November 22, 2006
Chapter 19
(Filed under: The Novel)"So you're Dominic?" Anwyn asked, catching up to the taller senior after they both finished with the fastest miles in their class. Dominic looked back at her. It was the new girl in his class. He'd never met her before, never seen her since she showed up at Howe High School a few weeks before. But her face struck him as oddly familiar.
"Yeah," he nodded, still breathing hard. He also just realized the freshman had nearly ran as fast as he did. Anwyn shook her head, understanding the coincidence. Of course she'd end up in one of Dominic's classes. Why not?
"You were pretty fast," Dominic said when Anwyn didn't follow up with anything.
"Yeah, I run all the time," Anwyn said.
"I guess so," Dominic said. "What's your name?"
"Anwyn. You knew my sister?"
"I did?" Dominic asked.
"Yeah. Isabelle Miller."
"Name doesn't ring a bell," Dominic said.
"It'd been a while. Probably four years," Anwyn said. Dominic searched his mind trying to place the name and the familiarness of Anwyn's face.
"You're the girl from Minnesota, right?" Dominic asked. Anwyn nodded. It was starting to click. "Your sister came to visit four years ago, right? She hung out with Catalina?" Anwyn kept nodding. Dominic slowly smiled.
"Yeah, I remember now," Dominic said, turning to spit in the grass. The rest of the class was starting to finish now, Mr. Graves was calling out times and shouting for the pack to hurry up. "I remember, yeah. What a bitch."
And it happened so quickly. There wasn't any forethought or shock or planning—only a reaction. Anwyn took a step forward, put her arms around Dominic—he thought he was about to get kissed, which was his fatal flaw the first time around—and as she pulled the senior in high school who had at least a six inch height advantage towards her, she viciously raised her knee to his crotch.
Dominic's body thundered to the ground like a felled tree. His hands went to his groin, his mouth fell open, his eyes watered. The other students in gym class turned in shock, trying to see imagine what could have happened, how the senior jock had been floored by the freshman new girl. Mr. Graves stopped calling out times and just stared, his whistle falling out of his mouth.
Anwyn stepped forward towards Dominic, still writhing on the ground, and leaned into his field of vision.
"That bitch," she said, "killed herself. Show a little respect."
And with that Anwyn calmly walked off to the locker room. The rest of the class, including Mr. Graves, just watched her go. When the rest of the class finally showed up in the locker room Anwyn was cleaned up and ready to go. The other students avoided her and finally Missy stopped in front of her.
"Uh, geez, Anwyn, are you OK?"
"Yeah."
"OK," Missy said. "Um, Mr. Graves wants you to go to the office."
"I thought so."
"Do you want me to go with you or anything?"
"No thanks. I'll be fine." Anwyn walked off to the office, leaving Missy gawking.
The school office was quiet and empty. The secretary point to a chair and Anwyn sat down. Mr. Douglas marched into the room, avoided Anwyn, and marched back with Chet Dahlman. He motioned for Anwyn to come with them and the three sat down in a claustrophobic conference room, Chet Dahlman and Mr. Douglas across from Anwyn.
"So what happened?" Mr. Douglas asked.
"He called my sister a bitch," Anwyn said, deadpan.
"And that's it?" Mr. Douglas said. "He didn't touch you or threaten you or anything?"
"No," Anwyn said. "Why?" Mr. Douglas didn't respond. This was apparently new for him. Either Dominic Warren had a habit of getting in trouble and the fact that this time wasn't his fault was a complete and total shock, or Mr. Douglas expected some sort of trumped up story to match the retribution.
"The boy will be lucky to have kids someday," Mr. Douglas muttered. "From what he says that's the same thing your sister did to him."
Anwyn looked up, suddenly surprised and brought back to the immediacy of the situation.
"What?"
"He says your sister kneed him in the groin as well," Mr. Douglas explained. "He talked about it running in the family and said some other colorful things that we don't need to repeat. But he'll need to be a little more sensitive from now on—and I imagine he will be."
Anwyn's mind raced. She never imagined her sister doing anything like this. It was such a bad girl thing to do, which wasn't quite Isabelle. It thrilled Anwyn a little that she had done something Isabelle did, but also scared her that they could repeat the same mistakes.
She wondered when it had happened, if it was the end to the little make out session along the Arkansas River that she had always assumed ended in something much more stereotypical.
Or was that the end of the underwear raid? It hardly seemed likely that the way to get a boy's underwear was to knee him in the crotch. Removing said pair of underwear would be a little difficult in that position, but maybe Isabelle did that to get him out of the way and then just rifled through his dresser and snatched a clean pair.
Or maybe there was something else. Maybe there was more to the story.
"Ms. Miller," Mr. Douglas said, returning to his official disciplinarian voice. "You'll have detention for a week. If anything happens again you'll be suspended. And I'm not interested in your fancy excuses or reasons—" he turned a wary eye to Chet Dahlman, "—there's no reason to injure a boy like that. I also want you to meet with Mr. Dahlman here, at least for today."
Anwyn nodded. The punishment didn't matter to her. Mr. Douglas nodded, then exchanged glances with Chet Dahlman—who looked tired and annoyed—and left the room. Now it was just Chet Dahlman sitting across from Anwyn.
