UnCatholic Conduct Page 10

  Teegan’s nostrils flared, and she stood there for a full minute, staring Jil down. “I might hate Pathways, but I hated foster care a hell of a lot more. I don’t want to be kicked out.”

  Jil held her gaze, not flinching.

  Finally, Teegan exhaled angrily and yanked her backpack open, almost breaking the zipper. Out spilled a maroon sweatshirt, musty with cigarette smoke, a half-eaten sandwich in a Ziploc bag, two binders, a pencil case, a pair of black mitts, a baggie full of cigarettes, four different lighters, rolling paper, and half a gram of marijuana.

  Jil picked up the pot and the rolling paper and wordlessly laid them on the table behind her. She looked back at Teegan, who stood staring at the floor, her cheeks red.

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Go on then. I’ll probably see so many backpacks today that I’ll forget whose this came from.”

  Teegan looked up, a faint glimmer of hope pricking her eyes.

  “No more drugs,” Jil growled. “They’re bad for your brain.”

  “Yeah, but they’re good for my mood,” Teegan whispered back. She grabbed her backpack and stormed out.

  Jess looked up, saw who the student was, and rolled her eyes, but she was already on to the next student.

  Clean hands, clear bag.

  “Next.”

  Nothing.

  Jil and Jess both arrived in the middle of the group of students at the same time. Gideon looked up at her and grinned. “Hi, Miss.”

  “Hi.” She looked at his hands, his arms, and the hands and arms of the gaggle of grade seven students surrounding him. They were all covered in paint from fingers to elbows. The drama teacher, Mr. Phelps, was fruitlessly directing them to keep their hands straight out and not to get any smudges on the cafeteria tables.

  “What are you painting?” Jess asked.

  “The barn and forest for Once Upon a Time,” Mr. Phelps replied. “Why?”

  “Because all of your students are covered in red paint,” Jess said grimly.

  “It comes off. I wouldn’t let them use something that would damage their clothes.”

  Jess sighed. “Go have them wash up and come back.”

  Before Jil could even ask Jess what she planned to do next, a loud, grating buzz sounded. The fire alarm. Insistent humming hammered through the walls of the cafeteria, which, incidentally, had the best acoustics in the entire school.

  Jess swore under her breath and jumped up. “Outside, everyone,” she ordered, opening the doors wide and ushering the students through. “Straight out into the quad. Go, go, go.”

  Jil pried open the other set of doors and beckoned the students through. They sighed and got to their feet, shuffling out slowly. Jil grabbed her coat and hat and followed them out. “Good thing I held on to these,” she said cheerfully.

  Jess just shot her a dark look and stepped outside without benefit of either boots or coat. “This has to stop,” she said seriously.

  “Agreed.”

  But they had nothing left to say when, upon returning inside, they found another message scrawled on the office door.

  WHOSOEVER HATETH HIS BROTHER IS A MURDERER

  Chapter Nine

  The tone of the messages had everyone on edge, especially Jess. In the wake of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and every other incident of school violence that had occurred in the last ten years, Jessica Blake wasn’t taking any chances. She called a meeting of the parent council, the administration, and Superintendent Giovanni DiTullio.

  The last thing anyone wanted was the blame after the incident: If only we’d done more beforehand…Cameras and a lockdown system seemed like a small price to pay for the absolution they’d need after the fact. They gave her the money she requested, almost without comment.

  The next week, a lockdown alarm system was on order, cameras had been increased three fold, and students were required to keep all personal effects in lockers.

  “Put your bags in your lockers. Don’t bring them to class,” was the phrase overheard hundreds of times a day. Students grumbled and groaned, not used to stashing their belongings and trying to balance two classes’ worth of books, binders, pens, and other items with them every day. “Miss, my locker’s all the way in G400,” her students complained daily. “I don’t have time to get there.”

  “Get to school earlier,” Jil said flatly. She had no sympathy for this particular issue. She didn’t think kids should have been able to bring their bags into class in the first place. Too many risks. Bombs. Guns. Knives. Explosive powders. Drugs. Forget it.

