My Time as Caz Hazard (2 page)

“I just remembered something,” he said. “I gotta go. Your class is at the end of the hall.”

The door was only a few steps ahead and I found it easily enough. As I was walking into the classroom, I heard a guy's voice at the other end of the hall calling, “Check it out — a new sped!” I glanced in that direction. Brad and his friends were looking straight at me, leering.

I ducked into the classroom as if it were an emergency shelter. Then I looked around.
This couldn't possibly be the right place. It looked more like a day care than a high school classroom. There were two bulletin boards covered with brightly colored construction paper, looking like they were ready to showcase new finger paintings, and there was an alphabet pinned to the top of one wall.

Seated around a long, rectangular table were four other kids — two girls on one side and two guys on the other. One guy was rocking back and forth slightly, tapping on the table. He had blond hair that hung over his forehead and swayed back and forth into his eyes as he rocked. He didn't look up. The other guy had dark skin and piercing black eyes. He was staring at me like I'd just killed his best friend. It made me want to shiver.

I closed my eyes. Please, please, please let this be the wrong classroom. I looked back at the open door. The number was definitely 112. I scanned the two girls on my side of the table. The first one looked like she was dressed in her grandmother's
sofa, so I chose a chair beside the prettier one.

“What's a sped?” I asked her, ignoring Psycho Boy's continued stare.

She rolled her eyes. “Special education student,” she enunciated, giving me a clear view of her bubble gum. “Welcome to Dogshit Secondary. You can ignore Jaz over there. He's brilliant — shouldn't even be here — but he's dealing with, like, serious anger management issues.” I jumped as Jaz — Psycho Boy — scraped his chair back a fraction and transferred his glare. The girl with the bubble gum didn't flinch.

She held out her hand for me to shake. It was adorned with spiky silver rings in gothic designs. “I'm Amanda. What nuts-for-brains called you a sped?”

“Some guy named Brad.”

“Looks like he just flew his private jet from Hollywood?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, don't stress about it. It's not like he's getting into Harvard any time soon. He's the biggest dealer in the school.”

“Drugs?” I said, trying not to look shocked. He'd seemed more like an art dealer than a drug dealer.

Amanda winked at me. “It's not the worst thing in the world. I wouldn't run the other way if he asked me out. Can't blame me for that, can you?”

I didn't have time to answer before our teacher swept into the room. She had crazy hair that was flying in all directions and she wore a long skirt and a crystal necklace on a brown leather cord.

“Talk about a flashback to the hippie era,” Amanda muttered under her breath.

The teacher was also wearing what looked like a Girl Guide vest, several sizes too small. It was covered in those little badges they award for baking cookies or starting a fire. I wouldn't know — I quit Brownies after three weeks. I couldn't handle all those sucks in one room singing about owls.

“I'm Ms. Samuels.” When she smiled, her eyes crinkled in the corners and she looked like we were her favorite people in the world. “We're going to be spending lots of
time together, so why don't we get to know each other. How about we share our names and our favorite hobbies?”

Amanda made gagging sounds.

“Why don't you start, dear?” Ms. Samuels said, her smile fading.

This time Amanda cleared her throat and crossed her hands on the desk in front of her, like a model student. “I'm Amanda. I like sunsets, long walks on the beach and kittens,” she simpered.

Ms. Samuels nodded as if Amanda were serious. “Next?” she said, turning to me.

“Caz. I like…” My brain suddenly went blank. “Shopping,” I finally stuttered.

When it was Jaz's turn, I'm pretty sure he said “go to hell” under his breath. Ms. Samuels pretended not to hear.

“Rob?” she said. Apparently she was talking to the rocking kid, but he didn't answer.

“He's what they call ‘non-verbal,'” Amanda whispered to me. “About as chatty as the sphinx.”

Finally Ms. Samuels turned to the third girl, the one dressed in upholstery, who spoke
so quietly I could barely hear her. “My name's Dodie and I like sewing,” she whispered.

Amanda made gagging sounds again.

