Apartment 1986 by Lisa Papademetriou

Author:Lisa Papademetriou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In which: bullies; ugh!

SOMETIMES I THINK THAT it is not that surprising that famous people are always suffering from exhaustion because I think that I am suffering from exhaustion and my life is just normal. I do not even have time to freak out about the fact that I can’t cash a check from 1986 because I have to pick up my little brother, who apparently has beaten someone up. Do these things even count as first-world problems?

I rub my right arm with my left because this place is over-air-conditioned. I am seated on a dark leather chair just outside the principal’s office at Desmond’s school. The seat is both poufy and uncomfortable somehow, like they shoved too much stuffing inside it. This office looks like a hunting lodge, only without the deer heads on the walls. I guess it would be a little weird for an elementary school principal to be surrounded by a bunch of dead animals. It might seem a bit spooky. This office is sort of accomplishing the spooky thing, even without the decapitated animals, though, and I’m just sitting in the reception area.

“You can go in, Callie,” Mrs. Lewis tells me. I can’t see her over the partition that separates her desk from the seating area because Mrs. Lewis is about four feet tall even when she is standing up. She has worked at the school for over thirty years, and everybody knows she basically runs the place.

“Thanks, Mrs. Lewis,” I say, and I give a little knock on the door and then push it open.

Desmond is sitting on another one of those god-awful chairs, facing the principal, who looks like—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—a toad who has been drinking too much coffee. He’s pale, and bald, and his neck is somehow wider than his cheeks, and the pouches under his eyes look like they are filled with grape juice, and, basically, he looks like he has had the kind of week that I have been having, only for about ten years. He takes out a handkerchief and coughs into it, then sticks it back into the pocket of his jacket.

Desmond’s lunch bag is on the desk, Exhibit A.

I turn to Desmond, whose face is red and blotchy, but not like he has been crying. More like he is trying not to scream. “Are you okay?” I ask.

“Callie Vitalis?” The principal stands up and shakes my hand, and I’m surprised by his tiny fingers and how slightly cold and almost wormy they feel. “Thank you for coming down. I’m Sal Becker.”

“I met you at Family Night,” I remind him.

“Oh, yes. Of course.” He drops back into his tall brown leather office chair, which lets out a sigh. “I’m releasing Desmond to you, as neither of your parents are available to pick him up, but please let them know that they should call the office and schedule an appointment as soon as possible.”

“So what happened?”

“I can’t give you that information,” Mr. Becker says.

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