I thought about it a moment and then smiled. “Thanks for the advice,” I said. They both smirked when I smiled and left them.
Right before the late bell rang for my next class, I pretended my phone had rung, and I stood outside the classroom doorway, listening and whispering. The late bell rang, but I did not go into the classroom. Moments later, my teacher, Mr. Trustman, stepped into the doorway and looked out at me. There was no doubt in my mind that one or more of the other students had told him I was outside on my cell phone.
“Lorelei Patio!” he shouted.
I acted surprised and flipped the phone closed. “Sorry,” I said.
“So am I, and very, very disappointed in you. Not only are you late, but you’re on a cell phone? Go directly to the principal’s office right now,” he ordered, holding his long arm out with the same stiff forefinger he used to make his points in class.
I lowered my head and hurried down the hallway. Because of the intercom system, the principal’s secretary, Mrs. Winters, knew exactly why I had been sent to the office before I arrived. She was a plump five-foot-two-inch woman with dark gray hair and a cherubic face. Most of the time, she acted as if she was everyone’s surrogate mother, gently chiding those who violated rules and praising those who had received some accolade. She had a personal bulletin board on which she pinned any student’s outstanding achievement, from sports to spelling bees. She was shaking her head as I entered.
“What a disappointment,” she said. “You of all people. What a disappointment. Dr. Phelps is waiting to see you. Go right in,” she told me, and shook her head again.
Our principal was a tall, thin, forty-five-year-old man with brown hair and a habitual look of distress and fatigue. Normally, he spoke so quietly, it was difficult to hear him if you didn’t give him your full concentration. I had seen him in action when it came to discipline. No matter what the violation, from chewing gum too loudly to defacing a part of the building, he always had the same initial reaction, taking it very personally and feeling sorry more for your parents than for you or even himself. It was always “We’ve been let down. What are we to think and do?”
With some students, it worked, and they were sincerely remorseful, but most saw it as getting off easy, despite what punishment followed.
“I have met your father only a few times,” he began when I entered his office, “but I know how much we’ll both be disappointed by your actions, Lorelei. Up to now, you have been a model student, doing very well in your work, behaving like a little lady in and out of your classes. No one has anything but good things to say about you. How could you suddenly turn like this and so blatantly violate one of the most important rules of our school?”
I didn’t respond, but I tried not to look too remorseful or apologetic. I was afraid he might lift the punishment and give me a second chance. However, this was a private school, with everyone sensitive about anyone else getting special treatment simply because outside the school, it was the norm. The kids were generally from well-to-do families with some influence. I had often heard students bragging about how their parents got them out of traffic tickets or into places from which they would normally be barred. Special favors resulted from financial or political muscle. No one was more sensitive to this than Dr. Phelps.
“You might as well leave that phone home from now on. If you should use it again in this building or on this property, you will be expelled from school,” he said.
His long pause had me worried that he would do nothing more.
“As per our regulations,” he added after he had obviously mulled over what he would do, “you are suspended for two days. I’ll count today as one of those days, even though it is half over. You are to leave the building. A call will be made to your father, of course, so my advice to you is to go right home.”
I nodded. My failure to say I was sorry or to say anything that sounded remorseful obviously annoyed and hardened him.
“Perhaps we have misjudged you.” He narrowed his eyes. “We’ll be watching you a bit more closely from now on, missy,” he said, his taut lips revealing the anger stirred up inside him. I nodded again. “You’re dismissed,” he said.
I rose and walked out slowly, but the moment I stepped into the hallway, I hurried toward the exit. As soon as I had left the building, I took out my phone and called Ava. Even though she was at college, she sounded as if she had been sleeping. It took her a few moments and a second explanation from me to get her to understand.
“Suspended? For answering your cell?” I could practically see her suspicions exploding. “Who called you?”
“I thought it was you,” I said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have answered the phone.”
“I didn’t ask you who it wasn’t. Who called you?”
“It was someone calling the wrong number. She spoke in Spanish, and it took me about a minute to get through to her that I wasn’t Lourdes or someone, but by then it was too late. One of my great new friends, or maybe two of them, told my teacher, and he sent me to the office. I have to leave the property. You’ll have to pick up Marla at the end of the day.”
“I don’t know why we ever gave you that phone.”
“Daddy gave it to me,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, well, you lucked out there, Lorelei. He and Mrs. Fennel are gone for two days. She left our dinners to be warmed up. You can have that privilege.”
“Where did they go?”
“Probably to see about your new home.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t run around here imitating you and asking questions all day.”
“When will there be a new little sister livi
ng with us?”