Julia's Daughters

The school secretary points to one of the three chairs in the hallway that runs between the front office and principal’s office. She doesn’t look annoyed or even all that interested in my latest insubordination. She doesn’t look at me like I’m a murderer, either, which is kind of nice. Of course she’s not really looking at me at all. She’s more interested in one of the charms that dangles from a gold bracelet on her left wrist. It looks like a potato. I wonder why anyone would wear a miniature potato on a bracelet, even if it was real gold.

“You know the drill, Haley. Don’t get up unless the school’s on fire or we’ve got a shooter, and then it better be a five alarm or automatic weapons,” she deadpans.

I’ve decided I like that word. Deadpan. I added it to our list (mine and Caitlin’s) yesterday. I like the action . . . or lack of action. I’m getting good these days at deadpanning. I keep thinking that if I don’t show any emotion, maybe I won’t feel it.

“You shouldn’t kid about that kind of stuff,” I say, looking at her. She’s kind of cute in a weird Zooey Deschanel way, but she’s wearing black patent-leather clogs and her roots need a touch-up. “You can screw up impressionable young women like me saying things about Columbine shit.”

“Language.” Her voice is still monotone. Nothing ever upsets her. She’d make a better principal than Dr. Hairball. My friends and I call him that because he’s got this creepy goatee that looks like he coughed up a hairball onto his chin.

She starts for her desk out front; hers is the biggest because she’s in charge of the other two ladies who work in the office. She has a glass jar of candy on it filled with mini chocolate candy bars, but in the almost four years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen her eat one or give one to someone. I can’t figure out why they’re on her desk. Maybe to try to make people think she’s someone she’s not? Like she’s this person who gives students treats?

“Be sure your mom signs you out before you go,” she tells me.

I drop my backpack on the floor beside the chair where I’m supposed to sit. I know from past experience that if you sit in that chair and lean to your right, you can watch kids go by on the other side of the glass. Wave, if you see a friend. “Even if my mom’s coming in to talk to Dr. Carlisle and he’s the one expelling me?” I ask.

“Even if the risen Christ expels you,” Miss Charter says over her shoulder, “she still has to sign you out.”

I can’t tell if she’s one of those crazy Christians or if she’s being sarcastic and she’s an atheist. I can’t decide which would be worse.

“I’m going to be eighteen in a couple of weeks,” I tell her. “Then I can sign myself out.”

“You sure could.” She stops and turns around; she has this stupid smirk on her face. “If you were still going to be here, which you’re not.”

I’m so surprised that she’d say that to me that I don’t even have a snappy comeback. I’m surprised because it was kind of mean. Adults have been really careful about what they say to me since I killed Caitlin. Like they’re afraid of me or something. I’ve been getting away with mad shit since I came back to school. So much shit that I was genuinely surprised when Dr. Carlisle said he was expelling me.

Miss Charter disappears around the corner and maybe out of my life. I sit down in the chair closest to the front office. It’s blue plastic, stolen from the cafeteria. Not stolen, I guess, if the principal told someone to bring it here. But it’s definitely not an office chair; it’s a cafeteria chair. The legs are uneven so it rocks unless you push back with your foot. It’s probably missing the little disky-foot thing like my chair in my chemistry class.

I lean to my right; the hall outside the office is empty. Classes have already changed. I lean back in the chair and get my ball out of the front pocket of my backpack. The stupid uniform skirts we have to wear don’t have pockets. We can wear long khaki pants like the guys, if we want, but they’re even uglier than the skirts. I throw the pink ball against the wall in front of me, just an easy throw, to judge the distance and surface of the wall. The little glow-in-the-dark bouncy ball comes straight back. I’ve gotten good at bouncing it over the last few weeks.

It hits the wall and comes right back to my hand like magic. The magic of physics, Caitlin used to say when she bounced it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Third Law of Motion.

I wonder if my mom will be mad at me for getting expelled. She used to get mad at me all the time. All she did was criticize me: Haley, why don’t you get better grades?

