Watch Me (3 page)

“What's
she
doing here?” I asked Jonathan.

“I heard she slapped some girl,” Jonathan said. “People think girls are sweet, but when they get mad, look out.”

“What was she mad about?”

Jonathan just shrugged. “Probably girl stuff,” he said. “You should have seen her in the office after. She was crying and begging Ms. Everett not to call her parents. She promised she'd do anything if Ms. Everett didn't call.” He shook his head in disgust.

I stared at Jana as she took a seat at the back of the room. She was smart and popular—she was always on the honor roll, and she had a million friends. Drew called her The Princess behind her back, partly because her last name was King and her family lived in a big house on Royal avenue, and partly because she seemed so perfect. It was hard to imagine her hitting anyone. But Jonathan was right. You never know about girls. Just because they look sweet, doesn't mean they act sweet all the time. To be honest, I wanted to laugh knowing that Jana King was in detention for more or less the same reason that I was.

Mr. Porelli, who was in charge of detentions that day, made all three of us move up to the front of the room where he could keep an eye on what we were doing.

“I'm going to give you a break, people,” he said. “I'm going to let you get a head start on your homework.”

This was supposed to be a big deal, because a lot of teachers who were in charge of detention made you write an essay about whatever stupid thing had landed you there and what you could have done differently. I hate writing stuff like that—I hate writing anything—mostly because my spelling is pretty bad. So is my handwriting. So I guess it was nice that Mr. Porelli wasn't making us write anything. But doing homework is just as hard for me as writing an essay, so it wasn't like he was doing me a huge favor.

I pulled out my math book and opened it. I did the first part of my math homework okay—it was equations, you know, solving for
x
. I'm not so bad at that. But the second part was harder. My math teacher had assigned ten word problems. The first one went:
John is building a fence around his mother's garden, which is shaped like an isosceles trapezoid with a square attached to the shortest end. If the sides of the
trapezoid section are 200 m, 500 m and 800 m, and the side length of the square is 200 m, how much fencing does John need?
You can't believe how much trouble I had just reading and figuring out the questions, never mind trying to find the answer. The more words in the question, the harder it was for me to work out what I was supposed to do. I puzzled over that first question for at least five minutes. Mr. Porelli glanced at me a couple of times, but he didn't say anything. I could have asked him for help, but I didn't know him very well and I didn't know what he knew about me. I don't like asking people who don't know about me. I don't even like asking people who do know, but at least then I don't have to explain why I'm having trouble.

Mr. Porelli got up. He said, “I'm going to trust you people to behave yourselves and do your work while I'm out of the room for a few minutes. Don't disappoint me.”

He didn't have to worry about me. Things were bad enough. If I got into trouble while I was already in detention, I
don't know what my mom would have done. So I kept my eyes on my work. But Jana didn't keep her eyes on hers.

“That's not right,” she said.

At first I didn't think she was talking to me. She had never talked to me before. But when I glanced up, I saw that she was looking at my math binder.

“You're doing that all wrong,” she said.

“Who asked you?” I said. I hate when people look at what I'm doing. I hate it even more when they tell me I'm wrong—like I don't know that already.

“You're supposed to add five hundred plus eight hundred plus two hundred times four,” she said.

I stared at her. What was she even talking about? I turned back to my work and pretended I hadn't heard what she had said.

“Fine,” she said. “If you want to get it wrong, be my guest.”

“Why don't you just mind your own business?” I said.

“I know how to do math,” she said. “I
tutor
math.”

“Big deal,” I said. I turned sideways in my seat and put my arm alongside my work so that she wouldn't be able to look at it. I think she was going to say something else to me, but Mr. Porelli came back into the room. That shut her up.

By the time Mr. Porelli let us go, the school was almost deserted. I went to my locker and got what I needed for the night. Then I headed for the door. On the way down the stairs, I ran into Jana. I didn't want to talk to her, but she stepped right in front of me.

“I wasn't trying to tell you what to do or anything,” she said. “It's just that I've heard about you and—”

She'd
heard
about me?

“You heard how stupid
I
am so you thought you'd tell me how smart
you
are, is that it?” I said. “Okay, so now I know. But let me ask you something—do your parents know that their little princess goes around hitting girls? Or did turning on the waterworks convince Ms. Everett to make an exception for you and not call them?”

Jana stared at me. Her face turned red. Her lips started to tremble. Her eyes got all watery—what a baby!—and she wiped at them with the back of her hand.

“What I meant was, I saw some of the papers that fell out of your binder earlier,” she said. “You mix up a lot of letters. You're dyslexic, right?”

I felt my hands turn into fists. I hate that word. I hate when people say it.

“I have a cousin who has the same problem,” she said. “He's good at math, like you, except when they're word problems. Then he has trouble. I was going to ask if you had tried the peer-tutoring program, because I tutor my cousin sometimes, and he says it helps. But forget it, okay?”

She spun around and started down the stairs. She was moving fast, even though she wasn't supposed to be running on the stairs. Her dark brown hair flew out behind her.

I watched her for a moment, and then I chased after her. I didn't catch up to her until she had reached the main doors.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Punching Rufus was one thing. Making a girl cry, especially when it turned out that she wasn't trying to give me a hard time after all—that was something else. “Really, I'm sorry.”

When she turned and looked at me, I saw that she'd been crying again. She didn't say a word. She just raced out of the school. I felt like an idiot for apologizing. It never got me anywhere.

Neil was making supper when I got home. I could tell from the way he popped his head out of the kitchen to look at me that Ms. Everett had called my mom, and my mom had called Neil. But he didn't say anything. He never did. He always waited for my mom.

