Stacey Kade - The Ghost and the Goth

I stopped and looked over to find him watching me, disgust spreading across his face.

“Pathetic,” Brewster sneered. “Do you really think I’m going to fall for your ‘crazy’act?” Of course. From his perspective, I’d jumped up from my chair to scuff my shoe against the carpet for no apparent reason. Story of my life.

Brewster shook his head. “You tell the school board anything you want. No one is going to believe you.”

Unfortunately, he was right about that. I had a slight credibility problem these days.

“I could call my mother.” I winced inwardly. God, there was just no way to utter that sentence with any kind of dignity.

“If you do, you’ll know she’ll pull you out of here in an instant and dump you in the nuthouse.” His gaze dropped down to my feet and the carpet. Only Grandpa Brewster and I could see the scorch marks. The damage to my shoe was real enough in this world, but unless someone touched the melted rubber on the side of my sole to find that it was still warm and freshly burned, it could have happened anytime. “I’m beginning to think that’s where you belong.”

“Then let me have my music back. It … helps.” I stole a quick sideways glance at Grandpa Brewster, who still stood next to me, silent for once as he watched our exchange. That couldn’t be good.

Brewster smiled, an expression of his I’d learned to dread. He turned (“About-face!”) and strode to his office door, pulling it open. “Mrs. Piaget!” he barked.

Something crashed, and I heard the sound of pencils or pens clattering as they hit the desk and rolled off onto the linoleum floor. “Uh, yes, sir?”

“Write Mr. Killian a pass to class. Tell his first-hour teacher he is not to have any kind of distraction during class, including music. Then, make sure the rest of his teachers know as well.”

“But, sir, he has—”

“That will be all.” He closed the door with a snap.

“I could skip class,” I pointed out as he returned to stand behind his massive desk. It wasn’t like I’d never done that before. I still managed a 3.4 GPA.

“I could recommend expulsion,” he said.

Dr. Miller, my psychiatrist, would be thrilled. It would give him just the excuse he needed to make the more permanent arrangements he felt I needed “to be safe.” Translation: a steady lithium drip and a kid who eats gravel as my roommate.

“What is your problem?” I demanded. “I’ve never done anything to you.” Until today, obviously. But he’d held this grudge from the first instant I’d met him.

“Isn’t it obvious, Mr. Killian?” He began shoving my books, notebooks, and folders back into my backpack any which way, crumpling pages and tearing paper. “You are an insult to every student here making a real effort. You’re a bad influence on otherwise responsible and well-behaved children, like young Miss Turner.”

I felt sucker-punched at the mention of Lily, but I refused to let it show. “That was a first-tier party.” No way in hell I was there. She shouldn’t have been either.

Brewster ignored me. “Not to mention, you’re a disruption and a distraction with all of your ‘special needs.’”

“You say that to all the sick kids?”

He paused, sensing trouble from a new direction. Public schools weren’t allowed to discriminate … for any reason. “You’re not sick, Killian. You’re troubled, maybe, and desperate for attention anyway you can get it, including manipulating your mother and digging through my trash to find out about my personal life. But you are not sick.”

I rolled my eyes. Why did people always think it was the garbage? Like they wouldn’t have noticed someone headfirst in one of their trash cans at the curb. I couldn’t remember how many times I’d had this argument. “What could you have possibly thrown away that would tell me your father is gay and—”

“You think you’re so clever. It’s my job to teach you that you aren’t, prepare you for the real world.” He chucked my now full backpack at me, but I caught it before it slammed into my gut.

“What if I’m telling the truth? Did you ever consider that?”

“It’s just a bunch of nonsense you’ve sold to that quack your mother takes you to.”

Actually, Dr. Miller had diagnosed me as schizophrenic — a real disease that was in the medical books and everything — but that wasn’t what was wrong with me. The voices I heard and the things I saw … they were real, even though no one else could see them. As far as I knew, medicine didn’t recognize that condition. Popular culture did, thanks to TV shows like Medium and Ghost Whisperer (Jennifer Love Hewitt is hot, but that show sucks ass) and various movies. But try telling one of the three adolescent psychiatrists in the dinky town that is Decatur that you see dead people. See what happens. It’s called a twenty-four-hour involuntary commitment.

“We’re done here.” Brewster stepped out from behind his desk and jerked his door open. “Get to class.”

As much as I hated being in his office, it was safer here than the hallway or even the classrooms. The fewer living people in the room, the fewer dead follow. In here I only had Grandpa B. to deal with, but out there, I’d be surrounded, engulfed, drowning in a sea of people dying to be heard. One of them in particular also seemed willing to kill me to get his point, whatever it was, across.

The thought of confronting him without Marcie or anything else to serve as a distraction made my palms damp with sweat. If he found me here and now, exposed like this, I’d be lucky if I ended up in the psych ward.

“Look, I only have a few weeks left here.” Focusing on a splotch of white on the nubbly carpeting where someone had obviously tried to bleach out a stain, I forced the words out, keeping my gaze down. I couldn’t stand to see him gloating. “I want to be out of here as much as you want me gone. Just let me have my music back. Please.”

“Means that much to you, hmm?” His highly polished black shoes, within my range of vision, rocked back on their heels and then forward again.

“Yes—” I grimaced and forced the next word out “—sir.”

“Good. Then the consequences of going without will hold some significance for you.”

I jerked my gaze up from the floor to stare at him in shock. “Bastard.”

“Watch it, kid,” Grandpa Brewster muttered next to my ear.

An arrogant smile spread across Brewster’s face. Without taking his gaze from me, he called to the outer office again. “Mrs. Piaget, set Mr. Killian up with an after-school detention as well.”

“Oh … okay,” came the distant and faintly dismayed reply.

He gestured to the open doorway. “Time to collect your winnings, sport.”

In the process of hitching my backpack over my shoulders again, I stopped dead. Of all the stupid little names he could have chosen … “Don’t call me that.”

“What?” Brewster looked confused for a second before understanding dawned, along with an evil gleam in his eye. Never give a bully more ammunition, I know, but I couldn’t let that one go. I just couldn’t.

“What’s wrong with sport, sport?” Triumph rang in his voice. He’d found a weapon to get under my skin, and he wielded it with glee.

“Don’t.”

“Why not … sport?”

I could have told him the truth — that had been my father’s nickname for me, and hearing it from him with such disdain and condescension made me want to beat his face in. But that would have only given him more to work with. I could also have gone the human rights way — I’m a person with a name, use it — but he wouldn’t care about that. So, instead I went for the more direct route.

“Don’t call me that, or I’ll tell you things that’ll make you wish to God you’d turned your service weapon on yourself that night instead of chucking it in the Sangamon River.”