Finding Hope in Texas (7 page)

Chapter
Three

I saw the girls later in gym, where the whole
knockout incident came down the day before. With a cool, crisp air
finally making it this far south, we had moved indoors and were
practicing basketball in the school’s oldest gym, also from the
Jimmy Carter era. They had three, but the coaches were not about to
allow some off-season track runners to take up time in the new gym
when they were in the middle of district play in basketball.
Supposedly, we were in the hunt for the championship this year in
both girls and boys basketball. Of course you could hardly tell it.
For myself, I was from out of town and didn’t know any of these
players, so that was my excuse for not caring. For the rest of the
student body, it just seemed that school spirit was beneath them,
that they had more important things to do than whoop and holler
about a round ball going through a hoop. My excuse seemed
better.

When I made my way on the court, I already
knew that my sullen expression was going to give everything away.
Mom always told me there was no easier book to read than my face,
and Dad said if I was ever to make a good lawyer, then I needed to
play more poker and learn my own tales. Because of that, and that
the girls involved in the manure-to-locker prank were already
staring at me with gleams of vindication shining across their
faces, I knew I had little to no time to find my revenge. If I was
to try to attack Jody, her friends would have me down in a
heartbeat and I would be the one to get in trouble. Plus fighting
was not my expertise. I could try to hurt her while we played
basketball, but again the numbers would be against me. Maybe
accepting what was done and being the bigger person would be my
only resolve? I was never much for revenge anyway.

My pace slowed as I felt the adrenaline in my
body start to fade away, until I saw him, Brad, sitting in the
bleachers with a few of his friends. They were all dressed out like
they were waiting to do something.
This would be it.
I felt
like the Grinch as he came up with the plan to steal Christmas. It
was fight or flight and I was choosing fight and he was my target.
I made a bee-line toward him, feeling my ponytail bouncing off the
back of my head as I went forward. This girl was going to learn the
hard way: never tick off a redhead! I knew Jody’s eyes had to be on
me, waiting for my reaction to the manure. But my plan was going to
be a direct assault on her heart and revenge would be mine! I
scrambled up the steps and made a swift move between two boys that
were sitting around him. He looked up at me, but didn’t say
anything. Such eyes.
Stay focused
. As sensually as I could
muster, I slowly planted myself in his lap, wrapped my arms around
his neck and gave him the biggest kiss he had ever seen before! Our
lips entangled with each other as I heard the whoops and hollers
come from all over the gym. His hands moved on my lower back,
supporting me. Finally, I pulled back, making a popping sound with
my lips. His eyes were like saucers as I stood up and began to walk
away.

“Was it good for you, Bradley boy?” I asked
in my best Marilyn Monroe voice, giving a quick wink, but not
waiting long enough for him to answer. When I clipped back across
the court, you could have heard a pen drop. All eyes were on me,
the instigator, and the antagonist of this little high school
drama. I didn’t say a word, didn’t stop to actually take part in
physical education. The ball wasn’t in my court anyway; I had just
slammed dunked it on Jody and yelled “boo-ya!” And I wasn’t about
to play anything with them, even under the careful supervision on
our coach. My day was done and I was going home.

I probably dressed the fastest in my life. If
a snide comment could give me a black eye, what would making out
with Brad right in front of Jody do? God, I’m sure they wouldn’t
even find my remains. My jubilation was turning into fear. My
adrenaline was telling me to run to the hills as fast as I could
and hide up there for the rest of my life. Panic sat in.

“I am
so
dead,” I said to the empty
room as I threw everything into my bag and grabbed my cell
phone.

“Come pick me up, NOW!” I practically yelled
at Mags.

“What? What’s wrong, honey? School doesn’t
let out for another hour.”

“I...I’ve got a stomach cramp. I feel really
bad. Can you just pick me up, please?”

Mags sighed on the phone. “I guess. I’ll have
to lock up early. Be there in twenty.”

