The Taming of the Drew (41 page)

I put a hand on my hip, ready to rip into Gremio, when Tio gave a frantic, not-at-all-subtle jerk of his head behind him. “Tell
her
,” he said. That’s when I realized Dean Verona waited in the doorway to her office further down the hall, watching.

“Oh I’ll tell her all right,” I said, “This man,” I pointed a shaky finger at Gremio, “this man has no idea what’s going on in my life. And don’t you deny it, mister!” (
mister
?). I stepped to Gremio, going up on tiptoe to loom over him as I poked him in the chest with my index finger.

Gremio puckered inside his skin like processed meat.
 

“That’s right,” said Tio behind me in a fake-hearty voice, “He doesn’t know
anything
because he’s my
father
.”

I could feel Greenback heads swiveling in horror and confusion behind me.
 

Gremio, vindicated, bloated in front of me, back to normal size. He gave a
so there
tug on his clip-on tie so hard that it accidentally popped off. Then, fiddling with the metal clip, he turned sideways, like he needed to preserve his modesty.

“Ha.” Said Tio, the volume still up on his voice. “Ha. Ha.
Of course
my dad doesn’t know what’s going on in your life, Kate. Ha. Ha. Kate, you’re such a kidder. Ha -”

He might have gone on that way for quite a while, except I sprayed him with a Mace-glare. He shut up instantly.

Dean Verona said, her voice too flat, “Is this true, Katharine? Are you joking with Tio’s dad?”

Tio, his back to Dean Verona, turned on me a pair of desperate going-to-the-pound-
don’t-let-them-put-me-down
puppy eyes and made a chin dip of yes Yes YES.

I said between clenched lips, “This will
never
work.”

Tio said back through his own suddenly-paralyzed mouth, “I don’t
care
.”

This was insane. And if I did this, if I baldly said, oh sure, this is Tio’s dad, I could add accessory-after-the-forgery to the list of things I’d done wrong. My criminal rap sheet was getting longer and longer.

Dean Verona said, “Katharine?”

I gave Tio a
you owe me big time
glare and said, “Ha. I
am
such a kidder. Hello, Tio’s dad.”

Gremio’s tie hung by a fabric tendon to his neck, and one of his collar points went straight up, the way a flap of hotdog can peel off and refuse to lie flat ever again. “Hello, Kate,” Gremio said.

There was a vague threat in those two words.

“So who called you to ask you to come to the school?” I said, all casual, as Dean Verona turned to go back to her office.
 

Gremio said, “Someone from the school asked me to be here, someone who would
never
get people in the kind of trouble that you get them in, Kate. Her name is Celia. Maybe you ought to try to be more like her.”

In the boiling greasy water of my anger, my face felt like it swelled. I rose up on tiptoe again, but Tio stood in Dean Verona’s doorway, motioning with a hand-flap for Gremio to hurry.

Gremio turned back to the hallway, and harshly whispered, “If I get a chance, young lady, I’ll
certainly
tell them what you’re up to, before you end up in a gutter somewhere. Just remember, I’m only doing this for your own good.”

He must have seen the look in my eye because he frantically clicked the door shut and I pulled up a nano-second before I collided, the tip of my nose touching the wood of the door, my panted breath bouncing back on my face.

I gave a growl of frustration, my hands clenching and fisting at my sides, arms straight down.

From behind, I heard a vaguely-familiar man’s voice saying, “Excuse me, can I get through here?”

Tapping the shoulders of the packed Greenbacks behind me, was Tio’s (real) dad.

***

“Uh.”
 

In unison, Phoebe, Helena, Viola, Alex, and Robin all turned to face him. Then we all took a synchronized giant step back, creating a three-body deep, two-body wide barricade. We knew who he was. We’d seen Mr. Vincent before at Tio’s house a few months back for a Friday-night hangout.

“Hi, Mr. Vincent,” I said, my voice thin from the pressure of the group and the stress of the last few hours. I felt the wood door behind me settle and then creak in its frame. “What are, what are you doing here?”

“I’m not exactly sure. I found a call on my cell from the Dean’s office, asking me to come in.” He eyed all of us. “Is this something about that club you’re all in? Are you in trouble?”

