She scans around, students beginning to break off and finally mind their business.
“What’s happening? What’s the meaning of this?” she asks, stepping into the hallway.
I don’t know when I started crying.
When no one answers, Mrs. Abram turns to Hannah. “What’s that?”
“It’s nothing—”
“Well, it’s something,” she snaps. “We wouldn’t all be standing here and you wouldn’t be uttering profanities outside my classroom if it wasnothing.”
She holds out her hand. Hannah hands her the crumpled papers. The air stills as the students still brave enough to stand around hold their breath, watching as Mrs. Abram unfurls the papers.
“Ms. Fitzpatrick,” she says, but it comes out all huffy and incredulous. She looks at Hannah, staring at her over the top edge of her glasses. Then she looks at me, with my tears, surely piecing together some inaccurate assumption about—
“It’s not what you think,” Olivia blurts.
“Liv—” Hannah tries to stop her.
“Someone taped that to their lockers. A—a bully! It wasn’t them. Hannah took them down—”
“You,” she says to Hannah. “And you,” she says to me. “Principal’s office,now.”
Hannah’s parents arrive first, so she goes into the office first. During the fifteen minutes that we wait in the scratchy, uncomfortable, polyester-cushioned chairs, we don’t speak aside from Hannah apologizing and me telling her that none of this is her fault.
We might have kept talking if the receptionist hadn’t comeover and informed me that they were able to reach my mom and she is on her way. I mean, there’s not much to say after a declaration like that.
Actually, maybe there’s one more thing—
“Lesbian Leverage?” I ask.
Hannah shifts beside me. I realize she’s stifling a laugh.
“It’s lesbian porn.”
“And you know thathow?”
But then her parents arrive, and the receptionist comes out of Principal Waters’s office to usher them in. The door closes with a soft click only to open moments later as Principal Waters calls Hannah in too.
Which leaves me alone, by the doors, chilled by the draft coming in from the hallway and shaken by the inevitability that my mom is on her way.
And then she’s there, pushing through the doors in a much more hurried fashion than Hannah’s parents. She’s wearing the rubber-duck scrubs, her fall jacket open, flapping with the force of air pressing against her but not slowing her down.
“I’m here for my daughter,” she says to the receptionist, leaning over her desk. “Clarity Jones.”
“She’s right there, ma’am,” she says, pointing to me. “The principal is finishing up. He’ll call you in in a moment.”
Mom whirls around, gliding in one swift motion until she’s seated next to me. She grasps my shoulders, assessing my tearstained cheeks and the mascara I tried to wipe away but hasnow settled into raccoon eyes. Finally her gaze falls on my quivering lip.
“I’m sorry—” I start, but the principal opens his door and the Fitzpatricks come out.
“They are taking Hannah home for the rest of the day,” Principal Waters instructs the receptionist.
They stop at her desk, Hannah glancing at us but looking away quickly when she registers that my mom is here.
“That’s the girl who was at our house,” Mom whispers, assessing, processing. Her arm remains around my shoulders.
But it slips away when we have to stand up, because it’s our turn to go in.