Madeline blew out a breath and folded her arms. “I don’t know whether to be furious or impressed that you know how to sew.”
Sheesh. Shouldn’t have surprised her. When you’re poor, you develop a lot of skills. “Anyway,” I said, cutting her off from recounting how I’d ruined her opening night. “I’m sorry about all of the stuff. There. Are we good?”
My mother narrowed her eyes at me. Apparently we were not good.
Mrs. Tsuru sat back down in her seat and shook her head like she was contemplating how many more years she had left until retirement, and it was far too many.
“We will talk more about this later.” Mom dug through her purse, fished out her car keys, and held them out to me. “When you’re done painting, take my car to your job.”
I reluctantly took the keys. “If I have the car, how will you get home?”
“I’ll drive her,” Mr. Seibold said. “We’re going out to eat while we discuss the situation further.”
The two of them were going out to eat, like on a date? That was all sorts of wrong. “What else is there to discuss?” I asked. “We’re being punished. We’re sorry.”
Madeline put her hand to her chest. “I’m deeply regretful.”
Her father gave her a cool, disbelieving look. “The school has issued a punishment. That doesn’t mean you won’t have further consequences from your parents.” He strolled to the door and waited for my mother to join him.
“But that’s double jeopardy,” Madeline put in. “You shouldn’t prosecute someone twice for the same crime.”
He chuckled and held the door open for my mother. “Nice try. A criminal court ruling doesn’t preclude a civil court ruling, or for that matter, parental grounding.”
My mom glanced over her shoulder at me. “If I’m not homewhen you get back from work, don’t worry. Tate and I have a lot to talk about. We’ll probably be out for a while.”
And then the two of them swept out of the room.
This was bad in so many ways. My life should never intersect with Madeline’s outside of school. Not even a little.
Besides, my parents had only been divorced for three months. That was barely even all the way divorced. She shouldn’t be dating random guys from spin class.
The thing was, I could tell my dad still wanted to reconcile. Whenever he called me, he asked about her. Repeatedly.
Any way you looked at it, Mr. Seibold needed to stay out of the picture.
5
Madeline
When school ended and the bulk of the students had left, one of the school’s security guards collected Cooper and me to serve our time and pay off our debt to society. The security guard was a middle-aged man with a crew cut, potbelly, and a put-upon attitude like we’d just ruined his day. His name tag read, “William.” I doubted he went by William. He looked more like a Billy-Bob to me.
The paw prints trailed down the middle of the walkway that stretched from the football practice field to the parking lot. His security cart waited outside the front doors, the back of the cart loaded with paint supplies. He pulled out two large paint cans—one blue, one white—a couple of jars of water, a bunch of rags, a roll of tape, some paintbrushes, and a stack of paw-print stencils.
“Have either of you ever painted anything?” he asked.
“I have,” I said. “I paint scenery for school plays.”
Beside me, Cooper muttered, “Show-off.”
Uh,no. Helping with the sets was teamwork, something that Mr. Football Star ought to appreciate.
“What about you?” the security guard asked Cooper.
Cooper shrugged. “I took an art class in junior high.”
“That’s a no, then.” This was clearly one more hardship in William/Billy-Bob’s day. He demonstrated the difficult skill oflining up the stencil with the already-existing paw print, taping it in place, and painting a new blue paw print on top.
“By the time you’ve painted all the stencils in the stack I gave you, the first one should be dry. You’ll pull up that stencil and use it for the next paw print. Got it?”
