The Way Back to Happiness (25 page)

Money any time you wanted it. From machines. Honestly, what message was that sending?

It was good to be doing something creative again, and this project gave the students a lot of artistic leeway. From a magazine, she’d found a model of a cornucopia in the shape of a turkey. “A turkey pooping fruit,” is how one of the students described it. Unfortunately, there was a little truth in that, but it was still a cute idea, and the kids would have something fun to take home to their parents or grandparents at the holiday, which never hurt.

She was lining up an entire counter with inexpensive materials she’d saved so that the girls and Stuart could construct their own turkey cornucopia from everyday objects. She had boxes—both wood and cardboard—egg cartons, pinecones, Popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, feathers . . .

This was going to be a blast.

At the last minute, she’d decided that the Popsicle sticks she’d been gathering and disinfecting all year could use a boost. She’d bought varnish at the hardware store during lunch and now used her free period in the classroom to lay the sticks on newspaper on the floor and stain them. They’d look more autumnal this way, and if she worked fast, the class could hit the ground running first period tomorrow.

She freed Bugs to hop around and opened the window to keep the room aired. It was November, but the afternoons still sometimes spiked into the upper sixties, and this was a perfect, clear day. A regimental march version of “What a Feeling” wafted over from the football field where the marching band was practicing.
Flashdance
with snare drums and sousaphones. She loved fall.

As she was halfway through varnishing, a light knock sounded at the door and Jackie popped her head in. It took her a moment to spot Bev on the floor, and then she noted all the Popsicle sticks with a smirk. “Looks like a summer camp project,” Jackie said.

Bev stood. She wouldn’t stoop to explaining her work to this woman.

“Lon needs to see you in his office.” Jackie’s perfectly plucked eyebrows arched sarcastically. “If you can spare the time.”

The summons shook Bev to the marrow of her bones. A personal summons . . . not just a message over the school intercom. Lon wanted to see her, and it was the end of the day. . . .

She tried to smile and appear unflustered, though she doubted she fooled Jackie. “All right.” She dusted her hands together as nonchalantly as she could, but her mind was in a frenzy.

They left the room and fell into step side by side. Occasionally, she could feel Jackie looking over at her. Was she sizing her up as competition? Watching for signs of nerves?

Bev
was
nervous. One comforting thought occurred to her: This was Tuesday. Most firings happened on Friday. Also, if Lon did fire her today, who would he get to replace her? Firing her would cause a disruption in the middle of the semester. It wouldn’t make sense.

But if she was wrong . . . how would she live? There was the mortgage on her house, and now she had Alabama to take care of.

As they approached the office, she clung to the not-Friday theory like a person treed by a bear would hug a precariously thin tree limb.

She was escorted right in and sat down in the chair opposite Lon. The naughty chair.

“Well, Bev,” Lon said. “I thought we were overdue for a little chat. That’s why I asked you here.”

She smiled.
Asked her?
She’d practically been frog-marched here by his sister. “What did you want to talk about?”

Assuming a pensive expression, he regarded her over steepled fingers. “The question is, Bev, what you need to talk about, and to whom.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

He leaned forward. “Of course, I don’t delve into the personal lives of my faculty. Your life is your business . . . except when it has a detrimental effect on the community here at New Sparta High School.”

Or on your sister’s love life?
Bev tried to keep a neutral expression.

“In that event,” Lon continued, “I feel it’s necessary to step in.”

“Have I had a detrimental effect on anyone?” she asked.

His lips flattened, as if this conversation was becoming more distasteful to him. In reality, she sensed that he was loving every second. “Your behavior this year has been . . . erratic. I understand that your personal situation has changed—your niece is living with you, and . . . well, excuse me, but we’ve all heard about the incident at Lewanne’s. Even the students know about it. You can’t feel good about that.”

“I’m not sure a conversation I had with a . . . friend . . . is anyone’s business but my own.”

