Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [77]
I reached over and hugged her tightly. “Thanks.”
Mom hugged me right back. “You’re welcome. Although there’s one more thing I need to say.”
“What?”
“I probably don’t need to tell you this, but I love you.”
“I love you t—”
“And you’re grounded. I mean, totally grounded. Evenings, weekends, everything. I want you home straight after school every day. Understand?”
A part of me wanted to fight her, but what for? She didn’t need to tell me I was grounded. I’d have been shocked if I wasn’t.
Besides, it was still totally worth it.
CHAPTER 42
I cranked up my laptop before we set off for school, and with Finn riding me like a sadistic personal trainer, I set up a link so that people could download songs from Dumb’s MySpace page for a buck apiece. (Even if the band turned out to be history, I figured there was nothing wrong with making a little money on the side while the craziness lasted.) It required hastily establishing a PayPal account and removing all the cover versions we’d done, because I had no intention of wasting weeks haggling with the copyright holders. But as I completed the task, step by excruciatingly painful step, I knew that no one else in the band would have done it. And it made me feel surprisingly . . . well, managerial.
I ran into school as bells drilled incessantly through the emptying halls, but I didn’t even make it to homeroom before I’d been redirected to the principal’s office. As soon as I arrived, a secretary pointed me to one of the hard plastic chairs reserved for the worst offenders, where I awaited sentencing. A minute later, Kallie and Tash sloped in, wearing contrasting looks of trepidation and defiance. I was glad Tash was there—always good to have a veteran when going into battle for the first time.
I think the principal had prepared a speech especially for the occasion—it wasn’t every day he got to flex his disciplinary muscle with students like Kallie and me—but he seemed flummoxed by my hair. He clearly hadn’t anticipated such a distraction. Every time he tried to hone in on a point, his eyes gravitated toward my head, and he lost track of his thoughts. Eventually he dropped the proselytizing and hurried us on to in-school suspension instead. Josh and Will were sitting outside his office as we left. I gripped Kallie’s hand and looked straight ahead.
Being cooped up in a cupboard-sized room with one small window was supposed to have been punishment, but with Tash and Kallie, it was anything but. We spent the whole time corresponding by hand gestures, while avoiding the glares of the secretary sent to keep us from trashing the place. It quickly became clear that Tash and Kallie had picked up some of my signs, and what they didn’t know, they made a good attempt to improvise. I wondered if Josh and Will would be joining us, but I guess the principal had envisaged how that might play out, and had decided to put them elsewhere. Thank goodness.
I’d only been in there an hour when one of the secretaries came in and told me my father needed to see me urgently. My first thought—completely irrational—was that something had happened to Grace, and I left the room in a daze. The secretary led me through to a private office, opened the door slowly, and ushered me in with a wave of her hand. By the window, hands stuffed in the pockets of an ill-fitting tweed jacket was—
“Baz?”
Baz’s mouth hung open in shock, his eyes fixed on my hair. It wasn’t until I coughed that he seemed to break from the trance. “Oh, right, yes. I’m sorry to disrupt your school day, Piper, but it’s your, your ...” He turned away, took a shuddering breath while he came up with a plausible excuse for showing up unpermitted on school grounds while impersonating my father. “Your grandmother.”
The secretary didn’t seem terribly interested. Whether or not the news was about to be tragic, I had pink hair, so all I received was a curt nod as she backed out of the door and closed it behind her.
“What the hell?” I barked.
“Don’t you ever check your text messages?”
“I had a hundred