BAE BOY

2

But when they sent me over to DeGrazia with my little form letter thing, Doakes and her crew discovered that "Downtown" had lost all of my old records. In fact, it turned out they had all kinds of old hardcopy records sitting in big old unmarked cardboard boxes in the basement, not even sorted alphabetically or anything. So it could've taken them months to find mine.

She finally used some kind of district procedure nobody else even knew about to get me registered without them. And once she'd got me squared away, she called a friend in the Superintendent's office who told The Boss all about it. And after he'd fired some people, he demanded that those papers be filed and a new system be built to keep it from happening again.

That is why nobody fucks with her. She does her job. Fierce about it. That's kind of rare in our district. Or I feel like it is, anyway.

So she was standing her ground as usual that day. Fire in those big, bulgy eyes.

But this Lurleen woman put her hands on what should've been her hips and said, "If y'all can't control these damned kids, you sure as hell can't be tryin'a control me!"

So Doakes folded her arms real cool and said, "Well, then I guess won't nobody be talkin' to nobody today, then. Because I have told you when you come in here actin' a fool like that, we're not gonna go no further. So you can carry yourself on back home and they'll take that boy right on over to Juvie."

And the little wiry dude said, "No, they won't! Teacher ain't even gon' press no charges!"

That didn't surprise me, what he said. Taylor would probably never press charges on one of her kids. No matter what they did to her.

But Doakes said, "Teacher's not, but the district is."

And boy, that Lurleen started huffing and puffing just like her boy Danny had with me.

"How the hell's the district doin' what she won't?"

The vice principal--Kevin Cox was his name--learned of his office door and beckoned to me sort of on the sly, like he was trying to stay out of the line of fire. But Lurleen's radar picked right up on that.

And she heaved that jelly around, lasered him with her eyes and said, "Nuther one ain't worth a damn! That the one beat on my boy?"

And she headed right on into the VP's office after me, too. And made me sorry the instant she walked in because a wave of funk spread through that room so fast and strong that it made me dizzy for a minute.

She smelled like a year's worth of stale sweat, pee and whatever she'd fried up for dinner every day. And what freaked me out even more was she had bear feet. Not "bare" but "bear." I mean, her toenails were as long and thick as bear claws. And curved down over the front soles of her sandals like claws, too. All brown and fungus-y looking.

She was way worse than anyone we had in our family. And we had some wild things, believe me. But Miss Lurleen's bear feet beat all.

Even so, I knew her kind well enough not to be all that scared when she cut her eyes over my way. I just sat there all chill. Didn't fidget or fumble or anything. So she'd know she was fuckin' with kinfolk.

And she said, "So what do you have to say to me, pretty boy?"

I was tempted to ask her if she was knew the Jameses from up by Marana. But I didn't. I just said, "Nothin' really."

And she raised her chin and said, "You damned near break a kid's arm and you got nothin' to say?"

"Arm he swung on a teacher with? I shoulda broken it," I said. Forthright as hell, too.