When You Believe Page 5

  IN MAYHEM CENTRAL, the copier was acting up. Patrice Saunders stood leafing through the Xerox instruction booklet while some unknown staff member—unrecognizable from the body parts that protruded from the midsection of the machine—yanked wads of paper from its path of rubber rollers. Some sophomore with a bloody rag under his nose stood dripping on the floor while the secretary, Marie Jones, went in search of Mo. At Marie’s station, the telephone was ringing and three holding lines flashed off and on at the same time.

  Lydia returned the Tatum form to its place. As she did, she was the first to notice a woman standing at the counter, her fingers in a prim, tight weave, leaning on her elbows.

  When Lydia turned back to her files, the woman rang the bell for help. Lydia glanced over a shoulder toward Marie’s chair, a little disgruntled because no one else would step up. “Hello,” the woman said to Lydia’s shoulder blades, her voice as thin as a ribbon. “I just need to pick up my daughter’s homework. I’m Tamara Olin.”

  The metal drawer trundled all the way open of its own accord. Lydia got ahold of the handle and clanged it shut. “You’re Shelby Tatum’s mother?”

  In a warm, embarrassed voice the woman said, “I know I should have called earlier to excuse her.”

  “We’ve been trying to reach you all day.”

  “Oh, you know.” The woman waved it away as if she was shooing a fly. “It’s been one of those crazy mornings.”

  Just then, several cheerleaders came charging in. One of the most anticipated events for Shadrach homecoming was the annual powder-puff football game. In a turn of roles each year, the eleventh- and twelfth-grade girls played against each other in a gridiron match-up while the boys rooted them on from the sidelines. This year a group of senior boys had offered to dress up as cheerleaders and do stunts. The kids had been whispering about it for weeks.

  The girls were excited. “Is Kevin here yet? They said they were sending somebody from yearbook.”

  “Why is somebody from yearbook coming?” Lydia asked.

  “Didn’t you hear?” At last, Marie returned with Mo and a first-aid bag in tow. “L.R. caught wind that the boys have decided to dress up in skirts. He’s making all of them come in today to have their outfits approved.”

  “Right now?”

  “He won’t let them dress that way unless the school board says yes.”

  “Do you have homework for Shelby Tatum?” Lydia asked Marie.

  “Right here.” The wire baskets were stacked as high as a St. Louis skyscraper. Marie pointed to the top tier. “If anybody put stuff together for her, it would be there.”

  Lydia thumbed through. Sure enough, she found a folder with Shelby’s name scribbled on it. She opened to the first page and saw that Mrs. Brubaker had slipped a note and an assignment inside. Mr. Newkirk had added a reading list for French II. Lydia closed it, handed it over.

  But Mrs. Olin didn’t quite get a grip on the folder. Papers fell out and scattered everywhere. “Oh, so sorry.” Mrs. Olin shook her head in frustration and began scraping everything across the counter toward her. “I’ll get this.”

  Lydia remembered her grandma saying once, “There’s no reason having a double-duck fit, saying things you don’t want to say. A conversation doesn’t please you, you just don’t have it.” She touched the strap of the woman’s wristwatch; there was a long, poignant meeting of eyes.

  “I’d like to discuss something with you.”

  The woman’s eyes moved to the countertop again. “Oh, sorry I dropped all of this.” She finally had the papers organized, almost in a stack. That’s when Lydia noticed the top corner of one page sticking out, a note with Shelby’s name on it, scribbled in Charlie’s hasty, heavy hand.

  “I just—” Lydia reached for it.

  “Oh, no. No.” Tamara Olin picked Shelby’s assignments up and tamped them on the counter. “I’m the one who scattered these all over the place.” Unceremoniously, she slid them back inside the folder for safekeeping and tucked the folder under one arm.

  “If I could just—” Lydia’s fingers stopped in mid-air. The familiar shape and form of Charlie’s script, the slanted, slender forcefulness of the S, the h a pointed tent as distinct and identifiable as a thumbprint.

  Oh my word, Charlie. What are you doing?