Bounce. Catch.

Why don’t you have nicer friends?

Bounce. Catch.

Why do you wear that black eyeliner?

Bounce. Catch.

What she always meant was why don’t you get good grades like Caitlin? Why don’t you have nice friends like Caitlin does? Why don’t you just wear pink lip gloss like Caitlin?

I throw my ball too hard and I have to jump out of my seat to catch it.

My mom is such a bitch. The worst thing is, she pretends she isn’t. Or at least she did before Caitlin died. Since then, Mom hasn’t really acted like anything. She barely speaks to me and when she does it’s in this quiet breathy voice that’s worse than if she just yelled at me.

She thinks it’s my fault Caitlin is dead. She just won’t come out and say it.

Bounce. Catch.

The thing is, it is my fault. Completely my fault.

Bounce. Catch.

I hear the front office door open and lean to see my mom walk in. She’s wearing jeans and flip-flops and an orange T-shirt she usually puts on to clean house. When she used to clean house. Now if anyone cleans anything, it’s Izzy. Dad says we’re going to have to get a maid if Mom doesn’t stop lying in bed all day.

Mom walks up to the counter. She’s not wearing any makeup and her hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail, looks like it hasn’t been washed in days. I always wished I had blond hair like hers and Caitlin’s. I’ve got ugly brown like my dad’s. Or it was ugly brown before I started dyeing it black. Izzy’s got red hair. I don’t know where she came from. Caitlin and I used to tease her and tell her that she was adopted and that’s why she doesn’t look like us.

“Julia Maxton,” my mom says. “I’m here to see Dr. Carlisle.”

“You can go in,” I hear Miss Charter say. I can’t see her because she’s around the corner. “You know the way.”

Mom doesn’t seem to get her little dig, but I do. What she’s saying is that Mom knows the way to Dr. Hairball’s office because she’s been called in before about me: academic probation meetings, behavioral evaluations, suspensions. This is the first time I’ve been expelled from a school. Well, except for preschool, but I don’t really think that counts. My biting was just my way of expressing my individuality and exercising my newfound freedom.

Mom turns toward the hall and sees me, but she doesn’t really see me. It’s like her eyes glaze over. She can’t bear to look at me, which is okay because I can’t stand looking at her, either.

I stare straight ahead. The wall is cinderblock, painted a pale green. As much as tuition is here, you’d think the building would be something other than cinderblock, but apparently they bought the building cheap. It used to be something else. I bounce the ball against the wall in front of me. Catch it.

She comes up to me and just stands there; she’s not even carrying her purse, just her keys. “What have you done now?” she asks. She doesn’t look like she really cares.

“Smoking,” I say.

“Pot?” She says it like she’s asking me if I had an apple for lunch.

I make a face. I bounce. I catch. “Marlboros. In the solarium.”

“In the school,” she says. Not quite deadpanning, but almost.

I shrug. “I didn’t want to be late for physics class.”

I wait for her reaction. If my friend Danielle said something like that to her mother, she’d get her face slapped. My mom doesn’t slap me. She just presses her lips together really hard and looks like she’s going to cry.

I never saw my mom cry until Caitlin. Now, most of the time she’s either crying, getting ready to cry, or just wrapping up a good cry.

She walks in front of me as I catch the ball again. “Could you please put that away?” she asks me.

I draw my wrist back, adjust the sleeve of the T-shirt I wear under my uniform polo, and I toss the ball against the wall. It bounces right back into my hand. Physics. Magic. Depending on how you look at it.

My mom walks down the hall to Dr. Hairball’s office. Third door on the left. It’s open. She knocks on the doorframe.

“Mrs. Maxton, come in.”

My mom says something in a teary voice, but I don’t quite catch what it is. It doesn’t matter. I don’t listen to them. I just sit there and bounce my bouncy ball and wonder—if I died, would my mom cry more or less?