The Taming of the Drew (42 page)

“He did?” Gremio looked genuinely baffled. Then he startled and puffed out his chest, his chin tucked next to his one up-pointing collar. “No he didn’t. I signed it.”

Dean Verona looked down at a golden-rod colored page. “With a daisy dotting your i?”

Gremio blanched, going as pale and clammy as chilled hotdog flesh. He glanced around the room in a growing semi-panic.
 

“Okay, some things I’ll pretend I’m capable of. But I don’t do
that
,” Gremio said, hands twisting the end of his waist-dangling tie.
 

Bianca rolled her eyes and dug in her front pocket. She took out a fuschia piece of paper. “Look, no one forged
anything
. Take a look at this. It’s MY tutoring form. The one that goes as a pair with Luke’s. I mean Tio’s. See? One student has to have a parent’s approval (with a qualifying grade level over the cut-off), and the
other
student just needs contact information. No one needs a parent’s permission to GET tutoring, just to BE a tutor.”

Dean Verona stared from one form to the other. “But these are the wrong color forms.”

“So?” said Bianca, “See at the top? I scratched out the title and wrote in the correct one on each of them when I turned them in. One is a tutor and one is being tutored.” She smiled sweetly, “Do you expel students in Academy for using the wrong colors?”

“Um. Well. I see. Looks like the papers are in order, just the wrong color.” Dean Verona tapped her forefinger against her chin and peered at Bianca through bifocals. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been tutoring Tio, I mean, Luke, all this time?”

Mr. Vincent now had a shoulder leaned against the wall behind him, a smile on his face.

Mrs. Bullard turned and said to me, her voice low and ominous, “That wasn’t our agreement, Kate, now was it?”

I said, my mouth dry, “But Mrs. Bullard, educational theory states that people learn best when they’re
sharing
information. Bianca told me that Tio’s best in her worst subjects, and she’s best in Tio’s worst.”
 

Bianca blushed as delicate pink. “I
did
get an A+ on my Romeo and Juliet paper.”

Mrs. Bullard eyed Tio, his thick low-rider jeans and his too-big forehead, “You expect me to believe this…
boy
…is good at English?”

I could see Mr. Vincent straighten at the edge of the room, but he didn’t say a word. He let Tio answer.

Tio turned, looked at Mrs. Bullard and said, sullenly, “’I am no breeching scholar in the schools. I’ll not be tied to hours, nor appointed times, but learn my lessons as I please myself.’”

Mrs. Bullard looked offended, until Dean Verona said, her voice dry as parchment, “That’s
Shakespeare
, Eileen. Not an insult.” There was a pause, then Dean Verona added under her breath, picking up the statue and looking at it, “Of course,
being
Shakespeare, it’s probably
also
an insult.”

Mrs. Bullard whipped back to Bianca, “And you claim you’ve been teaching too?”

Bianca smiled even more sweetly. “Sure.” She turned and faced the packed crowd. “Did you learn anything?”

Tio, said, “Oh yeah.” Then Curtis and Nate blurted, “Boy, did we,” and “I’ll say.”

Mrs. Bullard narrowed her eyes at Bianca and barked, “We’ll discuss this later. I think we can move on.”

Dean Padua looked confused, “But Eileen, there have been irregularities.”

Mrs. Bullard impaled him with a glare and his voice deflated to nothing. “That’s Mrs. Bullard to you,” she said.

Dean Verona raised her eyebrows at Gremio. “So you aren’t Tio’s…?”

Gremio couldn’t meet her gaze, but hunched his shoulders, his chest sinking in like a falling soufflé. He gave a short jerk of the head no.

“Does that also mean you’re not married?”

Another jerk of the head no, his body sinking so far into itself that his kneecaps pressed together.

“And you’re
how
old?”

His elbows sunk into his sides, his hands pressed between his thighs with his belt-tugging tie. He practically whispered the words, all ears in the room straining forward, “Twenty-one.”

The silence was so profound, you could hear the murmur of a distant class through the thin office walls. Gremio was 21 going on geriatric.

Dean Verona put her shoulders back, like she needed to square herself for this next part. She narrowed her eyes and made a vague gesture toward Mr. Vincent. “And you two are not…”

“No,” said Mr. Vincent.
 

