Montana Hero (8 page)

Brady stared at
his slightly distorted reflection in the glass partition separating the principal’s inner office from the “holding cell,” as the other bad kids called it. His fat lip throbbed worse than his middle finger, which another kid bent all the way back after Brady flipped him off. The jerk had deserved it, but his mother wouldn’t be happy. The last time this happened, she’d made him promise never to use impolite gestures again.

“Write down your feelings, son. Paint your anger with big red magic markers. Create a song and dance it away,” she’d said in that tense, serious tone she used when she thought he was going to snap.

Mom was weird.

He didn’t know how she kept smiling, going to work every day, helping him with his homework, worrying about him instead of thinking about the death sentence hanging over her head.

“Everyone dies, honey,” she’d told him when she sat him down to explain about his grandmother’s disease. “Grandma’s sickness affects her brain, specifically, her memory. Doctors don’t know how to fix it.”

“Will I get it, too?” Brady had asked. He knew how germs were passed, which was why he washed his hands a hundred times more than other people in his class.

“More than likely not, but I can’t say for certain.”

“Will you get it?” Sometimes people inherited stuff from their parents, he knew. Like skin color and tongues that could curl.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Someday. The odds are I will, which means I have to make the absolute most of my time while I have all my senses. I plan to fill my days with fabulous memories and try to do something meaningful…on a smaller level. Grandiose is so not my style.”

She’d always talked to him like that. Big words. Complete sentences. Complex theories that made him think. He’d been tested often enough to know he had a very high IQ. Smarts weren’t the problem. Everything else was. The people stuff. The be-nice-to-idiots part really got to him.

He’d heard the other kids talking about him. “Brady is smart, but he’s not very nice.”

Even though he didn’t care about what most of the people in his classroom thought, there was one whose opinion mattered. A girl named Chloe Zabrinski.

*

Kat felt every
set of curious eyes burning into the navy blue windbreaker she’d grabbed by mistake on her way out the door. The letters SAR, in bright yellow, made it hard to slip into the Marietta Elementary Principal’s Office, unnoticed.

Oh, Brady, why now?

She’d tried homeschooling briefly in San Antonio, before she realized she wasn’t cut out for the job. As much as she’d loved working with her son’s rich, fertile mind, she’d constantly felt inadequate and worried that she was short-changing him in terms of socialization and interaction with his peers. So far, he’d appeared to be fitting in well into the Marietta School system. As well as could be expected, anyway.

Maybe that’s why the phone call from the school telling her Brady had been in a fight hit her so hard.
No pun intended.
“Damn,” she muttered under her breath. “Here we go again.”

The outer office door stood open. She knew the drill: sign in and take a seat—just like in a doctor’s office.
Doctor.
The word reminded her of Flynn’s text that came in right before she left.

Taking possible broken ankle 2 ER
.

Was this his friend or had he stumbled across another accident? Why didn’t Dispatch get the call?
Is my gung-ho new boss recruiting victims?

She tried not to fidget as she waited on the hard, molded plastic chair.

I am open and receptive and good things come to me
.

Mom taught Kat that mantra when Kat was in high school. At the time, Mom and Lloyd had signed up for a meditation and yoga class at a nearby Junior College. Kat hadn’t understood why until years later when Lloyd mentioned that Mom had read somewhere that yoga and meditation were good for the mind. Even then, Mom had glommed on to any hope to slow the progress of her disease.

“Mrs. Robinson?”

Kat removed her jacket before following the principal into an inner office. The woman opened another door leading to a separate cubicle and motioned for Brady to join them.

Kat drew him into a one-arm hug and kissed the top of his head. Her boy was getting so tall. “Are you okay?” she asked, gently touching the swelling on his upper lip.

He nodded, his gaze on the principal who waited in the doorway of her office.

Kat noticed he stuffed his right hand into the pocket of his jacket before trudging ahead of her to face his punishment.

The principal filled in the details. “One of Brady’s classmates shared some unfortunate news this morning. His parents are getting a divorce and he will be moving to Florida in a few weeks. When the young man’s friends tried to console him, Brady walked up to them and said something inappropriate.”

“What did you say, honey?”

“I said, ‘Cool’.”

His tone conveyed frustration. She knew he truly didn’t understand how anyone could take offense to his response. “I like Florida. Remember when we drove along the highway and saw gators? I thought he might feel better if he knew it was a neat place to live.”

Kat’s heart swelled and she fought back tears. Logical. Her son seemed to channel Mr. Spock at times. “It was nice of you to want to help, Brady. But, I take it, the other kids didn’t understand.”

His chin dropped and he shook his head. She’d learned over the years that other people’s responses left him more perplexed than upset. To have him react physically meant something else was going on, too. “Did they tease you, honey? Say mean things?”

“Chloe called me ‘heartless’.”

Chloe?
She’d never heard him mention the name, but she’d noticed the word doodled in the margin of one of his notebooks. She’d assumed the two were working together on an assignment.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. That must have hurt your feelings.” A thought struck. She looked at the principal. “That’s not who he fought, is it?”
A girl?

“No,” the principal said. “The boy who is moving instigated the fight. Here’s the note.”

