What Mr. Mattero Did (11 page)

Setting my backpack on the floor, I took a minute to straighten up, quickly making separate piles of books, music, and other things. I placed the can of soda in the wastebasket and when I finally had a clear space on his desk, I retrieved Dad's day planner from my backpack and set it down. I even opened it up to the right day so the substitute would see what Dad had planned.

“Come
on,
” Annie beckoned from the doorway.

I scooped up my backpack, but on the way out I paused to look at the notice on his bulletin board for the upcoming competition in Virginia. There was a picture of the amusement park where we would all spend the day after the contest at Patrick Henry High School in Ashland. And a brochure of the hotel where we were staying. It had an indoor pool, a game room with video machines, and a restaurant where we could order what we wanted because we'd be bringing our own meal money.

EVERYONE SHOULD BE PRACTICING AT LEAST ONE HOUR A DAY
.

My father's note on a piece of white paper was printed by hand, each word underlined.

I wondered how long it would take the police to do an investigation. Would they get it done in time for us to have a final rehearsal and go to the competition the week after next? What if they didn't get it done in time? Would Dad have to cancel the trip? Could the school let him do that after all the work we'd done? All the money we'd raised at bake sales? At car washes?

“Hurry up!” Annie called in. And it suddenly struck me as odd—really odd—that Annie hadn't even set foot in the room.

 

 

After going to English together, Annie and I had to split up for different classes, her to Spanish and me to social studies.

None of my good friends were in that class with me, and I was not prepared, so I leaned over my desk, resting my forehead against my hand and hoping it looked as though I had a headache. My history teacher, Mr. Woburn, was pretty cool; I hoped he would understand and not call on me.

Discussion centered on World War II, which was our reading the night before. “How did the Allies force Germany and Japan to surrender?” Mr. Woburn asked. Hands went up, but not mine. While they discussed the answer, I drifted into my own thoughts, wondering how Mom was doing while she arranged all those impatiens at the nursery, and how Cade was surviving at the high school.

I worried about Dad and tried to imagine what questions the detective would be asking him for the lie-detector test. I did not doubt that my father would pass that test. Why
wouldn't
he? All he had to do was answer simple, basic questions and tell the truth of what happened. Questions that Detective Daniels said he would even know beforehand.

And just at that moment I had an incredibly random thought. I thought about my viola. I saw it in my mind, leaning in its case against my desk, and how, out of a sense of duty, I took it out and practiced for half an hour five days a week. I was good at fooling my parents. They didn't have a clue what a chore it was. Could a lie-detector test expose
me?

How deep down did a secret have to be before it was completely safe? And if there was a safe zone, then how could you ever really be sure that anyone was telling the truth? Even my father! What if Dad had lied about not touching those girls? What if he really did do something and was so ashamed he didn't want to tell us?

Startled, I sat up abruptly. I could not believe those thoughts had the audacity to come into my mind!

Mr. Woburn must have figured I had the answer to his question.

“Melody?”

I blinked and stared at him.

“Why was penicillin so important during World War II?” he repeated.

Penicillin?
I bit my lip and frowned, making it look as though I was trying hard to remember
. What was penicillin? A person? A legal term? No, it was a medical thing, some kind of—

“Did you do the reading last night?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said instantly, afraid to tell him I hadn't. But didn't Mr. Woburn know what happened to my dad? How could he call on me like this? He started looking around the room, to ask someone else I assumed, which would have only humiliated me more.

“Penicillin was important,” I began.

“Yes?” Mr. Woburn looked over his glasses at me.

“Because it saved lives?” I guessed.

“Excellent! It saved lives.” Mr. Woburn lifted his head, tapped a piece of chalk against his palm, and walked down the aisle behind my desk. “Remember that during World War I, fifteen percent of all soldiers who died had succumbed to infection.”

I sighed with relief, closed my eyes, and slumped back against my chair.

 

 

Annie was waiting for me in the hallway after social studies. We were scheduled for a study hall together the next period and had passes written out enabling us to go to the library, where we planned to make a recruiting poster for the literary magazine. Mrs. Humphries, our club adviser, had suggested we make a list of ten reasons to join. So far we'd come up with only two:

During study hall Annie thought of three more:

“Look,” I said, “I don't think we need to use so many exclamation points.”

“But we have to make it sound exciting,” Annie argued.

I thought about that. “Why don't we just say there will be free snacks?”

Annie lit up. “Great idea! We'll do that
and
the exclamation points!”

I rolled my eyes; she laughed. But we made it to six. After that, we couldn't think of anything else.

“Let's finish when you come over tomorrow night,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “We can be thinking of things in the meantime.”

I agreed. Then Annie took out her poem to work on for the rest of the period, and I did the same, only all I did was doodle in the margins.

 

 

Annie and I were part of a larger group at school. A group that included Jane, Jean, Noelle, Lucy, and Liz. We were in a lot of honors classes together. We were in chorus, orchestra, or band. And in the fall we were all on the field hockey team for Oakdale. In the spring, we did different things, some of us lacrosse, some of us tennis. Annie and I didn't even do a spring sport because we worked on the literary magazine. But every day, no fail, we ate lunch together at the long table by the double doors that led outside.

That day was no different. We met in the cafeteria, saved seats by throwing down backpacks and sweatshirts, and those of us getting hot lunch rushed to get in line.

