Teach Me a Lesson (26 page)

She would have said more, but she was alerted by a sound out in the waiting room. A glance at the clock assured her it was too early for her next client, yet a moment later, her office door burst open.

David Smith stood on the threshold, his face mottled with anger. “I thought you said you weren’t coming to her anymore.”

Jeanine jumped to her feet. Charlotte rose with her, heart beating wildly. “Mr. Smith, please calm down.”

“I’m not talking to you.”

She didn’t like his tone. Or his attitude. “But I’m talking to you. Please keep your voice down. There are other offices in this building.”

With three big steps, he towered over her. She loved it when Lance did that, but David Smith vibrated with malice. “This isn’t high school. I’m not one of your students. Don’t tell me to shut up.”

All right, she needed to take charge. “Regardless of the circumstances, Mr. Smith, I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to talk about any issues you might have. With Jeanine’s permission, I’m sure we can alleviate any fears about our therapy.”

His voice boomed in the otherwise quiet office. “I’m not afraid of anything, least of all you. We will not be discussing the situation, and I want you to leave my wife alone. Leave my son alone, too.” He stabbed a finger at the center of his chest. “Don’t you realize I’m chairman of the school board? I can have your job.”

He was threatening her. It was unbelievable, like something out of a melodramatic TV movie. “I haven’t done anything, Mr. Smith. You can’t take away my job.”

He dropped his head, glared at her, and lowered his voice. “Wanna bet?”

She didn’t like to admit it, even to herself, but the man frightened her.

“If you’re not careful, I might even take away your license to practice as well.” Then he turned his gaze on his wife. “Jeanine, we’re outta here.”

He didn’t grab her arm or drag her away. He simply turned. And Jeanine followed. The outer office door slammed behind them.

She’d been upset that Lance hadn’t let her handle her own problem. Well, she’d certainly gotten her chance.

And all she’d done was make a bigger mess.

21

LANCE SLUNG HIS JACKET OVER HIS ARM. IT WAS UNSEASONABLY
warm for Thanksgiving week, especially considering the temperatures and rain the previous week.

“Principal Hutton, I gotta talk to you.”

Eric Collins cornered him in the staff parking lot early on Tuesday morning. His hair was wild and his face pale with dark circles beneath his eyes as if he’d pulled an all-nighter. Lance didn’t think the boy had even bothered to use a comb before leaving home.

Other faculty and staff were entering the lot, parking their cars, heading up the aisles to the school. A few glanced their way. He thought about telling the boy to come by his office during his study period, but Eric appeared frantic, bouncing on his heels, his pupils large and dark. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s about my stepdad.” Eric tapped his fingers nervously against his jeans. “Can we talk in your office?”

“Don’t you have class”—Lance flipped his wrist to check his watch—“in fifteen minutes?”

“I do, but I guarantee you’ll give me a pass after you hear what I have to say.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Lance didn’t like Eric’s ominous sound. Smith was becoming a huge pain in the ass.

He gestured for Eric to follow. They garnered curious stares as they traversed the halls, Eric half a pace behind as if he were a dog Lance had told to heel. Or a kid who was in trouble and being taken to the principal’s office.

Mrs. Rivers looked up as they passed through, her eyes seemingly magnified through the lenses of her horn-rimmed glasses.

“Do I have any meetings in the next half hour, Mrs. Rivers?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Hold my calls.” He ushered Eric into his office and closed the door.

Eric waited until Lance was seated behind his desk, then took the chair opposite.

Lance leaned back. “All right, tell me.”

“It’s my parents, Principal Hutton. And Melody’s.”

Despite Lance’s nonchalant pose, his senses were on alert. “What about them?”

“Well, my stepdad had the Wrights over to our house last night, and he was fuming.”

“With them?”

“No, at Miss Moore.”

His stomach sank. “You didn’t talk to her again, did you?”

“No, it was my mom who went to see her yesterday, and my stepdad found out. I guess he and Miss Moore had a fight or something, then he dragged my mom out of there.”

Lance gnashed his teeth. Dammit, why the hell hadn’t Charlotte told him? Oh, yeah, because they were taking a break from each other. But this was school business, not personal.

