She turned around when she wanted to, that's why, thought Fenton. Now he was walking down the corridor that went by the auditorium. This corridor always made him nervous, because sometimes kids would cut class, and hang out in the hallways behind the music department. If you weren't paying attention and walked by too close to the folding gates that locked those hallways off from the corridor, somebody might reach through the gates and grab you.
It hadn't happened to him, but a kid Fenton knew named Curtis got grabbed once. Curtis was even smaller than Fenton. They took off his belt, pulled his pants down to the floor, then tied his arms up over his head with the belt, through the gates. When the classes changed, that's how the kids passing by in the corridor found him, near tears. It took five minutes for the music teacher to notice the laughter and yelling and come untie Curtis. Nobody else cared enough to help him, that's just what kind of school it was.
So Fenton didn't mind getting expelled. That's what Mrs. Jacobs said was going to happen, and all because he pushed Todd Sommers in class once, after letting Todd do things to him every single damn day for the whole two months since school started. She called it the final straw. "Fenton, stand up," she said. Had him get up in front of the whole class. "Fenton, remember what we talked about with your mother? Well, Fenton, this was your last chance. And instead of settling down, you continue to distract your fellow students from their work."
When his mom had come in for the parent-teacher conference, Mrs. Jacobs told her he wasn't completing his assignments. How could he, when there was stuff going on at home for him to worry about? And when kids like Todd Sommers and his friends were always messing with him? He had tried telling Mrs. Jacobs when it first started happening, when Todd asked to see his homework one morning the first week of school, real innocent like, because he said he wanted to see if Fenton had gotten all the answers. Fenton hadn't really talked to many kids yet, this was a new school, and he was shy. The first therapist he ever saw told his mother that he had anxiety issues, and he was seeing a different one now, but Fenton knew he still had the anxiety. He gave Todd his homework that morning, and Todd smiled an evil smile as he crumpled it up into a ball and wouldn't give it back.
But when Fenton told her about the homework, before class even started, Mrs. Jacobs didn't do a thing. In fact, she accused him of making up stories on account of him being lazy! She said it while laughing, telling him it would be a long school year if he insisted on concocting tall tales instead of buckling down and doing his work.
Fenton walked past the auditorium on the far side of the corridor from where the folding gates were. He looked out the big plate glass windows at the grassy area in the middle of the school. It was outside the cafeteria, and there were rocks, and a little stream that emptied into a pond. The stream seemed more like a ditch to Fenton. Since school started, he had never seen any running water in it, just green algae. It covered the pond, too. The bigger kids sat on the rocks during lunch. Todd Sommers was always on those rocks, when he wasn't sneaking into the woods to smoke cigarettes. Fenton could tell every time after lunch when he'd had one, because Todd sat right behind him in Mrs. Jacob's class, and he'd come in smelling to high heaven.
It was the middle of the afternoon, now, and nobody was on the rocks. Fenton suddenly thought about his dog. Beast the dog. He was a good dog, even if he was a mix of mutt and other things, like his mom said. Spaniel, definitely, because he was small. And Lab, and maybe Chow, Fenton had read in one of the books he took home from the library about how the Chow dogs had black tongues, like Beast's tongue was, a little. But not all Chow dogs were friendly, and Beast was. He even got along with Marzipan and Maybelle, they were two cats, and they belonged to his mother, technically, but Fenton took care of them too. It just ain't right, he thought to himself. We take care of them, and they don't give nobody no trouble. Why they gonna evict us over a couple of animals?
It had been two weeks since Fenton found the letter from their landlord on his mother's desk. It was only a few days since the landlord had sent them an official eviction notice, which his mother had broken down and cried about. Since the first letter showed up, she said her headaches had come back, and she was having trouble breathing, so she went to see her doctor to get her pills switched to a different kind. She told Fenton she was having trouble staying focused on the classes she was taking at night, and might have to drop out for that term. She was worried about how they got their rent, something called Section 8, which is what she told Fenton they qualified for, only a lot of people didn't want to rent to anybody in Section 8. I hope she's okay, thought Fenton. I hope she didn't go on a crying jag right in the middle of work, when the school called about me. Fenton remembered when she first heard from Mrs. Jacobs that he was on probation or whatever and might get expelled, how she had said she was counting on him to stay strong.
Now Fenton was walking down the last corridor leading to the front of the school, where the detention hall was, and the middle school nurse, who split an office with the school therapist, who was booked for appointments into next month before she was scheduled to see him, and the principal's office. The lockers were orange and blue and yellow, and they all looked the same. He wouldn't miss being around this place. Fenton didn't bother going into the principal's office, he sat down on one of the benches in the lobby, and stared outside at the parking lot.
Fenton supposed the eviction notice was like him getting kicked out of school. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and there was nothing he could do about it. He'd just have to hope things would be better at the next place they found. Mom said she was gonna home school me if this happened, thought Fenton. But how's she gonna have time if she's looking for another place for us? What if we can't find a place that takes animals? What's gonna happen then? What's gonna happen to Beast? Without noticing he was doing it, Fenton brought his sleeve up to his mouth and starting chewing on the cuff. Then he caught himself. I haven't done it since last year, he thought. The therapist said I was cured of doing it. But I don't care if I am. I don't care. By the time his mother's car pulled up outside, Fenton had chewed a hole right through the cloth.
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