My mom got home an hour after I did. I was in my room, but I heard her come through the door. I heard her drop her purse on the floor beside the table in the
front hall. I heard her talking to Neil, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. For the longest time after Neil moved in, I thought my mom agreed with him about everything. I never heard them fight. But after a while that started to change. They started to close the door of whatever room they were in, and I would hear from the sharpness in their voices that they were arguing. This was one of those times.

Finally someone knocked on my door.

“Who is it?” I called.

“It's me.”

My mom. I told her to come in.

But when she opened the door, I saw that Neil was with her. They stood side by side at the foot of my bed.

“Ms. Everett called me at work,” my mom said.

“It wasn't my fault.”

My mom shook her head. She looked tired. She glanced at Neil.

“Ms. Larch saw what happened,” he said.

“No, she didn't. She only saw part of it.”

“But you did knock that boy to the ground, didn't you, Sport?”

“Yeah, but that's because—”

Neil cut me off. “And you hit him, didn't you?” he said.

“He deserved it,” I said. “He—”

My mom sat down on the edge of my bed.

“Oh, Kaz,” she said.

“But, Mom, you don't understand—”

“There's no excuse for fighting, Kaz.” She sounded as tired as she looked. Worse, she sounded disappointed. “You used to be so happy. You never made any trouble. You never got into fights. You were always outside with your hockey stick playing road hockey, ice hockey...” Her eyes glistened with tears. Geez, was everyone going to cry today? “Remember, Kaz? Remember that boy?”

Neil came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder.

“I think what your mother is trying to say, Sport, is—”

“I want to live with Dad,” I said.

That took my mom by surprise.

“what?” she said.

“I want to live with Dad.”

I thought about the old lady and her purse. I wished it had had lots of money in it. If it had, I would have used it to buy a bus ticket. I would have gone to my dad's place.

“Your dad has a new family now,” my mom reminded me, as if that were something I could ever forget. I'd been stunned when she told me. She hadn't seemed happy about it either. A few weeks ago, I heard her complain to Neil that having a new baby was my dad's latest excuse for not sending child support payments like he was supposed to. She said she hadn't got a check from him in over three months. But I didn't care about that.

“He's still my dad. I can be with him if I want to.”

“But you haven't seen him in years,” my mom said.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Watch the tone, Sport,” Neil said. He still had his hand on my mom's shoulder.

“You think
I'm
to blame?” Mom said.

“He's the one who decided to move so far away.”

“He moved after you wouldn't let him have joint custody,” I said. “You never let him see me.”

“It's more complicated than that,” my mom said slowly. “Your dad...” She shook her head. “It's just complicated, Kaz. And now that you have a little sister...” There were more tears in her eyes now. “We can talk about this another time. For right now, you need to know that what you did today was wrong. I know you're having a hard time in school. But you can't take your frustration out on other kids. It's not right. I know you're a better person than that. I just know it.” She stood up. “Supper will be ready in half an hour.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Half an hour later when she called me to come and eat, I didn't answer. She didn't call again. I heard dishes clinking in the kitchen. I smelled food—I think it was Neil's meatloaf. I didn't like Neil, but he made good meatloaf. My stomach rumbled. My
mouth watered. But I stayed in my room until the next morning after both Neil and my mom had gone to work.

My mom had left my lunch on the kitchen table in a brown paper bag. I peeked inside. It was a thick meatloaf sandwich. It looked so good that I ate it for breakfast. It put me in a good mood—until I got to school and found Jana waiting at my locker.

“I just wanted to say I'm sorry about yesterday,” she said.

She
was sorry? I was the one who had been mean to her. Why was she apologizing?

“I guess I did sort of come across like some kind of know-it-all,” she said. “And then I got all emotional. I hate that. I hate when I cry in front of people. Especially people I don't know very well.”

She meant people like me.

“I was embarrassed,” she said. “I mean, I
never
hit people. Never.”

Unlike me.

“And then...” Her cheeks turned pink. “Do you know Alicia Seretta?”

I nodded.

“Well, she said something stupid. Normally I would have ignored her. I guess I should have. But I didn't.”

“What did she say?”

Jana studied me for a minute, like she was trying to decide if I was really interested. Or maybe she was trying to decide if she wanted to stand there and talk to me when she could have been hanging out with her millions of friends.

“Alicia did some community service at a seniors' center,” she said finally. “She was telling everyone how much she hated it. She said old people were a waste of space. We got in an argument and...” She shook her head. “I've never slapped anyone before. But she wouldn't stop. It's like she thinks if you're old, you're useless, and, well, I guess it got to me because my grandma is in the hospital.”

Oh.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Is she sick?”

“Someone pushed her down and stole her purse,” she said. “She hit her head
really hard. She's seventy-five years old.” Her eyes started to fill up with tears again. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. “Here I go again,” she said. “I'm sorry about yesterday. I just wanted to tell you that. And if you ever need help with math or anything, you can ask me.”

She turned then and ran down the hall to the girls' bathroom. I watched the door close behind her. I wondered where her grandma lived. I wondered what the chances were.

No way, I told myself. It's a big city. It was just a weird coincidence that someone had stolen Jana's grandma's purse.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I watched for Jana in the hall that afternoon, but I didn't see her anywhere. So at the end of the day, I went up to a girl who I knew was a friend of Jana's and I asked her where Jana's locker was. The girl looked at me like I was crazy—like, why was a guy like me even thinking about Jana, let
alone looking for her locker? She told me, but the way she said it, she made it sound like it was a waste of her breath and would be a waste of my time to go to Jana's locker. I told myself that I should forget it. I didn't want to run into that girl again. But I had to find out.