Tools of the Devil Read online

  Lisa had her head down scouring her notes on the pituitary, adrenal, and thyroid glands for the thousandth time. She barely noticed the other kids in the room or Ms. Lye until someone in the back muttered, “Oh, shit.”

  Lisa looked up and muttered the same sentence under her breath because standing in the front of the room was Missy Matthews. She handed Ms. Lye an official looking document.

  “So, Miss Matthews, you’re transferring from third period Anatomy to second period?”

  Missy nodded.

  Ms. Lye scribbled something on the paper and said, “You’ll have to take the only open seat we have.” She pointed to the seat next to Lisa.

  Lisa groaned silently to herself, but Missy groaned out loud. “Really?” The whine in her voice was clear to all with ears. “I have to sit there?”

  “Unless you want to sit on the floor, I suggest you get moving.”

  With the hugest of sighs, Missy picked up her backpack and muttered, “I change my schedule three times, and I still can’t get away from her.”

  Lisa ignored her. If Missy wanted to be an ignorant jerk, she could do that on her own. Without waiting for Missy to be seated, Ms. Lye said, “Put your notes away and take out a pen. Following this twenty minute quiz, you’ll start reading chapter ten in your textbooks. We finally get to learn about blood.”

  “Yay,” one of the nerdy kids in the front row cheered which earned him a smile from Ms. Lye.

  Ms. Lye was tough but fair. She was somewhere in her mid-thirties. Not new, but not one of those hanging-on-until-retirement teachers either. Like Coach Spears, she was fairly easy-going until you crossed her or did something stupid like copy homework or cheat on a test, then she was all business. She always told the class she expected her students to be sincere and honest. She said she had more respect for a student who honestly earned an F over a student who cheated to get an A. That made sense.

  Lisa reached down and slid her notebook gently past her Bible. Not that she usually read the Bible at school, but being part of the youth alliance debate was keeping her on her toes. You never knew when a Bible verse would come to her, and she’d have to look it up. She and her friends had spent a lot of time over the past couple of weeks thumbing through their Bibles at the lunch table looking for scripture to use. She’d never thought in a million years she’d be reading the Bible with her friends at school, but life had a way of being weird. Especially lately.

  Lisa stared out the window onto the softball field and felt a deep yearning. Having to wait all winter to play was pure torture. Speaking of torture, she should start doing squats now, that way she’d be in better shape when gym practices started up with Marlee in February.

  “Lisa,” the kid in front of her hissed.

  Lisa looked up to see a stack of quizzes come crashing down onto her desk. Geez, she must have been lost in thought. She grabbed one for herself and handed the rest to Caroline, the girl who sat behind her. She took a deep breath to shake the cobwebs out. Maybe she shouldn’t have stayed up so late studying.

  Lisa was sailing through the quiz and was on the final question, an essay about the pancreas, when her pen slipped out of her hand and tumbled to the floor. Caroline stifled a giggle, and Lisa tried hard not to laugh at her own clumsiness. She reached down to pick up her pen, but it had rolled underneath the foot rest of the kid in front of her. She had to practically get out of her seat to retrieve it. Luckily she hadn’t lost her train of thought and went right back to her description of digestive enzymes.

  “Two more minutes,” Ms. Lye called from her desk in the front of the classroom.

  A collective, anxious groan came from just about everyone, Lisa included. Except Missy. That was weird. Maybe Missy was a super-fast writer and had already finished. Whatever. Lisa went back and finished her last few sentences about how insulin and glucagon worked to maintain a steady level of glucose in the blood.

  Lisa finished her last sentence just as Ms. Lye called time.

  “Pens down, people,” Ms. Lye said, hands on her hips. “Please make sure your names are on your quizzes and then pass them up your row to the front.”

  “How’d you do, Lisa?” Caroline asked from behind her. “Did you get your usual A plus?”

  “I thought it was pretty easy. How about you?” They chatted quietly for a few minutes until Ms. Lye directed them to open their books and silently read and take notes on their next section.