  Just then the door flung open; the hooting and catcalls rang out. In traipsed an entire roster of senior boys, raucous and free in their status—It’s almost over, we’ve almost survived Shadrach and are escaping soon to taste the rest of the world—ready to display their outrageous attire to L. R. Nibarger, the principal.

  Nibarger had put the word out that in no uncertain terms were the actions of the students to detract from, as he put it, “the diligent pride and upstanding character of those who have attended this institution before us, and the strong sensibilities of the community of Shadrach that has given us so much support over the decades.” These boys looked to be doing everything they could to push the envelope. Will Devine entered carrying his aunt’s Hawaiian muumuu. Ian McNeil had his outfit—an embroidered peasant blouse that, Patrice Saunders had told them, came from Natalie Stokes’s rummage sale—on a hanger in a plastic bag from Run O’ The Mill Dry Cleaners.

  Yearbook photographer Kevin Champa crouched low with a Pentax screwed to his eye. A burst of light from the camera’s flash, and Lydia knew she couldn’t let Tamara go without mentioning something about Shelby. One carefully worded phrase. Something.

  “I talked to Shelby just yesterday.”

  You did? she expected Tamara would say. Or, Oh yes, she told me.

  But, “I’ve wanted her to talk to you,” the woman said, smiling, and Lydia’s throat closed with disbelief. “I’ve been encouraging her.”

  “You have?”

  “Of course I have. She’s going to have so many opportunities when the time comes. If Missouri and Ol’ Miss both offer her the scholarships we’re expecting, I don’t know what she’s going to do.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “If it wasn’t against the rules, she would already have been hearing from coaches by now. She’s going to have a very difficult—”

  “Okay, Leavitt.” Nibarger made a small notation on an index card he’d pulled from his rear pocket. “The skirt is fine.”

  “This conversation wasn’t about college. It was a little more serious than that.” Lydia moved a vase of wilted mums an inch to the left; it had been sitting there in the same spot for at least two weeks. “Perhaps we should sit down somewhere. Maybe we could visit about this.”

  “Visit about what? Did she say she has some kind of problem? Shelby doesn’t have any problems.” The words suddenly high-pitched and tumbling. “And besides, you know how it is. You can’t always believe everything a teenager says. You know how teenage girls are sometimes.” A careful shrug. “You know you can’t take adolescent drama—”

  “No.” Nibarger gestured wildly toward Tommy Ballard as the entire counseling staff, excluding Lydia Porter, applauded. “No, not that. You may not wear a coconut brassiere.” He pronounced it as if the very word was distasteful to him. Bra-zeeeer. He held out his hand. “In fact, why don’t I just confiscate that right now?”

  Tommy handed it over with obvious pride, two halves of coconut shell bound at strategic junctures with twine.

  Strange how humans are, Lydia thought. When Mrs. Olin said not to take Shelby seriously, Lydia began to take her even more so.

  “Do you talk to your daughter, Mrs. Olin?”

  “Oh, we talk all the time. We’re very close, especially since I married Tom. She’s so happy now.” The woman was passionate in her sincerity. “When I was married to Shelby’s father, our lives were insane. He spent money like it was growing on trees. Do you know that his mother wanted to pick the names of our children?” Tamara ran on and on. “Since I met Tom, I don’t think I could ever have another life. Gosh, Tom just loves Shelby. Like his own daughter, he says. He wouldn’t miss a soccer game if his life depended on it.�
��

  It was an old counseling joke and it popped right into Lydia’s head. Denial, counselors always laughed. It ain’t just a river in Egypt. This woman rattled on and on as if someone had dropped a quarter in her slot.

  “Last Mother’s Day, she made me certificates. Good for one foot rub before you go to bed. Good for one manicure. Good for one car wash. Now who would have known how she’d come up with something like that? She helps with vacation Bible school at Big Tree, and those kids sit in her lap; they tumble all over her like puppies. Drives her crazy but don’t let her convince you she doesn’t like it. Shelby’s a drama queen sometimes, but you couldn’t ask for better. I tell you, she’s one person I know who’s got the world by the tail.”