“Of course. Normally, I pay no mind to gossip—except I did note that the real story of your nose, which I pieced together through the grapevine, turned out to be a little different from the tale you told me.”

She blushed. She couldn’t deny she’d misled him there. Well, lied.

“But even leaving those things aside,” he said, moving on, “there’s the matter of having shouting arguments with your niece in the hallway. That’s not a good example of how to comport oneself in public, is it?”

“It was just once. I was so surprised by—”

He waved away her excuses. “We all know that teens can try our patience. And everyone is aware that your home situation changed abruptly this year. That’s why I’m giving you this friendly warning and offering you the advice to see someone. Jackie would be happy to contact Dr. Land for you.”

She shrank back, her cheeks flaming. He wanted
her
to talk to a psychiatrist? The same one she’d sent Alabama to?

“I see,” she said. “Is that a requirement?”

“Oh no. Simply a friendly nudge. We all need help sometimes, Bev.” He smiled. “Meanwhile, I’ll mark in your employment file that we had this little chat.”

All the way back to her classroom, her emotions careened between relief that she hadn’t been fired, humiliation that everyone thought she was crazy, and panic about her file. Oh, Lon could soft-pedal the matter all he wanted, but there was no doubting his meaning. She’d come unhinged once too often, too publicly. She’d lied. And no telling what Jackie was saying about her.

Hearing an account of her actions in their most unflattering light did make her feel ashamed. Especially lying about her nose. And now it was all being noted in her file. Lon was laying the paper trail so he could let her go at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Her footsteps slowed. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Jackie wasn’t actually at the bottom of all of this. It would be so handy for her if Bev was out of the way altogether. Then she could have Glen free and clear, and someone else—maybe even Leah—could take over the homemaking classes. And with cousin Larry stepping in to teach health, the Kirby stranglehold on New Sparta High would be a little bit stronger.

It was like the royal court intrigues of the romance novels she sometimes dipped into, only instead of dukes and countesses, the players here were administrators and teachers. Her head wasn’t on the chopping block yet, but she felt as if she was headed in that direction. And it was impossible to know who she could trust. Did other members of the faculty think she was losing it, too? Could she talk to Glen?

Glen. She remembered now. On Halloween at the grocery store, he’d said he wanted to talk to her about something he’d heard. Maybe this was it. Maybe he was her ally after all.

And she’d been so snippy and snide with him.

When she approached her classroom, the door was slightly ajar. She sped up, worried. She’d rushed out so quickly she hadn’t even remembered to take her purse with her. The school didn’t have a lot of trouble with theft, but leaving something out like that was asking for trouble. She pushed into the room, and bit back a shout when she saw someone there.

Then she let out a sigh. It was Oren. It wasn’t O time, but maybe he’d forgotten something.
She
wasn’t going to be anal about his not keeping to the schedule.

Oren barely glanced at her after he entered. Instead, he remained hovered where the newspapers were strewn across the floor and covered with the varnished Popsicle sticks. An ominous frown was etched across his jowly face.

“What have you done?” he thundered at her.

She rushed forward. Had the varnish spilled? It did smell strongly, even though she’d closed the lid. She was sure she’d—

Looking down, she gasped. Bugs was lying stretched out on his side, his furry little body arched and rigid. In her hurry to follow Jackie, she’d forgotten him as completely as she’d forgotten her purse. And now a half-gnawed, newly varnished Popsicle stick protruded from his triangle of a mouth.

“He’s dead,” Oren said.

His meaning—and the evidence—couldn’t have been clearer.

The school mascot, the very symbol of New Sparta High, had met its death gnawing on her home ec project.

She’d killed Bugs.

“A
re you in love with Kevin Kerrigan?”

“What?” Alabama nearly spat up her Mr. Pibb. “No!”

She’d been reluctant to tell Stuart about Kevin at all, but after he saw Kevin pass her a note in the cafeteria, she’d had to confess. He’d been interrogating her for details ever since. It was like walking home with a member of the KGB.

