Confessions from the Principal's Chair (2 page)

Maybe Rendi wasn't really born to my grandparents. Maybe she got mixed up with another baby in the hospital. I mean that's possible, right? She doesn't look anything like my grandmother, who has every hair in place and fingernails that are always perfectly manicured, My grandmother wears suits and dresses that are made by some important designer whose name you would probably recognize if I could remember what it is. Even when Grandma puts on casual clothes, they are classy looking. Her figure is perfect too. She could wear a two-piece bathing suit except that, of course, a woman her age wouldn't look proper in one. Grandma doesn't do anything that is not proper.

Rendi isn't what you'd call fat, but she isn't the type who should wear a two-piece bathing suit either. Her hair is really shiny and soft, but kind of plain, just light brown and pulled back by a loose ribbon. I've never seen her wear makeup, not even lipstick, and there is usually clay or something from her work under her fingernails. Still, Ivory really got me mad once when she said, "Your mother would be pretty if she did something with herself." Of course, I didn't say so to Ivory, but I like Rendi the way she is, or at least I used to before she turned on me over Marcy Willis.

So there I was on the floor of my room that had one chair from the kitchen and a chest left in it. One of Rendi's friends wanted the kitchen table and chairs. Rendi had tried to give the women-men the chest, but the one who talked said, "No, thank you." Anyway, like I said, I was on the floor wondering what it would be like to live in Oklahoma. Would my grandparents show up at our place uninvited, or maybe the whole family would kind of sit down and talk things out. Before Marcy Willis, Rendi had been a believer in talking things out. Don't ask me why she hadn't ever talked things out with her own parents. Maybe things would have been different if my Aunt Jenny, Rendi's sister, had lived. Rendi was really close to her sister, but Jenny died in a car accident when she was sixteen and Rendi was my age, fourteen. I'll bet Aunt Jenny would have made my mother work on her relationship with their parents, but, hey, I had a lot bigger problem than wondering why Rendi didn't get along with her mother and father.

I was about to get stuck in some brand-new school. I rolled myself into a fetal position (I read that in a book), you know, like a baby in the womb. I remembered what it had been like when I started middle school, me not knowing anyone from before and walking down those halls all alone. In elementary school, the halls had been friendly, even in new schools, but I can tell you middle schools do not have friendly halls. In elementary, the halls are all decorated with frogs and rabbits and pictures of presidents and stuff. Not in middle schools. Those halls are like prison halls, except I guess they don't have lockers in prisons. Anyway, I've never seen any lockers in prison movies, but I can tell you that the eyes that watch you in middle school halls are just as unfriendly as the eyes of all those murderers, rapists, and thieves. Those eyes (you know, at middle school) are as cold as the steel the lockers are made from. Wait a minute, I'm not sure that the lockers are made of steel. Maybe they are tin, but then, I guess you get the point about how cold the eyes were when I started middle school in Denver.

Ivory had the seat in front of me in history. I could see that she was the coolest girl. She is tall, but not as tall as me. The thing is, though, that her neck isn't long at all. She could be a model or something, and she held her head up high, kind of like she might own the place or something. I guess you could say she does sort of own the place.

She isn't a cheerleader or on the pom-pom squad or anything. She's not that kind of popular. She's the kind of popular that doesn't need to do anything to earn it. I'm willing to bet every kid in the whole, huge eighth grade knows who she is. But stay with me here. I don't want you to get confused. We were in the sixth grade when I first met her. She asked me a week or so after school started if I had an extra pencil, and I gave her the one with the pink stripes on it even though it was my best one. "You can keep it," I told her, "you know, for later."

I liked her because of the way she looked and because she always nodded at me when she slid into her seat just before the bell rang. I knew why she was always nearly late and everything. I passed her every day in the hall with a group of other girls. They'd have their heads together, talking as fast as they could. Anyone could see they were good friends. I remember wishing I belonged to a group like that, with people who would always tell me their secrets and always be ready to walk down those cold halls with me.

