question, her eyes had grown wet. She shook her head. “Matty… I can’t… Red already asked me.”
“I don’t understand. Red isn’t even here.”
“They just moved here for the rest of the winter. He… His dad… There was some trouble. I don’t know what.”
That’s because he and his father are both criminals.
She screwed up her face into an almost angry expression, and says, “Anyway… I don’t like you that way Matty. You know that.”
I tried to play off her last statement. I tried to hide the devastating blow I just received. My throat seized as I said, “I… I… I meant as a friend. If you didn’t have another date.”
Red and his dad had moved here? This was a disaster.
I don’t think I was very convincing. Carlina’s eyes drop to the table. “I’m gonna get my lunch.” I got up and left the table before she could say another word. I stood in line, and got my lunch. It was an unidentifiable meat with cheese and tomato sauce on it, tater tots, and a cup full of mixed fruit drenched in syrup. I stood there in indecision after I paid for my lunch. How could I go back over there and sit and talk like everything was normal?
I couldn’t. I had to try, or she would know how badly I’d been hurt.
Walking back to the table wasn’t like walking through a tunnel carrying a torch. Instead, it was like walking through death row to the execution chamber, and when I arrived the executioner was there. Red, a year too old for the eighth grade, sat next to Carlina. He had a smarmy grin on his face. Carlina’s cheeks were flushed red. The color of his name.
They didn’t see me.
Wasn’t that’s the way it always was?
***
I was too ashamed to tell Papa. He had been so absurdly pleased that I was asking Carlina to the dance. I spent the next two weeks doing extra chores around the house, earning the money for a nonexistent date.
As the night approached, Papa asked, “Do we need to pick her up?”
“Her father’s bringing her.”
I’ve always been a terrible liar, but that night I succeeded. He didn’t question it. The night of the dance he dropped me off in front of the school, and insisted I call before midnight to be picked up. The dance ended at 10, so I would be calling long before midnight. I waited until he was gone, checked to make sure there were no teachers or chaperones in sight, then ran away from the school. I spent the next hour and a half in a filthy diner down the street.
The next two months were agonizing. I was a ghost, wandering the halls of Williams Middle School, invisible, untouchable. I ate lunch alone and rode the school bus alone for the remainder of my three months in Tampa. I can tell my parents were concerned—I’d stop going out after school or asking to stay late. I’d stopped actively participating in life. When we weren’t at practice, either in the gym or at the fairground, I sat in my room reading. It was with massive relief that March arrived and it became time to pack and begin touring again.
Chapter Seven
Donuts (Matt)
Strike or not, my alarm goes off at six in the morning.
I fumble for the alarm, hand flailing against the bedside table several times. I almost give up, but then my hand slaps into the alarm clock with a loud crack and I feel a sharp pain in my hand.
Damn it! I sit up, suddenly wide awake. Light floods through the windows, and I remind myself that there will only be a few more weeks of decent weather. Winters here are ugly. Cold and wet. When I was growing up I spent the winters in Central Florida. Cold has an entirely different definition there.
My morning routine is all over by six forty-five. I have no idea what to do with myself. Normally I’d finish my coffee, put it in the sink and walk outside to head to work.
Not today, though. A small number of teachers will symbolically picket each school, but it’s not expected. The strike won’t last long—teacher’s strikes are illegal in Massachusetts—but with luck the closing of South Hadley’s four public schools will get the attention of the town’s residents. The union has been distributing flyers and talking with the parent teacher organization for almost two years, and negotiating with the school committee just as long. No one was interested.
I bet they’ll