"If he doesn't want to eat," Mr. Goodhart said into the phone, "then don't try to force him. . . . No, I didn't mean to say that you were forcing him. What I meant was, maybe he just isn't hungry right now. . . . Yes, I know we need to get him on a schedule, but—"
The car wash was empty. No one wants to bother washing a car when it's just going to rain. But the McDonald's next door, where Mr. Goodhart had picked up his burger and fries, was packed. Only seniors are allowed to leave campus at lunchtime, and they all crowd the McDonald's, and the Pizza Hut across the street.
"Okay," Mr. Goodhart said, hanging up the phone. "Now, where were we, Jess?"
I said, "You were telling me that I need to learn to control my temper."
Mr. Goodhart nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, you really do, Jessica."
"Or one of these days, I'm going to get hurt."
"That is an excellent point."
"And that I should count to ten before I do anything the next time I get angry."
Mr. Goodhart nodded again, even more enthusiastically. "Yes, that's true, too."
"And furthermore, if I want to learn to succeed in life, I need to understand that violence doesn't solve anything."
Mr. Goodhart clapped his hands together. "Exactly! You're getting it, Jessica. You're finally getting it."
I stood up to go. I'd been coming to Mr. Goodhart's office for almost two years now, and I'd gotten a pretty solid grasp on how things worked from his end. An added plus was that, having spent so much time in the reception area outside Mr. Goodhart's office, reading brochures while I waited to see him, I had pretty much ruled out a career in the armed services.
"Well," I said. "I think I get it, Mr. Goodhart. Thanks a lot. I'll try to do better next time."
I had almost made it out the door before he stopped me. "Oh, and Jess," he said, in his friendly way.
I looked over my shoulder at him. "Uh-huh?"
"That'll be another week of detention," he said, chewing on a fry. "Tacked on to the seven weeks you already have."
I smiled at him. "Mr. Goodhart?" I said.
"Yes, Jessica?"
"You have ketchup on your lip."
Okay, so it wasn't the best comeback. But, hey, he hadn't said he'd call my parents. If he'd said that, you'd have heard some pretty colorful stuff. But he hadn't. And what's another week of detention compared to that?
And, what the hell, I have so many weeks of detention, I've completely given up the idea of ever having a life. It's too bad, in fact, that detention doesn't count as an extracurricular activity. Otherwise, I'd be looking real good to a lot of colleges right about now.
Not that detention is so bad, really. You just sit there for an hour. You can do your homework if you want, or you can read a magazine. You just aren't allowed to talk. The worst part, I guess, is that you miss your bus, but who wants to ride the bus home anyway, with the freshmen and other social rejects? Since Ruth got her driver's license, she goes mental for any excuse to drive, so I've got an automatic ride home every night. My parents haven't even figured it out yet. I told them I joined the marching band.
Good thing they have way more important things to worry about than making sure they get to one of the games, or they might have noticed a general absence of me in the flute section.
Anyway, when Ruth came to pick me up after detention that day—the day this whole thing started, the day I punched Jeff Day in the neck—she was all apologetic, since I'd basically gotten in trouble because of her.
"Oh, my God, Jess," she said when we met up at four outside the auditorium doors. There are so many people on detention at Ernest Pyle High School that they had to start putting us all in the auditorium. This is somewhat annoying to the drama club, which meets on the auditorium stage every day at three, but we are supposed to leave them alone, and they pretty much return the favor, except when they need some of the bigger guys from the last row to move part of a set or something.
The plus side of this is I now know the play Our Town by heart.
The minus side is, who the hell wants to know the play Our Town by heart?
"Oh, my God, Jess," Ruth was gushing. "You should have seen it. Jeff was up to his elbows in condiments. After you punched him, I mean. He got mayo all over his shirt. You were so great. You totally didn't have to, but it was so great that you did."
"Yeah," I said. I was pretty stoked to head home. The thing about detention is, yeah, you can get all your homework done during it, but it's still a bit of a drag. Like school in general, pretty much. "Whatever. Let's motor."
But when we got out to the parking lot, Ruth's little red Cabriolet that she had bought with her bat mitzvah money wasn't there. I didn't want to say anything at first, since Ruth loves that car, and I sure didn't want to be the person to break it to her that it was gone. But after we'd stood there for a few seconds, with her rattling on about how great I was, and me watching all my fellow detainees climbing into their pickups or onto their motorcycles (most of the people in detention are either Grits or JDs—I am the only Townie), I was like, "Uh, Ruth. Where's your car?"
Ruth went, "Oh, I drove it home after school, then got Skip to bring me back and drop me off."
Skip is Ruth's twin brother. He bought a Trans Am with his bar mitzvah money. As if, even with a Trans Am, Skip is ever going to have a hope of getting laid.
"I thought," Ruth went on, "that it would be fun to walk home."
I looked at the clouds that earlier in the afternoon had been over the car wash. They were now almost directly overhead. I said, "Ruth. We live like two miles away."
Ruth said, all chipper, "Uh-huh, I know. We can burn a lot of calories if we walk fast."
"Ruth," I said. "It's going to pour."
Ruth squinted up at the sky. "No, it's not," she said.
I looked at her like she was demented. "Ruth, yes, it is. Are you on crack?"
Ruth started to look upset. It doesn't actually take all that much to upset Ruth. She was still upset, I could tell, over Jeff's piano-case statement. That's why she wanted to walk home. She was hoping to lose weight. She wouldn't, I knew, eat lunch for a week now, all because of what that asshole had said.
"I'm not on crack," Ruth said. "I just think it's time the two of us started trying to get into shape. Summer is coming, and I'm not spending another four months making up excuses about why I can't go to somebody's pool party."
I just started laughing.
"Ruth," I said. "Nobody ever invites us to their pool parties."
"Speak for yourself," Ruth said. "And walking is a completely viable form of exercise. You can burn as many calories walking two miles as you would burn running them."
I looked at her. "Ruth," I said. "That's bullshit. Who told you that?"
She said, "It is a fact. Now, are you coming?"
"I can't believe," I said, "that you even care what an asshole like Jeff Day has to say about anything."
Ruth went, "I don't care what Jeff Day says. This has nothing to do with what he said. I just think it's time the two of us got into shape."
I stood and looked at her some more. You should have seen her. Ruth's been my best friend since kindergarten, which was when she and her family moved into the house next door to mine. And the funny thing is, except for the fact that she has breasts now—pretty big ones, too, way bigger than I'll ever have, unless I get implants, which will so never happen—she looks exactly the same as she did the first day I met her: light-brown curly hair, huge blue eyes behind glasses with gold wire frames, a fairly sizable potbelly, and an IQ of 167 (a fact she informed me of five minutes into our first game of hopscotch).
But you wouldn't have known she was in all advanced-placement classes if you'd seen what she had on that day. Okay, in the first place, she was wearing black leggings, this great big EPHS sweatshirt, and jogging shoes. Not so bad, right? Wait.