At Risk of Being a Fool (17 page)

“Yeah, I figured that out about ten minutes after the pencil quit moving.”

“Pencil?”

“This thing here,” Jeanie said, tapping his pencil. “Masquerading as a miniature yellow flashlight? Yeah, that thing. That’s a pencil.”

Tonio gave a short laugh. “Jeanie, you’re a nut.”

“So you keep telling me.”

“What was that about a hamster?”

“The wheel’s turning, but the hamster’s gone. Means, like, the exercise wheel is going around by itself.”

“Huh.”

Jeanie rolled her eyes. “A hamster is a little animal—”

“I
know
what a
hamster
is.”

“Good. So, what’s up? You don’t seem to be getting far with the essay. Want a different topic?”

“No, I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine. He looked like a rug that had been beaten, hung out to air, and then run over by a lawn mower two or three times. Naïve she might be, but she’d seen a thing or two in her day.

“Look, Tonio, if I saw a high school kid looking the way you do now, I’d haul him to the counselor.” Jeanie felt his stare burning into the top of her head. She had dirt under one nail. She occupied herself in prying it out with another nail. “I’d like to help.”

If it had anything to do with Estelle or Bryce, he wouldn’t tell her. If it were any of a dozen things, he wouldn’t tell her. She looked at her nails ruefully. “I wish they looked as good as Sorrel’s. I just never seem to pay attention to things like that.”

Yesterday had been a frustration, start to finish. Jeanie had made dozens of phone calls, and dropped in on several people unannounced. Mystery books notwithstanding, police had no interest in sharing information with civilians. She’d had a trifle more success with parole officers and substance abuse counselors. There was a limit to what she could ask employers. If she drew their attention to possible risk, her students’ jobs were at stake. On the other hand, some were already at stake, and a friendly voice did no harm. She’d made those contacts in her cheery, chirpy persona, the sort of persistent lovey-dovey maternal type that people found it hard to reject. Annalisa claimed it made people feel as if they were stomping on a bunny rabbit.

In terms of facts, the day had netted little. In terms of her students, she’d saved a job or two. Possibly, she’d convinced a few people not to let her students to fall into a bureaucratic abyss. If they came after one of her kids, they’d better have clear, compelling reasons, or surrogate mama would be all over the radio stations and the newspapers. Of course, she hadn’t said that. But they weren’t stupid. They’d been that route, seen her like before.

Sorrel and Brynna would be late today, but they’d be here. Some sort of plumbing disaster at Bright Futures. Dillon was gone, too. Another official was grilling him. Jeanie didn’t know why. Teachers never knew the whole story. Perhaps it was fair. She never reported all she knew, either.

“Never mind. I just got to fretting about you, that’s all. Just promise me one thing?” She looked up at him. “If a student of mine committed suicide, I’d never forgive myself. So don’t, okay? Deal?”

Tonio frowned. “Why?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not saying I would. I’m just asking, why does it matter?”

“I’m a teacher. I care. That’s why I teach.”

“No.” His head turned slowly from side to side. “All my life, my teachers were scared of me. I never did nothing to ‘em, not ever, but they were scared.” The flat monotone added an odd emphasis to the words. “I could never figure it out.”

A lump in Jeanie’s throat shifted and settled into her stomach. It lay there like a snake, writhing and turning. This memory mattered deeply to Tonio. He’d wadded up his observation, sour and spiked, and handed it to her, a double-edged gift. Now he waited to see what she’d do with it. Protect her colleagues, or care about him?

“I’m sorry, Tonio. If they’d known you better, they wouldn’t have been frightened.” Teachers cared, but they had choices to make, between ten easy students or one difficult student. If you worked with the one, you were cheating the ten. If you worked with the ten, you cheated the one. She shouldered the vague guilt. “You matter to me. What happens to my kids,
matters
to me.” She didn’t know what else to say.

His eyelids dropped to half-mast. “I’m kind of tired, that’s all. Been camping out in my car. Don’t sleep good.”

She blinked back the moisture in her eyes. She’d failed his test. “Your car? I thought you lived with your uncle.”

“Yeah, well, usually. Only we got into this thing a few days ago. I lit out. Give it a few days, I’ll go back. It happens, no big deal.”

