Strays Page 7

  “No!” I said.

  But my commands weren’t working.

  Roman let out a subtle growl, and before I could stand up, he grabbed my shorts and began tugging, his growl turning into a full-on snarl.

  “Help!” I screamed. I covered my face with my arms, hoping to save my face if he launched into an assault.

  Within seconds, Kevin was at my side, in control of the leash and the dog at the other end of it. When all was clear, I stood up, shaken.

  “What were you doing?” he asked me. Roman had seemed to snap back to his listening self.

  “I was trying to play with him, like Talbot’s doing with her dog.”

  “She has a very different dog,” said Kevin.

  “I see that.”

  “They don’t play the same way,” Kevin said.

  I couldn’t keep it all straight. I’d finally made an effort to work with my dog, and he’d tried to eat me.

  Kevin had Roman lie down while he explained more dog rules to me. “By lying down on the ground, on your back, you are completely submitting to Roman. You’re letting him know that he’s the boss of you and that he’s in charge of the game.”

  “That was his version of a game?” I asked.

  “Did you think he was attacking you?” asked Kevin.

  I burst into tears. Oak came over and took Roman’s leash from Kevin, who put his arms around me while I blubbered into his chest.

  “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you,” he whispered into my ear. “You have to learn to trust him. And in the meantime, no lying down on your back, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “You sure?” asked Kevin.

  “As long as you’re positive he wasn’t trying to eat me,” I said.

  “I promise. We feed them a good breakfast before they work with you.”

  Talbot and her dog were still both lounging together, and she turned my way and smirked as if to say: This whole thing could have been avoided if you’d just committed to making plans with me.

  *

  I was determined not to be late on the first day of summer school. I had been so efficient, in fact, that I rolled Dad’s bike into its parking spot thirty minutes early. Good timing had never been my forte. There was only so much roaming of the halls I could do before I got bored and headed toward my classroom, and besides, the more people I came across, the greater the chance they would recognize me as that girl who went nuts. Scanning my enrollment papers, I found my classroom assignment: C-123. Schneider’s room, which was more like a tomb.

  Just great.

  She’d never be my teacher again, but the thought of even setting foot in that classroom made me sick.

  Even though most remnants of her presence had been removed, above the whiteboard, still tacked to the wall, was the quote by Molière. Who was this Molière, and why was he giving such import to grammar anyway? Probably some historical English teacher famous for torturing his students.

  Inside the classroom was just one other student, searching for something in a green canvas army bag. I took a seat at the back of the room, ready to become a wallflower as soon as class began.

  “Why don’t you take a seat at the front. It’s going to be a small group, I think,” said this apparently know-it-all, bossy student.

  Who in the world did this girl think she was, telling me where to sit? I felt anger-fueled adrenaline race through my body, but I worked hard to suppress it, knowing that acting out in any way would not be the best way to mark my big return to school.

  “I’m good here, thanks,” I said.

  “I’m Perry,” said the girl. “I’ll be your teacher for this class.”

  What? How did a kid get this job? She must have been some honor student or something—looking to perk up her college application form. Was that even legal? But as she came closer to shake my hand, I saw she wasn’t my age at all.

  “I look young,” she said almost apologetically.

  “I thought you were in the class,” I said.

  “Well, I am—it’s just that I also happen to be teaching it.”

  A teacher who introduced herself by her first name? I was impressed.

  “Iris,” I said.

  She paused and looked up, like she was recalling some information. “Iris Moody, right?” Why did she know my last name? What had she heard about me? I was probably blacklisted throughout the school. Watch out for this one. Don’t piss her off; she’ll add you to her list.

  I was so embarrassed.

  “I’ve studied my roster,” she said and handed me a syllabus entitled: “Fairy Tales: Happily Ever After?”

  “Am I in the right class? English 3?”

  Perry nodded her head. “Yes.”

  I’d read all the fairy tales I ever wanted to read in the second grade. Mom bought me a huge collection, and I remembered staring at that glossy cover when she read from it. All of the characters from the stories were there, Rapunzel sitting on Cinderella’s coach, a leprechaun in her lap. Puss in Boots standing next to Rumpelstiltskin and Bluebeard’s facial hair weaving its way across the page like a piece of yarn gone wild. We’d cuddle on the couch, and Mom would make me a cup of chamomile tea and place a handmade quilt on top of me. If the stories ever got too scary, I’d hide beneath, as though shielding my eyes would turn off my imagination. They were all good memories, those fairy tales, but they were stories for young kids, not for high schoolers.

  “Do you think you could help me move some chairs around?” Perry asked. “We’re going to get rid of these pesky rows and make a circle.”

  I felt obligated more than ever to be the best student I could be, as though that might erase my current reputation. This could be my chance to start over.

  *

  In a short while, students filed into the classroom, taking their seats at various vacancies in the circle that Perry and I had assembled. The seats on either side of me remained empty.

  When Lorrie Hastings, swim team snob, ambled in late, Perry motioned for her to go to one of the free seats next to me.

