Mr. Terupt Falls Again (14 page)

G
ateway drug. That was one thing Peter and Danielle talked about in their PowerPoint presentation. That’s like saying smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol could, like, open a doorway to trying other stuff. Badder stuff. Listening to them present, I wondered why they picked this topic. I didn’t realize it had everything to do with me. But Teach did.

I took a drag on my cigarette. I didn’t cough. I was getting better at it. I was chillin’ on the green couch, hangin’ with Lisa and Reena while they did their homework. Brandon had gone out to his car to get something.

Once it turned cold, Brandon started picking me up from home with his car every day. We’d chill for an hour or two at the hangout until it was time for the girls to go to basketball practice. Brandon would give them a ride and then drop me back at home. He had nothing else to do. He said he couldn’t handle the sight of his teammates working out on
the mats without him, so he stayed away from wrestling. He was messed up over it. I felt really sorry for him.

“Got a treat for you today, kindergartner,” Brandon teased, rejoining us in the back room. “This stuff is dirty.” He held up a plastic sandwich baggie filled with what looked like dried-up green leaves.

“Dirty” meant “wicked good.” Same as “nasty” or “sick.”

Suddenly I wasn’t chill anymore. I didn’t know what that stuff was, and it made me nervous.

“I just scored this bag of weed. I bought it right in school,” Brandon bragged. “Stupid teachers. None of them understand what I’m going through.”

That slap in the face woke me up. That was the second time Brandon had ragged on his teachers. Like, I felt bad for Brandon, but I didn’t believe what he was saying. I had the best teacher in the whole world, and like, I knew he cared.

Then I heard his voice coming from outside. “Alexia! It’s Teach!” My heart took off.

“What was that?” Brandon yelled. The girls looked at each other and shrugged.

Then again: “Alexia!”

I had the best teacher in the whole world. He knew and he cared. I flicked my cigarette into the ashtray and ran out of the house. I jumped off the front porch and ran straight into Mr. Terupt’s arms.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. I cried and cried. It hurt so much to disappoint him. Feeling his arms hold me made it hurt more and less all at the same time. He wasn’t giving up on me. I was lucky.

D
ecember was a month I had grown to hate over the last two years. The holiday season always made me miss Michael even more. That wasn’t any different this year, but other things were.

All of a sudden Mom and Dad were talking to each other. I found them drinking coffee together at the dining room table one morning, so I made a point to look and see if it was happening again the next day, but instead I found them lying in bed together. I still didn’t know what it was, but the holiday season was filling my house.

When I got home from school one afternoon, there was a Christmas tree waiting. We’d had a tree last year, so it wasn’t that big a deal, but decorating it together was. Mom played our holiday CDs and we pulled out ornaments that I didn’t even remember we had. Then we had a family dinner. All three of us sat down and ate together, a wonderfully decorated and smelling tree in the background.

I did most of the talking, telling them all about school. I told them the story of Luke’s presentation, and how Mr. Terupt was going to marry Ms. Newberry.

“Now, that’s a proposal I’ve never heard of before,” Dad said.

“How did you propose, Dad?” I asked.

He looked at Mom and smiled. She gave a sheepish grin back.

“When I was a little girl my daddy gave me a music box,” Mom said. “It was my favorite thing in the whole world. Your grandfather died when I was in high school, and that music box stopped working shortly after that.”

“Your mother told me about it when we were dating, and I never forgot,” Dad said. “I made her a new music box and gave it to her one night.”

“He had me in tears before I even opened it,” Mom said.

“What happened when you did open it?” I asked.

“I found this,” she said, showing me the diamond ring on her finger.

Dad reached across the table and took Mom’s hand in his. They were smiling, and so was I. I went to bed that night happier than I’d been in a long time, still having no idea that the best was yet to come.

When I walked into the house after school the next day, I found Mom and Dad in the living room. Mom was rocking Asher.

“He’s going to be with us for a while,” Dad said. “We’ve become his foster parents.”

That was when I started believing in angels.

L
ike, there was a lot happening with me in the new year. For starters, I had a job. I was working at the Pines with Mom after school. Mostly I cleaned the dishes, but once in a while I got to wait a table or two, or seat some of the guests. The cook was a guy named Vincent, and boy, could he whip up some delicious foods. He also told the corniest jokes in the world, like, “Why wasn’t Cinderella any good at soccer?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Because she always ran away from the ball.”