"Well," Chet started. "Despite what Mr. Douglas said, we are concerned about your reasons …" He continued, rambling on and on about how it was OK if Anwyn felt the need to act out, but she needed to find constructive ways to do so and kneeing a boy in the balls wasn't one of those ways, though it was good that Anwyn could take care of herself, and on and on it went. Anwyn nodded at the right spots and wondered what she was missing in Spanish. She finally spoke up and said enough kind-hearted, remorseful things that Chet Dahlman felt pity on her and decided it would be best if she returned to class.
He walked her to the door of the office and told her his door was always open and it was always better to come visit by choice. Anwyn nodded and stepped into the empty hall.
And then the bell rang. The hall filled with students and voices and laughter and movement. And eyes staring at Anwyn. As she walked down the corridor towards her English Literature class she felt like the students parted in front of her, not wanting to get too close. It was more her imagination than anything, but the students were buzzing about the freshman girl who had toppled a senior guy. One story had it that her blow had made him impotent. Another said that Dominic had tried to touch her and he got what he deserved. But every story contained the detail that Dominic had called Anwyn's sister 'bitch' and that the sister had committed suicide. It was also starting to make the rounds that the sister had reportedly done the same thing to Dominic, though no one quite understood how the puzzle pieces to that one fit together.
"You know, if you wanted to get the story out of Dominic, that probably wasn't the best method to use." It was Lynn. She saddled up next to Anwyn and walked with her down the hall to their English Literature class.
"Yeah, I know," said Anwyn.
"I mean, I'll back you if you want to use torture," Lynn said. "I've got spare car battery we can hook up to his nipples. It's the American way." Anwyn smiled.
"I don't really know what I was doing," Anwyn said. "It just happened so quickly."
"Of course you knew what you were doing," Lynn said. "Achieving justice for women everywhere. So is it true that your sister did the same to Dominic?"
"I don't know," Anwyn said. "That's what Mr. Douglas said."
"Well, you're probably not going to get the real story out of Dominic now," Lynn said. "Unless we keep going with that torture plan." They reached their English class and sat down. Anwyn noticed Mrs. Summers watching her from the door to her chair. Apparently word traveled fast, even among teachers.
"What did he do?" Oliver asked as soon as he came in. He looked furious, like he was ready to go after Dominic himself, even though Dominic was the one already hurting.
"He just said Isabelle was a bitch," Anwyn said, trying to keep her voice low, though she could tell the whole class was straining to hear. It even looked like Mrs. Summers was trying to hone in on their conversation from the corner. "And I snapped."
"He didn't do anything to you?"
"No," Anwyn said. "Why does everybody ask that?"
"It'd give me more reason to kick his ass."
"No, I think I've done enough," Anwyn said.
"Kicking his ass would fit with our torture plan," Lynn chimed in.
"He didn't do anything wrong," Anwyn said. "Isabelle could be a bitch. It just, I've never had anyone say anything like that about Isabelle to my face. I snapped."
"You say the word and I'll hook up that battery," Lynn said as Mrs. Summers dimmed the lights and flicked on the overhead projector to start class.
The eyes continued to follow Anwyn the rest of the day and she was glad for the quiet of detention. Gossiping about the sister of a suicide case was not tolerated in detention, as two kids quickly found out with a doubled punishment. It turns out the office had called her father and he'd be picking her up after detention.
As she waited outside the school Mr. Graves stuck his head out the front door.
"Ms. Miller," he called. She looked over. "That was a nice mile today. If you can keep that knee to yourself I want you on my track team." She nodded and the door closed behind Mr. Graves. At least not every teacher pretended like they didn't know.
Jack pulled up to Howe High School in his Saab and picked up his daughter from detention.
"Hey beautiful," he said.
"Hi Dad."
"So I know you had talked about getting into some after school activities, but is detention really what you had in mind?"
"Sorry, Dad."
"I bet that boy is sorry," Jack said. "What was his name? Dominic Warren?" Anwyn nodded. The silver Saab pulled onto the main highway and cruised back to Richmond. "I probably know his parents. Boy is that going to be embarrassing when we run into each other at the post office. And I don't think Mabel running interference will help."
"So why'd you do it?"
"He knew Isabelle," Anwyn said, starting from the beginning. She told her dad about the scene at the river—quickly filling in the rumored information that Isabelle also had a knack for kneeing Dominic in the groin when Jack's grip on the steering wheel tightened—and about the truth or dare-inspired underwear raid. "I thought he might know something about Isabelle that we didn't know."
"So you kneed him in the groin?" Jack asked. "Honey, that's generally a good way to make a boy incapable of spilling the beans."
"Dad," Anwyn intoned.
"Sorry," Jack said. "I'm not just not used to handling discipline cases like this."
"Do you want more practice?" Anwyn asked. Jack should his head and she continued. "He finished ahead of me in the mile in gym class and I realized who he was. It clicked and I went up to ask him about Isabelle. As soon as he remembered who she was he said she was a bitch. Then I just snapped."
"Well, I suppose fond memories of being kneed in the groin might make you call someone a bitch," Jack said.
"Do you think that's all it is?"
"I don't know," Jack said. "What do you think?"
"I don't know," Anwyn said. "And I suppose now I won't find out."
"Unless maybe you knee him again," Jack said, laughing until he turned to see Anwyn straight-faced. "Sorry—do I need to be serious again?" Anwyn nodded.
"Well, it's not every day that a father learns both his daughters could defend themselves. It's encouraging." Anwyn didn't say anything. She loved her dad, but sometimes she expected something more normal. This wasn't exactly the punishment lecture she was expecting.
"So you ran the mile today?" Jack asked. "How'd you do?"
Posted by kevin at November 22, 2006 4:18 PM
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