  As the day plodded along, Lisa got more and more tired. Whose idea was it to have PE at the end of the day? Oh, yeah. It was hers. She’d rather take a nap than play basketball.

  For three days in a row, Lisa had gotten changed for her PE class without incident. Missy’s ladies-in-waiting were still in the class, but they hadn’t caused a fuss or made any problems. Thank God.

  Coach Spears set them up into four ability groups for basketball, one group at each basket where they played five on five half-court games. Lisa was in the highest ability group with Julie and some of the other athletes in the school. In fact, a couple of the girls dinged her gaydar, but they weren’t that friendly to her. Jessica Myers, in particular, hadn’t passed her the ball once, even though Lisa was taller than everyone else and could probably score easily.

  Everybody in the creation of the world seemed to know that she was gay. The Missy’s of the world were both repulsed and afraid of her, and the closeted gay girls didn’t want to be near her, either. Guilt by association maybe? If you were friends with Lisa, then you must be gay. Life sucked sometimes. Thank God Julie was still her friend. And the girls on the softball team, they were still cool.

  Lisa was hard at work trying to get somebody, anybody, to pass her the ball when Coach Spears came up to their group. “Lisa, I need you here.”

  “What’s up, Coach?” Lisa left the game and wouldn’t you know it? The girl that subbed in for her was passed the ball on the very next play. Whatever. Jerks.

  “Mr. Braun wants to see you.” Coach Spears handed her a hall pass.

  “Right now?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Should I get changed?” Lisa looked down at her gym attire.

  “Nope. The note said for you to go to his office immediately. Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know, Coach. I’ll let you know.”

  Lisa shrugged at Julie’s questioning expression and hurried out of the gym and down the hall to the assistant principal’s office.

  “Lisa Brown?” Mrs. Olsen asked. She was Mr. Braun’s administrative assistant.

  “Yes.” Lisa’s nerves were amping up. Was her family okay? Did someone get hurt? Was there a car accident? She took a breath trying to stay calm, but it didn’t work.

  “Go right in.” Mrs. Olsen gestured to Mr. Braun’s door.

  Lisa knocked lightly on the door and then opened it. She was shocked to see Missy Matthews leaving. Mr. Braun smiled at Lisa and gestured for her to come in. Lisa looked from him to Missy and was as confused as ever. She couldn’t read his expression, but Missy looked smug. This was not good, but at least it meant that her family was okay. And that, at least, was good.

  “Thank you, Missy,” Mr. Braun said. “You can go back to your class. Get a hall pass from Mrs. Olsen.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Missy said demurely. Wow, she could really put it on, couldn’t she?

  Missy left without closing the door, probably so she could hear what Mr. Braun was going to say to Lisa. Thank God he stood up and closed it.

  “I got a visit from Ms. Lye earlier today,” he said.

  “Okay.” Lisa’s mind was racing at a million miles per hour. What was happening?

  “She gave a quiz in class.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll cut right to the chase. She found a cheat sheet under your desk.”

  “My desk?”

  “Yes. On the footrest. Do you know anything about this?”

  “Absolutely not, Mr. Braun. I don’t cheat.”

  “Ms. Lye said she was quite su
rprised to find it under your desk after class.”

  “It wasn’t mine,” Lisa said. “I didn’t cheat. I swear. I studied. I stayed up late to study.”

  Lisa couldn’t read the expression on his face. Principals, especially disciplinary principals like Mr. Braun, had to have good poker faces, and his was the best.

  “I pulled your grades, Lisa. Mostly B’s. Some A’s. But no A plusses. Except the one you currently have in Anatomy. Can you explain that?”

  “You think I cheated my way to an A plus?”

  “I’m not saying that, but your grades don’t support it.”

  Lisa could not believe what was happening. “I love the subject, Mr. Braun. I want to apply to go to medical school, so I spend extra time reading the textbook. It’s fascinating. Just because I do well, you think I cheat.” She felt her face getting warm. Missy. It had to be. Before Mr. Braun could say anything, Lisa added, “If the cheat sheet was on the foot rest, then it was under my seat. Under me. I don’t mean any disrespect, Mr. Braun, but how could I have seen a cheat sheet if it was underneath me?”

