The Sacrificial Daughter (4 page)

"I like your skirt, and your hair," her mother commented in a chipper voice when Jesse came down for breakfast. "You look beautiful."

The navy blue skirt was the second finest that she owned, she didn't want to go overboard after all, and above it she had slipped on her long-sleeve white satin blouse. Her hair, recently dyed back to its original gold-blonde, had been painstakingly curled and even with the slight crook in her nose where it had been broken the year before, she did indeed feel pretty.

Jesse was about to give her a warm thank you when her mother added, "Why don't you try harder like this all of the time? You usually look like such a slob."

With the stress of her first day of school, it was a struggle for Jesse not to flip out on her. "Just be happy that I'm trying today," she replied between her clenched teeth.

Normally her attire matched her mood, which meant black with barely a touch of color. She thought the vampire/goth look that many kids wore was silly, but all the same the style of clothes that she preferred to wear was close to it.

But that day, her first at Ashton High, she didn't dress according to her mood, which was an anxious, jittery nervousness.

That day she dressed to impress.

If that was still even possible. Despite the fact that she had been in town just shy of two complete days, her father had been there three months already. There was no telling how many people he'd had fired in that time and in a small town like Ashton everybody seemed to be related to everyone else. With all the first, second, and third cousins, as well as aunts and uncles running around, one firing could mean a dozen or more angry students.

And then there was Ms Weldon who would probably turn most of the school staff against her, if they weren't already.

Jesse was definitely behind the eight ball and she knew it. Therefore she put on her nicest school outfit and her most pleasing smile. She was determined to face her new school head-on in the friendliest manner possible. Who knew what the day would hold? Perhaps today she wouldn't be hated; perhaps she could even find a friend. This time, this school could be different.

It wasn't.

If anything, it might have been the worst first day in the history of first days. From the receptionist in the front office, who eyed her with a cold sneer, to her counselor, who couldn't stop saying things like:
I look forward to seeing you graduate from Ashton High… that is if I even have job in May
, everyone was downright nasty.

Everyone that is, but one boy and the best he could do was ignore her completely, even going so far as refusing to say his name when she asked directly. He was rude and frustrating, but was an angel compared to the rest of the students.

Registration took close to two hours, which meant that not only did she miss her first two classes: English and calculus, she was late to her third. The receptionist, Mrs. Daly, had done this on purpose. With five minutes left until the bell rang for the end of second period, all Jesse needed was a printout of her schedule. With the schedule sitting on her computer screen, Mrs. Daly could have had it printed out with two clicks of her mouse, but instead she answered a call from a friend.

They chatted and Jesse fretted. Walking in late to class on your first day of school was a singularly painful event. Everyone knew this. When the bell rang, Jesse tried to get Mrs. Daly's attention, but the woman simply turned her chair away and went right on talking. She seemed to be in absolutely no hurry.

Next Jesse tried to lean over the tall desk to get a better look at her schedule, thinking that she would write it down if she had to.

"Do you mind?" Mrs. Daly crabbed before switching off her screen. She then went back to her banal conversation with her friend. "It's nothing. You know that new town-manager…it's her daughter. Already she thinks she's queen of the school."

Jesse's eyes rolled in her head at the words. She put both of her hands in her hair and gripped her blonde locks hard and before she remembered how she was going to try to be positive, a growl of frustration escaped her throat.

"You have something to say to Mrs. Daly?" Asked a man, Principal Peterson, she assumed from the plaque sitting on the wall next to the doorway he stood in. He was a tall, angry, rat faced man with an over-flowing paunch. Not a person Jesse wanted mad at her.

"No, sir. It's just that I…"

"Then get away from her desk," he ordered. "It's not polite to listen in on someone else's conversation. Didn't your parents ever teach you that?"

"Yes, sir." Jesse dropped her eyes and went to sit down at a nearby bench. A minute later the late bell rang for third period and her stomach knotted unpleasantly. Ten minutes after that Mrs. Daly scolded her for loitering when she should have been at class.

"But…"

"Your schedule has been sitting right here for ages. Do you even plan on attending classes today?"

Jesse had learned long ago that as a child and a student there was no use arguing with a person such as Mrs. Daly. "Yes ma'am," Jesse said glumly and the pain in her abdomen grew slightly.

A look down at her schedule made the pain grow. 3rd period: Art at the Speed of Life. Ms Weldon rm. 213

"Mother-puss-bucket." The words came out as a groan. Ms Weldon was the last person she wanted to see at the moment. Jesse checked her watch and saw that there was still thirty-eight minutes left to the period. She decided that ditching was the best course of action. It was either that or she would get an ulcer at the age of seventeen.