Eric twisted his hands together. “Anyway, they were all in my stepdad’s study, but the laundry room’s on the other side, and if I put my ear up to the wall socket when there’s no plug in there, I can hear whatever they say.” Talk about cheap construction. How did kids figure this stuff out? It was ingenious. “That’s the only way I ever know what’s going on around there.” A typical kid, Eric rolled his eyes.

“Go on,” he said, as if Eric needed permission to reveal what he’d overheard.

“My stepdad was saying they had to put a stop to her—Miss Moore, I mean—that she was a menace to kids like me and Melody. That if there’s anything wrong with Melody”—Eric looked at Lance beseechingly—“and there’s not, I swear it.”

“I know there isn’t. She’ll be fine. We’ll work through this.”

“But she won’t get through it if she doesn’t have Miss Moore.” The boy’s features were tense, earnest.

Lance wondered how Charlotte inspired this kind of faith. But then he knew, because she cared. She was the real thing. She didn’t mouth platitudes or fob off responsibility. She did anything she could to help the kids who came to her in need.

“Melody will get all the help she requires,” he promised. “But finish telling me about this powwow last night.”

“Well, Mrs. Wright was pissed—I mean angry,” he changed the word this time as if afraid
pissed
would be considered profanity. “Anyway, she says that whatever’s wrong with Melody is all Miss Moore’s fault, that Miss Moore is telling Melody that she—Mrs. Wright, I mean—is abusing her because she’s offered to let her have surgery. She says a guidance counselor can’t be allowed to turn kids against parents.”

“Surgery? What kind of surgery?”

“Breast implants.”

Lance drew his brows together and leaned forward. “That woman wants her fifteen-year-old daughter to get breast implants?”

“Yeah.” Eric nodded vigorously. “She thinks it’ll solve all Melody’s problems.”

He’d thought acne was her problem. How did they suddenly jump to breast implants? At this point, though, it was academic. There were only two germane points: First, Smith hated that his wife was Charlotte’s client, and second, Kathryn Wright thought she was being bad-mouthed to her daughter. Maybe it was the same symptom, the two didn’t like what was said about them behind their backs, most of which was probably true.

“Then what happened?”

“They were going on at my mom about what Miss Moore might have said to her, and she just kept saying that it was confidential and she couldn’t talk about it.”

The truth was that it was confidential only for Charlotte. She couldn’t reveal anything, but Jeanine Smith could say whatever she wanted. Dammit, why the hell hadn’t the woman defended Charlotte instead of clamming up?

Eric grabbed the arms of the chair and leaned forward gravely. “Then my stepdad starting saying how Miss Moore was probably talking about sex with all those students she has in her office, corrupting them, telling them that it was okay to have sex as long as they used condoms, and maybe she was even encouraging them to have multiple partners and orgies and stuff.”

It was so ridiculous, Lance would have laughed. Except that he could hear Smith’s voice in his head, pandering to parental fears, whipping up fury.

“And Mrs. Wright was agreeing and Mr. Wright was saying he didn’t want Melody alone with her.” Eric lowered his voice. “It was scary, Principal Hutton. Like one of those Salem witch hunts.”

Yes, indeed, it was. “What do they plan to do about all this?”

“They’re starting a petition to have her fired. Mrs. Wright’s going to take it round to all the parents of the freshman class.”

Shit. His worst fear.

“My mom said they were getting out of hand. But I don’t think anyone was listening to her at all.”

A petition. All right, he had time to undo any damage before it really began. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Eric. I’ll take it from here.” Another conversation with Smith was in order. This time, he’d need to make a few threats of his own.

“I talked to Melody and—”

Lance cocked his head. “I thought Melody wasn’t speaking to you anymore. Isn’t that how this whole thing started?”

Eric’s face flushed, whether with embarrassment or something else, Lance wasn’t sure. “Yes, sir,” he said deferentially. “But this is extreme. So I sent her a text. And she answered. She doesn’t like what they’re trying to do to Miss Moore either.”

It was miraculous. Charlotte had gotten them together without even trying. The two teenagers were putting aside their differences and rallying round her.

“All the kids like Miss Moore, don’t they,” Lance said, musing almost to himself.

“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “Most everyone thinks she’s awesome.”