  “Lisa,” he said with a sigh as if he didn’t believe a word she was saying, “I’m going to have to call your parents.”

  “Why? I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is work hard. Can I at least talk to Ms. Lye?”

  “She’s asked me to handle this.”

  “How do I defend myself? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You can go back to class now.”

  “Wait. What? What did Missy say? She was the one who was probably cheating. Check out the handwriting. Is it my handwriting? That should be proof enough.”

  Mr. Braun took a deep breath and folded his arms. “Missy said that during the middle of the quiz you dropped your pen and took an extra-long time to pick it up. She noticed you looking at a piece of paper under your desk.”

  “She said what?” That bitch! “I’d have to be a contortionist to be able to read a piece of paper under my seat. Obviously she’s covering her own butt. She’s accusing me of something she’s done, so she won’t get in trouble.”

  He stood without saying a word and opened the door to his office. “You can go back to class. Get a hall pass from Mrs. Olsen.”

  Lisa put her hands out in a helpless gesture. She had obviously been dismissed. She rose up to her full five foot eleven inch height, held her head high and calmly said, “I have been falsely accused, Mr. Braun. You have to believe me.”

  He looked her right in the eye and gestured again that she should leave his office.

  Lisa groaned in frustration and went to Mrs. Olsen’s desk for the hall pass. She stormed out of the main office door and headed toward her PE class. The tears came before she’d made it half way. There was no one in the hallway, thank God, but she needed to get herself together before going back to class. She stooped down to get a drink at the water fountain. The water helped cool her rage somewhat, but not enough. It was Missy. It had to be. Missy must have slipped a cheat sheet under the desk when Lisa was daydreaming about softball. How low could a person go?

  Lisa splashed water in her face and took a couple of deep breaths. She had never been so frustrated in her life. Oh, God. Her parents. Mr. Braun was probably calling them right now. They would be so disappointed.

  Disappointed at what? A surge of anger flooded her, and she kicked the nearest locker. The sound was almost as satisfying as the jolt of pain in her toes. Too bad the locker wasn’t Missy’s head.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the LORD your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.”— Deuteronomy 31:6

  THE DAY AFTER her visit with the assistant principal, Lisa stopped at Ms. Lye’s desk on the way to her seat and tried to tell her that she hadn’t cheated. Ms. Lye wouldn’t let her finish, saying she had handed the matter over to Mr. Braun. Frustrated, the only thing Lisa could do was sit at her desk and fume. She caught Missy’s eye and shot her a silent ‘what the hell?’ glare. Missy just smiled with her eyes, sat down, and turned away.

  Evil. Missy was pure evil.

  Later that morning, Lisa’s parents came in to speak with Mr. Braun. After dinner, when Lisa’s siblings were otherwise occupied, her parents told her that the assistant principal was a tough cookie to crack, but he had at least agreed to let both Lisa and Missy take the quiz again. This time under direct supervision.

  That Friday afternoon, Lisa sat alone in the detention room during her lunch period. She was waiting for Mrs. Olsen to arrive to administer the quiz. Since Lisa didn’t want Mrs. Olsen to think she was using hidden cheat sheets, she left her backpack with Julie who would bring it with her to their common U.S. History and Government class. While she was waiting, Lisa systematically went over the endocrine system in her mind.

  Mrs. Olsen finally came in the room and went over the ground rules. Exactly twenty minutes and no longer. Pen down meant pen down. Lisa nodded and was handed the quiz that would vindicate her to the world. Well, at least to Ms. Lye and Mr. Braun. Hopefully. She twisted her mood ring for good luck.

  The quiz was different from the first, but that didn’t matter. She knew the material backward and forward. This time the essay was about the adrenal gland and its form and function. Lisa knew all about the adrenal gland since adrenaline had been racing through her body ever since she’d been called to the assistant principal’s office.