I liked Vincent and his dumb jokes, and I loved being with Mom. The restaurant was a cool gig. It was all thanks to Teach—and Anna.

Teach came and rescued me from the Old Woods hangout. He knew something was up with me, and Anna helped him discover my secret. I still can’t believe she had the guts to do that. I mean, part of me is mad that she ratted me out,
but I also realize I had gotten myself into a mess that I didn’t know how to get out of. I was crazy scared when Brandon pulled out that plastic baggie. I wasn’t ready for that. I feel like Anna was my guardian angel. I’m so lucky to have her as my friend and Teach in my life. He wasn’t one of those teachers that didn’t know or didn’t care like Brandon talked about. I sometimes wonder what I’d be like if Teach hadn’t shown up. I piled into the backseat of Ms. Newberry’s car with Anna and Jeffrey after we watched Brandon demo his infamous fishtail exit—his middle finger included free of charge.

No one said anything in the car. Ms. Newberry drove to a different school, where Anna and Jeffrey got out. They met up with Anna’s mother. I figured I was next to get dropped off, but that wasn’t the case. Instead of going to my empty house, we ended up at the Pines.

Turns out Teach had been to the restaurant before that day to talk to my mom. His concern for me intensified when Mom was unable to make the parent-teacher conference back in October. Probably not that big a deal under normal circumstances, but I was the only one without a parent to attend for the second year in a row. That was, like, reason enough for Teach to start paying closer attention to me—that and my mysterious “after-school program.”

There was a lot of explaining to do, but Teach knew I’d been through enough for one day, so we just ordered dinner and sat and ate—Teach, Ms. Newberry, Mom, and me—together.

The next day Mom surprised me by showing up to give me a ride home after school.

“What’re you doing here, Mom?”

“I thought you and I could spend the rest of the day together,” she said.

“What? But aren’t you working?”

“Not today,” Mom said.

I smiled, but like, there was a lot going on in my head. I was glad Mom was there, ’cause I didn’t know what I was going to do after school. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going back to the hangout, but like, I was confused, too. Why wasn’t Mom at work? Did she get fired or something?

We climbed into the car and headed home, but not the normal way. Instead, Mom took us down Old Woods Road. I held my breath.

“That’s where you’ve been hanging out, huh?” Mom said as we drove past the old house.

“Yeah,” I said.

“No more,” Mom said. She was laying down the law, and I was happy to accept it because I desperately wanted her back in my life. “You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I think that was the first time I ever called Mom “ma’am.” I remember thinking I sounded like Danielle. But like, it was serious talk, and I was giving Mom a serious answer. I’m not stupid. I knew Mom had talked to Teach. How else would she have known? But the question was, how much did she know? I think what she found out was how little I knew, ’cause when we got home Mom explained everything to me. Like why she was working so much.

Normally, when two people get a divorce and children are involved, the parent not having custody of the kids pays
child support. That means my dad would be sending money to my mom every month to help her pay expenses. But that wasn’t the case, so Mom was working long hours to make enough money for us. When I learned that, I started crying.

“I thought it was ’cause you didn’t care about me.” I rubbed my eyes. “I didn’t think you wanted to be with me.”

“Of course I want to be with you, Alexia. You’re all I have.”

Mom wasn’t getting any child support from Dad because they weren’t divorced. Mom had simply told him to get out, and that was it. She didn’t have the money to pay a lawyer for a divorce, plus Dad had threatened her. Told her that if she came looking for any of his money there’d be trouble. Mom started to cry.

I told Mom I wanted to help. “I want to work too,” I said. “I want to work at the restaurant with you. Then we can both make money and I can be with you in the afternoons.”

That’s how I got my first job—and my mom back.

“M
r. Terupt called,” Mom said.

It was after school. I was home with Mom, Dad, and Asher—what was beginning to feel like a family. Things were terrific! Nothing had happened at school, so I didn’t know why Terupt would be calling.

“Your father talked to him. Go ask him what it was about,” Mom said.

Dad was in the kitchen making dinner. We ate together every night now. Mom and Dad took turns doing the cooking, and I did the cleanup and dishes. Mom stayed out in the living room with Asher. I could hear her singing to him.

“Dad, you talked to Terupt?”

He stood up from the oven, where he was bent over checking the chicken. “Yes.” He turned around to wash his hands in the sink. “You and I are going down to the high school after dinner. Mr. Terupt will be there.”