Dean Verona gave a shaky laugh, “Forgive me, that’s not an
accusation
, you understand. Not an implication. Not even an implication of a…a…liaison…per
se
…”
 

Thank
God
she stopped talking.

In the awkward silence, Gonzo blurted, “Deanie, I know just how you feel.” He was impossible to see, buried in the back of the crowd. He may even have been sitting. I imagined him slumped, head in hands.

“Tell me about it!” Celia said, giving a you and me finger wave between herself and Mr. Vincent, who frowned at her, confused.

Dean Verona scanned the back of the room, “Gonzalo?”

Now Gonzo mumbled. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. I mean, some things you can’t take back, Dean. Make that
Mrs
. Dean. I mean, sorry,
Dean Verona
. Just, you know,” (huge sigh) “sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“We seem to be digressing,” Dean Verona said, her neck mottled with embarrassment.

“Or converging!” Viola said, her voice bouncy as she watched Celia dart secret sideways glances in Gonzo’s direction.
 

Dean Verona said to Gremio, “The fact is, Mr. Whoever You Are, you came to my office and impersonated a student’s father. For which confusion, I offer my sincerest apologies to the
actual
father of Lucentio Vincent.”
 

Mr. Vincent folded his arms. “I appreciate that. I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what was going on.” He seemed to be trying hard to look angry, but failing.

“I’ll get to the punishment in a moment. And by punishment, I refer to
all
those involved. Because — what is your name?”

“Marcus.”

More shocked silence.

“Marcus Gremio.” He added, as if he knew we didn’t believe him.

Dean Verona cleared her voice. Even on such short acquaintance, she was having trouble accepting the name Marcus for the person crumpled in the chair in front of her. “Because, Marcus, you didn’t do this alone, now did you? In fact, without someone’s help, even you and Tio, I mean Luke, the both of you working together couldn’t have gotten in my door.”

Dean Verona placed the statue to the side, and I could see the inscription on a plaque at the bottom. It was indeed a statue of the Bard. She shifted papers on the desk and adjusted her bifocals. “Which brings us to Katharine Baptista. Felony theft of school property, misuse of school accounts, numerous violations of students’ privacy rights, misuse of the school’s internet policies, breaking and entering the boys’ locker room.”
 

I knew Dean Verona was tough, but it was kind of scary the way her neck sank into her shoulders, her nose wrinkling up into a snarling bulldog position. Even the tweed on the back of her shoulders ruffed up. You don’t mess with Dean Verona’s pod, and here she thought I’d been running an organized crime syndicate.

She kebabbed me with a look so penetrating, I winced. “And, I am to understand from account records, the illegal sale on-campus during break-time of contraband substances.”

Gremio shouted, “I knew it!” Then as all eyes turned to him, he squared his shoulders, his pointed-up collar tapping against his chin, “Kate has all the signs. It’s a sickness. She can’t help herself. I tried to warn her. Over and over I tried. But did she listen? Noooo…”

“Warn her?” Dean Verona narrowed her eyes at Gremio, “About hydrogenated trans fats?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Sank like melting grease back into the chair, muttering. “Oh. Well. At least there’s good money in trans fats, I’ll give her that.”

Dean Verona took off her bifocals and looked at me. Somehow, although I wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible, her stare was worse. Her eyes without her glasses, like my mom’s without make-up, had that soft and vulnerable look, and out of them shone a deep, grieving disappointment with a simmering twinned fury. “Katharine, I have noticed you are capable of championing some of our most, shall we say, at risk students. If I find that you have done so for illegal purposes…” as she spoke, the fury obliterated the disappointment, a kerosene fire of anger that ate up anything soft.

“I did,” I said.
 

Everyone in the room looked away. At the floor, at fingernails, at the ceiling.

“Think, before you speak, child.” The fury still crackled in Dean Verona’s gaze, but some hint of softness emerged, asbestos-strong.

I told myself it was time to end the deceptions. There was no point to any of it any more. My trees were gone. Now my friends were in serious trouble, all because of me. I wasn’t brave. I had to tell myself,
don’t look scared, don’t look scared
. I swallowed twice before I spoke.