  Lisa put her pen down a full two minutes before Mrs. Olsen called time. Mrs. Olsen put Lisa’s quiz in a folder just as the bell rang to end lunch.

  “Thank you, Lisa,” Mrs. Olsen said and then smiled.

  “Thank you.” Lisa answered, but she was bewildered by the smile. Mrs. Olsen was known to be as hard-nosed as Mr. Braun.

  At the end of the school day on Friday, there was still no official word about whether Lisa was vindicated or if the cheating accusation would stand. Lisa sat quietly in the front seat of the afternoon school bus in a mood that was completely opposite the rest of the kids. Their happy-for-the-weekend voices did not penetrate her growing melancholy. Being accused of cheating could have serious repercussions. She could get suspended. She could be thrown off the softball team. She could have the promise of a college scholarship revoked. All because of an unproven and untrue accusation.

  “Lisa?”

  “Hmm?” She looked up to see kindly old Mr. Broward, the man who had driven her to and from school since she was five years old, gesturing toward the bus door.

  “This is your stop, dear.”

  The rest of the kids who got off at her stop were already heading home. She stood up quickly. She was on the verge of tears and didn’t want him to see. “Thanks, Mr. Broward. Have a good weekend.”

  “You, too, dear.”

  Despite the cold, Lisa shuffled her way home. She wanted to get her tears under control before seeing her mother and Bridget. She didn’t want to upset them. She opened the front door to the house and hung up her coat with a sigh.

  “Lisa!” Bridget said and ran toward her. Usually Lisa would scoop her little sister up and swing her around a couple of times, but she didn’t have the energy. She let Bridget slam into her legs.

  “How was your day, Bridget?”

  “Good. Me and Mama made sketti sauce.”

  “You did?” Lisa’s mood perked up. Yeah, the house did smell yummy. Her mother’s homemade marinara sauce with meatballs was one of Lisa’s favorite meals. And she’d be seeing Sam later, too, so the day was improving exponentially. Of course, when you’re at rock bottom, the only place to go was up.

  “How did it go, honey?” Her mother called from the kitchen.

  “I think I aced the quiz, Mom.” Lisa went into the kitchen and gave her mother a quick hug. “Meatballs, too?”

  Her mother nodded. “Meatballs, too.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Nothing really. I just thought we could all use a little cheering up.”

  “You do belie
ve me, Mom, don’t you?”

  Her mother put down the spatula she was holding and turned around to face Lisa. “If you tell me you didn’t cheat, then, yes, I believe you one-hundred percent.”

  “Thank you, Mom.” Lisa hugged her mother again, this time a little longer.

  When Lisa pulled back, her mother said, “Don’t forget that I need you to watch the kids after school every day next week.”

  “Oh, yeah. Marion’s going on vacation, right?”

  “To sunny Florida. I’m glad she trusts me with her customers.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever want to cut hair full time? You know, when the kids are bigger?”

  “Maybe. We have a lot of college to pay for.”

  Lisa yawned. “Mom, I’m going to my room. I’m suddenly feeling really tired.”

  “Go for it. I’ll keep Bridget occupied. Is Sam coming for dinner tonight?”

  “No. Maybe tomorrow. Marlee’s picking me up, and we’re heading to East Valley tonight. If that’s okay.”

  “Sure, sure. If I hear anything from the school, I’ll let you know.”

  One more hug later, and Lisa was in her room, shoes off, under the covers, eyes closing. She needed a break from life, and a nap was just the ticket.

  “Lisa,” her mother called gently.

  “Hmm?” Lisa sat up and wiped the sleepy dirt out of her eyes. Her room was pitch dark. “How long did I sleep?”

  “Well,” Lisa’s mother said, “Marlee’s here to pick you up.”

  “What?” Lisa sat up and blinked her eyes open. She was still tired. “How did you keep the kids quiet?”

  Her mother laughed. “We played the quiet game.”

  “That worked?”

  Her mother nodded. “I think they know you’ve been going through some, er, stuff, and wanted to help you.”

  “That’s sweet. Did you invite Marlee in?”