“How many times have you gone out with him?”

“Twice. It’s sort of been by accident. He picks me up to go driving . . . and stuff.”

“Are you going steady?”

“Going steady? This isn’t
Happy Days
. Anyway, does it sound like we’re going steady?”

“No. You make it sound more like occasional kidnapping.”

She scowled at him. “It has to be that way because I’m grounded. And Aunt Bev thinks he’s too old. Or I’m too young.”

“So all you can do is sneak around when your aunt’s busy. I get that. But would you consider yourself his girlfriend? Has he kissed you?”

“Yes—I mean, yes, he’s kissed me.” She was doubtful about the girlfriend part.

“Has he done more?”

She had no intention of answering that, but her blush probably gave her away. The second time she’d driven with Kevin, he’d been just as nice during the drive but a lot pushier when they were parked. Not that she didn’t enjoy a lot of what he was doing. Remembering where he’d put her hands turned her insides to lava. But she certainly hadn’t let him take her clothes off or anything like that.

“I’m not sure I trust that guy,” Stuart said. “You should watch out.”

“
You
were panting after him for months! Why else were we hanging out by the tennis courts in the heat of August? And now you’re telling me I should stay away?”

“I was panting after him because it seemed hopeless, and because he’s cute. Unrequited lust is romantic. It’s different if he actually notices you. And it’s really different if he treats you like a PG-rated streetwalker.”

“You’re just jealous,” she said.

“No, I’m not.
You’re
just touchy because you don’t want to admit he’s using you.” They walked in tense silence for a while. Then he asked, “What do y’all talk about?”

“Nothing.” Her tone was curt. “Just stuff. The usual.”

“Does he like music, like you do?”

“Of course. Everybody likes music.”

“I mean, those old rock albums,” he said. “Which isn’t really old music. Really old recorded music started—”

She interrupted, not feeling like listening to a history of the music industry going all the way back to Edison wax cylinders. “I don’t know. I never talk about it with him.”

“You said that’s what y’all talk about.”

“It’s
some
of what we talk about. You know. Small talk.”

His eyebrows drew together, puzzled. “So he’s not very interesting?”

She bit back a yowl of frustration.

But at the same time . . .

She was coming to the same conclusion. Kevin was popular with a certain crowd and good at sports—tennis, at least—and he made decent grades, but he didn’t seem all that intelligent. Or original. It was fun having a guy like him interested in her, even if it was only in secret. But the second time he’d picked her up, once she’d forgotten how nervous she was she actually felt . . . bored. She’d tried to talk to him about
Great Expectations
once, and he’d told her that when he was a freshman he hadn’t bothered reading it.

“Maybe I could hang out with you guys sometime,” Stuart said. “You know—if you go somewhere.”

“Where would we go?”

“A movie, maybe?”

She shook her head. “My aunt would flip.”

“Not being able to go out and do stuff puts a big damper on a relationship, doesn’t it?” Stuart asked. “I mean, you and Kevin don’t really strike me as Romeo and Juliet material.”

“I never said we were. I just don’t want my aunt to wig out. Is that so hard to understand?”

Stuart didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. It was common knowledge that her aunt had flipped already. The death of Bugs the day before had spread through the school after homeroom—it had almost been a day of mourning. Last night, Bev had moped all evening as she made lemon bars for the big Future Homemakers of America bake sale, but, typically, she hadn’t told Alabama
why
she was so depressed. Alabama was as shocked as all the other students when she’d heard the story that morning.

“Well, if you don’t want to hang out with just me anymore,” Stuart said, “and you don’t want to invite me along . . .”

Honestly. It was like having a little brother. “It’s not that I don’t want to invite you. I told you—it’s not something I can ever plan.”

“And Kevin thinks I’m a freak, right?”