It was like I had some kind of fairy godmother or something who had just been hanging around with her wand to grant my wish because, I'm not making this up, the very next day after the pencil thing, Ivory stuck her hand back toward me just when Mr. Simons started talking about how early Greece influenced life today. There was a note in her hand, and I got so excited that I forgot to hide what I was doing when I leaned down to get it.

"Robin Miller," Mr. Simons said, ucan I please have your attention?" I honestly think that might have been the first time a teacher ever called me down, well anyway since second grade, when I let the class frog out of his glass cage. The teacher yelled at me then, but of course that day with Ivory sure wasn't the last time. After the day of the note, I got in plenty of trouble, for passing notes, being late to class, once for smoking cigarettes in the girls' room, and finally for teasing stupid Marcy Willis.

That first note from Ivory said, "No party here. [That's how Ivory starts every note, unless of course something really interesting is happening to her as she writes.] Do you want to hang out with me and my friends? We want to call ourselves THE SIX-PACK, and we really need another person. Tell me after this BORING class is over. Ivory."

That's how I got to be part of the group whispering to each other in the hall, and that's when the halls stopped being a scary place.

But now back to the packing. All the while, I kept hoping Rendi would come in and say, "I've been unreasonable. I can see that now." At around six, she knocked on the door. Here it comes, I told myself, and I also thought how I'd be forgiving. No use holding a grudge. My mother usually does so much better than the mothers of my friends. I could even forgive her for giving away my bed. It would be kind of fun to shop for a new one.

"Come in," I told her, but she didn't open the door.

"It's time to eat," she said. "Come and have a sandwich with me."

I definitely was not hungry, but I thought I caught a soft note in the sound of Rendi's voice. Maybe she would admit her error while we ate. "Okay," I said.

She had already made tuna fish salad, my personal favorite, especially when she puts in onions, and she had just to please me. She likes it better without onion. Sometimes she makes up two different batches, but not this time. I saw her take the stuff for both our sandwiches out of the same bowl. I sat with my shoulders hunched to show how miserable I was, and that I wasn't going to be bribed with onions. I took tiny nibbles off the edge of my sandwich.

"Bird," Rendi said after she had chewed her first bite. "I'm sorry that you see this as a punishment."

Wonderful! It was about time she started on the "I am sorry" track. I let go of a long sigh and turned my eyes to her with the saddest look possible. I mean, it wasn't a pretend sadness. She was about to drag me away from the best friends I had ever had. "How else could I look at this, except as a punishment? It
is
a punishment, Mother, a cruel and unusual punishment." I was proud of the part about cruel and unusual because I was pretty sure there was some kind of law or something against cruel and unusual. I was also using "Mother" instead of Rendi. I don't know why, but I thought it was a good tactic.

Rendi didn't seem impressed. "It isn't a punishment, although you certainly deserve to be punished for what you did to that poor child. We are moving because I think it is best for you. I think small-town life will do you good. You need to meet new kids, learn not to be a follower, learn to think for yourself." She reached over to brush the hair away from my eyes. "Remember how much fun we used to have, just driving down the road until we found someplace we both liked?"

I rolled my eyes and looked up like I was just about to pass out with disgust.

"Puh-leeze, Mother," I said. "In the first place, I'm not some ignorant little kid anymore. I can assure you, we won't find a place I like, not that it matters to you. I like it here. Besides, we picked on Marcy Willis for her own good. Someone had to show her how pathetic she is. It's like a no-brainer to see we did her a favor."

Rendi didn't say anything else, just ate her sandwich. I picked at mine for a while, then got up, ran back to my room, slammed the door behind me, threw myself on the floor, and cried into my pillow (generously not given away by Rendi to the two weird people). The tears were real enough, but I took my face out of my pillow, and I scooted over to open the door too. Rendi needed to hear how she had broken my heart. I cried, and I cried.

It worked. In almost no time, she was knocking at the open door. I decided to play it sweet this time. "Come in." I raised my face just enough so she could hear me, then dropped it back, this time into the pillow. I could afford to be comfortable now.