“Good,” Ms. Samuels said, ignoring Amanda. “Now, you're probably wondering why I'm wearing this vest. A few of you are having some difficulty with spelling, and we're going to begin the year by reviewing the rules. We'll start with the consonant sound ‘dge,' as in badge.”

This time when I looked at Amanda she seemed to have dropped into a coma, and I understood completely. A year of spelling sounded like death by slow torture. And did Ms. Samuels think we were in preschool? As she unfolded a poster of the Golden Gate Bridge — another “dge” sound — I slid down in my seat and kicked Amanda under the table. When she turned, I showed her the first page of my notebook.

I'd written: Time to jump off a ledge.

My work with Ms. Samuels was going to count as English for the first semester, so the remainder of my day was divided into three. There was history, with the oldest teacher known to man. He taught while clinging to a podium at the front of the class, as if he might topple if he lost his grip.

After that came math, which I did my best to sleep through, and art. The art teacher was
also old, but he looked less likely to croak in the near future.

“And who are you, young lady?” he asked when I sat down. He removed old-fashioned spectacles to look at me more closely.

“Caz Hallard,” I said, digging my sketchbook out of my bag.

“Hmm…obviously a Virgo,” he said.

The rest of the class giggled, but I looked up at him in surprise. He hardly seemed the type to study astrology. And he was right — my birthday was in September.

“Nice people, Virgos,” he mused as he sauntered back to the front of the class. “Organized, too.”

I looked at my sketchbook suspiciously, as if it had given away my secrets. Then Mr. Spectacles started drawing on the board. With only a few strokes, he outlined a method of showing perspective in an illustration. A farmyard fence seemed to slowly disappear into a background of rolling fields.

Bending my head, I hastily copied the example into my book. He might have been strange, but at least he knew how to draw.

Amanda found me at my locker after school. “So. Shopping,” she said, snapping her gum. I hoped it wasn't the same piece she'd been chewing that morning.

“What?”

“Shopping. You said that was your thing.”

“I guess. I couldn't think of anything else to say.”

“Want to go to the mall?” she asked.

I didn't really want to go. I wanted to race home and call Mel and whine about how hellish my new school was (except for art). But I didn't want to say no to Amanda, the only person who had actually talked to me all day.

“Sure. The mall sounds great.”

It was only a couple of blocks away. It was filled with winter clothes, even though it was only the first week of September. We wandered through one of the department stores.

“Hey, check it out,” Amanda called, holding up a purple paisley skirt, tightly pleated. “It was made for you. Seriously.” It looked like something my great-aunt might wear.

I smirked at Amanda. “I was thinking of trying this on instead,” I said, grabbing a hideous sequined blouse from the rack.

Just then a saleswoman appeared — the condescending kind who thinks she owns the store. “Perhaps you girls are looking for the junior miss section on the second floor?” she said, pressing her lips into a prim red bow.

We both dumped our clothes on the nearest racks. I was ready to slink away, but Amanda looked up at the woman and batted mascara-clotted lashes.

“I was going to buy that for my mom's birthday. But then I saw the hanger up your ass and I changed my mind,” she said. Grabbing my elbow, she waltzed us toward the door.

I turned to call over my shoulder. “You have lipstick on your teeth!”

Once in the mall, we collapsed onto a bench in a fit of giggles.

“Did she really have lipstick on her teeth?” Amanda gasped when she could breathe well enough to talk.

“No. But I wanted to say something mean and I couldn't think of anything.”

That sent Amanda into another giggle fit. “You're right,” she said.

“About what?”

“Shopping's perfect. And I have another idea. See the dollar store over there?”

I nodded.

“Do you think you can cause a distraction when we go in there?”

“What kind of distraction?” I felt my cheeks going red just thinking about it.

“I don't know. Complain about something you bought last week.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

Amanda just grinned. Not waiting to see if I was going to agree, she strolled casually into the store and started browsing.

I followed reluctantly. What could I complain about? Especially at a dollar store. The clerk was going to tell me to shut up and spend another dollar on something new.