Tonio was only nineteen. “Have you been able to get to work all right? Got enough to eat?” Silence. “Let me rephrase that. When did you eat last?”

“Yesterday,” he muttered. “Morning.”

“Idiot,” she said, without heat. “Blast you, you’re the one who told me not to carry money in this neighborhood. Stay put, will you?”

Tonio’s head jerked up. “Hey, I’m not—”

“Oh, hush up.” Jeanie rifled her purse, Mackie’s desk, and the closet. With a bang of the door, she disappeared. Shortly, she reappeared at his desk with a can of pop, a bag of pretzels, a candy bar from the vending machine, a dollar and seven cents in change, and a plastic bag under one arm. She looked at him doubtfully. “Look, all I’ve got is this stuff. I’ll go upstairs and borrow a ten from—”

“No,” he barked.

She let loose a sharp sigh. “Okay, be a martyr. What about these
things?” She dangled a bag of rice
cakes, caramel-flavored.

Tonio laughed, and snatched it. “Listen, lady, I’m hungry enough to eat the plastic bag.”

“And tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he said, his eyes glinting, “I’ll ask my boss for a loan. He’ll do it, I done him some favors on his truck. I just, you know, I didn’t want to ask.”

“Thanks.” She smiled. To an outsider, it would seem odd, thanking him for letting her feed him. But Tonio had trusted her, briefly. For someone of his background, that was a great gift to give.

“Hey,” he said, as she walked away.

“Hmmm?”

“Suicide, it ain’t my way.”

“Deal, then?”

“Deal. The hamster thing, I get it now. Pretty good.”

“For a teacher?”

“For a teacher.”

Jeanie turned to lighter problems. She’d had a few misgivings about bringing the cat. Rita was more of a distraction than Corrigan was. Currently, Rita was having a wonderful time chasing paper balls that Quinto thoughtfully threw to her. How educational. Quinto’s “essay” held few words, and many sketches of Ricardo Cervantes and Danny Rivera.

“Quinto,” she prodded.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” He flipped the page and wrote laboriously.

Dillon stalked in, handed her a note from Randy, and sat down. Jeanie ushered Rosalie back to her seat for the third time, and tried to extract an essay from her. Regrettably, the topic she chose had led, once again, to memories of her father, and the loss she now felt without his love. This was a poignant story, and had affected Jeanie greatly the first half-dozen times she’d heard it.

“Rosalie, Rosalie,” she said bracingly. “Come on, girl, quit the tears. You’ll get salt in the potatoes.”

“Potatoes?” said Rosalie, startled. The tears stopped.

“Life is like a potato, Rosalie, didn’t you know?” Jeanie felt like a fool, pulling out the old family joke. It never made sense to outsiders. “Potatoes have a rough life. They’re mashed, baked, fried, or scalloped in a cheese sauce.”

“Huh?” said Quinto, interrupting from his table. “How’s that? Life’s a potato?”

“Back to work, guys. Come on.” Jeanie cast a glance around for the cat. Rita had discovered Dillon, and crawled into one of his large coat pockets. Jeanie savored Dillon’s unnerved expression.

Brynna shoved her way through the door, looking over her shoulder. Jeanie stood involuntarily. Brynna was her own personal weathervane. Whatever was going on, Brynna always knew it. Was the girl sadistic? Or calculating, always looking for an angle? Or was it just the suspicion of a trapped animal, watching for hunters? Jeanie’s hand settled on a room divider. Without conscious thought, she pulled it behind her, closing Brynna off from Tonio.

“Hi, Brynna,” Jeanie said.

“Hey,” said Brynna. She settled at a table, and sat watching the door with the alert look of the vulture waiting for something to die.

There was a shuffling step in the hallway. Sorrel walked in stiffly, jerking from side to side, like a wind-up doll whose interior mechanism had fragmented. Brynna’s alert look sharpened.

“Hi, Sorrel,” Jeanie said.

Sorrel gave no sign of hearing. She passed all of them and fumbled her way into a chair in the furthest corner of the room. The students generally avoided the corner desk. It was too isolated, and had no nearby windows. It accumulated the usual clutter of homeless debris: empty Coke cans, crumpled assignments, even a wrench and a spray can of paint.