Rendi came over and got down to sit beside me. She reached out to touch my hair, sort of wrapping a strand around and around her finger. "Bird," she said, "I hate to see you so unhappy." She started to tousle my hair, which is a thing that has always felt good to me and helped me relax. "Just think how it will be to go to school in a little town. You will know every kid in your class, and, oh, think about acting. They will be amazed at how good you are. You'll have the lead in every play, and we'll look for a place that has a nice little community theater. Why, you could even end up giving acting lessons to younger kids. Wouldn't that be fun?"

Rendi knew what would appeal to me. I didn't want her to know I was interested, but before I thought about it, I raised my head just a little. I realized real quick what was happening, and I dropped back against the pillow fast. It would be fun to give acting lessons. I'd been studying acting at Miss Deirdre's Studio since I was just a little girl around five. Miss Deirdre is an actress who used to be this big deal on Broadway. She starred in all sorts of plays with famous people, but then she was in an awful car accident. She lost the use of her legs. I guess there aren't a lot of parts for people who can't walk, so Miss Deirdre came to Denver and started an acting school. She said looking at the mountains made up some for not being a star anymore.

I started off in a class with some other little kids. They mostly couldn't even talk loud enough to be heard and couldn't even really pretend to be rabbits or elephants. Let me tell you, I could do a really mean elephant impression, my arm all drawn up to my face and waving like a trunk. I guess my bunnies must have been good too because it wasn't any time until Miss Deirdre told my mother she would like to give me private lessons, and that she wouldn't even charge us. Everybody said how good I was, and I had just packed away all sorts of trophies I got for being actor of the year at Miss Deirdre's school. Just a couple of months ago, Miss Deirdre told my mother and me that I could be in movies or on the stage in New York right now. She had called Rendi and said that she would like to talk to her privately about my future, but Rendi said I should come along. I heard her tell Miss Deirdre that she didn't keep secrets from me, that we discussed everything and made decisions together. Boy, that turned out to be a big joke, didn't it?

Anyway, Miss Deirdre said she still had some connections that would help me break into movies or plays in New York. Rendi turned to me right then and said, "Well, Bird, do you want to give it a shot?"

"We'd have to move, huh?"

"Yes," said Miss Deirdre. " You would have to move to the coast, either east or west."

We were in her office, Miss Deirdre behind her desk and Rendi and me on the love seat across from her. "Would I still have to go to school?" I asked.

"Yes," said Rendi.

"Well," said Miss Deirdre. "After you got a good-size role, arrangements could be made for you to be taught on the set, but I suppose it would be best to enroll you in a public school at first."

I looked down at the floor, wrinkled my eyebrow, and pretended to think. I didn't want Miss Deirdre to feel like she had wasted her time with the talk, but I knew right off I would say no. I loved acting, but there was no way I was going to go to a new school. Being part of the Six-Pack gave me security. No one would ever hassle me, and there was always a place saved for me in the cafeteria, even though we weren't supposed to save places there. Everyone knew not to take a seat meant for a Six-Pack member. No one was that brave or that dumb, except, of course, that brainless Marcy Willis.

Well, back to the part where Rendi was sitting beside me and moving my hair around on my head. "Hey," I said, and all full of hope, I sat up. "If you really want to move me, let's go out to Hollywood and let me try to get into movies."

Rendi shook her head. "No, Bird. I'd like to say yes to that, but I think I've been wrong about some things. A small town might be just what we need. Maybe my folks are right about how I've raised you. Maybe I should have been more conventional."

I wanted to protest then, to tell Rendi that she had been right to talk things out with me and to trust me to make my own decisions, but it wasn't a time I wanted to be agreeing with her. The phone rang, and she got up to answer it.

"Hello," she said, then she put her hand over the mouthpiece. "It's Ivory. I'll give you privacy so you can tell her good-bye."

I sat up and stared at her. This was real! Rendi was going to drag me away from Ivory and my four other good friends! I started to shake.

"What are you doing?" Ivory asked.

"Nothing," I said. Of course, it wasn't true. I was packing to leave my whole world behind, but we always started every conversation the same way, the "what are you doing, nothing" routine. "What are you doing?"