  “Go get rid of your bags and bring me a late slip,” she said. After four days of that routine, no one brought their book bags to her class anymore. She didn’t want to waste any more time with this crap. It was halfway through October, and rather than getting any closer to finishing her investigation, she’d developed nothing but complications. The only person she spent any time with was Buck Weekly, and if he were any purer, he could have scribed for Jesus himself. That didn’t mean he still didn’t give her the creeps, though.

  “When are the metal detectors coming?” Jil joked as she met Jess in the hallway.

  Jess barely slowed her walk. “By the end of November, if we’re lucky. You’d think we were in Harlem, for God’s sake, not Rockford.”

  “Better safe,” Jil said, walking with her en route to the library. She was a little surprised at how seriously these taggings were being taken.

  “It’s not just that,” Jess replied to her unspoken thought. “It’s that whole incident with Alyssa. Scared people—parents especially. I don’t know how many phone calls we’ve had this year from parents wondering what we’re doing to ‘protect our students.’ They feel better with things. Cameras. Increased security. I’ve even had to hire another guidance counselor, which makes four for a school of thirteen hundred. That’s a lot. We’re doing anti-suicide workshops next semester. I mean, students used to come to school for education. Now they’re coming for everything but, it seems. Teachers don’t even spend their time teaching half the day!”

  “I know what you mean.”

  Jess looked at her—the look that made Jil feel like she could see right through her. “Why do I get the feeling I don’t know half of what’s going on in my own school?” she asked, stopping at the doors to the library. Her eyes probed Jil, and Jil could feel every inch of skin on her arm—the arm that was almost, but not quite, touching…

  “Because you probably don’t,” she replied, trying to keep her voice steady. Which wasn’t easy when Jess was this close. Too close. “How can you? Every year, you get hundreds of strangers walking through the doors and into your classrooms. It’s not like they get an interview.”

  “I don’t even know half the staff here,” Jess replied impatiently. “They’re transferred based on seniority from other schools, or recommended to me from other principals. I must admit, this is the first year I’ve been handed a staff member from the superintendent.”

  Jil chuckled.

  “What did you do before you were a teacher?” Jess asked, as if it had just occurred to her that Jil had had a life before St. Marguerite’s.

  “That’s the kind of thing you’ll want to ask your staff in an interview next time.” Jil winked. It relieved the tension. Popped the bubble.

  Jess smiled wanly. “Thanks for the tip. Believe me, if I got to handpick all my staff myself, I would. Sometimes you just take what comes. No regrets though.” She touched Jil’s wrist lightly and turned away.

  Jil watched her walk away, her attention drawn to the way one of her hips rose higher than the other. She just had time to wonder if Jess was actually limping when a group of students traveled past, obscuring her line of sight.

  Back to the staff room to collect more gossip. This investigation seemed even more ridiculous than before. Except for the fact that Padraig had called last night and reported that Giovanni DiTullio’s most recent check had paid for the back-rent that was due on their bui
lding. For the past four months.

  She took out her notebook and scribbled in her own cryptic shorthand.

  K.N. has purchased a new home in South River. Whose salary is paying for that? Divorced last spring. No new wedding ring.

  R. J. Has a membership to Adult Only Video Store XXX. Frequent flyer.

  O. P.—Gay.

  G.B.—Also gay.

  T.T. is 29 years old and has a 13-year-old girl. Married at 16?

  As she looked at her master chart, Jil realized that inside two months, she’d gleaned information on nearly half the staff members, and she’d only actually followed three of them home. She might get out of St. Marguerite’s faster than December if she kept this up.

  That afternoon, she drove to O’Hanagan’s, traded in her loaner X-Trail for a black Jimmy, and programmed the next address into her GPS. William Follett. Math teacher. No one at school seemed to know him too well, and in the three weeks she’d been trying to dig up dirt on him, nothing had come up. No online social media accounts and no close friends at school. He was married with two kids and had a dog. That was all anyone really knew. But before she gave him a tick for Catholic conduct, she needed to do a home visit.