“No.” A lie. Kevin sometimes sneered a little about Stuart. She felt uneasy about that—and disloyal for not making Kevin see what a good friend Stuart was. Sure, she’d told him that she hung out with Stuart, but he didn’t seem to care.

Anyway, why should she feel guilty about all this? Was she really supposed to share her sort-of boyfriend with her friend?

“Or he thinks I’m a dork,” he said. “All those guys do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He stopped at his street. She still had several blocks to go. She would have invited him back to the house . . . except that she never knew when Bev would be in one of her manic phases. Which, in a strange way, felt more like life used to be, with her mom.

But also . . . she didn’t want to go with Stuart because she was secretly hoping she’d run into Kevin.

“Are you avoiding me because I think Ms. Putterman is really your mother?”

“No.” That was partly the reason, but telling him that would just start another argument.

He didn’t look satisfied with her answer. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” he said, resentment coming through in his voice and from the slump of his shoulders. “Since you’re not interested in doing anything anymore.”

He pivoted and headed for home.

She called after him, “Stuart, c’mon. Don’t act like a baby.”

He didn’t turn around.

What was the matter with him?

Why couldn’t life be simpler?

As luck would have it, Kevin did drive by, seconds later. She smiled at him when he leaned over and opened the car door for her. “It looked like you were going to Stu-loo’s house,” he said, grinning.

She frowned. She hated when people called him Stu-loo. “You were stalking us?”

“Nah—just seeing what you were up to.”

She got in the car. “We could have included him.”

He wrinkled his nose. “No thanks,” and then he accelerated.

She grabbed the dashboard. “Where are we going?”

“How about your place?”

“Are you kidding? My aunt might come home.”

“No, she won’t. I just saw her outside the grocery store, doing a bake sale thing.”

That was right. She’d forgotten about the FHA bake sale.

“That business with your aunt and Bugs is unbelievable,” Kevin said. “Do you know what Marvin was calling it at lunch?”

Marvin was his friend, another junior, who she knew by sight but had never talked to. She shook her head.

“Murder by homemaking.”

She laughed, then stopped herself. It really wasn’t funny. That poor rabbit. “I kept looking at all those Bugs Bunny posters they put up for this week’s pep rally and thinking about Bugs choking.”

“You know what? I have the most awesome idea for those posters.”

He told her, and it did seem like an awesome idea. So awesome that, for the first time, they didn’t go driving around. They stole some old craft supplies from Bev’s garage—water-damaged poster board, tempera paint, and glue—went back to the school, and got to work. They had to sneak around and break into a few rooms, but with Gerald the old security guy on duty, it wasn’t that difficult. Gerald was practically deaf.

She returned to the house that night around seven thirty. Bev had only been home for a few minutes, but she was livid.

“Where have you been?”

Alabama took a chance that Bev hadn’t been on the horn yet. “Stuart’s.”

“You could have called. And you’re supposed to be grounded. That means no running around after school.”

“Sorry—guess I forgot.”

Bev pursed her lips in disbelief. “Also, you said you’d empty the dishwasher, remember? If you don’t start being more responsible, I’m going to have to dock your allowance.”

As Alabama slunk off to her room, it was hard to bite back a smile. Let Bev screech and nag all she wanted. Revenge was nigh.

Tomorrow was going to be incredible.

 

The next morning, everyone was buzzing about the posters. At first glance, they looked just like the pep rally posters carefully crafted by the cheerleaders and pep squad, with Looney Tunes figures drawn on them. But Alabama and Kevin had retouched them, occasionally gluing the old cartoon figures onto the poster board they’d taken from Bev’s to make room for the new slogans. Several of the posters were of Bugs Bunny. Over Bugs’s ears, they’d printed W
HAT’S
U
P
, M
ISS
P
UTTERMAN
?

