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I walked some more, thinking mostly about Del Grant now. I suppose what I liked about him the most was that he was a loner. Probably because of his home situation, he avoided making friends with many people. He never had time to be in an extracurricular activity at school, and was absent so often, he barely got by. He kept to himself and wasn’t very talkative in school, and whenever I saw him anywhere in the city, he smiled or nodded, but always looked like he was afraid to do much more.

Yet I never thought of him as shy. To me he looked like he knew more and was older than the other boys his age. I had the feeling he thought that the things that were important to them were childish or meaningless. He was clean and neat even though he was poor and didn’t have much of a wardrobe, sometimes wearing the same thing for days. But he looked like he took care of what he had. Neal Sertner told me Del’s mother cut his hair, when she wasn’t drugged out on something or other. When he had it cut, he looked stylish. His mother worked on and off in a beauty parlor, but she had gone through so many, been fired from so many jobs, that people said she didn’t only burn her bridges, she burned the roads to the bridges.

I liked Del’s dark eyes, the way he tilted his head just slightly when he looked at someone, especially when he looked at me. I saw a strength in him I admired. He wasn’t big by any means. He was just about five feet ten and about normal weight for his age. He didn’t have big muscles or shoulders, but he looked tight, firm, hardened not by exercise but by life itself, and for me that added a note of maturity I respected.

His nose was perfect, and his lips weren’t too thick or too thin. His jaw line was a bit sharp, perhaps, but he had a male model’s cheekbones. He walked through the school not so much with confidence as with indifference. His eyes were always fixed straight ahead, and when he sat in the cafeteria or when I saw him sitting in a classroom, he stared down and looked up only when he had to, but he never appeared to be afraid of anything.

The other boys in the school simply kept clear of him. When he walked through a crowd, it was like Moses parting the sea. The other students would step back. They looked like they were afraid of touching him. They glanced at him and then quickly returned to their own conversations as if he wasn’t really there. I loved the fact that Del didn’t seem to care at all. Their indifference reinforced his.

We’re alike, I thought. Someday he’ll see that; he’ll look at me a little longer, let me talk to him a little more, and he’ll understand and he’ll smile and he’ll want to know me. That was my schoolgirl fantasy before I was abruptly ripped out of public school and sent to Snob Birdland. My biggest fear was that he would think I wanted to be there; he would think I was just some conceited little rich girl.

“Teal!” I heard Mother scream. “What are you doing outside? Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room? Your father is on the way home from work. Get yourself in that house and up those stairs,” she ordered.

She had just pulled up in her Mercedes, stepped out, and saw me sauntering along the edge of our gardens. I saw she had a bag with the name of one of her favorite boutiques printed on the outside.

“I needed some air,” I said.

“You’re going to need more than some air,” she fired back. “Get in that house.”

I did what she said and went up to my room, where I flopped on my bed and, with my earphones still on, folded my arms and pouted, staring at the door. Soon my father would be opening it, and I had to prepare myself for that scene.

Daddy could be the most dramatic man. I think it came from his business negotiations. He was good at posturing, and no one I knew could fix his eyes on you and burn a hole through you as well as my father. It was probably that and his quick mind that had made him so successful in the business world. Carson had inherited his math abilities. It was like I was completely passed over when it came time to distributing his genetics, as far as mental capacity went. Maybe that was why he and I never got along. If I didn’t resemble him in other ways, I would bet he would have accused my mother of infidelity. Even now he often had a look on his face that suggested he thought I was created with a mixture of sperm, his and some lover’s my mother must have taken. What else could explain me?

The door opened slowly, and he was standing there staring in at me.

My father never hit me, never so much as raised his hand. I know there are many people who would say I am the way I am because of that. Ironically, Carson says he did spank him and once slapped him so hard, he made his head spin.

I didn’t take off the earphones for a long moment. I knew that was only adding fuel to the fire, but I was trying to postpone the inevitable. Finally, I did.

“Drunk? At school?”

I didn’t answer.

“I don’t even want to hear an excuse. You’re so clever with your excuses, Teal. You really should think seriously of becoming a defense attorney. But that would mean taking school seriously and trying to become something, do something with your life other than ruin and destroy and bring static and havoc into everyone else’s life.

“I don’t want you leaving this house until I say so, understand?”

“Don’t leave the house? I don’t have to go to school?” I asked.

“You know what I mean, Teal. Of course, you have to go to school, although I don’t imagine you will last there much longer. When they kick you out, you will be in a far worse situation, believe me, so if there is any advice you should heed, it’s this: don’t get into any more trouble. I mean it, Teal. I have reached the end of my patience.”

I started to put the earphones back on.

“Just a minute, young lady. Before you withdraw into your own world as usual…” he said, and marched across my room to my phone. He unplugged it. “No more private line, and you will not be permitted to make any phone calls on the family lines or my line, understand?”

“Smoke signals still okay?”

He stared at me and for the first time, I did see something more than just impatience and disappointment. His eyes weren’t hot with anger. They were cold, deadly, fixed on me like a snake fixes on its prey. It actually put a shudder down my spine. I had to look away quickly.

“You’re not going to go on bringing this family down, Teal. Your mother has given up, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to baby you and try to convince you how you are wasting your life. Don’t push me on this,” he warned.

“I hate the school I’m in,” I whined. “It’s full of snobby girls and boys who act like they’re all God’s gift to women. I haven’t a single real friend!”

“That’s not why you’re there. You’re there to get an education, not to socialize. It’s an opportunity other girls your age don’t have, and you should make the most of it.”

“I hate it,” I insisted.

“You’re there because you couldn’t go to a public school without getting into trouble.”