Chapter 37

Monday morning was our first day back after the holiday. Considering how the year had gone so far, I should have expected a curveball, but I guess the break had been so good that I’d put it out of my mind.

Kat was still pissed at me, but it had come down a few notches from how we’d left it on Sunday. I figured I had a few more days in the dog house until she forgave me for not kissing her. The cold shoulder had been expected, at least.

The actual surprise came when I walked through the front door of school and turned to head towards my class, and saw Mrs. Morgan, the school secretary, flagging me down. I walked through the glassed-in doors of the front office and stopped in front of the receptionist counter.

“Go sit by Mr. Keller’s office. He wants to talk to you before you go to class.”

I couldn’t imagine what I could have possibly already done to get called into the vice-principal’s office. Nothing had happened the week before spring break, I hadn’t been here at all last week, and I’d only walked on school property thirty seconds before. I knew I had a knack for violating school policies, but this seemed like a record even for me.

I was still sitting on the hard plastic chair outside his office when the bell announcing first period rang. At least it was the first day back from break, which meant it was unlikely there’d be a quiz or something I’d be late to. Finally, Mr. Keller came walking into the office from wherever he’d been and waved for me to follow him in when he opened his office door.

“Sorry for the long wait,” he said, indicating I should sit.

I had already started to before he said anything, since these little meetings were becoming old hat by now.

“We were out all last week, Mr. Keller,” I said. “How am I in trouble already?”

I tried to not sound snotty, but I was getting sick of being the school’s punching bag.

“You’re not in trouble, Charlie. I just wanted to talk to you about a few changes happening next year.”

That sounded ominous, especially since he was only talking to me, as far as I was aware.

“First, I want to say that I know you’ve had a lot of challenges this year. I know it may seem like I’m always calling you in here to pile on you, and you’re right to feel like you’ve been treated badly by the administration here. I want to let you know that, while I have responsibilities that I have to meet, I’ve never once thought you were a problem kid or a detriment to Julian S. Carr High School. In fact, I think you’ve been a huge asset to the school and you’ve shown that you can excel when challenged. Your improvement in math has been nothing short of extraordinary, especially because of where you were forced to start from.”

“I hear a big ‘but’ coming.”

“No but. I mean every word of it.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess, although there has to be a reason to call me in other than wanting to sing my praises.”

“There is. I wanted to let you know I’m leaving Carr at the end of the year to take over as principal at a school in Wake County.”

“Okay,” I said, unsure of what that had to do with me.

“I wouldn’t normally talk to a student about this kind of thing, but I’m afraid this might impact you next year and I wanted you to prepare for it. During the whole restraining order mess, there was a lot of pressure from both parents, some of whom carry a lot of weight in the community, and faculty to have you removed from the school completely or, failing that, kicked out of all school activities entirely. This included people who have no children in this school and shouldn’t have cared at all what happened with any single student.”

“Isn’t it the school’s job to protect students’ rights?”

“No. You’d think it would be, but the administration’s job is to protect the school district first and foremost. Next year there will be a new person in my seat and some of the people in the running for the position have made it clear they would have made very different calls than I did this year when it came to you. Now, I don’t want you to think this is because they have it out for you or are bad people. I knew I was leaving at the end of the year, so I had luxuries someone else might not have had.”

“So you’re saying next year is going to be a lot worse than this year,” I said.

Between teachers lying about me cheating and being threatened with expulsion for doing nothing more than defending myself, I couldn’t imagine it getting worse. I guess in hindsight, I could see that Mr. Keller maybe had my back a couple of times, but only after I got all the proof to defend myself.

“I’m not saying that. I just want you to be aware of the changes and consider what you can do to help yourself. The best thing you can do is to try and keep from doing anything that might get you into trouble. I know, you’re going to say you’re treated unfairly and you shouldn’t have to act differently to other students. I get it and I agree, but this is one of those moments when you have to deal with the hand you’re given. I just wanted to give you a heads-up beforehand so you wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I said, sounding anything but thankful.

I actually regretted my tone as soon as it was out of my mouth. He didn’t have to give me any kind of warning and if he’d been more like Mr. Packer, things could have gone a lot worse.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I appreciate the warning.”

“I know it seems like the world is stacked against you, and in your case, it does seem to be the case a little bit, but just remember you’ve only got two more years and you’ll be off to college and away from all this.”

“Okay,” I said.

He was right but that didn’t really help me for the next two years.

“Okay, I’m done preaching. Get a pass from Mrs. Morgan and head to class.”

That afternoon Kat and Hanna were both up in the stands while I practiced. Besides a few nasty looks, Harry stayed out of my way for the entire practice. I’d heard from David, who’d been inside getting stuff set out for me to carry to the field, that he’d had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment with Coach Dean about his attitude and how it was affecting both teams. Apparently, Coach Dean had just about had it with him and made it clear that if there were any more incidents that Harry would be off the team.

I couldn’t imagine how that would happen with Coach Bryant on his side, but maybe enough of the coaching staff had gotten tired of his shit that Bryant was overruled. Without Harry being a constant ass, practice was actually fun. I got to focus and really pay attention to what I was doing instead of constantly being distracted by the possibility of Harry doing something dumb that might somehow come back on me.

