So I started working on the beginning of everything in the story with Talon and Ana (who's name I'm still not sure about sticking with) yesterday night, and as it turns out, she has a pretty dark story in store, for why all this happens in the first place. This is the lead-up to it all, so pretty soon you'll probably find out. :)
Mrs. Lariat, the old and somewhat disabled homeroom teacher eyed me with contempt, her wiry gray hair sticking to her forehead in the humid air of the English building, her eyes livid, framed accordingly by overly-red plastic frames, as I tried to hide behind nothing, afraid that she would actually want something from me.
Something about this place, possibly the close resemblance to hell (if not the fact that the air conditioning had apparently been broken all year) had left it the one place that even the people restricted to their classrooms tried to escape.
“You came in late, didn’t you?”
I looked up at her in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
She frowned at me, the lines on her face growing more and more pronounced and gathering in pools beside her lips. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“I was here ten minutes before class! You
saw me!”
She leaned down to my desk, her breath smelling like death. I should’ve taken it as some kind of freakish omen. “Go to the office before I report you for not getting some kind of slip.”
Emily ‘the Witch’ Sidson laughed from behind me, making some snide remark about the way even a bat as blind as Lariat could tell when someone was worthless quietly enough for my oppressing authority figure not to hear.
“Look, Mrs. Lariat, you’ve sent me to the office for the last three days.” I pleaded on my behalf, trying to use logic to prove my innocence. “Don’t you think I would’ve learned by now and that I’m telling the truth? Mistakes are easy to make, believe me, and no one would blame you if...”
“NOW.” She demanded hotly.
I heaved my bag back onto my shoulder, sighing. I was sure Mr. Truman would be all too happy to disclose this information to my dad; probably just as happy as Jay, the over-sensitive office aide with an over-obsession for telling stories, would be to get another listener.
“Smooth move, laxative,” Jana, Emily’s best friend, commented across the room as I headed for the door. Her whole group of posse-loving, Emily-worshipping friends, and all of those in the class who had some kind of desire to be any kind of popular, chuckled quietly, leering at me from across the room.
I held my tongue. There would be time for verbally tearing her apart later, and she was giving me some really great material.
I pulled open the heavy metal door, slinging my bag halfway on my back. A couple more crude whispers followed me out the door, more than likely followed by a number of equally crude gestures.
Pulling another door open, leading outside, I headed across the sidewalk to the building straight across from the English building.
If the Main Office had been anywhere else, I might have reconsidered going to the office; I may have just gone home and forgotten about the whole situation. Of course, Dad would be upset and throw things around for a while, but this would be my second absence in four days, since the school system had decided that two tardies was somehow equal to an absence in that class.
Obviously, they didn’t have any kind of math teacher’s input on that whole issue, because as far as I remembered, two ten minute periods of lateness don’t exactly equal fifty-five minutes of class time.
As I reached for the door to the office, it swung open of its own accord.
After a moment of shock, I saw the pasty hand that had actually done it.
“Hi, Jay.” I said dryly. Most people would've gotten the hint.
“Hey, Anna!”
I grimaced, walking down the tiled hallway with him behind me like some kind of sidekick. “It’s not pronounced ‘Aah-na,’” I corrected tightly. “It’s ‘Auh-nuh’. A-N-A, not A-N-N-A.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what I said.” He chirped merrily, not at all disturbed by the fact that I was speeding up, trying to get away, as if it were possible. “Anyways, why are you in here? Did you bring an attendance sheet? I thought that Mrs. Lariat was here today…”
“I was tardy, Jay. Again.”
There was a moment of silence from Jay. That was one of the more serious offenses he had lectured me on
yesterday morning when I’d been in the office for the very same thing.
Of course, though, the silence ended too soon.
“Well… I guess everyone messes up at some point in their lives, though I wouldn’t let myself run into that situation again. I know you probably will find this kind of hard to believe, but, well, I was tardy once. It was back in third grade and I had a doctor’s appointment that ran a little bit over schedule. I was panicking, but you’ll never believe this, you’re excused if you can prove you were at the doctor! Anyways, it didn’t take too long to get that cleared up with Mrs. Heeder, the attendance secretary at the time. I think Wanda’s pretty good at her job here, though – that’s Mrs. Qwan to you, Anna – even if she has been here for only a couple of months. You know, it’s kind of funny, but it seems that most third-graders-”
I slammed the Principal’s office door in his face, relieved to have a reason to do so, and turned to face Mrs. Turner, Mr. Truman’s older, yet much younger-acting, secretary, who was looking at me both surprised and amused.