  At dusk, she pulled into the quiet residential neighborhood where Mr. Follett lived and parked on the side of the road near his house. She turned off her lights, got out her monocular, and settled in with a thermos of coffee and some peanut butter crackers. Luckily for her, no one had thought to close the curtains yet. She lowered herself in her seat, even though the front windows of the truck were tinted.

  There was no car in the Folletts’s driveway. But the lights were on, and from the street, Jil had a clear view of the kitchen. She thought she saw William moving around in there, so she peered through her monocular.

  “You guys might think about closing the curtains if you’re going to go around half-dressed,” she muttered to herself. “A little quickie after the kiddies are in bed?”

  Suddenly, William seemed to realize he was in sight of the neighborhood, because he yanked the curtains shut.

  “Shit,” Jil muttered.

  She was just packing up to go when a woman exited William’s house. It wasn’t what she was wearing that caught Jil’s attention as much as what she wasn’t wearing. No nylons, socks, or tights—though the weather was getting cooler now. She wore three-inch platform heels, a ripped mini-skirt that had a slit right up to the hip, and a belly-top that displayed a gaudy gold navel ring. Her hair was bleached and looked like it had been cut with a hacksaw, and her cleavage practically spilled out of her top.

  “I don’t think that’s Mrs. Follett.” Jil lowered herself even further as the woman passed right by her parked Jimmy and got into the beat-up blue Honda behind her.

  Fifteen minutes later, a van pulled into the driveway. Two kids leaped out, running up the footpath in matching martial arts uniforms. The driver put the van in the garage.

  “That is Mrs. Follett.”

  Jil took out her notebook and found today’s date. W.F., she shorthanded, Adultery.

  With that, she closed her notebook and drove away.

  By Friday morning, the students were beginning to show some interest in Buddhism.

  “Miss, do you think that people can be Enlightened for real?” asked Joey, her shining face half-hidden by her bleached-blond hair. Impatiently, she pushed it behind her ears, searching once again for the hair band she had lost. Jil was growing used to answering questions for students who were clearly distracted by other things: love, crushes, lost lunch money, forgotten locker codes…life.

  “Buddha seemed to have achieved it,” she replied, flipping on an overhead. On it, there was a Buddha seated beneath a tree.

  “Yeah, but Buddha was Buddhist,” Joey insisted. We’re Catholic. Can Catholics be Enlightened?”

  “No, yo!” Kyle interrupted. “You’ve gotta like—convert—to Budda-ism. Then you can be Enlightened.”

  Wiley stretched languidly in his front row seat, his purple hoodie riding up just enough to show the rest of his boxer shorts that weren’t visible from the back. “Catholics can be Enlightened,” he said as he yawned. “Enlightenment means finding God. Catholics already found God. He came to Earth, remember? Jesus?”

  “It’s not the same,” Theo insisted. “That was the real God. Buddhists are Pagan. Enlightenment is not the same as finding Jesus. It’s false worship. Jesus and God are the only way to heaven. Do you think Buddhists are going to heaven? No way.”

  “Maybe heaven is a myth,” Jil said, and the class all looked at her. She still wasn’t getting used to that—how much weight her words held as a teacher. “Different from sect to sect. Catholics visualize it as an eternal glorious afterlife. Buddhists view it as Enlightenment, and knowledge for the next incarnation. Pagans think of it as the Summerland—a place to rest. Heaven existed long before Christianity did. Even the Vikings believed in Valhalla.”

  “So, what, Miss, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, you still get to go to heaven? You can be a total heathen, and it doesn’t matter?”

  “That depends on your definition of heaven, Theo,” Jil answered calmly. “Is your heaven exclusive? Who wouldn’t be let in?”

  “All the sinners,” Theo answered promptly. “Sinners aren’t going to heaven. They go to hell.”

  “Who do you think of as sinners?” Jil asked. She knew she was approaching dangerous territory, but she didn’t stop.

