The Silver Star(59)

If a boy goes on a date with Liz Holladay, what should he bring for protection?

A) A rubber

B) A bar of soap

C) A gun

D) Jerry Maddox





My face started burning and my hands clenched up like they needed to grab something and tear it to shreds and without thinking about what I was doing, I leaped at Lisa Saunders, shouting, “You think you’re special, but I’m going to hurt you bad!”

After that, it was all a mess of hair I pulled on, skin I scratched at, arms I pounded against, and clothes I tore up. Lisa Saunders’s fingers were in my face, clawing and scratching back, but it didn’t hurt. All I felt was anger. We were rolling on the floor, grunting and screaming and kicking and gouging and flailing. Very quickly, other kids circled around to watch, cheering and hollering encouragement, not to me or even to Lisa but generally, to urge it all on. Fight! Fight! Hit her! Hit her good!

Then I felt a different pair of hands on me, a man’s hands. The science teacher Mr. Belcher had pushed through the crowd, and he broke us apart. I was panting like a dog, shaking with rage, but I was glad to see that I had done some serious damage to Lisa Saunders. Her bony nose was bleeding, her mascara was running down her face, and I’d pulled out her ponytail holder along with a fistful of blond hair.

Lisa Saunders’s friends began accusing me of starting the whole thing. When Mr. Belcher dragged both of us by the arm down to the principal’s office, they followed behind, going on about how Bean Holladay jumped on Lisa out of the blue for no reason at all.

The principal was out, so Mr. Belcher shoved us into the office of Miss Clay, the vice principal. “Hall fight,” he said.

Miss Clay looked up at us over her reading glasses. “Thank you, Mr. Belcher,” she said. “Take a seat, girls.” She passed us a box of Kleenex. I started to explain about the friendship application, since that was what the fight was about, but Miss Clay cut me off. “That’s neither here nor there.” She launched into a lecture, saying how disappointed she was in us for engaging in such inappropriate behavior and going on about what was and wasn’t proper conduct at Byler High. “Girls hitting each other,” she said. “It’s so unladylike.”

“Unladylike?” I asked. “Do you think I care what’s ladylike and what’s not?”

I was still completely worked up. I had gotten even hotter when I realized that Miss Clay wasn’t going to let me tell her about the repulsive friendship application. I went on to say that if the teachers had been doing their jobs and looking after their students instead of turning a blind eye when one of them got picked on, these girls wouldn’t be going after my sister, and I wouldn’t have to be defending her.

Miss Clay jerked off her reading glasses. “Don’t use that tone of voice with me, young lady. You need to respect your elders.”

“I respect people who do their jobs,” I said. “Respecting people just because they’re older is a bunch of malarkey. Jerry Maddox is older. Am I supposed to respect him?”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she said. “Jerry Maddox has nothing to do with this.”

“He sure as heck does,” I said. “You know it, too, and if you pretend you don’t, you’ve got your head up your butt just like all the rest of them.”

“Jean Holladay, you have one ugly mouth on you. You’re suspended.”

“What?”

“You can spend the next three days at home, thinking about your behavior.”

“What about her?” I pointed over at Lisa Saunders, who hadn’t said a word and instead had been sitting there with her ankles crossed, daubing at her runny mascara with the Kleenex and doing her best to look innocent. “She was fighting, too. And she wrote that thing about Liz that I’ve been trying to explain to you.”

“I’m not interested in whatever the two of you were squabbling about,” Miss Clay said. “School officials never get to the bottom of these quarrels, and in my mind, we shouldn’t try. You’re not being suspended for fighting. You’re being suspended for using unseemly language with the vice principal.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


Uncle Tinsley was pretty upset when I told him I’d been suspended. “This is mortifying,” he said. “Another first for the Holladay family.” Once I explained that I’d been standing up for Liz, he said, “Well, I guess you did what you felt you had to do, but it won’t exactly boost our standing in the community.”

The funny thing was, it sort of did. When I got back to school at the end of November, the other kids treated me differently. Now I wasn’t Day-Glo Girl, I was the Girl Who Beat Up Lisa Saunders. I guessed that it was, if nothing else, a step up. The teasing mostly stopped, and a few kids actually went out of their way to be friendly. It was as if they thought going to the cops and filing charges against Maddox was being a tattletale—like running to the teacher when someone picked on you—but throwing punches, now, that got their respect.