“Um. See. Well.” My brain flopped and twisted, unable to find an escape. I tried so hard to force something out that I’m pretty sure thought-blisters swelled and popped under my skull. “We could all go…” (yes, going was a good idea!) “and show you…the thing…the thing” (what thing could we show him?). “The thing that we’re--” That’s when I remembered the trees being cut down, the burst of redwood splinters showering a burgundy red spray, and my voice creaked like the door behind me. I stopped, cleared my voice and tried again, saying, “We could…see the place…we tried to save…”
 

Mr. Vincent said, his voice low and soft, “Kate, are you okay?”

I didn’t expect the door to give way behind me. There was only one more warning creak, then air where there had been solid wood. For a heartbeat of time I thought that, without Tio there to tell me to put my head between my knees, I’d actually swooned. My stomach did a swing and I went flying the way you jump off at the height of a swing on a play ground, and I stumbled back, crashing into a chair and toppling it.

A chair that held Gremio.

Okay, slipping and sliding off the pork-product smell of rubbery Gremio is a memory I intend to suppress for the rest of my life. Even as I tried to find my footing, I hoped I’d have traumatic amnesia. Otherwise I knew I’d have to scoop out my frontal lobes and sterilize them.

When I sizzled to my feet, my crinoline reeking of rancid oinker, I shoved with one hand my hair up out of my face and with the other hand my skirt down in back. Greenbacks staggered around the room and Dean Verona said, while glaring at us over her bifocals, “May I help you?” in a demanding way to Mr. Vincent, the only one stationary in the doorway.

Mr. Vincent blinked at the sight of his son in a chair, and Mr. Gremio flopping limp as bacon on the floor.

“Uh. Hi. Dad,” said Tio.

Dean Verona zapped Tio and then turned and zapped me with a neon-crackling look and I froze, my right eye twitching.
 

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, but before anything came out, the doorway behind Mr. Vincent filled with a crowd of people (Celia, Bianca, Gonzo, Mrs. Bullard, and even Curtis and Nate). The pushing to get a look (mostly from Nate and Curtis at the very back) carried Mr. Vincent along with the others into the room.

In the jostling silence, the room’s attention centered on Mr. Vincent, who stood with his arms crossed, staring from Tio to Gremio. “What’s going on?” he said.

Gremio stood, the chair looking like it was trying to crawl away at his feet. Gremio’s clip-on tie had lost its grip in the fall and now hung, unnoticed by its owner, in a particularly unfortunate place.

From his belt.
 

Gremio crossed his arms, his belly forward in defiance, and said, “I’m in charge of Tio. Here. Now.”

Dean Verona said, “Kate! I know you know this family and I asked you to verify this man. Explain to me exactly what is the meaning of this?”

I said, my voice rising with hope, “Alternative families?”

As the meaning of my words detonated around the room, I heard gasps and then, “No!” from Gonzo.
 

“What?!” from Mr. Vincent, and “NO!” bellowed Tio.

I feared, for a moment, from the look that flickered across his face, that Tio might claw his own eyes out.

Gremio said, eyeing Mr. Vincent, “I don’t think so. He’s not really my type.”

A collective gasp sucked the air from the room.
 

Mr. Vincent said, “Was I really asked to come to the school to explain my sexual orientation?”

“NO.” shouted Tio, even louder. He shot me a death-glare. “Mom will
kill
me.”

Gremio said, equally matter-of-fact as he righted the chair and sat in it, his tie now neatly tucked into his crotch, “Besides, I’m straight. Just ask my wife.”

My ears popped with the second vacuum-gasp. Gremio
gay
?! Gremio
married
?! Gremio and sex of
any kind
?! It was just too painful for any of us to think about.

“And I’m straight. Too.” Mr. Vincent’s volume dialed up. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it. With being straight. Or not-straight. Not that one’s a
better
thing. I mean, it’s
okay
to not be into my type. I mean, for
me
to not be some
guy’s
type, or
anyone’s
type, or to be their type, for that matter…”

Thank
God
he stopped talking.

At least now I know where Tio gets it from.
 

All the eyes in the room were tractor-beam locked onto Mr. Vincent. He’s really tall — two or three inches taller than Drew, with an athlete’s wide shoulders and a scholar’s slouch. He’s got salt-and-pepper gray hair at his temples and from his square jaw to his angled cheekbones, his face was deep-red.

Dean Verona eyed Mr. Vincent, then Gremio, then Tio.