  Sam Leavitt joined them then, pulling his mother’s skirt around his pelvis, working it off past the basketball shorts that he wore underneath.

  “Hey, Miss P. Hey, Missus Olin, where’s Shelby? I ordered her this big red flower for homecoming and I’ve got to tell her to find something to wear that’ll match it.”

  Maybe the note Lydia had seen, with Shelby’s name scrawled in Charlie’s handwriting, had been only a class assignment. Maybe it was only that. Lydia’s heart seemed to lift up out of itself with the indecision, as if it was weightless, pushing up against her chest.

  Could this woman’s house be on fire and she doesn’t see it?

  Could it be the stepfather maybe? Tom, she’d said. Gosh, Tom just loves Shelby. Like his own daughter, he says.

  If she won’t listen to me, she isn’t listening to Shelby.

  Nobody’s listening to Shelby. Not even me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lydia walked the hallway back to her office in a daze during fifth period, her peripheral vision spinning gray around her. In a building she knew so well that she could have found her way blindfolded, she made a wrong turn up A-hall.

  She backtracked, angry at herself for being so distracted. She found Carol Hawkes, the other guidance counselor, on the opposite side of the college catalog bookshelves. “Carol? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “I need help.”

  “So, what else is new?” But Carol’s voice sobered when Lydia didn’t laugh. “Help with something professional? You’d better tell me.”

  So much going on in her heart, and Lydia knew she had to remain sophisticated about this. “A student came into my office late yesterday and she…” This wasn’t the first time something had happened like this, even in Shadrach. She knew what to do. She had to present the idea as formally and as professionally as if the perpetrator wasn’t someone she cared about.

  “What?”

  “This student told me that she has been sexually abused by someone.”

  Carol laid down the college catalog she’d been riffling through.

  “This someone, Carol. It’s… it’s somebody in the school.”

  “Well, of course she is. The student—”

  “No,” Lydia said pointedly. “That isn’t what I mean. Not only the student.”

  “What?” And then, “Oh, my word.” The conversation stopped there, hung between them like a pendulum ready to swing.

  “I need you to help me.”

  “Well, of course I will. I’ll do anything. But—”

  This idea had been growing in Lydia’s mind ever since she’d heard Tamara Olin speaking about her family. Like an animal caught in a snare, it was impossible for her to move one way or another. “Will you do it for me, Carol?”

  Carol stared at her. “What?”

  “Will you make the report to Nibarger?”

  Carol shook her head. “Don’t ask me to do that. You know how important it is for you to be there. You’re the one required by the district to do it.”

  “I could help you with the paperwork. I just… you could tell him that it’s somebody I don’t—”

  “You remember what happened in the Richard Janke case. Those teachers were charged with negligence because they didn’t go to the state. You’re the one they’ll want when the Department of Health and Human Services comes along. There will be plainclothesmen, too, and they’re going to have all their questions.”

  “Does it matter who reports it as long as it gets reported? You could do it, Carol. It would be so simple.”

  “They’ll want specifics of what she said. Uncontaminated evidence from the student. There isn’t anybody who can do that now except for you.”

  No, Father. I can’t do this. Please.

  “You’re the one she trusted to talk to in the first place. You’ve done it before, and the police are going to expect it from you again, Lydia. You’ve got to remind her that she’s safe. Encourage her.”

  “Carol, if you’d consider it—”

  “I won’t consider it. I don’t know why you’re even asking.”

  Charlie pressing her against him, drawing her close until her spine curved against the shape of him like the curve of a barrel stave.

  Charlie, whose love polished her life the way his hands polished jack-oak and hickory—honing, refining, coaxing out the shine.

  All this time, and Carol must have been studying the play of emotions on her face. “This person the girl is accusing, Lydia. You’re acting as if it is one of our friends.”

  Lydia didn’t say anything else. Now there was a stupid statement, and they both knew it.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Carol asked.

  Everybody was friends with everybody else in the halls of Shadrach High, especially since they’d all settled down about Charlie Stains moving home.