When I got there, the clerk was busy anyway. There were two plump women in
front of him, making him add up their bill a second time.

“Those wrapping paper rolls were on special,” one of them was saying.

I heard a hiss from between the shelves. “Hurry up,” Amanda whispered.

Looking around frantically, I spotted a stack of cheese graters near the edge of a shelf. I nudged them and they crashed to the floor. The women and the clerk stopped talking and stared at me.

“I'm so sorry,” I stuttered. “They just slipped. I'll put them back…” The three of them kept looking, not saying anything, until I'd replaced the graters. I couldn't see Amanda so I ducked out the door.

I spotted her a few stores down, loitering in front of a shoe display. “Come on,” she motioned.

She led the way outside. When we got to the middle of the parking lot, she reached in her coat pocket and pulled out four chocolate bars. “Here's your half of the hot goods,” she grinned, handing me two.

“You stole these?”

“We stole these,” she said happily.

I looked behind us, as if there might be a team of security guards on our trail.

“They're only chocolate bars. Relax,” Amanda said.

I nodded and slipped them into my pocket. Who was going to miss a few chocolate bars? It wasn't like the store was going to go bankrupt.

When I got home I could hear my mom banging drawers open and closed upstairs. My dad called me into the living room, where my little brother was already waiting. Ted was in grade nine and pretty cool in an obsessed-with-multimedia kind of way. He was holding his video game controller, but the TV was turned off. He looked wary, as if Dad were about to send him to boarding school in Siberia.

“What's up?” I asked, climbing over the arm of the sofa to sit cross-legged beside Ted. As a general rule, I avoided sitting on the sofa. It was sort of a silent protest. We used to have a big chocolate-colored couch like a velvet mud pit, waiting to suck you in. Old and ugly, but unbelievably comfortable. Then Mom started reading home décor magazines and bought this “camelback sofa.” It was called that because there was a hump along the back. It was also about as comfortable as sitting on a camel.

So I usually avoided the sofa. This time the disadvantages were outweighed by the advantages of sitting by Ted — he hated it when I sat too close to him. Surprisingly, he didn't complain.

Dad took a deep breath. “Your mom and I have been having some problems lately,” he said.

“And the Oscar for understatement of the century goes to…” I said dramatically. No one laughed. Ted studied his video game controller.

“We're going to try living separately for a while,” Dad continued.

This time I stared at him in silence.

“Maybe you were expecting this,” Dad mused.

Suddenly my brain clicked back into action. “Wait! Who's we? Who's living separately?” I asked. Ted remained silent.

“Your mom has rented an apartment downtown. She has an extra bedroom, so you can stay with her whenever you want. But I hope you'll want to continue to live here, with me.”

Clang
! Ted threw his controller onto the glass coffee table, which vibrated with the impact. He kicked the cord out of his way and scuffed out of the room, hauling up his pants as he went. Dad waited until he was gone, then turned to me with a sigh.

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said.

“Obviously, since you've decided everything without even telling us.”

“We thought if we had a plan in place, the transition would go more smoothly for you kids.” He sounded completely calm, as
if we were transitioning from one brand of breakfast sausage to another.

“You both suck.” Not the most impressive thing to say. It was the best I could do on short notice.

“Mel phoned yesterday and today,” he said, still calm. “You should call her.”

“Whatever.” I followed Ted.

I could hear my mom still banging around. When I poked my head through the doorway, it was like being sucked into a disaster zone. The closet had obviously been hit the hardest — hangers dangled empty, sweaters hung half off their shelves and socks littered the floor. The bed was covered in suitcases.

I took a step inside and Mom finally noticed me. I don't know what I was expecting. Waiting for Mom to apologize is like waiting for the polar ice caps to melt — scientifically possible but unlikely in the near future. A couple of months ago she turned an entire load of my white laundry bright pink, and all she did was shrug and say, “Mmm…bad luck. You're old enough to do your own laundry, anyway.”