  “I am not sitting next to her.” Lorrie snickered.

  The waters percolated inside. How dare she embarrass me in front of the whole class? It would be so easy to reach out and teach her a lesson. It was almost what was expected of me now.

  “Lorrie, is it?” asked Perry.

  Lorrie nodded.

  “You make one more comment like that in here, and you are out. This classroom will be a place of respect.”

  Perry was protecting me. I hadn’t felt as though anyone had been on my side in a long, long time.

  Lorrie rolled her eyes and reluctantly sat down next to me.

  The circle setup was awful because I couldn’t hide behind anyone. We were all equally visible. As I looked around the classroom, I recognized a few familiar faces—one guy from PE, another from biology, a few from Mrs. Schneider’s English class. They were all students who failed. And now I was one of them.

  Perry addressed the class. “So you might be wondering why I have chosen fairy tales as the focus for our class this summer.”

  “Fairy tales!” the boy next to me said. “That’s girlie stuff.”

  “If by ‘girlie’ you mean mass murder, infanticide, and lust, then yes, by all means, very girlie,” said Perry.

  The guy next to me looked perplexed—in fact, we all did, not quite sure what she was talking about. But any teacher who uttered the word lust was bound to get our attention.

  “Since you are getting a year’s worth of credit for a six-week course, I’m not going to lie—it’s very intense. Not only will you have to complete all of the required material in your reader, but you will each need to read and review an outside collection of fairy tales as well as compose an eight- to ten-page research paper on your chosen collection in relation to a specific topic.”

  I stopped listening at the phrase eight- to ten-page research paper, focusing only on the five-hundred-page reader plopped on the desk in front of me and the syllabus, thick
with explanations. High school seemed to be all about following directions. I had grown tired of listening.

  Perry spoke as though she had been reading my mind. “Keep in mind that this syllabus is a formality. The school requires that I churn one out. But in this class, in addition to hard work and a firmer grasp of the English language, we’re going to have fun. We’re going to delve into deep psychological recesses and explore these tropes that come up again and again in this type of literature.”

  “What’s a trope?” asked a girl dressed in gothic garb across from me.

  It seemed as though Perry had forgotten that we were all here because we had failed English class. Instead, she talked to us like we were honor students.

  Perry said, “The valiant prince, the girl who gets punished for being curious, the missing mother.”

  My ears perked up with that last phrase.

  “These are all tropes that we will be discussing in detail—that is to say, these leitmotifs occur again and again in these stories, and we’re here to act as psychologists, sociologists, and historians to figure out why.” Perry looked suddenly lost in thought. She stared above the whiteboard.

  We looked around at one another, wondering if our teacher would ever return to us.

  “What’s wrong?” asked the guy from my PE class.

  Perry kept her eyes fixed on Schneider’s Molière quote.

  “Something is going to have to be done about that,” she said. She dragged a chair over to the back wall, hoisted herself up, ripped the butcher paper with the quote from the wall, crumpled it into a ball, and slam-dunked it into the recycling bin. Score two points for Perry, zero for Mrs. Schneider.

  I had been staring at that quote for two years wishing I could have done that very same thing.

  English, even if it was only temporary, had just become my favorite subject.

  *

  At our session Thursday after school, Doug Loggins asked me what my “exit plan” was when I got angry.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you don’t have one in place, we need to develop a strategy, something that interrupts the anger—that makes you walk away from situations if using your words isn’t an option.”

  I had seen evacuation plans posted in plenty of hotel rooms, but never did I think I would need my own.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, uncomfortable with this session topic.

  “Go right ahead,” said Doug, “if that’s how you want to spend this time.”

  I was nearly at the door when it occurred to me that I had used the bathroom as an excuse to escape the session.

  I turned back around and faced Doug. “I don’t really have to go. That was just me showcasing my exit strategy.”

  “See, Iris, you’re coming a long way here,” said Doug.

  I sat back down and finished the session.

  At home, I felt exhausted, and there was little more I could do than collapse on the couch and watch my animal shows until Dad came home. When he arrived, he was carrying a work suit encased in plastic wrapping.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “My promotion suit. If they’re gonna give me the position, I’ve gotta look the part, right?”

  “I guess,” I said. My show was just getting to an interesting part about a battle between two disputing ant colonies living in the rain forest in South America. The dominant colony had taken in prisoners to work as slaves. For a moment there, I had forgotten it was even a show about ants at all—it looked just like some epic Hollywood blockbuster. But Dad was making so much noise taking the plastic off the suit that I got up to take a closer look.

  “It’s an Armani,” he said proudly.

  Dad had never been one to care about brand names before.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means it’s expensive.”

  I looked at the price tag dangling from the sleeve. Fifteen hundred dollars.

  “Sheesh! No kidding!” Here I was using his bike because he refused to get me a working secondhand replacement while he was splurging on clothes.

  “You leave the finances to me, Iris. My new salary can afford me this suit, and if you get through the summer without getting into trouble, I will get you a brand-new bike. Any kind you want.”