“Okay, hurry.” I slammed the phone shut and
ventured over to the door, cracking it to see if anyone was in the
hallway waiting to pounce. The coast looked clear. This might be my
only chance to escape.
Come on, Hope! You had enough gumption to
kiss the cow’s boyfriend, but you can’t take your first step out of
the locker room where they will kill you for sure? Get the heck
outta here.
Crap. Now my consciousness was starting to sound
like a Texan.

This was a first for me. Mom would have had
my head on a platter if she would have found out I was skipping
school, even if it was only P.E. But any reasonable person could
see this was justified, that I needed a head start away from these
animals. I pranced down the hallway, like a gazelle fleeing a lion
on the African savanna. This would be much worse if I got caught,
though. Lions were relatively nice and just severed the jugular of
their prey. Jody and her friends were going to do much worse to me
if I was caught, and as I learned from yesterday, the hallway was
no place to be. It felt like forever, but I finally pushed open the
large metal door at the front of the gym and scurried out into the
parking area. Ah, open space. At least it gave me a fighting chance
not to be cornered like a rat on a sinking ship.

But now I had to wait, and wait, and wait
longer still. Twenty minutes standing in the cold winter breeze was
certainly not the shortest time in the world. The parking lot was
empty of people and I suspected if any adults came by that I would
be immediately sent to the office for leaving class without
permission. And as if my thought had been his cue, a man in a dark
suit began to descend on me from the school building.
Oh
crap!
As he came, his body language told me that the day had
been tough for him too, as he walked with finality-to-the-day
expression written upon his face. That is, until he saw me.
Quickly, his authoritarian demeanor returned to take on one more
misbehaving child who he needed to show the error of her ways.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” I replied, but in a noncommittal
way.

“Young lady, what are you doing out
here?”

“I was having cramps so I got permission to
go home. I’m waiting on my mo...aunt to pick me up.”

“Oh?” His voice cringed and I knew it was
from that one word:
cramps
. Men would rather hear that the
world was ending in the next five minutes before they ever heard of
a woman speak of the physiology of Mother Nature. His gaze shifted
back and forth as though he had been thrown off his trajectory by
this new information. “Alright then, carry on,” he lamented and
began to continue on his path, away from the birds and the bees. No
more questions, no grilling, no water boarding.
Cramps
.
Mr. Dark Suit doesn’t like them. I’ll have to make a note of
that.

It was just a couple minutes later when Mags
pulled up in the Ford POS and I flew into the passenger seat.

“Drive,” I ordered, looking over my shoulder
at the doors to the gym.

“And good seeing you, too.”

“I’m sorry. I just feel really bad.”

“Oh, honey, should I take you to the
clinic?”

“Um, no. I mean, if it gets any worse, then
maybe.” Yeah, if it gets worse than
I’m feeling fine but scared
of having the living crap beat out of me
, then we should
definitely look into it. Mags put the car in drive and we were off.
I had escaped and could feel a gleam of comeuppance fairly dealt
cross my face. This had to end the onslaught of attacks against me,
the defilement of my locker, the misfortunate accidents wielded
upon me during practice. I sighed in relief. It had to be over.

As soon as we got home, I ran into the house,
across the living room, down the hallway, and shut and locked the
door to my room. If I hid out in there, maybe my “sickness” would
be a bit better in a couple hours. Charlotte Bronte would keep me
company for a while.
Ah, Jane Eyre, if anyone was as a
depressing sole as me, it is you. Of course, you are only a
fictional character, and even in the end, you find your family,
gain an inheritance, and got Mr. Rochester in his tarnished
condition.
I sighed. It always worked out well in these
classics; I guessed that was why I had been such a fan and why they
were still popular after two hundred years. And even though I had
read them many times before, this time they really made sense, that
maybe the best part of someone’s life could be just around the
corner, that some small change could put you on the greatest path
of your life. I truly hoped so, probably even more than Barack
Obama had hoped for change. Still, I wondered if Mr. Rochester wore
a hook for a hand or just had a nub. Did Jane tease him later in
life and call him pirate? Before I knew it, I opened my eyes and it
was 6:30 p.m. I could hear Mags tapping on my door.