  LYDIA WAS TRAPPED. Caught fast. As obligated to care for Shelby as she was to care for Charlie. Add to that, she hadn’t found a way to get out of driving with him to pick up his newly purchased boat.

  It isn’t just any girl I would trust to drive my truck, he’d said.

  And so, with a heavy heart, she didn’t back out of her promise.

  Big Tree Baptist Church, perhaps the most visible and noted landmark in St. Clair County, sat like a white wedding-cake top along the ridge of Elbow Knob.

  Out by the road, down the hill a little ways, the sign said VICTORY BAPTIST CHURCH. But the summer Addy Michael had gotten saved, she’d started bringing her three rambunctious boys along. Her youngest one—three-year-old Henry—couldn’t say “Victory” very well. Oh, big tree in Je-sus, my savior forever, Henry would sing at the top of his lungs. He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blo-oo-od.

  “Well, that works,” the pastor’s wife, Emma, had said. “Jesus died on the cross, and it was a big tree.” That, plus all those white oaks and old cedars, honey locusts and chestnuts that God made to blanket Shadrach’s hardwood slopes, had sealed it. No matter what the sign said out front, the place had been known as Big Tree Baptist ever since.

  When Lydia drove into the church parking lot in Charlie’s truck, they only had thirty minutes or so to pick up his auction boat.

  The slim craft sat on the lawn out front, gleaming like a missile in its trailer, tipped stern-down and prow-up. It looked like a bullfrog ready to leap.

  “I’ll go in and pay them,” he said, his voice grim after their earlier conversation. Then, pointedly: “I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m getting away with something.”

  Lydia wasn’t listening to him. She sat with her fingers in a light curl around the wheel, touching the stitched leather as if to remind herself that it was there, the same way she touched the possibility that Shelby could be telling the truth.

  His truck door creaked as he threw it open.

  She didn’t want to climb out and follow him. She wanted to stay inside his truck holding her breath. She wanted this precipice, this falling-off place in her heart, to go away. She wanted everything to stay the same.

  Charlie didn’t look back at her. He slid out and walked to the boat. He ran his hand along the resin, searching for scratches and chips near the rivets. He found several. Every time he found one he stopped, rubbed hard with his thum
b, trying to rub away the damage.

  “I had such big plans,” he said, his voice brimming with bitterness. “I was going to take your dad out, show him the way we sail in Missouri. Forget the wind. I was going to let a big-mouthed bass take hold and pull us along.”

  “My father already knows how to do that. Uncle Cy taught him.” Reluctantly, Lydia edged out of the seat and slid past the running boards to the ground. “Charlie—”

  “Was looking forward to getting the name painted on the boat.” He talked as if his whole life had ended, now that he understood what Shelby was accusing him of. “Was going to get the lettering done in blue and gold, by a professional at Shadrach Signs.”

  “Charlie—” She came up behind him, her arms at her sides, her mouth feeling like she’d swallowed a cotton boll. “What did you do with your kids today?”

  He was traipsing around the bow of the vessel he’d named Charlie’s Pride, his footsteps digging deep into the gravel. “I couldn’t wait to moor her at the new dock at Viney Creek. The new Porter dock.” He turned, stopped. It must have taken that long for her question to sink in. “What do you mean, what did I do with my kids?”

  “In class.”

  He shrugged, furrowed his brows at her. “What we always do in class. Build things.”

  She asked this next thing as lightly as a butterfly descends and settles, barely landing, fluttering away again. She hated herself for checking up on him this way. She couldn’t stop thinking about the note to Shelby she’d caught a glimpse of. “Any homework this week?”

  “No.” A frown. “Why?

  “Do you ever assign any homework when the kids miss class?”

  Say yes, Charlie. Yes. Say that, just for Shelby, you sent something today.

  “When we study joinery. I’ll assign homework for everybody then. They’ll go out to search for basic joints.”

  “That’s the only time you’d send an assignment home? Joinery?”

  “Tongue and groove joints. Bevel joints. Dovetails and miters and lap joints. They’ll drive everyone crazy, looking. We’re doing finishes now. Smoothing with sandpaper and steel wool. Applying waxes, oils, stains—”