Page 26 of The Grump I Loathe
I turned the volume up even higher, elbowing her until she gave up and started singing along. We sang at the tops of our lungs until I pulled up outside of Granite and Cassie hopped out. A huge, yellow clearance sign filled the window.
“Good luck,” Cassie said. “Tell Alannah there’s emergency chocolate in the glovebox if she needs it. That always helps.”
I raced up the stairs to St. Orwell Prep and was greeted at the door by a security guard who escorted me into the main office. A secretary with a phone jammed between her ear and shoulder pointed me toward a door. The nameplate said Denise Marilyn - Vice Principal.Shit. The door was slightly ajar, and I knocked before hearing, “Come in.”
“Sorry. I got here as quickly as I could,” I said to a stern woman who sat behind a large wooden desk. “I’m Eddie. Uh, I mean, Edith Sheppard.”
Alannah glanced at me over the back of her chair, on the verge of tears. I gave her a comforting squeeze to the shoulder. Next to her sat a girl who looked remarkably like the kid who’d playedAlterbotat the con and…double shit! My eyes almost bugged out of my head as I locked eyes with Lord LockMill himself.
“Holy mother of unskippable cutscenes,” I muttered under my breath. What were the chances that Grace went to the same school as Alannah? Connor’s usual scowl deepened. Maybe it had just dawned on him that I’d snuck out of work to be here.
Well, if that bothered him, he’d just have to get over it. After all, he’d clearly done exactly the same thing.
“Miss Sheppard, if you could take a seat,” Ms. Marilyn said, pointing one thin finger at the chair next to Alannah’s.
I sank into it, glancing at Alannah out of the corner of my eye. She looked distraught.
“I assume everyone knows what we’re all doing here,” Ms. Marilyn said.
“Actually,” I said, thrusting my hand into the air. “I might have skipped a few lessons. Can someone jog my memory?”
Ms. Marilyn clicked her nails against her desk. “Grace and Alannah are deskmates, and they’ve been disrupting each other in class recently. Their teacher has already separated them several times, but now the disruptions have escalated to violence.”
“Violence?” Connor said, looking from Grace to Ms. Marilyn. I could hear the alarm in his voice.
Okay, I had to admit, violence sounded bad. “When you say?—”
“Hair pulling,” Miss Marilyn clarified, her eyes narrowing at the girls. “We have a strict hands-off policy at St. Orwell Prep, which is clearly spelled out in the school charter both girls sign at the beginning of every year. As such, you can be sure we are taking this very seriously.”
“I’m sure we’re all taking this seriously,” I said.
“That’s reassuring to hear, Miss Sheppard, seeing as both girls will be suspended?—”
“Suspended!” Connor and I cried in tandem. Grace sighed and looked at the floor. Alannah sank down in her seat like she was trying to melt into a puddle.
“—for two days,” Ms. Marilyn continued.
“Excuse me,” Connor said. “But doesn’t that seem a little extreme?”
I nodded in agreement. “It was just a little hair pulling.”
Ms. Marilyn’s sharp gaze cut from Connor to me. “The school has a zero-tolerance policy for violence.”
“Butbothof them being suspended?” I said. “Does the school not have any idea who started the incident?”
“Zero. Tolerance.” Ms. Marilyn rapped her nails against her desk so hard I thought the tips might come flying off.
I blew out a heavy breath. It didn’t seem like there was any talking our way out of this one.
“I will say this is very atypical behavior for both girls,” Ms. Marilyn said, eyeing them. “I wouldn’t expect this sort of acting out unless one or both of them was dealing with something particularly difficult. So if there are anyissuesat home the school should be aware of…”
I started to shake my head, but Connor cleared his throat, running a hand around the back of his neck. “Uh, Grace’s mother is?—”
Grace snapped her head up. “This has nothing to do with Mom!” she insisted, scowling as she glared at Alannah. “I was minding my own business when Alannah started the fight.”
All eyes snapped toward me and Alannah.Well, shit. I knew I should probably say something. But where did I start? Alannah was stressed over her upcoming gymnastics tournament, and Simon and Valentina had been fighting more, and she got a C on a spelling test recently.
Any of those things might make sense of her behavior, but then I remembered what it was like to have my own parents talk about how I was too loud and too much, right in front of me, like I was a math problem they were solving and not a person.
