chapter 21

CYLIN

AS that fall slowly became winter, it was clear that school this year would be very different for all of us. Eric got a black eye from fighting some guys in gym class. “I’ll kill that dick if he ever comes near me again,” he told Shawn after school. And Shawn said he would help. “I’ll hold him down and we’ll beat the shit out of him.”

Shawn had a concussion two weeks earlier from a fight he had been in at school and had to go to the emergency room. I’d started to hear rumors in the elementary school about my brothers: They got into fights all the time. They were bad. Shawn was crazy. Eric was about to be moved into the “special” class. I didn’t understand how they could have gone from being really good students and good kids to being bad practically overnight, but it had happened. Now they liked to swear all the time and go shooting with Dad’s cop friends. They had been to the firing range with Dad and Don Price and had learned how to use guns. Shawn told me that it was really loud, but Eric didn’t say anything about it. “Eric’s a pretty good shot,” Shawn told me after one of their practice sessions. “But I flinch too much.” He must have heard that from one of the cops, because the way he said it, it didn’t even sound like him talking.

One Monday morning at school, everyone in my class was talking about Cathy’s slumber party. I knew Cathy pretty well, and I would have said we were friends, so I was surprised that she had a slumber party over the weekend and hadn’t invited me, especially when it sounded like every other girl in our class had been there.

At recess, I sat by her on the swings. I could tell she was as uncomfortable as I was about things. “Was it your birthday over the weekend?” I finally asked.

“Yes,” she said, and looked down at her sneakers. She dragged her heels back and forth through the sandy dirt. “Look, I wanted to invite you, but my mom said that you couldn’t come anyhow, so I didn’t.”

“That’s okay,” I told her. “But I could have come, just so you know.”

“You could have?” Cathy looked over at me, surprised. “My mom said she didn’t want a police car sitting in our driveway all night. And then Dad said the other girls’ parents wouldn’t let them come if we had you over, so . . .”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“It wasn’t anything special anyway,” Cathy said, then added in a whisper, “and don’t worry, I didn’t let anyone talk about you.”

After recess, I sat at my desk and took out my hairbrush to pull my hair back into a ponytail. The brush was grabbed out of my hands by someone standing behind me, and when I spun around, I saw that it was my teacher, Ms. Williams.

“No hair brushing in my class,” she snapped at me, then she marched up to her desk and slammed the brush into a drawer. “I just want to remind all of you that you are not allowed to have any personal objects in this classroom. I told you the rules of my class when school started.”

Cathy raised her hand, then said, “But Cylin wasn’t here when school started, so she didn’t know.”

“The fact that she wasn’t here is her fault. No one gets any special treatment in my class.”

After school was over for the day, I went up to Ms. Williams’s desk. “Can I have my brush back now?”

“No, you cannot.” She didn’t even look up from the papers she was grading.

“When can I get it back?” I asked her.

“You don’t get it back,” Ms. Williams mocked me, talking in a high, singsong voice.

The brush was a special one that Mom had given me. It was a travel brush that folded up on itself. I really wanted it back. I sat on the bus trying hard not to cry, but when I finally got home, I ran into my room and burst into tears. Kelly asked me what was wrong. When I told her, she said it wasn’t a big deal. “Isn’t she that teacher Shawn had a few years ago? Didn’t he say she was really mean?” She handed me a tissue. “You just can’t let her get to you. In fact, if you act like you don’t care, that will really bother her.”

I didn’t mention being left out of the slumber party. Kelly wouldn’t have understood, and I didn’t want to make Mom mad at another one of my friends.

By the time Mom got home, I was feeling better. But I heard Kelly tell her the story about Ms. Williams as they were fixing dinner for everyone. “What?” Mom yelled. “That bitch, she’s not getting away with it this time. She made Shawn’s life hell when he was in her class.”

The next morning, Mom drove me to school with a police cruiser following closely behind us. We were a little bit late when we got there, and I thought she was going to take me straight to Ms. Williams’s classroom, but instead we went to the principal’s office. “You wait out here,” Mom told me, and I sat in the outer office by the school secretary. I could hear my mom talking to the principal, and when she came out, she still looked mad. The principal came with her.

“Let’s go,” Mom said, and took my hand and held it hard. We followed the principal upstairs to Ms. Williams’s classroom. He knocked on the door, and when Ms. Williams came out, he said,“I need a quick word with you.” Then he turned to me. “Cylin, go clean out your desk.”

I went into the classroom and everyone stared at me. I opened my desk and there, on top of all my books, was my red plastic hairbrush. She had put it back for me, even folded it up the way it was supposed to be. I grabbed my stuff and walked out without talking to anyone. When I came out to the hallway, Ms. Williams went back into the room and closed the door behind her, and the principal led Mom and me down the hall. “You’ll be in Ms. Campbell’s classroom now. It’s an open classroom, with grades two through four. Everyone learns at their own pace. It’s sort of an experiment; we think you’ll like it.”

When we reached the new classroom, I took a peek inside. There were no desks. Instead, kids were sitting in small groups on the floor. Some were reading, others were doing math flash cards or art.

“Hi,” a lady with crazy curly hair said as she came over to the door. She was small, like my mom, and wore a printed hippy shirt and jeans. None of the other teachers at school wore jeans. “I’m Joyce.” She shook Mom’s hand.

Mom gave her a weak smile. “This is Cylin,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders.

“Well, come on in, Cylin!” she said to me cheerfully. “She’s going to be fine here; you don’t have anything to worry about,” I heard her say to Mom.

I didn’t know where to put my stuff, since there weren’t any desks. But Ms. Campbell showed me my “cubby,” which was like a wooden locker, and had me put my stuff in there. I didn’t know most of the kids there; I hardly knew that this class even existed. But I did know that by lunchtime everyone at school was going to be talking about how my mom had come and pulled me out of Ms. Williams’s classroom.

My family had been trying so hard to pretend that everything was normal, that we were all fine. But now there was no hiding the fact that things were not normal, even at school. My brothers were failing out of their classes, swearing and punching kids every day, and I was suddenly in a special class with no desks and weird kids. I didn’t want to be special, but maybe I needed to be. I joined the circle of kids reading on a colored rug, and a pretty redheaded girl shared her book with me.

“You’re going to have a really good time in my class, I promise,” Ms. Campbell said as she sat down beside me. Why was she being so nice to me? She didn’t even know me. Suddenly, tears filled my eyes, and before I could stop myself, I was sobbing. “It’s okay to be sad; you can be sad here whenever you want. You don’t have to be brave.” Ms. Campbell wrapped her arms around me and told the other kids to go on reading. “You’re going to be okay, Cylin.” She put her hands on my shoulders and gave me a real smile. “You’re going to be okay.” I hadn’t realized how much I needed someone to tell me that until she said it.