The Academy (27 page)

“Nothing.” He refused to look up from his plate.

“Tony.”

“I said it was nothing!” His voice was a little too defensive, a little too loud.

“You can’t keep things bottled up inside—”
Like your father,
she wanted to say. “It’s not healthy. Whatever it is, you can tell me. You can talk to me about it.”

“It’s you! All right?”

Kate blinked. “Me?” This came as a complete surprise.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You never help out at my school! Why can’t you sign up for something? Sell soda at the football games or tickets for the Harvest Festival? Why can’t you work in the library?”

“What brought this on? If I remember correctly, I was a room mother when you were in fifth grade, and you were so embarrassed by my existence that you begged me, crying, never to volunteer at your school again.”

Tony shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah, well . . .”

“Well, what?”

“Well, I guess I changed my mind.”

“Oh you did, did you? And why’s that?”

He looked at his plate. “Some of my teachers might’ve . . . mentioned it.”

“Mentioned what?”

“That you haven’t volunteered as much as you were supposed to.” A torrent of words poured out, hurt and angry. “They made fun of me in class! Mr. Connor pointed me out and said you’re the only parent who doesn’t pull her own weight! Mrs. Habeck said in front of everyone that part of my homework was to get you to be more responsible! I’m not going to be able to even go to the Harvest Festival this year because you haven’t volunteered enough!”

Kate was taken aback. “I’m . . . sorry.”

“Yeah, well, sorry’s not good enough.” There was that look again, his father’s look.

She reached across the table, touched his hand and was gratified when he didn’t pull away. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “I promise.” She looked into his eyes, and it was not his father’s angry gaze she saw there but a worried hopefulness she recognized from when Tony was a little boy. “I promise,” she said again.

He did pull away, but he nodded.

There was a PTA meeting the next morning, she knew, and though she’d never attended one before, Kate was determined to go to this one and complain about the outrageous demands being placed upon the kids and their parents, particularly working parents. The constant pressure of the white envelopes was bad enough, but when students were harangued in their classrooms by their teachers over their parents’ perceived unwillingness to volunteer enough time or donate enough money to the school, well, that was completely unacceptable.

After dinner, she fished out the notice from the pile of papers on the coffee table. The meeting was at ten o’clock in the multipurpose room, and in the morning she called her supervisor, let him know that she was taking half a personal day, and drove to the high school. She was there ten minutes early, and to her surprise she was the first one to arrive. The door was open, but the room was empty. She’d expected someone to be setting up coffee and cookies on a table, and figured the PTA officers would be conferring among themselves before everyone else arrived, but she was the only one there.

Not that she cared.

The truth was, she didn’t like a lot of the other parents she’d met at Tyler. There was a weird competitiveness among many of them, and within the insular world they inhabited, their status was far too dependent on the achievements of their children. There was a constant jockeying for position, with their kids’ grades, sports and extracurricular activities all used to determine who was top dog. And of course, no one had normal kids; none of
their
children could possibly be average. They were all gifted or special or exceptional—despite the fact that nearly all of them would eventually end up getting regular jobs and living in suburbia and having ordinary lives just like their parents.

She didn’t play that game and had little tolerance for those who did, but Kate knew that she was going to have to get at least some of the other parents on her side if she was going to effect any kind of change, and she started thinking about ice-breaking topics of conversation as she sat down on a metal folding chair in the back row.

A few minutes later, the PTA moms arrived en masse, as though they’d already started the meeting somewhere else and were coming here to conduct the last part of it. She recognized Helen Adams, Jason’s mother. Their boys had been friends back in junior high, though they hung out with different crowds in high school. And over there was Andrea Hagen. And Barbra Watkins.

Only . . .

Only none of the women looked the way they usually did. They were “tarted up,” as her own mother would say. Far from the Betty Crocker / Carol Brady stereotype she’d been expecting, the women walking into the meeting were wearing tight jeans and halter tops, minidresses and spiked heels. Makeup was thick and garish. Tattoos were exposed. She felt like the frumpiest hausfrau on the planet as she sat there and watched the rest of them pass by.

The women ignored her, one and all. Talking among themselves, they sat together in the first three rows, putting an end to any thoughts she might have had about chatting a few of them up ahead of time. Why had she decided to sit way back here?

Three other women arrived, sitting with the group.

She wasn’t a naturally outgoing person, but gathering her courage, Kate stood and made her way toward the front of the room. She found an empty spot next to Helen, and sat down, giving the other woman a friendly smile. “Hi,” she said. “How’s it going?”

Helen ignored her, turned away and started talking to the woman on the other side of her.

Not knowing how to react (in old movies, didn’t women just huffily say,
“Well!”
and turn away?), Kate sat for a moment in silence. Another woman, this one very obviously wearing no bra under a tight pink T-SHIRT featuring a sparkling green marijuana leaf, sat down next to her. Kate was about to say hello and attempt to start a conversation when the meeting started. A woman in the front row stood up, faced the seated mothers and without preamble began running down a list of topics they needed to address this week.

