“It looks to me as if you’re smoking a joint,” Principal Woodrow said. “Which is illegal.”
“I can argue all I want and you’re not going to believe me anyway, so why bother?”
“I’ve got all the proof I need,” Principal Woodrow said firmly. “You’re suspended for five days. You need to get your act together if you want to graduate in a few months.”
“I’m passing everything,” he said.
“Barely.”
“But I am. Why do you care? You’ll pass me just to get me out of your hair. We both know it. Are we done? Can I start my suspension now?”
Principal Woodrow stared at him, then sighed. “You know, Chance, it’s not too late to turn things around.”
He shrugged, stood up, turned and left. He didn’t need another lecture from someone who didn’t give a shit about him.
He went to his locker, grabbed his books and left. Despite what the principal thought of him, he was going to do his homework for the week and not blow it off as a vacation. He’d even pick up a few extra shifts at his job.
He wanted out of this hellhole as much as they wanted him gone. That meant not falling behind.
The minute he was in his beat-up Camaro that he’d brought to life himself, he revved the engine, lifted his foot from the brake and smoked his tires, speeding out of the parking lot.
“What are you doing home?” his grandmother asked him ten minutes later.
“Got suspended for a week,” he said, throwing his books on the table in the small kitchen of their apartment.
His grandmother heaved enough air to fill her lungs. “What did you do this time?”
“Nothing more than normal. Got accused of something that wasn’t true. I’m done trying to argue my case to deaf ears.”
“Now what? Let’s go talk in the living room before I have to go to work.”
“Did you eat yet?” he asked. “I can cook you something.”
“It’s my job to cook for you,” his grandmother said.
Rhea Drummond had been taking care of him since the day he was born to her sixteen-year-old daughter. Then four years ago, his grandmother was the only person in his life.
“You wait on enough people in your job.”
His grandmother had been a waitress, bartender, and cook for her entire life. Doing whatever was requested of her in the pub she worked for.
“Fine, you can cook while you talk. What happened?” she snapped.
“Some asshole snapped a picture of me smoking lavender on the grounds. Looks like a joint, so must be a joint, right?”
“Chance! If I knew you were going to bring them to school, I wouldn’t have let you try it.”
He shrugged. “It works. I just needed to chill for the afternoon.” No way was he going to admit to his grandmother that he was feeling more anxious than normal.
He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was the looming graduation and what the hell he was going to do with his life. College sure the fuck wasn’t happening.
“I know it works. I use them all the time to help me sleep, but I can see where someone thought it was something else. I’ll go down to the school and get this taken care of tomorrow.”
“No,” he said. “It won’t make a difference and you know it.”
Maybe if it were his first offense, but they’d suspended him once a year for four years. Twice it’d been for fights. The other time, he didn’t even remember. All his trips to the principal’s office were blurring together.
“If it weren’t for the fact that you had less than two months left of high school, I’d overrule you. Can we just get through without any more incidents?”
