Something Wicked - By Lesley Anne Cowan Page 0,28
thanking God we’re not as bad as the next guy. They should make a school where there’s a mix of good kids, like reclusive scholar students, and bad druggy kids, so that we could all rub off on each other.
It’s an intense Thursday morning. Keenan, a seventeen-yearold guy who just got out of a residential drug program, storms into the couch room, pissed off and making sure everyone knows it. We are all sitting around discussing current events, which we do every morning. After each of us reads a part of the newspaper, Sheila, the CYC, asks us to share our thoughts.
When Keenan walks in, a girl named Snow is talking about some convenience store owner who was stabbed in the neck but survived. And how the next day he won two hundred thousand dollars in the lottery. Keenan, obviously demanding that everyone in the room be brought down to his miserable level, sits slouched on the chair, legs wide apart, baggy jeans drooping, baseball cap over his face, and yawns loudly.
“Thanks, Snow,” Sheila says, then she turns her head. “Keenan, can you sit up please?”
Keenan doesn’t move.
“Keenan? We need you up. And I need to see your eyes.”
The room gets tense. I don’t know how air, something that’s invisible, can all of a sudden grow heavy and thick with stress, but it does. And we all know this is not going to end well. Keenan is crazy. He comes to school half doped up on medication just to calm him down. Apparently his father, a motorcycle gang member, shot his mother in the gut and Keenan watched her bleed to death when he was a kid. So, really, no one can blame him for being a little nuts.
Fearless Sheila gets up and moves in toward him.“Keenan?”
He startles, pretending she’s woken him up. “What?” he snaps, incredibly annoyed at her interference.
“Let’s go,” Sheila says calmly, motioning out toward the hallway. “Let’s talk about it in the classroom.”
He turns his head and looks off to the side, ignoring her.
“Come on, man, give her a break,” Tyler pipes up, and it’s all Keenan needs. He’s up out of his chair in two seconds, towering over scrawny Tyler, who only has time to throws his knees up to defend himself against Keenan’s arms reaching in and lifting him up like a curled ball off the chair.
“Keenan!” Sheila shouts, but the two intertwined bodies are already on the floor. Jordie, this real big fat guy who’s been in the program only two days, steps in between them and they part too easily, as if they had been waiting for someone to cut in.
Sheila, all red-faced now, takes Keenan by the elbow and leads him outside. Jordie holds on to Tyler by the back of his hoodie and then pushes him down into the couch. The rest of us—Snow, this girl Kat, and me—just sit there, staring at each other. Tyler has a bloody lip, which makes his pimply, ugly face even uglier. I actually feel sorry for him since I’ve come to realize he’s pretty harmless.
“That was brave,” Snow says to him. “Stupid, but brave. You know he’s fucked up?”
“Yeah,” Tyler admits, and puts his hand to his lip. “It wasn’t brave. I just do shit without thinking. Sometimes it’s good shit. Sometimes it’s bad.”
“There’s a bong in the girls’ washroom,” I offer as condolence. Since I’ve got to know him, I think he’s sort of sweet. He’s been through so much—foster homes since he was five, and now a group home where he has to basically fight older and bigger guys for everything. It’s like he’s a harmless little runt fighting for the teat. “Look in the garbage bin, under the plastic.”
“Thanks,” he says, and gets up, probably not to go smoke it but just to get the hell out of the room.
The teacher (whom I no longer call just Miss), Ms. Dally, appears at the door before he gets to it. Obviously Sheila is dealing with Keenan and has given her the lowdown, and she’s come to pull things together. “Where are you going?” she demands.
“Wash my lip,” Tyler says quickly.
She inspects his face. “Okay. When you’re done, go into my office.” She turns to the rest of us and smiles. Ms. Dally has this way of being totally calm even after students dump on her or spaz out or just plain give her attitude. It’s not like she doesn’t have feelings, it’s more like she’s seen it all and nothing stresses