Brynna swiveled to watch, her face bright with malicious curiosity. Jeanie closed the door, grabbed two more room dividers, and boxed off Sorrel from the others. Brynna gave a wordless protest, and subsided into a sullen lump.

“Here, Brynna,” said Jeanie, plopping books on her desk. “Science today, I thought. A little change of pace.”

Her wandering eye settled on Tonio. Tonio glanced from Sorrel’s divider to his radio. He edged it towards Jeanie with a questioning look. It was a trade for the food, thought Jeanie, and nodded gratefully. Tonio turned on the radio. The beat of gangsta rap drowned out the background paper rustles. Rita squawked at the noise, and dove into Dillon’s jacket. Dillon flinched, but his hand, pursuing the cat, was unexpectedly gentle.

Jeanie slipped between the dividers. Sorrel hung in the chair, her hands lying loose on the table. She might have been dead or comatose, and tied into her chair for some barbaric ritual. Jeanie lifted the clutter from the desk, dumping it on the floor.

The roar of Oscar Kemmerich’s motorcycle cut through the music. Jeanie noticed it with vague irritation. Since she’d broken up a cozy conversation between Mr. Kemmerich and Rosalie, he’d gone to some trouble to disrupt the class. In one of his more inspired antics, he’d brought a friend of his, a police officer, on a tour through the building, and introduced him to her class. The officer was polite, if baffled, but her students’ varied reactions had taken her most of an hour to overcome.

“Sorrel, I talked to your boss,” Jeanie said, trying to break into her self-absorption. There was no flicker of understanding. “Carol’s really happy with the way you’re working out.” Where were the girl’s restless movements? The tapping of the fingers, the impatient slap of books onto the tables? There was something obscene about the dreadful stillness. “Sorrel? Sorrel, are you feeling all right?”

“Sure.” The voice was distant, vague.

Was she in shock? Sugar was good for shock. “Sorrel, can I get you a pop? Some coffee, maybe?”

“No.” With a visible effort, Sorrel looked up. “I’m fine. I got work to do.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jeanie’s glance slipped over Sorrel’s eyes, the color of the skin around the vivid splotches of makeup. She ticked off the warning signs she’d read a hundred times in the last months. Nothing matched. “You look sick. Do you need to lie down? Should I call the clinic?”

“No.” Sorrel’s voice was still, lifeless.

Jeanie waited for the automatic reach for purse and hand mirror, but the purse lay disregarded. Rumpled clothes, uncombed hair, uneven makeup, applied with an absent mind and careless hand. There were scuffs on her fingernails. There were actually
scuffs
on her
fingernails
.

“Sorrel? Honey?” Jeanie’s hand edged out over the desk and hesitated. Her instincts fought with her hard-won knowledge.

Never touch
, Mackie said.
Never
.

Very lightly, Jeanie rested two fingers on the back of Sorrel’s hand. Sorrel’s hand was still. It quivered, turned, and closed tightly on hers, fingernails digging into the back of Jeanie’s hand. Sorrel’s face convulsed, and a tremor wracked her body. She dropped her head onto the joined hands. Her forehead was hot and damp.

“What is it? Whatever it is, just tell me.”

“I’m pregnant.” The words were scarcely audible.

Words leaped to Jeanie’s mind.
Who, when, how?
She bit back the words. All it took was ten minutes and a broom closet.

She brushed a tendril of hair from Sorrel’s hot face. “You’re sure.”

“Yeah.” The tortured voice was nearly inaudible. “Shit, what am I going to do? They find out, they’ll kick me out of Futures, back to the Tank. ‘Til I’m twenty-one. Two more fucking years. I can’t do it. I’ll kill myself.”

Jeanie strove to keep her voice calm, detached. “Maybe an abortion, Sorrel? I’ll help you sort it out. No need to tell anyone.” Jeanie was putting herself out on a limb, but it seemed like a natural place to be. A student needed her.

“No.” The word wrenched loose. “I thought of that, I thought maybe— I snuck out of work at lunch today. I went to this place and asked. They had these pictures, you know. Babies, all cut up.”