“And your parents are going to other parents to get them to sign a petition to get rid of her.” Not that he’d let it happen, but a little help never hurt. “Perhaps those parents need to hear another point of view from their kids.” He let the idea sink in.

Eric’s face suddenly animated. “Yeah.”

The seed would germinate. Hopefully when Kathryn Wright started making the rounds with her petition, she wouldn’t find a whole lot of signers.

* * *

CHARLOTTE STOPPED DEAD JUST BEFORE SHE ENTERED THE QUAD.
She was later than normal because she didn’t have an appointment until after the first period.

And there, right in the center of the quad, students streaming around them on their way to class or the library or a lab, stood Melody and Lydia. Good God, Lydia was befriending the girl. Charlotte could have cried. It was the one good thing in a really bad week, and this was only Tuesday, for God’s sake. By involving Lydia, at least she’d done something right where Melody was concerned.

She hung back beneath the relative darkness of an awning to watch. Lydia did half her talking with her hands and arms, not to mention a very mobile face. The girl couldn’t hide anything; what she thought was written all over her features for everyone to read. When Melody spoke, her arms stayed at her sides and her body exhibited very little movement, as if she kept everything buried deep inside. Her brown hoodie and blue jeans were like the dead leaves of winter versus Lydia in all the vibrant colors of New England trees in fall. The utterly amazing thing, though, was that Melody talked. The girls weren’t fighting. Melody hadn’t stomped on Lydia’s shoe or poured the contents of a Coke can over her head. They were talking. Lydia nodded. Then Melody nodded. They parted company, and Lydia grabbed the arm of one of her BFFs—Lydia had many—and dashed up the steps. At the opposite end of the quad, Melody rounded a corner and disappeared.

Charlotte stood there for at least another minute and pondered the meaning. She could have kissed Lydia. Then again, maybe she needed to find out what was going on. A sly question or two to Melody in their session today would draw out the answer. As she finally moved on toward her office, she could only hope this was a good thing. But it seemed a little too fast. She was suspicious of huge turnarounds in a short space of time. Still, it was a good beginning. It had to be.

She was on tenterhooks through her first two appointments of the day, both of which concerned course planning to facilitate acceptance into the schools of choice. One was an Asian girl interested in high-level computer languages, the other, her brother, a year older, who had structural engineering on his mind. She often found that Asian students of immigrant parents chose career paths early and were very focused in their goals.

Melody was a horse of a different color, so to speak, but this morning as she entered the office, Charlotte felt there was the slightest buoyancy in her step that hadn’t been there last week. Though that might be wishful thinking.

She started with something innocuous. “How was your weekend, Melody?”

“Fine.” The girl toyed with a loose thread on her sweatshirt.

“Did you do anything fun?”

“Watched some movies on cable.”

Okay, this was sounding like a repeat of last week. “Did you try any of my suggestions?”

Melody crossed her ankles and drew her feet back beneath the chair. “I haven’t seen a new pimple since yesterday.”

Staring at herself in the mirror looking for new pimples wasn’t exactly what Charlotte had in mind. The difference here was not that Melody looked in the mirror, but that she was sharing what she considered was a triumph.

“That’s good. Maybe you’re feeling a little less stressed.” Charlotte could only hope.

“Not really.”

After a pause in which Melody added nothing, Charlotte decided it was time to bring up Lydia. Melody had isolated herself. She needed friends, activities.

“I wanted to—”

But Melody talked right over her. “I saw Eric yesterday.”

Charlotte’s heart started to beat faster with anticipation.

“And I didn’t kick him, slap him, bite him, or dump a beaker of sugar water over his head.” Melody smiled. It was sheepish, a bit self-deprecating. But it was a smile, and she was actually poking fun at herself.

Charlotte wanted to punch the air. Instead she merely said, in keeping with the humor, “You didn’t spill Coke on his shoes either?”

Melody rewarded her with another smile.

Fabulous. Things were looking up. Yet Charlotte didn’t think she’d had a thing to do with it.

* * *

LANCE ASKED MRS. RIVERS TO CALL SMITH’S OFFICE. HIS
secretary said he hadn’t been in yet this morning. So Lance had Mrs. Rivers call the Smith home. No answer there either.