Jesse figured that she would find an empty classroom or a bathroom to hide out in, but just as she turned toward the stairs she saw Mrs. Daly eyeing her. It was a shrewd, been-around-the-block kind of look and it sent warning bells off in Jesse's mind.

She decided that it was best not to ditch.

Instead, she moped her way up to the second floor. The school, like the town, was small; it had only four-hundred and ten students and Jesse was at room 213 in little over a minute. She stood outside it for another minute trying to gather her courage. It never got gathered. The only thing that occurred was that her stomach began to ache all the more. It felt like she had swallowed a razor.

Finally she stepped in. The art room looked exactly like a high-school art room. This was Jesse's third high school and every one of them had a room that looked just as this one did. Except that is, for one large horse-faced difference.

Ms. Weldon accosted her the second she walked in. It was as if she had been expecting…and hoping for this very thing to occur. "You are late. Do you have a proper excuse?"

Jesse felt ambushed. She barely had time to take in the twenty or so students staring at her. "No. Registering took longer…"

The art teacher cut her off, striding to stand over her, "Do you think you can walk in here anytime you please?" The tone sounded sweet, but the words were poisonous ice.

"No of course not. I only…"

"Then perhaps you'll be kind enough to follow the rules of this school and go get a note from Mrs. Daly," Ms. Weldon said in her sickly-sweet manner.

Jesse was so astounded that she couldn't find even the simplest words to respond with. "I…uh…I," was all that came out.

"Go," the teacher ordered. "And don't come back without a note. We have rules for a reason and don't think that just because of who your father is that I'll bend them for you."

Red-faced and with ears that felt as though a match had been taken to them, Jesse left. Tittering of the art students could be heard as she walked down the hall in utter disbelief.

"Mother-puss-bucket!" This time it wasn't a groan. This time she was angry.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Daly?" Jesse paused for a response, yet nothing came from the receptionist but a cold stare. After an awkward moment Jesse went on, "Ms. Weldon says that I need a note excusing me for being late to her class. Could you write one for me please?"

"No."

Another awkward moment passed between them. Jesse scratched her head, thinking. "You won't write me a note because you believe you gave me my schedule with plenty of time to get to class is that correct?"

Mrs. Daly stood up and placed her pudgy little fists on her desk. "I don't
believe
I did. I
know
I did. You asked for your schedule and instead of taking it and going to class you sat around day-dreaming."

Unbelievable. Un-freaking-believable,
Jesse's voice of reason said in her mind. It had good reason to be mad.

A fury began to mount in her, but she bit it back, relying oddly enough on the part of her that was her father. Mrs. Daly and Ms Weldon were nothing but cogs in the high school machine and should be treated as such. The idea tempered her anger and allowed her to think.

"Well I guess I'm in a bit of a pickle then," Jesse acknowledged. "Is Principal Peterson available? I will probably need to talk to him."

Mrs. Daly began to laugh at this. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down. "What do you need to see him for? Do you think he'll believe anything you might try to make up? If so you are sooo mistaken. He has seen your transcripts from your previous schools. They read like a felon's rap sheet. Fighting, stealing, cheating…the works. So whatever you have to say, you might as well save it."

"Actually I was going to turn myself in for cutting class."

Mrs. Daly looked dumbfounded. "What?"

A millisecond later Principal Peterson's office door came open and the rat-faced man stepped out. "Did I just hear you say you are cutting class?"

Jesse glanced up at the clock and jerked her thumb toward it. "Yes, technically I think so. Third period. Ms Weldon won't let me in without a note excusing me for being late and Mrs. Daly won't write one, so…here I am."

The two bureaucrats looked at each other in surprise with eyebrows raised. Neither could find anything to say to this. Jesse was sure that no student had ever turned themselves in for cutting class before and she went on speaking as only a cog in a machine would really appreciate.

"I hate to be taking so much of your valuable time for something as simple as this. It would be terrible if people got the idea that the faculty around here had nothing better to do than to give the new kid in school the run around. Especially when so many budget cuts are being enacted. It would seem like such a waste of time and resources."

Now the surprised look on their faces faded through the full spectrum of apprehension. They went from unease to the first trace of fear…but this didn't last, a glower of anger settled on both their faces. Secretly this struck Jesse as humorous. They would have laughed at her had they known how little James Clarke valued the opinion of his daughter. In his eyes she had done very few things right in her life and not once, not a single time had he ever sided with her when she had the least dispute with an adult.

Principal Peterson barked out, "Just write the note."

Jesse couldn't decide if the note represented a minor victory, or just a mitigation of an obvious defeat.