No one in my group pestered me with questions about Dad, but I thought about him as I pushed my tray along in the food line. My father always brought his lunch to school and ate at his desk, using the extra time to repair instruments or grade papers.

A square of lasagna and a big spoonful of string beans were dished out onto a plate and slid over the counter to me. A weird combination, I thought. But it didn't much matter. I wasn't very hungry. I took a roll, some sliced peaches, and a milk.

Walking back toward our table, I saw Noelle rushing toward me. She grabbed my elbow and whispered in my ear. “Mellie, we know who the girls are—those seventh-graders—two of them are eating lunch over there.”

“Where?”

“
There,
by the windows,” Noelle said. “Don't
look
! Just walk by. Second table from the right. The two at the end. One of them has blonde hair, see? With the streaks in it? The other one has brown hair—in a ponytail.”

I walked by, but not very slowly because I was nervous. I glanced quickly but didn't recognize the ponytailed girl at all. Her face looked pinched. She was eating some sort of a granola bar. Another quick glance at the blonde, however, and I had a flash of recognition. But I couldn't quite place her.

Noelle was still beside me. “Do you know them?”

I shook my head. “Are you sure those are the girls?”

“Positive.”

After we sat down, I started buttering my roll, but I kept looking over at the two girls.

“The blonde one's Jenna,” said Liz, crouching beside me. “The other one is Claire. And one of them isn't in school today. Her name's Suzanne.”

“How do you know that?”

Liz nodded toward Jane. “Jane's brother, Colin, is in seventh grade. He says everyone knows.”

Annie settled her tray beside mine and pulled out the chair. “Do you want me to go over there and accidentally spill my lunch on them?” she asked. “Or my milk? I'm good with milk.”

I smiled at her but shook my head. And vaguely, I heard some boys laughing at the table behind us. I heard the name “Mattero” and the word “bra.” And very clearly, I heard the word “pervert” before a slimy string bean hit the side of my face. An explosion of laughter from the boys.

Pushing back my chair, I fled from the room.

13

Claire

I WAS BACK TO BITING MY THUMBNAIL
so badly that my finger started bleeding again. It stung, too. I took a Kleenex from my backpack and wrapped it around the top part of my thumb. Then I kind of made a fist so you couldn't see it. There were only a few minutes to go in the last period of the day. Literature. Mrs. Sidley passed out paperback copies of the next book we were reading,
The Outsiders
. I might actually read this book, I thought, since I sort of felt like an outsider myself. I wondered if that was what the book was about, not fitting in. This year, even with Jenna, it didn't feel like we “fit in” so much as we had just carved out our own little world and had each other.

“One other handout!” Mrs. Sidley announced. She gave it to us as we walked out the door. A sheet of paper with Oakdale Middle School at the top and Mrs. Fernandez's signature at the bottom:

 

 

I knew that note was about us—Jenna, Suzanne, and me—and I didn't want to read it. In all the hustle and bustle of the final bell, when kids were pushing through the doorway, I crumpled up the letter and dropped it in a wastebasket.

On the already-crowded bus, I could see that Jenna was saving me a seat toward the back. It felt like everybody watched me as I turned sideways to squeeze myself down the aisle. They all knew it was us now. I didn't like the attention. Why were they making such a big deal out of it anyway? I almost didn't want to sit with Jenna because of what was happening, but she patted the spot beside her and scooted over, so I sat down.

We didn't talk to each other at first. Just waited until the bus was full and jerked forward. That's when I leaned over toward her and said in her ear: “I didn't know Mr. Mattero had a daughter at our school.”

Jenna shook her head a little. “No, I didn't either.”

We hadn't had time to talk about it earlier.

I sighed because I felt bad for Melody Mattero. “Those kids that threw the food at her were mean.”

“What?”

You can't hear a darn thing on that bus without yelling. “Those kids—they were mean!”

“Yeah,” she agreed, but she was fiddling around with her new charm bracelet, and I couldn't see her face, to see if she really meant it.

She used both hands to pull her long hair back over her shoulders. The bus bounced down the highway. A wad of paper hit me on the back of my head. I turned around to see who threw it, and so many kids laughed you couldn't tell.

At the first stop, some of the worst kids in the back got off. I was glad.

I readjusted the Kleenex on my thumb, which had stopped bleeding but still hurt.

Jenna turned to me when the bus moved again. “So what?”

“So what?” I repeated. Like what was she talking about?

“Yeah. Like so what if Mr. Mattero has a daughter?”

I just stared at her. Talk about a delayed reaction, I thought.

Jenna started examining her fingernails, but she knew I was looking at her. Suddenly, she flashed me this icy look and arched her eyebrows. “Maybe he abuses her, too,” she said.

Something inside of me tightened up then. Tightened right up into a hard knot. And as the bus rolled on, that knot got bigger and bigger. I started adding things up in my head: Suzanne was not in school. The police were doing an investigation. Mr. Mattero had a daughter.

The next thing you know, Jenna had those silver earrings out of her earlobes and was handing them to me. “Here,” she offered. “I know how much you like them.”

It was so random! I couldn't believe it. I loved those earrings. “Are you sure? I mean, why?”

Jenna smiled sweetly. “ 'Cause we're best friends is why.”

At the bus stop, after we got off, I asked her again, “Are you sure?”

But she just pushed my hand away. “Totally. They're yours.”

I admired the shiny earrings in the palm of my hand. I thought it was really nice—and very generous—of Jenna to give those earrings to me.

“Good luck with your mom,” I told her.