The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [24]
“We’re hardly planning to make you work around the clock.” Dean Winston looked over my shoulder and nodded at someone behind me, before turning his attention back to my dad and me. “But you will be monitored, of course. I’ve selected a student leader to keep an eye on your participation and encourage you to do the right thing regarding being fully honest about this situation.”
I couldn’t wait to see who was going to be Winston’s lackey. I turned around and saw Joel in the doorway. When he saw me, his face went white. He’d overheard what Winston had said and knew he was my new jailer.
I was wrong. Winston had found a way to make things worse.
10
I needed to be alone or I was going to lose it. I wasn’t sure what losing it was going to look like, but I was willing to bet it would make what had happened with the statue look like small-time. I pictured myself standing in the center of the quad screaming and flopping around on the ground like a two-year-old having a full-on meltdown.
When Winston finally dismissed me, I put my head down and hustled toward my room. I was supposed to go to the last ten minutes of calculus, but whatever. I needed at least ten minutes of silence where I could just sit and pull things together. Everything had blown apart. I felt like I was standing in the middle of the rubble of my life, unsure about what to pick up. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and it felt like I could throw up at any second. However, I couldn’t be alone, because I had Joel stuck to my side like Velcro, and he was following me back to the dorms.
Joel shuffled through the leaves. “What should we do?”
This was the fourth time Joel had asked this question since we’d walked out of Winston’s office.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.” I wondered if people looking out of the classroom windows were watching, and what they thought of me. I couldn’t look Joel in the face. I still wasn’t sure how to handle what had happened. My plan of ignoring it altogether was now going to be a bit harder, since the entire school knew there’d been a kiss, even if they didn’t know who it had been with.
“Do you want me to confess?” Joel asked. “I was going to, right after the meeting. I followed Tristan out of the hall, but then he puked.”
I stopped short. “What?”
“He threw up. I’ve never seen him like that. I was going to tell him that it was me, that I was the one who kissed you, but when I saw him, I couldn’t.”
I couldn’t think about Tristan now. I forced the image of him out of my mind. Tristan acted cool and aloof about everything, but he wasn’t. He was used to protecting himself. It came from years of having photographers following him around hoping to capture a vulnerable moment. I remembered him telling me that when he was six, he took a nasty spill off of his bike. His knee had a huge gash, and there was a flap of skin, a triangle of flesh, that was ripped free and hanging. Tristan said it was that flap of skin that had really freaked him out, almost more than the pain. He’d been afraid that if he’d pulled on it, his entire skin would have peeled off his body. He’d started crying, and someone had snapped a picture just as his mom had come rushing up to his side. The picture ended up on the cover of some tabloid magazine, and the kids he went to school with teased him about being a crybaby. He told me that was the last time he ever cried in public. I couldn’t imagine what he must have been feeling to be upset enough to puke in the bushes.
“I could get kicked out of school for this,” Joel said, snapping my attention back. “I’ll lose my scholarship for sure.”
“You’re not going to get kicked out,” I countered, continuing toward my dorm.
“Winston is just big enough of an ass to do it. All the shit he’s doing with you, putting the whole school on restriction, the cleaning crew detail,