“Dean Verona, I did everything you said. All those illegal things. And I made friends. Not just to get them to do illegal things. But I roped them into it. I wanted everyone to help me. Not a single one of the Greenbacks would have done anything wrong, except that I made them. They even called me the obsessed demon that drove them. That goes for Tio and because I’m the one who committed Tio to the tutoring arrangement, that goes for Gremio, too.”

The truth hung heavy over the room. Only Dean Padua smiled his oily smile.

Gremio muttered from the hollows of his chair, “That’s
Mister
Gremio to you, young missy,” but no one paid him any attention.
 

Dean Verona, with a heavy sigh, as though she dreaded doing it, picked up her bifocals and put them back on.
 

“In that case, Katharine Baptista, you deserve this pod’s most severe punishments, which means expulsion and fines, all of which will be, of course, on your permanent record. Our city’s law enforcement will be consulted as well. I intend to press for the maximum charges allowable. I also will personally insist on written, sincere, and public apologies to all individuals you have affected with your activities.”

“I think we should start now.”
 

Everyone turned to see Drew, my mother, and two other adults standing in the still-open doorway. It was Drew who’d spoken. I’d been holding it together, but the sight of him and the scratch on his arm brought back the memory of the tree’s chainsawing and the way I’d clawed and fought him. For the first time my upper lip shook and I pressed the back of my hand against it.
 

I thought my mom would come across the room to me, but she didn’t. She went and stood behind Dean Verona’s chair. Mom leaned against the window ledge, arms crossed, as relaxed as if she was watching the end to an interesting bit of theater, instead of the beginning of her daughter’s downfall.

Drew gave a nod to his mom but walked to me and stood on my right, his hands at his sides, not touching me, not looking at me.
 

Dean Verona re-settled her glasses on her nose. “I understand you have a stake in these proceedings, Andrew, since you are one of the photographed —
ahem
–locker room boys, but I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”

“Oh no,” said Drew, this time putting his hands on his hips. He took up a lot of space, “I’m not one of the locker room boys. I’m
the
locker room boy. And the one person old enough to go to state prison for the missing camera.” As he talked, the couple who’d arrived with my mom and Drew moved separately into the crowd. One was the Botox-ed woman who’d staffed the snack table at the Uni Leadership dance, Mrs. Snyder. The man with Mrs. Snyder walked to the front of the room, put a large pile of papers on the desk in front of Dean Verona, and said, “I’ll get your signature on those before I leave, to prove you’ve been served,” then joined his wife. Mrs. Snyder had moved through the crowd to stand behind Celia, and, seeing them side-by-side, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed the resemblance before.
 

Drew said, “Kate ought to start the personal apologies now. Why wait?” He turned to face me. “Go ahead.”

The room got swimmy and my throat clogged. I said, “Drew.” I cleared my throat and tried again, avoiding his face but staring at the raw red scratch down his arm. “Drew, I’m sorry I hurt you—”

“—No.” He interrupted, his voice firm and patronizing as a Pottery person’s, as though he was talking to a beginner. “You mean you’re sorry you stopped me from destroying my life.”

That’s when I looked at his eyes. They were so soft, I took a deep shuddery breath to keep the tears inside. His lips tilted up at one corner and he reached out and hooked my hair behind my left ear. “Now start again,” he said, his voice deep and warm.

Alex said, into the silence, “That’s right. She needs to apologize to me too. You say it, Kate. Say you’re sorry you were my only friend.” Alex’s voice cracked.

Robin, shoved through Tio and his dad. “You’ve got a lot to answer for. You apologize now. In front of everyone. You apologize for believing in us. For caring about us when no one else did.”

People were blinking and looking away, a sniff here, a rubbed eye there.

I tried to keep my eyes on Drew, afraid that I couldn’t keep control if I didn’t.

I heard Phoebe say, “After everything she’s done, Kate’s lucky I don’t tear her limb from limb. Of course, she’s the reason I don’t do that kind of thing any more, which makes it kind of tricky.”

Helena said, “Apologize, Kate.” Her voice edgy with emotion, “Apologize now for giving us something to care about. How dare you make us believe we could make a difference.”

Into this silent, aching hurt, Mrs. Snyder reached out a thin arm and wrapped it around Celia, pulling Celia back against her chest in a loose hug.