“He’s extremely annoying, isn’t he?” she remarked as the first period bell rang.
“That doesn’t even begin to cut it.” I said grimly, sinking into a chair. “Hey, Mrs. T., is everything always this screwy around here?”
She turned back to her computer, chuckling. “Honey, it’s your fourth day of school. Lighten up and look at whatever bright side you can find. If things suck for you now, just know they’re not going to exactly get better quickly.”
I groaned. “Does Truman know I’m in here yet?”
Without taking her eyes off of the screen, she picked up a pink slip of paper that she’d printed off and waved it in the air. “And it’s
Mr. Truman, Ana.”
“Crap.” I remarked.
“Tardiness travels faster than gossip around here.” She said, shrugging.
I snorted. “She said she wasn’t going to report me as long as I came in here and got a slip.”
Mrs. T. laughed. “I thought by now you would’ve learned that Mrs. Lariat isn’t exactly of the bigger brained humans in this world. She probably doesn’t even remember your name.”
What’s really sad is that what she’d said was true. “She called me Tiffani Lese yesterday.” I agreed.
“Exactly. So see?”
I sighed and put my head against the wall, shutting my eyes.
Last week, things had been so much better.
Before I had time to at least relax in my too-cold, too-plastic, recycled seventies waiting room chair, Truman’s door opened and a pale-faced kid who looked like he’d been beaten up pretty badly walked out in a daze.
“We have a contract to discuss, Mrs. Simon.” Truman announced through his office and out the door. He knew I could hear him.
I heaved a sigh and got up, lugging my bag with me. It was still loaded with school supplies I’d had to get out of my old locker.
“Hey, Mr. Truman.” I said, walking into the freezing office. All of the sudden, the hellish English building didn’t seem too incredibly bad.
“Ana Simon. Well, well, well, another tardy for the books already.”
He didn’t even look at me; he was turned away from both his desk and I, pouring him another cup of coffee.
I slid into one of his more cushioned chairs. “If that’s what you want to call it. I swear, I’d been there since
before the bell rang. I even asked her a question to make sure she’d remember me… Ah, Mr. Truman, don’t you think that’s a little selfish?”
His thin figure turned to me, an inquisitive look on his face. Dressed in tan slacks and a light blue collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, it seemed so strange that he was a principal in a high school; he looked like he’d barely gotten out of high school himself, let alone college, though I knew full and well that the picture of the three kids and woman on his desk happened to be a part of his married life – his after college married life, as he told kids who were having other-half issues.
“Excuse me?”
“The coffee maker.” I pointed out. “For the last three days, I’ve noticed that everyone else has to go to the break room for coffee, which makes them even more irritable before their daily cup…”
“Not everyone here drinks coffee in the first place. They’re naturally moody.” He said, half-smiling.
“But even so, those who do don’t have their own, while you get to sit in your comfortable office with air conditioning at your disposal and all the coffee you can possibly brew.”
Truman chuckled, shaking his head and seating himself in the chair behind his monstrosity of a wooden desk. “We’re not here for my coffee habits, Ana, though I can see why you may want to avoid the issue of your tardies.” He pulled at some papers on the desk, taking a sip of coffee. “This happens to be your fourth tardy in your first four days at this school.”
“It’s not my fault. I told you this the
last three times.”
“Right,” he agreed, “But I don’t know that you’re to be completely believed.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, what?”
He kept looking at several papers. “According to your old transcript, you were only tardy once this year over at our sister school, so I’m kind of curious as to why.”
I looked at him skeptically. “You really think someone would try to get something from being tardy?”
“Attention, possibly. A reputation, yes…”
My mouth fell, and I shook my head furiously. “You
know that’s not true. You really think I want to be known the same way I was back then? That was
horrible.”
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
