whole truth. The first was that I didn’t want to snitch on Sicily, and the second was that I didn’t want to implicate Cherri. For that reason, at least seventy percent of my story had to be left out. “I walked into her room because I wanted her to tutor me,” I said.
Principal Hix flipped through a few papers in the file he’d opened and then looked pensively at the one he’d landed on. “It’s interesting you say that because you did marvelous on the history section of your entrance exam, and Mr. Mead, with whom you currently take world history, sings your praises as one of his best students.” He looked up. “I don’t believe you need tutoring.” He tilted his head to the side, his chocolate skin catching perfectly in the light hanging above his desk, making it feel a little too much like an interrogation for comfort. “Why don’t we start again?”
“I swear, that’s why I went in there,” I said. “I’m bad with facts and shit. If I’m doing good in Mead’s class, that’s news to me.”
There was silence between Principal Hix and me for a while before he continued. “Okay. Let’s assume that’s why you went in there. What happened next?”
“Well, kinda the same thing that just happened right here,” I explained. “When I told her I needed tutoring in history, she said that Mr. Mead had told her I was doing fine in his class, and then, I don’t know, she flipped out. She started talking about stuff that made no sense, and her eyes got all crazy. She walked over to the window. I tried to stop her, and she just…jumped.” The image of her lying on the ground still rocked through my mind. “I don’t know why.”
Principal Hix quietly pondered what I said before closing the folder on my desk. “Tell me, Deon. Have you heard any rumors about Miss Abrams? Salacious or otherwise?”
I could only imagine he was fishing for something. That was how questioning behind bars always started. A hypothetical question that they’ve already decided the answer to. “No,” I lied. “Like what?”
He watched me through a half-lidded gaze. “You’ve heard nothing at all?”
I shook my head. “The only thing I’d ever heard about Miss Abrams was that she was a good teacher. That’s why I went to her for help.”
Again, silence filled the room until there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Principal Hix called out.
The door opened, and the cop poked his head in. “Deon’s parent is here.”
“Thank you. Tell them we’re on our way.”
The cop nodded and closed the door, and all I could think about was my poor mom getting that call and knowing I was probably headed back in. There would be no way I could ever make up to her what I’d put her through.
Principal Hix looked at me. “Well, I’ll take what we’ve talked about here and log it away. I’ll be speaking to a few other students, and probably some staff as well, and then I’ll make a decision about if your parole officer needs to be contacted or not.”
“Thank you,” I said, glad that he wasn’t flying off the handle but also afraid of the students who misconstrued my attempting to stop Miss Abrams for pushing her.
He nodded. “You may go.”
I stood up and walked out of the principal’s office, already preparing my apology to my mom. I got to the main part of the front office and came to a halt. It wasn’t my mom at all.
It was Connor Loche.
“Hello, son.” He motioned. “Let’s go. We’ll talk about this in the car.”
There wasn’t much I could do. I didn’t want to put up a fight and bring any additional attention to myself, and it at least seemed that most students had gone home, so I walked out of the office where Annika and Sicily were standing and waiting.
“Oh my god,” Annika yelped, rushing me and throwing her arms around me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I looked at Sicily. “I think everything is gonna be fine.” Sicily clutched his chest and relaxed a bit. I wanted to say more, but Connor’s hand sat on my shoulder and pushed me on. “I’ll call you guys later, okay?”
With that, I let Connor guide me out into the parking lot and into the back of a black SUV with tinted windows. I stared at my mom’s car in the lot as the car drove away, knowing I’d have to find a way to come back later and get it before it got towed. I imagined that Connor was going to be pissed. Maybe he felt like I’d embarrassed him, or maybe he would have to pay some large sum of money for the cop to look the other way. Why he was contacted instead of my mom, I had no idea, but I was at least partially grateful for my mom to be uninvolved for the time being.
“What happened, Deon?”