There were many votes in the mitigation category. After all she was still heading to Ms Weldon class halfway through the period and she would still have to suffer whatever unnecessary barbs the art teacher had to throw in her face. In addition to that she had, by invoking the ghost of her father, probably forever linked the two of them together in the minds of the teaching staff. This of course meant that since he was hated then she was hated, but at the same time, clearly this had already begun anyway.

In the victory category, she held in her hands a note Ms Weldon would be very surprised to read. Because her day had started so poorly Jesse decided to claim victory, though hollow it turned out to be.

When she walked back into the class, the art teacher was obviously ready with some snide remark about crawling back empty handed. Before the girl got halfway through the door Ms Weldon rounded on her.

"I thought I told you not come back without a…"

With a neutral look upon her face, Jesse flashed out the paper and presented it to the teacher.

"What is…" Ms Weldon read it over once and then eyed the signature closely. Callously she crumpled the paper into a ball. "You are still responsible for everything that you missed. Take your seat."

Jesse groaned under her breath. The only chair available was at an empty three-person table in the very front of the class. Feeling every eye in the room boring into her back, she hurried to the chair and sat down.

Just as she did, Ms Weldon spoke up, "Jesse please stand up and face the class."

"Mother-pus-bucket," she said so that no one could hear. Slowly she climbed to her feet, fearing the next bit of torture that Ms Weldon had in store for her and wondering if her cheeks were as red as they felt. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Class this is Jesse Clarke…" Here Ms Weldon paused, perhaps expecting the name to be known, but in this she was disappointed. No one so much as batted an eye. She continued, "This is her first day here at Ashton and I want you all to stop your work and give her your undivided attention as she tells us a little bit about herself."

What? This was ridiculous! "I…I haven't had to do this since the second grade," Jesse began with a shy smile. This earned her a few grins, which rallied her. "I'm only seventeen so there's not much to tell just yet. I…uh, just moved into town with my family. We were living in Copperfield. So that's about it…"

She was just starting to sit when Ms Weldon asked, "Your entire family just moved here?"

So this was the deal. The horse-faced bitch just wanted to make sure every kid in school knew exactly who she was and more importantly who her father was. Jesse had a strong temptation to simply lie straight out, but she held back and instead went with a modified version of the truth.

"Only my mother and I just moved. We got to town on Saturday." She almost made it back into her chair which would have been nice since her sprained ankle was beginning to get twingy.

"And your father?" The voice of the art teacher was dead cold.

Jesse wanted to blurt out:
I'm an orphan. My father was killed in Iraq. Thanks for bringing up that painful memory!
Instead she said quietly, "My father works for the town."

"In what capacity?"

The exact truth was that James Clarke was sort of a janitor. His whole job was to clean up the messes the idiots who ran the town before him were too gutless to handle. Of course that couldn't be mentioned since some of the children of the cowards were possibly in the room.

"My father is the town manager," Jesse announced.

Now came the whisperings that Ms Weldon had been hoping for and along with the sound, which reminded Jesse of a basket full of snakes, came quite a few hard stares. The teacher let the students murmur to each other for a long minute until the classroom was all astir and only then she took control again.

"Quiet down. Jesse you can take a seat, unless you have anything else you wish to say?"

Jesse had plenty to say, all of it enough to get her expelled. Instead she sat. Her face a stony mask.

She tried to tell herself that everything was going to be fine and that either way the truth was going to have to come out sooner or later. At least this way her secret was revealed all at once, like ripping off a band-aid…it was always better done quick.

"Let's get your graphs out," Ms Weldon said to the class. There was a general confusion as large rolls of paper were laid out upon all of the desks. All save Jesse's. "Remember these have to be done by Thursday and I will not tolerate excuses."

Jesse stared about her as the other teenagers went about marking up long rectangles of paper that were drawn over with pictures and bubbled wording. From where she was sitting she couldn't read any of it and had no clue what was going on.

She raised her hand. Eight minutes and twenty seconds later Ms Weldon strolled up.

"You have a question?"

The question was dreadfully obvious to both of them and Jesse felt strength slip from her at the silly need to ask it. "What is the class working on?"

"It's a coordinated studies program. The artistic portion is using
I Madonnari
to protest." She said this as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Jesse waited the appropriate amount of time for her teacher to explain what
I Madonnari
meant and then sighed, "Alright, I give up, what's eye moderny?"

Ms Weldon handed her a hefty textbook. "I'm busy. Look it up."

By Jesse's count she had one hundred and six days until she graduated. The way things were going she feared that each day would feel like a year all by itself. "You want me to look it up? Isn't it your job to teach?"

Jesse's tone had been over the line rude, but she didn't care and neither did Ms Weldon, who replied calmly, "My job is also to teach you how to think for yourself; something clearly lacking in your upbringing. I repeat Look. It. Up."

