Page 17 of Lost
Mr. Bailey was silent as he marched Lysander down the sticky hall, straight towards the principal’s office. He should have expected that, he supposed. But if the school was happy to turn a blind eye to Jack being hassled since Freshman year, what was the worst that could happen? A slap on the wrist? Saturday detention? It was practically laughable. With consequences like those, it was no wonder Jack was having a hard time. Lysander snorted. Maybe he owed the same treatment to the rest of them.
The thought should have scared him, but it didn’t. Mom would have been furious if she’d known.
Don’t think about that.
“Wait here,” Mr. Bailey said, waving a hand in the general direction of a bench pressed against the white painted wall. He slipped into the principal’s office without waiting to see if Lysander complied.
Lysander leaned against the wall and examined the photographs that hung across from him, black and white group shots of students who had graduated before him. He wondered briefly if his father was in any of them. What extracurriculars did rockstars take in high school? Marching band? Choir? There was no time to look, however, as Mr. Bailey returned to the hallway and waved him on into the room.
The principal didn’t look up from his paperwork as Lysander approached, but he did motion with his hand what Lysander took to meanhave a seat. He did just that, sitting in one of the two chairs positioned in front of the man’s desk, and set his bag down by his feet. The gentle ticking of a clock filled the silence.
A plaque on the desk declared the man to be Principal James Randall. He was getting on in years, his hair greying and his hands unsteady as they went on filling out paperwork. He squinted at his own writing, despite the fact that he was wearing thick glasses. He seemed harmless.
“Mr. Bailey tells me that you hit one of your fellow classmates,” Principal Randall said eventually, though his attention remained focused on the desk. “May I ask why?”
“Because, sir.” Better to be police, he reasoned. His mother would have expected no less. “He was insulting my friend because of his sexual preference.”
That got the principal to look up. He set his pen aside and clasped his hands together, his full attention suddenly on the boy in front of him. Lysander straightened. His gaze met the principal’s squarely.
“Mr. Maverick, isn’t it?” The man riffled through a small stack of papers to his right. When he came to the one he wanted, he set it out in front of himself and scanned it quickly. “Zachary Bennett’s boy?”
“Yes, sir. That would be me.”
“Mr. Maverick.” Principal Randall removed his glasses and tucked them neatly into his front pocket. “I don’t know how things worked at your old school, but here at Mapleton Beach High we have a no violence policy. No matter how noble your reasons may have been, it will absolutely not be tolerated.”
Lysander had to bite his tongue to keep from responding with a remark about how verbal abuse was just as bad — if notworse— than punching someone. Jeffery Hallon would recover from having his nose broken, but could Jack recover from years of bullying? Principal Randall may have looked harmless, but he also looked like a smart man. Surely he already knew.
“I understand, sir,” he said instead.
“Did it not occur to you to try raising your hand and reporting this incident to your teacher?”
What good would that have done?Lysander knew what the outcome would have been. Jeffery and his friends might have earned themselves a lecture in the classroom, and they would have taken their anger out during lunch period.
Principal Randall didn’t wait for his answers. “Ordinarily,” he said, “the parents of all involved parties would be contacted about this.”
Lysander froze. Of course the school would call his father. Especially if Lysander got himselfexpelledover this. A sense of dread developed in his stomach at the thought. He should have realised. What would Zack think of Lysander now? Would he still see a son that needed his help, or would he see a trouble-making teen?
He didn’t care what anybody else thought of him, but his father’s opinion mattered. He and Zack were just getting to know each other; he didn’t want their relationship to be strained over something so trivial, and so soon. Especially not when he still needed the man’s help. Dakota was depending on him.
“Please, sir,” he said, “it was only a misunderstanding. You don’t need to call any parents.”
“It says here that your mother recently passed away. Is that true?”
Lysander was so thrown by the question that he didn’t immediately respond.
Apparently he didn’t need to. Principal Randall gave him a sympathetic look. “I wonder, Mr. Maverick, if that has anything to do with your actions? I can arrange for you to speak with somebody if you feel that it’s an issue. After all, your prior school records indicate that you were a well-natured student, good grades and not a black mark against you.”
A counsellor. That was what he was talking about. Lysander had spoken to a number of them in the days after his mother’s death, and he had no desire to speak to another. He shook his head.
“I don’t need to speak with anybody. It was an act of defence that I felt needed to be executed. It won’t happen again.”
The principal studied him for several moments before nodding.
“See to it that it doesn’t, Mr. Maverick. Because if it does, Iwillhave to inform your father. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Principal Randall nodded. “You may go.”
