My Soul to Keep - By Sean Hayden Page 0,19

me with her head tilted to the side as if listening to everything. Just before I built up enough nerve to strike up another conversation with her Mrs. Rhodes called me up to the counter. I gathered my bag off the floor and walked up with a confused look on my face.

“Come on through, Connor. Principal Parker’s waiting for you in his office.

I nodded meekly and let her open the gate separating the admin offices from the waiting room. I walked through and she let it go, letting it creak slowly back in place with a little click. I turned and walked down the hallway fighting down the panic that seized me every time I made this trip. Fear of my parents kept me from getting into too much trouble. I hadn’t done anything I knew of, but life wasn’t always fair.

I peered around the doorway to Mr. Parker’s office and saw him sitting there typing something on a very archaic looking computer. The one we shared at home looked light years ahead of the cream colored beast he worked on. Cedar Hills didn’t have a lot of money, and it looked like county education budgets had gone from a trickle to a stop. I knocked lightly on the doorframe. He looked up from his screen and gave me a somewhat angry glare.

“Come in, Connor. Have a seat and I’ll be right with you.”

I nodded and slid into the green leather chair in front of his desk. I gently set my book bag down on the floor in front of me and waited. I tried not to stare at Mr. Parker, but I couldn’t help it. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t skinny either. I figured he was about the same age as my parents, but Mr. Parker had one huge thing that severely tarnished his reputation with the students of Underwood High. Mr. Parker had the absolute, quintessential, no margin for comparison, take every last award, worst comb-over in the history of mankind. He looked like he took the hair growing out of his neck, combed it upward, and forced it to spiral around the top of his head several times. Very few could look at him or have a conversation with him and not laugh. I tended to concentrate on his caterpillar like eyebrows. It helped.

“So, Mr. Sullivan, do you know why I called you down here?”

“No, sir. I haven’t got a clue. Did I do something?” I tried my best to look innocent, which in this case I was, or at least I thought so.

“I personally took your mother’s call yesterday morning letting me know you were home sick. I tend to have lunch at the mall, so you can imagine my shock when I saw you having lunch with a girl...”

Time stopped, my mind stopped, my heart stopped, and I managed to croak out an, “Oh.”

“That’s exactly what I said when I saw you, Mr. Sullivan. Now how do you think your poor mother is going to react when I tell her I saw you yesterday on a date? Do you think she’s going to be happy?”

I could only imagine how my mother would react. My father would probably high-five me when he found out I had lunch with a girl while ditching school. Mom was sure to go thermonuclear. I meant to tell Mr. Parker that it wasn’t me he saw at the mall. My mouth opened and I said, “It wasn’t a date.”

“I don’t care if it was a bar mitzvah. The point is, young man, you were supposed to be in school. What do you think I should do with you?” I could tell he was getting angry, because the amount of saliva spritzing me the farther we got into the conversation increased rapidly.

I looked up and pretended like I was really considering what he should do to me. I love it when grownups ask us moronic questions. They know we’re going say something like, “Let me go,” or “Forget the whole thing.” Why on earth they would expect us to say, “Punish me to the full extent of the law and your power,” is beyond me.

I did however say something that shocked the hell out of me. “She’s my girlfriend, sir. We had a little pregnancy scare, so we met at the mall to get a test from the drug store inside …”

Chapter 7

Mr. Parker’s mouth dropped open like a toddler had crawled under his desk and whacked him in the giblets.