  He had said the magic words. I had been dreaming about a black Pake Urban six-speed for years. I would keep my mouth shut about his suit.

  The phone rang, cutting our conversation short.

  “It’s for you,” said my dad.

  “Who is it?”

  “She says her name is Talbot. Who’s Talbot?”

  “Dog training friend,” I said, grabbing the phone. “What’s up?” I made my way to the private confines of my bedroom.

  “I got your number from Kevin. I was wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner tomorrow?”

  Though I had refused her past invitations, I was glad she had called. Maybe it would be refreshing to have a new friend who didn’t know about the recent events of my past. Someone who thought I still had a mother.

  I asked Dad if I could go.

  “You just met her,” was his response.

  “But we’ll be spending the next five weeks together.”

  Dad put the plastic covering back on his suit. “Well, what did she do to land herself there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But if it was really bad, she’d be in jail.”

  He nodded, carefully hanging his new suit in his closet.

  I ran back to my room.

  “I’m in!” I said.

  “Yeah!” said Talbot. It felt good to have a friend actually cheer at the prospect of hanging out with me.

  seven

  At the park on Friday, it was Kevin who was running late. The rest of us sat in the grass waiting for him to arrive. A cool breeze passed through, and the fog hadn’t quite lifted that afternoon.

  “Knock-knock. Anyone home?” said Talbot, rapping on Oak’s covered head.

  He pulled the strings tighter so that his hood practically enveloped his entire face.

  Randy plopped down next to me. “Where do you go to school?”

  “Santa Cruz High,” I said. “So does Hood—” I stopped myself from saying Hoodie Boy and corrected myself. “So does Oak.”

  “Me, too,” said Randy. “Just graduated.”

  I couldn’t believe I had gone to the same school but had never even noticed him.

  “I’m starting my junior year at Santa Cruz High,” said Shelley.

  “How is it we’ve never seen each other before?” I asked.

  “Maybe we have?” said Shelley.

  In my head I ran through all of my classes from the previous year and inserted a visual image of Shelley. But her presence in my classes wasn’t ringing a bell.

  “How about you, Talbot? You a Cardinal, too?” asked Randy.

  “First of all, that has to be close to the lamest mascot ever, and no, I don’t go to SC, I go to Clark Academy.”

  Randy and Oak both reacted by rolling their eyes.

  “Whoa, fancy pants. Well, excuse me,” said Randy.

  “It’s not like that,” she said. “I’m not like that.”

  Clark Academy was where the rich kids went. They lived in big houses and wore uniforms and their parents bought them brand-new cars as soon as they turned sixteen. You could tell a kid went to Clark just by the car they rolled down Pacific Avenue on a Friday night.

  “What kind of car you drive?” asked Randy. I could tell he was eager to get under her skin.

  “I used to drive a beat-up BMW,” Talbot said.

  “Figures,” said Randy.

  “But I don’t drive it anymore.”

  “Daddy took it away?” teased Randy.

  Talbot looked him straight in the eyes. “More like, daughter totaled it drunk driving.”

  My stomach clenched, thinking about how my mom had been killed by a drunk driver in Topanga Canyon. I didn’t know much about the guy
who killed her. Dad didn’t want me at his sentencing. All I knew was that he was sitting in jail—maybe for life.

  And here I was, not far behind his path: my own court hearing under my belt, paying my dues for my own crime. I wondered if anyone had been hurt in Talbot’s drunken accident. What innocent victim had she affected? Whose life had she forever changed?

  “Was anyone hurt?” I had to ask.

  “Just yours truly. Concussed head. Shattered glass. Broken arm.” She pointed to her arm, which was covered in a smattering of scars, reminding me of Roman’s battered fur.

  “You could have killed someone,” said Oak.

  “Okay, Mother Teresa, what brought you here?” Talbot asked Oak.

  “Stealing,” he said.

  “That’s original,” she said. “What did you take? Sweatshirts?” She tried to pry his hood off, but he moved out of the way just before she could reach him.

  “I hacked into people’s credit card accounts and stole enough money to help out this nonprofit my buddy was working for.”

  Incognito computer genius meets Robin Hood. I was intrigued.

  “No way!” said Randy. “That’s awesome! You’re a computer nerd!”

  “It wasn’t so awesome once the Feds caught on.”

  “The Feds?” asked Shelley.

  “Yeah, I guess they thought I was the leader of a big hacking ring they’d been trying to nab for years. They felt pretty stupid that it was just me—a sixteen-year-old working out of my bedroom.”

  The lines were so blurred between good and bad. I mean, Oak’s objective had been really benevolent. And in my own situation, there had been no malicious intent—yet here we were, branded as trouble.

  “What did you do?” Talbot asked Shelley, taking a marker to her already decorated high-tops and adding squiggles and hearts.

  “Graffiti. On a few highway overpasses. Cops caught us.”

  “Do you know someone named Scott?” I asked, remembering the guy who was sentenced before me at the courthouse.