The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [16]
Caroline, Vic’s wife, knew Paula Coffey from school committees and disliked her because she was too peppy. Vic had never met Buff, but according to neighborhood gossip, Buff would preach the socks off anyone he could corner. He was a minister at some wacky fundamentalist church. “I know of them,” he told Gigi.
“Rusty’s headed for trouble,” Gigi said. “She used to be such a great kid. And she’s so smart.”
Vic said he was sorry to hear that, and decided not to mention all the neighborhood gossip he’d heard about Rusty. According to the stories, Rusty was more than headed for trouble. She’d already been suspended for having pot in her locker and had been caught shoplifting at Hot Topic. She skipped school and periodically ran away from home. Supposedly, she was one of the vandals who occasionally swept through Canterbury Hills at night. So far, they hadn’t done any major damage, and their pranks were kind of funny if it wasn’t your mailbox sprouting a spray-painted penis and, of course, if it wasn’t your teenager doing it. He didn’t think his teenagers were doing it, but he’d probably be the last to know.
“Hey,” Gigi said. “See that old lady sitting over there with them?” She pointed.
Vic barely looked. “Uh-huh.”
“Just moved in across the street from Buff and them. But it’s y’all she really wants to meet. Seems to know a lot about your father-in-law. Come on over and I’ll introduce you. Her name’s Nancy Archer.”
It was the old lady who was supposedly going to take Suzi to Italy. “Does Suzi know she’s here?”
“They were talking up a blue streak earlier. They’re real buds.”
“Don’t make me go over there,” Vic said. “I don’t want to meet any new people. I know too many people already.”
“Fine, Puddleglum.” Gigi was scanning the skaters. “They should serve martinis to the adults who’re brave enough to come in here, don’t you think?”
“I do think,” Vic said, but, actually, he found the skating rink, once he got acclimated, to be mesmerizing. He got a kick out of watching not only his kids but people of all ages and races and types, from the little dread-locked five-year-old boy to the older white woman in Ice Capades attire, forming the letters Y, M, C, A with their arms as they skated past.
Vic never was much of a roller skater, but back in Iowa, he and Caroline, before they had kids, used to go ice-skating on Lake Macbride. He could still picture that silly fur hat and old yellow ski coat Caroline used to wear. Those exhilarating Sunday afternoons, holding hands and moving together over the dazzling white lake, looking forward to a warm fire and split pea soup and an evening reading and talking, were some of the happiest days of his life.
“Hey, Mr. Mature,” Gigi said, squeezing Vic’s elbow. “Good news. I’ve been assigned to your portfolio project.”
The Great Portfolio Project! Vic and his team had spent months designing it, convincing the higher-ups that it would be a better way than the usual standardized tests and timed writing essays to assess high school students’ writing. Eleventh graders in participating high schools would assemble portfolios of the best writing they’d done that year in math, language arts, science, and social studies, and trained FTA scorers would evaluate them. Following the national trend in education, FTA would be encouraging writing not only in language arts, but—and here came the buzzwords—across the curriculum. The plan was that after they’d tested the project and gotten it up and running, they’d sell it to various school corporations across the state, who, hopefully, would be delighted to jump on board.
FTA had lined up ten high schools from around