Another poster had featured Elmer Fudd in hunting gear. She and Kevin had broken into the faculty lounge and Xeroxed Bev’s faculty photo, and then replaced Elmer’s face with Bev’s. Instead of Elmer Fudd saying
“Kill the Eagles!”
Bev was now saying
“Kill the Wabbit!”

The prank was an even bigger hit than Alabama had ever dreamed it would be. Students found the signs hysterical. At first she was dying to blurt out the fact that she was the mastermind behind the posters . . . or at least the assistant to the mastermind . . . but she and Kevin had sworn themselves to secrecy. Breaking into the faculty lounge could bring a load of trouble down on them.

Some kids in her algebra class discovered Bev was the second-period hall monitor, and they took turns going to the bathroom so they could ask, “What’s up, Miss Putterman?” Apparently, the trend spread. At midmorning assembly, Lon Kirby announced that frivolous trips to the bathroom would not be tolerated. To which one wiseacre senior called out, “What’s up with that?” Within seconds, a chorus of “What’s up?” rippled through the auditorium.

Mr. Kirby went beet red. When one of the more serious-minded students bravely stood and asked what constituted a frivolous trip to the bathroom, and how the principal would be able to verify that it was frivolous, laughter broke out. Mr. Kirby shushed them all and changed the subject. They were warned that any defacement of school property—including pep-rally posters—would be considered theft and vandalism and subject to a three-day suspension. What’s more, his office was working diligently to discover the identity of the culprit behind today’s prank.

The dead serious tone in his voice sent a chill through Alabama. Then, from across the auditorium, Kevin winked at her. She smiled, but not too much.

By lunch, all of the posters save a few outliers had been found and removed—presumably to be studied for clues. Alabama made a mental note to replace the missing poster board in Bev’s garage. Now that the first rush of excitement was over, paranoia set in. She kept imagining Mr. Kirby and Gerald battering down her door some night and dragging her in front of the school board in her pajamas.

She hadn’t told anyone, not even Stuart, but what if Kevin boasted to his friends? Could they be trusted? Some of those boys seemed like big mouths.

At lunch, Stuart was later than usual getting to their table. “Somebody wrote ‘What’s Up, Miss Putterman?’ in Magic Marker on the boys’ bathroom mirror,” he explained as he unloaded his lunchbox. “It took me forever to clean it off. I had to ask the janitor for some cleanser.”

“Why’d you wash it off?” she asked.

He stared at her in confusion. “Because it’s so mean. I know she grounded you and all, but I felt so bad for Ms. Putterman in class this morning. She seemed seriously shaken up.”

“Really?” It took effort not to sound too gleeful. The bomb had hit its target. Eureka!

He poked the straw into his juice pouch and took a sip. “At one point, I could swear she was crying. The whole class got real quiet. It’s awkward in there anyway, what with the sad empty cage and everything.” He shook his head. “Who would be that vicious?”

Alabama nibbled a chicken nugget. “It was just a joke.” Maybe it
was
a little mean, but she wasn’t vicious.

Was she?

“Some of the kids are being so nasty,” Stuart said. “I won’t tell you about the drawing that was also on that bathroom mirror.”

She sat back, frowning. She’d assumed people would laugh at the joke and move on. And they probably would. Stuart was just in his moralizing mode. A few days earlier he’d held forth for the entire lunch period about the hole in the ozone layer. No wonder they usually ate by themselves.

Glancing over at the faculty table, she noted that Bev hadn’t shown up for lunch.

“People don’t know what it’s like to have something like that happen to them,” Stuart said.

He spoke as if
he’d
had personal experience. Or maybe he just meant people calling him Stu-loo and tripping him in libraries. That was probably bad enough.

Between classes that afternoon, Bev stopped Alabama in the hallway.

Alabama’s heart was in her throat. Their public encounters didn’t always go well, and there was the very real fear that Bev had connected her brief disappearance last evening with the appearance of the posters this morning.

Would her own aunt turn her over to the school authorities?

Bev frowned. “Is something wrong?”