I knew what she was thinking — that neither of the men resembled Tiny Tio. But Bianca, at my left, darted her gaze from Mr. Vincent to Tio, noticing, it seemed for the first time, Tio’s elongated arms and legs, and his massive tennis-shoed feet. I heard Bianca say in a loud voice, “Oh my God. He’s going to be HUGE.” Bianca’s first syllable was enough to cattle-prod Mrs. Bullard into bellowing action, like she’d barely been able to wait this long. “My
daughter
has been subjected to a fraudulent tutor on school grounds! I discovered Bianca’s been writing…” At the same exact moment, Mr. Vincent seemed to snap, and he barked, “I don’t even know why I’m here!” Then Mrs. Bullard whipped out lined school paper covered with hearts and doodles and a few notes on it, shouting “
love
notes and other inappropriate messages to someone named…” Mr. Vincent bellowed, “
Why
are we all shouting?!” and it was like Mrs. Bullard announced the guilty culprit in a game of Clue, “Luke! In the Tutoring Hall! Right here on campus!”

Dean Verona rapped her desk with a statue. It shocked everyone into silence, for a moment.
 

“Mooo-oom,” said Bianca, and slapped her palm over her forehead. The naked embarrassment in Bianca’s voice made every girl in the room cringe. When it comes to mothers, we knew the feeling, but none of us had ever had a mother go so far as to wave our secret notebook love-doodles in front of the entire school administration.

Tio stepped forward and said, his hands shoved in his front pockets, “Um. Mrs. Bullard?”

“Yes? You’re the young man who’s supposed to be her tutor! I’ll get to you in a minute.”

Dean Verona rapped the statue on her desk again with a tunk, but didn’t remove her hand from it. The Oscar-sized metal shape had a rusted dent on the head. Probably from being used for this purpose for many years.

Dean Verona peered over her bifocals at Gremio. She stared at him with a look that promised all kinds of violence. And detention. “And you are?” she asked in a torturer’s voice.

Gremio said, “Tio’s dad.”

Before the room could erupt again, the forehead of the statue took another pounding. In the silence, Dean Verona turned to Mr. Vincent, “And you are?” she said in a voice full of steel.

Mr. Vincent crossed his arms, his jaw set. “I’m Luke’s father.”

“Neat,” Viola’s voice rang out from the back, “like Star Wars!”

The room chuckled and even Dean Verona seemed to relax a bit, like she, at last, saw where the confusion came from: two dads + two different boy names = mixed up meetings. But then Nate’s voice from my right said, “
See
. I told you Bianca’s boy-crazy.”

Tio said, his fist clenched at his side, “Listen, jerk-off,
I’m
Luke.”

I would say there were double-takes around the room, but really they were quadruple takes. From Tio/Luke to Gremio, to Mr. Vincent to Tio/Luke. And back again with the name of Tio/Luke mentally swapped.

Dean Verona honed in on the one person whose head wasn’t swiveling in confusion. She held the statue out, pointing the dented metal head at me like a sword. “Kate,” she growled, and I could hear the expulsion in her voice.

“Um. Well. Yes.” I said, “The thing is, part of this is easy to explain.”

“Explain.”

“Tio’s name is Lucentio. Which means he got called,” I left out the Tiny part, “
Tio
in elementary school. But, clearly, his family calls him--”

“--Luke,” said Mr. Vincent.

Nate said, “You
knew
! You little twerp!”

Tio/Luke said, glaring back at Nate, “I found out when you did that
maybe
Bianca liked me. And then right after that you two bozos ruined…” his voice trailed off as Tio/Luke realized he almost spat out the fact that Nate and Curtis were the ones to expose the tutoring forgery.

Nate turned and stomped to the back area of the room, and Phoebe, standing next to him, said, “Nice eyeliner, Nate.”

Dean Verona said, “You are, in fact, precise, Kate, in saying you’d explain only
part
of the problem. I’m waiting for an explanation for the rest.”

That’s when Dean Padua said from the still-open doorway, “Knock, knock. Eileen, am I late?” His voice had an oiliness to it. He sidled into the room next to Mrs. Bullard.

Mrs. Bullard still hadn’t recovered from the Luke shock, but Dean Verona saw an opportunity when it arrived. Dean Verona (ignoring Dean Padua, like the rest of the room) pinned Gremio with a glare. “You claim you’re Tio’s father. As Tio’s father, you should know that this young man forged your signature.”