“It’s going to be okay,” I say, and then I draw him into a hug. He lets me, which is unusual, but there are no witnesses here. Even so, he feels tense and solid in my arms, and I let him go quicker than I intended. “You should go on to lunch. I’ll take care of your sister now.”
“I will,” he says. “But I couldn’t—” He doesn’t finish, but I understand. I couldn’t leave her alone, he means. One thing about my kids: they stick together. Always, even while they bicker and fight. They haven’t let each other down since the day of The Event. That’s how I try to think of it, in capitals and italics: The Event, like it’s a scary movie, something removed from our lives that we can forget. Fictional and distant.
Sometimes, it even helps.
“Go on,” I tell him gently. “We’ll see you tonight.”
Connor goes, though not without a glance back over his shoulder. I’m biased, maybe, but I think he’s a handsome kid—sparkling amber eyes, brown hair that needs a trim. A sharp, clever face. He’s made some friends here at Norton Junior High, which is a relief. They share typical eleven-year-old interests in video games and movies and TV shows and books, and if they’re a little nerdy, it’s a good kind of nerdy, the kind that comes from rabid enthusiasm and imagination.
Lanny’s a bigger problem.
Much bigger.
I take in a deep breath, let it out, and knock on Principal Anne Wilson’s door. When I enter, I find Lanny in a chair against the wall. I recognize the cross-armed, head-down posture. Silent, passive resistance.
My daughter has on baggy black pants with chains and straps, and a torn, faded Ramones T-shirt she must have stolen out of my closet. She’s let her newly dyed black hair fall loose and ragged around her face. The studded bracelets and dog collar look shiny and sharp. Like the pants, they’re new.
“Ms. Proctor,” the principal says, motioning me to the padded guest chair in front of the desk. Lanny has one of the hard-plastic ones off to the side—the chair of shame, presumably, worn shiny by dozens, if not hundreds, of militant little asses. “I think you already see part of the problem. I thought we agreed that Atlanta wouldn’t wear these kinds of clothes to school anymore. We have a dress code that we have to enforce. I don’t like it any more than you do, believe me.”
Principal Wilson is a middle-aged African American woman with natural hair and comfortable layers of fat; she’s not a bad person, and she isn’t making this some kind of moral crusade. She has rules to follow, and Lanny? Well. My daughter isn’t good with rules. Or boundaries.
“Goth kids aren’t violent assholes,” Lanny mutters. “That’s some bullshit propaganda, you know.”
“Atlanta!” Principal Wilson says sharply. “Language! And I’m speaking to your mother.”
Lanny doesn’t look up, but I can well imagine the epic eye roll under that curtain of black hair.
I force a smile. “This isn’t what she had on when she left this morning. I’m sorry about this.”
“Well, I’m not sorry,” Lanny says. “It’s fucking ridiculous that they can tell me what to wear! What is this, Catholic school?”
Principal Wilson’s expression doesn’t change. “Also, obviously, there is her attitude.”
“You’re talking about me like I’m not even here! Like I’m not a person!” Lanny says, raising her head. “I can show you some attitude.”
The shock of seeing her face makes me flinch before I can control it. Pale makeup, heavy black eyeliner, corpse-blue lipstick. Skull earrings.
For a moment I can’t breathe, because her face morphs from my daughter’s to something else, someone else, someone dangling from a thick cable noose, limp hair sticky around her head, eyes bulging, what skin she had left that same shade . . .
Put it in the box. Lock it up. You can’t go there. I know damned well Lanny has done this deliberately, and our eyes meet, challenge, hold. She has an eerie ability to find and push my buttons. She got it from her father. I see him in the shape of her eyes, in the tilt of her head.
And that scares me.
“And,” Principal Wilson continues, “there’s the fight.”
I don’t look away from my daughter. “Are you hurt?”
Lanny shows me her right fist and raw knuckles. Ouch. She has a shadow of a smirk on her blue lips. “You should see the other girl.”
“The other girl,” Principal Wilson says, “has a black eye. She also has parents who are the type to have lawyers on speed dial.”
We both ignore her, and I nod for Lanny to continue. “She slapped me first, Mom,” Lanny says. “Hard. After she shoved me. She said I was looking at her stupid boyfriend, which I wasn’t—he’s gross, and anyway, he was looking at me. Not my fault.”
“Where’s the other girl?” I look at Principal Wilson. “Why isn’t she here?”
“She was picked up by her parents half an hour ago and taken home. Dahlia Brown is an A student who swears she did nothing to bring it on. She has witnesses to back her up.”
There are always witnesses in junior high, and they always say what their friends want them to say. Surely Principal Wilson knows that. She also knows that Lanny is the new kid, the one who doesn’t fit in. That’s because my daughter has taken up the goth lifestyle in part as a control mechanism: pushing others away before she can be pushed. That, and in some strange way, she’s dealing with the secret horror show that is her childhood.
“I didn’t start it,” Lanny says, and I believe her. I’ll probably be the only one. “I hate this fucking school.”
I believe that, too.
I turn my attention back to the woman at the desk. “So you’re suspending Lanny, but not this other girl, is that right?”
“I really have no option. Between the dress code violation, the fight, and her attitude about the whole incident . . .” Wilson waits, clearly anticipating the argument to come, but I just nod.
“Okay. Does she have her schoolwork?”
Hard to miss the relief that slips over the principal’s face, that this parent who reeks of gunpowder isn’t going to make a scene. “Yes. I made sure she does. She can come back to classes next week.”
“Come on, Lanny,” I say, rising. “We’ll talk about this at home.”
“Mom, I didn’t—”
“At home.”
Lanny lets out a sigh, grabs her backpack, and slouches out of the office with her dyed-black hair hiding her expression, which surely isn’t pleasant.
“Just a moment, please. I’m going to need specific assurances before I let Atlanta back in classes,” Wilson says. “We have a no-tolerance policy, and I’m bending it because I know you’re a good person and want her to fit in here. But this is the last chance, Mrs. Proctor. The very last chance. I’m so sorry.”
“Please don’t call me that,” I say. “Ms. Proctor will do. Has since the 1970s, I believe.” I rise and offer her my hand. Hers is a moderate handshake, businesslike, nothing more. These days, I count merely businesslike as a positive. “We’ll talk next week.”
Outside, Lanny has chosen the very same chair her brother used; it’s probably still warm from his body heat. Do they mean to do it, or is it just instinct? Are they getting too close? Have my paranoia and constant vigilance made them like this?