"Could you at least tell me what language it is?"

The art teacher surprised Jesse by answering, "It's Italian."

For the remainder of the shortened class, Jesse tried and failed to find anything in the book that sounded like
eye moderny.
Eventually, she just took to reading about Cubism, which was mildly interesting. When the bell rang her shoulders drooped in relief at the sound.

"Miss Clarke?" Ms Weldon called to her as the rest of the class escaped to the halls.

"Oh crap," Jesse whispered to herself. Louder she said, "Yes ma'am?"

"Do you have the definition of the word yet?" Jesse shook her head and Ms Weldon smiled grimly. "Then you get a zero in class participation for the day. And to catch you up with the rest of the class, I want a five page essay on
I Madonnari
finished by tomorrow."

Anger and outrage coupled with a sudden despair that nothing would go right had her emotions taking over her mind. Jesse had to blink back tears. "That seems rather excessive."

"I just want the tax payers to get their money's worth," Ms Weldon said with feigned innocence. "Isn't that what you want as well?"

"Yeah…sure." Jesse turned to leave and saw on one of the side chalkboards the word:
I Madonnari
. Finally a flippin break! Hurriedly she jotted it down. She had been looking up an altogether different spelling of the word. With that done she darted from the classroom and pulled out her class schedule.

"Lunch!" she cried with more enthusiasm than she had meant to. People stared.

She left the area around the art room and limped down to the cafeteria on her gimpy ankle. The three-inch heels that she was wearing, though they looked great, were really starting to put a strain on her. She had to stop and slip them off. This was an immediate relief, but it also made her last in line for lunch.

She came up behind a boy who was slim and of average height. From behind he was nothing special, but when he turned around he was something else entirely.

"Excuse me?" She tapped him on the shoulder. The boy hadn't been in her art class and probably didn't know who she was yet. Jesse was hoping that a little small talk would lead to an invitation to sit with him. She would even flirt if that's what it took. Though she had everyday of her high school life, she dreaded the idea of sitting alone.

The boy didn't turn, nor did he make any sign that he knew someone was behind him. She tapped again harder.

"Hi. I was wondering if you knew…"

She stopped in mid-sentence because the boy had turned in the oddest manner. Instead of just turning halfway about and looking back, he turned fully toward her, as if presenting his front to her. He paused for half a second and then turned back again without ever once looking her in the eye.

She had looked however. The boy had striking hazel eyes and thick dark eyebrows. His skin was smooth and unblemished with the youthful color of apple in his cheeks, but despite that he had the air of a man. Not a goofy teenager like those all around them, but a man.

It made her heart do a little tap-dance within her chest. She coughed, afraid that her voice would crack and said, "Uhh… excuse me?" The boy made no indication that he heard. It was very strange.

Perhaps he was a retard, Jesse mused. Or maybe he was gay. If so…what a waste! But she didn't think he was gay and the idea that there wasn't something right in the ole attic stuck with her. If this was the case he wouldn't last long at the school. Her father absolutely hated retards in school. He was fine with them learning and growing to the best of their ability, he just thought it was detrimental to all the other kids around them.

In an otherwise perfect society he might have a valid point. Yet Jesse had seen so many "normal" kids being far more of a disruption in class: selling drugs, talking on phones, mouthing off to teachers, that in her mind a retard wasn't going to change things much. If there had been…

"Miss Clarke!"

The stern voice calling across the cafeteria disrupted her thinking and made her jump. She looked up to see Principal Peterson standing with the cooks behind the tins of food, glaring at her. "This is a cafeteria, not the playground; get your shoes on, now!"

Laughing and whispering followed on the heels of the booming voice. Jesse hurried to comply, but her ankle was swollen and it took a minute to get the shoes on. By the time they were on the cooks were removing the trays. Hurriedly Jesse grabbed a plate and held it out.

"Excuse me, can I have a little of…" She couldn't tell if what she was pointing at was lasagna or stuffed shells. "A little of that, please."

If she thought that the angry stare of the librarian from the night before or the wicked malice of Mrs. Daly was bad, it was nothing compared to the looks the cooks were giving her. Just then she remembered her father's conversation with Ms Weldon about closing the school cafeterias. Oh crap!

The cook did not spoon out a small portion; she dug out a great big heap of the marinara filled dish. It was much more than Jesse could eat in a day, let alone at one sitting at lunch. Yet it was the single act of kindness that she had received in a long time.

"Thank you very…"

The cook smacked the great gob onto Jesse's plate and it couldn't have been anything but purposeful. The food hit the back end of the plate and a large portion of it shot in an oily red mess onto Jesse's white satin shirt.

"Sorry," the cook muttered with a shrug.