We finished up and I headed towards the gym until I noticed Kat and Hanna were still in the stands, talking to each other. Normally they headed off towards the gym when we did, intercepting me on the way, so whatever they were talking about must have been engrossing. I carried my load of stuff back inside and grabbed my backpack from my locker, and headed back out to find them still going.

Stopping at the fence in front of the stands I called out, “You two coming?”

“Yeah,” Hanna said, grabbing her stuff and coming down to the gate so we could cut across the field and go out to the parking lot.

“Hanna has some news,” Kat said, excited.

It must have been, because she’d apparently completely forgotten that she was still pissed at me.

“What’s up?”

“I called the admissions office at UNC right after school got out and asked about moving over from the business degree to the business management one; and that guy we’d met at the school, he apparently looked up my information and put a note into admissions that if I requested a transfer to their department, he would support it, or something. I’m not really clear on how that works, but apparently having a member of faculty support you moving, even if it’s just a professor and not a department person or whatever, cuts through a lot of the red tape.”

“I thought he said you had to actually accept the offer or whatever for the school before you could change your degree?”

“Yeah, they said that, too. I was just checking to see if it was possible and they said yes, that I had a note on my file approving it already. The lady said that was weird and asked if I’d had a meeting recently with someone from the department. I told her about bumping into Professor Cross, that’s his name, and she said that kind of thing sometimes happens. Anyway, they said once I enrolled all I needed to do was call back to admissions and they’d change it in the system, although she warned me there was a maximum they could take in a year and so I didn’t want to wait too long or the spots might be filled.”

“So you’re going to take it?” I asked.

“Yes, I just need to talk to Mom about it. My only big concern was she’ll ask why I want to move to that program and she didn’t sound super happy with my reasoning when we talked about it last time.”

“I thought you’d decided to do it regardless of what I ended up doing?”

“I did and I am, but I think I want to work with you and your band, like officially or whatever. I know a lot can change if you get signed by a label and it’s not just up to you, but if you’ll have me once I’m out of college I’d like to work with you guys. Even if you get big and famous before then, I’m okay finding whatever place I can with y’all. I’ve always believed in you, but after seeing you at the festival, the whole thing with Linda Chapman and how those other guys reacted to you at that bar, I think you’re going to make it big and I want to be there for it.”

“Well, I know the rest of the guys are okay with you, so that won’t be a problem. Especially Lyla.” I said the last part barely holding in a grin and she shot me a dirty look. “Seriously though, they’ve all said they’d love to have you if you want to do it. And I couldn’t think of anyone I’d trust more than you.”

“Okay. Like I said, it’s not a right away thing and I know you’ve already got this audition and everything and you might not be able to wait till I’m out of school, so don’t worry about me if you have to get one before I can join on. Do what you have to do and I’ll either find a place to work with you or I’ll start getting experience somewhere else until you do. When the time comes, I’ll be there.”

“Deal,” I said, sticking out my hand, which she shook.

Wednesday Kat had her first appointment with Dr. Rothstein as an official patient. They still hadn’t figured out how they were going to go after Kat’s father for financial support so right now, Mrs. Phillips was paying for it out of pocket. I imagined a psychologist of any type was pretty expensive, but Mrs. Leighton had a psychologist connected with their organization evaluate Kat before the trial, since everyone knew her condition was going to come up.

From what Hanna told me, he’d talked to her mom after the trial about how important it was to get Kat help, telling her that Kat had major issues that had resulted from the abuse by her father. It didn’t sound like he’d actually worked out a diagnosis and I didn’t get specifics since I was hearing it third hand, but whatever he’d told her was convincing, because they’d arranged for an appointment the day after the trial. Kat had told Hanna about Dr. Rothstein and convinced her that she wanted to go back to him, since he already knew about her condition and the appointment had been pushed back a week so we could go on our trip, but everyone had agreed the sooner they could get her in the better.

The only real snag was that Dr. Rothstein had asked that I come along to the appointment, too. I know he and Kat had had a brief phone call when they were setting everything up, so I had a good idea why I needed to be there, but Mrs. Phillips was in the dark. Kat hadn’t explained to her the whole deal between us and I didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans if she was avoiding telling Mrs. Phillips about it for some reason. Since it was the doctor asking, she went along, but the drive over was a little awkward as she kept asking questions trying to figure out why I needed to be there. Kat was staying extremely quiet, answering anything directed at her with just guttural sounds, so I continued dodging. I tried to say it was because I’d been involved when she’d seen Dr. Rothstein the first time, when it had been just as a favor for Chef, but I didn’t think she was buying it.

When we got there they had Kat go back and talk to him first while Mrs. Phillips and I sat out in the waiting room. Although she was pretending to read a magazine, every time I looked up I caught Mrs. Phillips staring at me. I hated keeping her in the dark, because Mrs. Phillips had always been really good to me and was one of my biggest supporters, but it still wasn’t my place to say.