It wasn’t a meeting so much as a lecture, and in its speed and brevity was almost a parody of those hyperefficient proceedings conducted by high-powered businesspeople. Kate had thought she would get a chance to talk, but there was no opportunity to bring up unscheduled subjects, and before she knew it, the meeting was over. Seconds after the closing announcement was made, the women around her were standing and starting for the aisle.

“Wait!” Kate said loudly. “I have something I want to say!”

She was greeted by a crowd of hostile frowning faces.

“Who do you think you are?” the PTA president demanded. Chairs were pushed aside, and the presidentwas suddenly right in her face. Kate found herself surrounded by an encroaching circle of women.

Kate held her ground. “My name’s Kate Robinson. I came to this meeting because I wanted to talk about all of the time we’re supposed to volunteer and all of the money we’re supposed to donate. It’s getting ridiculous, and I think most parents—”

“This is the first PTA meeting you’ve been to,” the president said.

“Yes.”

The woman looked angry. “I recognize your name. You didn’t sign up for the mother-son dance like you were supposed to. And you didn’t donate anything for our bake sale on Back-to-School Night.”

“Those are all voluntary,” Kate said frostily. “So far as I know.”

“You’re not a team player!” Helen said, leaning close. “You don’t know what it means to support the school.”

One of the other mothers shoved her, causing her to bump into a different woman. The woman shoved her back. Within seconds, she was being buffeted back and forth, and it was all she could do to remain upright as she was pushed first one way and then another by the increasingly irate crowd. Long fingernails scratched her upper arm. The sleeve of her blouse was ripped. Someone pulled her hair.

“Knock it off!” she cried, but it sounded more like a plea than a demand.

Barbra slapped her face. Andrea yanked the strap of her purse.

Kate fought back. She slapped Barbra even as one of the other mothers tried to pull her off-balance, and she jerked back on the strap of her purse. Seeing an opening between two of the women, she stumbled forward, ramming a halter-topped bimbo out of the way and giving the PTA president a gratifying elbow in the gut.

Then she was free and running for the door. She expected to be chased, anticipated the sound of high heels rat-tat-tatting on the floor behind her as the president yelled, “Get her!” But nothing like that happened. Beneath the harsh rasp of her own breathing, she heard only a few muffled laughs, and then she was out the door and on the sidewalk and making a run for her car.

A few students were out of class and watched as she sped by, but Kate ignored them and kept her focus on the parking lot ahead. She was sobbing, though she could not remember the last time she had cried. It was frustration more than the physical assault that had brought her to tears. She reached the parking lot, reached the car, opened the door and locked herself in. On the way out, her fender bumped that of another car parked near the exit, but she didn’t care, she didn’t stop and she kept driving until she was safely in her own garage and home.

*

Tony had to eat lunch alone. One by one, his friends had been recruited by the principal to become Tyler Scouts. Chuck was the most recent, tapped only yesterday, and now Tony was the last one left at their old table. The scouts trained at lunch—
and
before school
and
after school—so unless he found some new friends, he was probably looking at a lot of time spent by himself.

Tony glanced to his left at a table where a gaggle of hot girls were talking in low tones, heads together. If he had a girlfriend, he wouldn’t need any guys to hang out with. But he didn’t. He wasn’t smooth, didn’t have any game and hadn’t even had a date since the beginning of the semester. There’d been a chick he’d fooled around with a little bit this summer, a skanky dropout who’d worked with him at Taco Bell, but he’d left that behind when he’d quit the job in August, and even if it was possible, he wasn’t interested in starting anything up again with her.

Glumly, Tony opened his sack lunch, certain that everyone else in the eating area was looking at him and laughing. All the surrounding tables were crowded with students, and his pathetically empty table couldn’t help but be the center of attention. He reached into the brown bag to pull out his sandwich—

And a strong hand clamped down on his.

“Hey!” he said, shoving the hand away and standing up quickly, prepared to fight off the intruder.

It was Chuck. And Logan. And Craig. They were grinning, and behind them stood a line of Tyler Scouts stretching all the way back to the classrooms. Now he definitely
was
the center of attention. But he didn’t mind. In fact, he was pleased. “What is it?” he asked, hoping he already knew the answer.

He did.

Logan handed him a letter. “Principal Hawkes wants you to become a scout.”

Tony melodramatically wiped his brow, as though he’d been sweating it out. “About time!” he said.

“You won’t need this anymore.” Chuck grabbed the brown bag containing his lunch and threw it as hard as he could. It flew over several tables, landing on the head of a fat kid, who leaped to his feet and swiveled around. “All right!” he bellowed. “Who did that? I’ll kick your fucking—”

The scouts laughed derisively.

The boy grew pale and immediately sat back down.

“Respect,” Chuck told Tony, making a fist.

“Yeah!” Tony grinned. This was going to be great. He didn’t know exactly what the scouts did or what their purpose was, but they definitely did get respect.
Everyone
was afraid of them, and while he’d never been one of those kids who aspired to join the military or become a policeman, he found that the idea of being someone in authority appealed to him.

“Aren’t you going to read the letter?” Logan asked.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.” Tony scanned the missive in his hand. It was a xeroxed form letter that said the principal was personally asking him to become a Tyler Scout because of his stellar scholastic record and personal qualities that had been vouched for by a minimum of two other scouts.

His stellar scholastic record?