  “Well, you know…people who live their lives wrong. People who don’t abide by the Ten Commandments.”

  “Like murderers?” Joey piped up.

  “Yeah, and hookers—unless they repent and are forgiven. Anyone who doesn’t believe in God. Anyone who isn’t Christian. Terrorists. Rapists. Thieves. And gays, too.”

  “Being gay is against a Commandment?” Jil asked, feigning surprise. “I don’t recall any Commandment that says ‘Thou shalt be straight.’”

  Theo’s face tightened. “Everyone knows gays go to hell, Miss,” he said. “It’s in the Bible.”

  Jil knew she should end this discussion. It wasn’t going to get her anywhere. The students around her fell silent, watching the exchange, wondering who would get the upper hand. Usually teachers argued for Scripture and students against. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.

  “Where?” Jil said instead. She couldn’t help it.

  Theo’s jaw tightened further. “Homosexuality is an abomination,” he said, pronouncing each syllable carefully. “It goes against the laws of nature.”

  “So does wearing polyester, according to the passage you’re quoting,” Jil returned easily.

  A long minute passed. Jil held Theo’s intent gaze. He didn’t back down well, but eventually, her status and seniority seemed to wear him out, and he glanced away, clenching and unclenching his fist.

  “Jesus lunched with lepers and tax collectors, did he not?” Jil asked in a low voice. “Who thinks he also had lunch with homosexuals?”

  Every hand in the room went up, except for Theo. Bex purposely did not look back, but bit her lip and kept her hand up.

  “Yes, Bex?” Jil asked.

  “Jesus associated with everyone,” she said clearly. “He associated with all sinners. But it doesn’t say anything about him having lunch with homosexuals…” she paused and took a deep breath, staring straight ahead at Jil as she spoke, “because gays weren’t sinners. A long time ago, like in Roman times, gay people were just part of the community. The intolerance came later. When the communities were suffering and they needed everyone to reproduce. Then they decided that being gay was a sin—because back then there wasn’t fertility treatment, and two men or two women couldn’t have babies.”

  “Interesting,” Jil murmured. “Bex wants to challenge Scripture because she believes it was written with an ulterior motive. Is that possible?”

  “Of course,” said Brianna, a usually quiet girl who must have had an IQ of 180, but rarely chose to open her mouth. “There’s
absolutely nothing written purely from God’s mouth.”

  “Cynics, are we?” Jil teased her. “Nothing at all?”

  “The Bible is the word of God!” Theo thundered, surprising everyone. He jumped to his feet, knocking over his empty chair. Joey ducked, and Bex’s face went white as he tramped down the aisle. “You’re all blasphemers!”

  The door slammed.

  Jil raised her eyebrows. “Guess he doesn’t like a little friendly debate,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “He takes religion pretty seriously, Miss,” Joey whispered. “I think he wants to be like, a priest or something.”

  “I’ve never met a priest who was that staunch in his beliefs,” Jil said flatly. “Usually people who are deeply spiritual are also deeply contemplative.” She received blank looks. “Willing to consider multiple points of view and examine an issue from all sides to see if there might be some truth to it.”

  Bex raised her hand at the back. “Are gays going to hell?” she asked bluntly.

  “I doubt it,” Jil responded dryly. “If they are, then so is everyone else.”

  Soon after, the bell went, and a sober lot of students gathered up their textbooks and headed to lunch.

  “Bex?” Jil said as the girl passed her desk. Bex slowed down. “Are you really worried about going to hell?”

  Bex looked startled, then nervously fingered her necklace. “Guess not,” she said, staring at the floor.

  “Bex, do you want to—”

  “What? Talk about the joy of being a lesbian in a Catholic school? Yeah, Miss, it’s a blast. Totally accepting community we’ve got here.”

  Jil grimaced. “That’s kind of what I was asking.”

  Bex smiled wryly, looking a little apologetic. “Sorry,” she said. “I just feel like everyone’s looking at me all the time. It’ll be even worse after today’s class. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth. I’ll really get shit now.”

  “From who?”

  “I dunno.”