“Hope, you okay? I haven’t heard anything
from you since we got home.”

I had fallen asleep and quickly stretched
myself awake. “Yes, I’m fine. Just took a nap.”

“Okay, well. Dinner will be ready in about
fifteen minutes. Why don’t you come out and we will eat together,
okay?”

“Okay,” I howled back and I could hear her
leave the door. I jumped from the bed and grabbed my laptop. I
didn’t do it very often, but I decided to scan Facebook and see if
there was any good news in my friend’s lives back home. Mom and Dad
always ridiculed the social network, saying it would be the death
of all of humanity, so it was fun catching them enjoying a joke or
a posting on there just to throw it back in their face.

“Thanks for destroying American culture with
this tripe,” I would cry, laughing the entire time. Their faces
would redden and they would defend that they were just keeping up
with Tyler and me and making sure we were not putting anything too
bad on there. As I skimmed through the few posts from my friends
that were about 1800 miles away, I soon felt disconnected with my
old world. Our little neighborhood was such a good little community
that we never felt like we needed to use Facebook to keep up with
each other. We could just as easily have stepped out on the veranda
and talked to our neighbors, or walked down to the local deli or
shopping market. That’s what we were used to, but here in Texas,
where everything seemed to be a twenty minute drive, I could see
why the social internet was so helpful to people.

The little red box at the top of the toolbar
popped red and I noticed that I had a new friend’s request.
Scrolling across it, I saw Lizzy Peet’s name appear. I smiled to
myself just a little bit and accepted her friendship.

“My first new friend...at the loser’s table,”
I snorted.

Hey, you on?
She asked.

Yes, what’s up?
I typed back.

You, that’s what’s up. Everyone is talking
about what you did today at school. Jody was so angry! LOL. They
are destroying you on here.

Yeah, figured as much. As long as they don’t
physically assault me again, I’ll be fine.

Well, watch out for that 2. These girls here
are brutal curse words.

LOL. Thanks for your support. See you
tomorrow at lunch.

K. I mean it, though. B safe and watch out
for yourself.

I will. Thanks.

God, it was only the end of the third day at
school and the mean girl mafia was out to get me. Maybe I shouldn’t
have kissed Brad like that. I knew that would push Jody over the
edge, but she was on the brink, anyway. So she was now attacking me
on Facebook? Well, it only seemed appropriate, like the whole
teenage thing to do. I sighed. Maybe I should have just apologized
after she caught me talking to Brad in the first place. I still
didn’t think I did anything wrong; he was helping me up for Pete’s
sake, but maybe in her little narrowed mind it did look like he or
I was flirting. And today, sitting in his lap, kissing him like I
did, the whole
was it good for you
comment. Jeez, now that I
think back, I would have wanted to kick my butt, too. Was there
enough of a miracle that we could actually talk this out and make
amends? She was in that little religious group. Didn’t they teach
her that an
eye for an eye
left the whole world blind? All
of it had gone far enough and I really didn’t want to spend the
next year-and-a-half fighting with some girl that seemed to run the
school even as a junior.

Closing my computer, I made my way down the
hallway to the kitchen where Mags had made tortillas with beans and
rice. Ah, my first Tex-Mex encounter. What could I say, but out of
all the men Mags had chased around the country, she at least never
had to go after a chef. Her food was delicious with not too much
grease in the meat, the beans cooked at just the right temperature,
and the rice was not slushy or clumpy. Way to go Mags, I thought to
myself, but didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m sorry, I had planned on cooking this
tonight, but I didn’t know you would be feeling bad.”

“Oh, well, I’m feeling much better now. Thank
you.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

We sat for a few more minutes without saying
anything until she tried again.

“How do you like Jimmy Carter? Have you met
any new friends yet?”

“Mmm,” I played with the beans with my fork,
“Just a girl from band. We eat lunch together.”