Abandon - Meg Cabot [44]
Before she could reply, there was a thump on the back of our seats, like someone was kicking them. I spun around fast, sure it was him.
But of course it wasn’t. It was only my cousin Alex, clambering into the row behind ours.
“Hey,” he said to me. “There you are. I was looking all over for you at lunch. Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Tim took it,” I said. “He said I would engage better without it.”
Kayla laughed. “Oh, man,” she said. “You really are new. I can’t believe you fell for that one. You never surrender the phone, chickie, no matter what Tim says. Never.”
I shrugged. “No one ever calls me, anyway.”
This was sad but true. Did John even have a cell phone? Doubtful. How would he pay his bill? In gray diamonds? That would probably go over well with the phone company.
Alex climbed into the seat beside me, then sank into it.
“Thanks,” he said. “I guess I don’t count as anyone.”
“You know what I mean,” I said.
He shoved me companionably in the shoulder in response.
“Simmer down, people.”
That’s what the man — the school principal — said in a tired voice when he climbed up onto the stage and stood there behind the podium, waiting for everyone to take their seats. As he flipped through a bunch of note cards he’d brought with him, checking to make sure they were in order, I heard Alex heave a sigh. I didn’t blame him. I looked around, already bored. I needed another soda. I’d only had six since breakfast. This guy had better make his speech snappy.
“So,” Alex said to me, “how’s your first day been so far?”
“So far?” I shrugged. The girls who’d sneered “D-Wing” to me, I saw, had found seats…on either side of the guy in the white polo shirt, who’d held the door open for me. Interesting. “Fine.”
“Wow,” Alex said. “You lie almost as convincingly as my dad. Really. I’m inspired.”
“This place sucks,” Kayla said, squirming. “I know the Florida State Department of Education is, like, out of money. But I think there are bedbugs in my seat.”
“People.” Principal Alvarez’s voice boomed into the microphone. “As long as this juvenile behavior continues —”
Someone yelled something unflattering about Principal Alvarez’s parentage and then suggested he go do something incestuous with his mother.
That’s when the doors to the auditorium were thrown open, and police officers in short-sleeve uniforms — out of deference to the heat — appeared at every exit. They walked into the auditorium and leaned against the walls.
I eyed them nervously. I’d been hoping for something a little more interesting than your typical run-of-the-mill keep-off-drugs convocation.
But having spent a considerable amount of time in the company of the police only a few short months ago — even though I hadn’t been the one who’d actually done anything, just the one who’d taken all the blame for it — this was a little much.
The cops seemed to make everyone, not just me, nervous. The auditorium suddenly got very quiet.
“Mr. Flores,” the principal said into the microphone, “you may be surprised to know that I can see you perfectly clearly from up here. And you just earned yourself an OSS for the remark about my mother. That’s an Out-of-School Suspension, for those of you unfamiliar with the term. Please remove yourself from the school grounds, Mr. Flores, and don’t bother returning until Monday.”
Everyone in the audience hooted appreciatively at this as a young man in a black head scarf rose and sauntered — not appearing too concerned about his suspension — from the back row of the auditorium. The police officers observed his exit casually from where they stood.
This was a far cry from the Westport Academy for Girls, where the first assembly was always devoted to a loving tribute in song to the school’s founder, Miss Emily Gordon Portsmith.
“Hey.”
To my surprise, the guy in the white polo shirt had gotten up from his seat. Now he turned to face the entire auditorium. Without so much as wiping the nervous sweat off his hands onto his khaki shorts (probably because he had no nervous sweat), he said in his easygoing voice, “Welcome