She leaned across the desk to pass Kat a tattered piece of lined paper. Kat tried her best not to smile when she read the neatly printed corrections in her son’s handwriting. Kat couldn’t look at Brady for fear she’d burst out laughing.
Bad mother.

More sternly than necessary, she asked, “What’s his punishment?”

“We have a zero fighting policy. Two days mandatory suspension for both combatants. I believe Brady’s teacher has prepared a packet of homework. Brady will be able to Skype with the class during writing and math, if he wishes.” She gave Brady a no-nonsense look. “Audio only. He won’t be allowed to participate. If he has questions, he can email them to his teacher.”

Brady was ahead of his class in both subjects so Kat wasn’t worried about him missing something important. She did fear what this would mean to his relationship with the other students. “Will he be a pariah, now?”

“I’m glad you asked that. As a matter of fact, Serena James, the school’s new auditory therapist, has some ideas on how to help students resolve issues. Ms. James is waiting for you. She’s already spoken with the other boy and his parents. I believe the entire class can learn from this.”

Kat let out a sigh of excess tension and stood. Her phone, which she’d silenced as per the big sign in the waiting room, hummed in the zipper pocket of her uniform pants. She ignored it to shake hands with the principal. “Thank you. I appreciate your efforts to turn this into a positive. Brady hasn’t been that lucky in other schools. I really want him to make friends and be happy here.”

“As do we,” the principal said. She looked at Brady. “Do you know where Ms. James’s room is, Brady?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Overly polite. Playing the game.

“Good. Lead the way for your mother. And I want you to use the next two days to think about how you can avoid this kind of behavior in the future, young man.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Same exact inflection.

Kat hurried her son out of the room before the woman figured out Brady wasn’t listening to a word she said. Once they were alone in the hallway, Kat paused to look him straight in the eyes. His gaze bounced like the silly jumping beans that grossed her out so much at the street fairs in San Antonio. Finally, he took a breath and looked at her.

“Does your lip hurt?”

“A little.”

“Did you hit him back?”

“Once.” He held up his hand. As she suspected, his knuckles looked scraped up. “He had his mouth open. His teeth got me.”

“We’ll clean the wound and put an antibiotic ointment on the broken skin as soon as we get home.”

“I washed my hands, Mom. I’m not stupid.”

In an elementary school’s public bathroom. And you probably forgot the soap.

“It’s a mom-thing. Humor me.”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and led the way down the shadowy hallway. She’d gone to school in the South mainly. Her buildings had been lighter and brighter. But she liked the vibrant posters incorporating the school colors.

The room they arrived at was very small, more like a big storage room, but the woman behind the old metal desk more than made up for the size with her exuberant personality.

“Ah-ha, pugilist number two,” she said, jumping to her feet.

She marched toward them, hand extended. “I’m Serena James. So nice to meet you both—even under less than ideal conditions. Are you ready to make lemonade—figuratively speaking? I am.” She smacked her lips and ushered them into the room.

Kat liked her immediately. Her name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it…until she spotted a framed photo on the desk. A holiday shot of Serena James in a gorgeous white dress standing in the embrace of a man whose image she’d seen many times in the newspaper: Austen Zabrinski.

A thought Kat fought to ignore wiggled past her guard as she stared at the man’s movie-star handsome profile:
He could be my half-brother.

‡

A
t the sound
of the doorbell, Kat checked her watch. Five-fifteen. She felt like her day should have been over hours ago.

She put a lid on the pot of chili she’d thrown together after Brady’s session with Serena James. Kat liked her a great deal, but Serena’s unguarded comments about “Austen this”, “Mia that”, and “Paul and Bailey’s new baby” made Kat’s head feel ready to explode.

She had no intention of approaching the Zabrinski family with her unproven theory. The thought made her a little ill. She could picture what would happen if she dropped the “bastard” bomb in the center of this close-knit, extremely religious family.

“No. Not happening,” she muttered, wiping her hands on a towel as she checked on Brady on the way to the door.

Their two-bedroom apartment included a small alcove the rental agent called a study. Since neither she nor Brady were into television, she’d turned the area into a library, with a hodgepodge of bookshelves she’d bought at yard sales and spray-painted bright, some might say “garish” colors. Brady occupied his giant beanbag, headphones in place and iPad in hand.

He hadn’t said much since their meeting with the principal and Ms. James. She knew from experience he needed time to fit all the pieces of what happened in a composite that made sense to him. Tomorrow or the next day, he’d probably hand her a drawing or a poem or short story that summarized this experience for him.

Then, they’d talk.

She checked the peephole and her pulse sped up as she quickly opened the door.

“Hi. What are you doing here?” she asked her boss.

Flynn held up her bulky winter jacket—the one she’d meant to grab on her way out of the office and the cloth tote she often joked carried her life. “If I’m hit by a car on the way home from work, promise you’ll bury this with me. No peeking,” she’d told her co-workers from Day One.

“Rebecca was going to deliver these on her way home, but her husband’s car broke down north of town. Since your place is on my way…”

His smile looked a little uncomfortable.

She understood. They were still feeling their way as boss and employee, and privacy issues were on everyone’s mind these days after Ken Morrison’s Peeping Tom habits came to light.