1000 Paper Cranes

Chapter 24 - 489

"Jordan, can you come in here, please?" My mom called from the kitchen. She was using her disappointed voice. I hated the disappointed voice.

As I walked downstairs, I pondered all of the things my mom could be disappointed over. They weren't mad about my breach of curfew, surprisingly. They had been forgiving since I had never broken the rules before. When I rounded the corner and met my mom's eyes, I knew that this was not about something as simple as a broken curfew. My mom's eyes were daggers. They were fire. If she could have shot laser beams from her eyes, I'd have been dead.

"I'm going to give you the opportunity to tell me what you did to Marc Foster last month. And then maybe I'll give you the opportunity to explain yourself. But right now I'm not interested in an explanation." She looked like she was about to explode. She was so angry she was vibrating.

I felt the color drain from my skin. I wanted to melt into a puddle right then and evaporate. I wanted to find some way to distract my mother, run away while she wasn't looking, change my name, and live in Tijuana as somebody else. I wanted to do anything except tell my mom what Robin, Jonathan, and I had done to Marc Foster.

"You know what, no. I'm not even going to give you the chance. I'm so mad, Jordan. I have never been this mad at you. Is this because of Robin? Or Jonathan? Or Joanna? What? Your social life is suddenly important to you and you start doing things like this?"

She was talking so fast that I was having trouble keeping up. I couldn't even follow what she was saying. Robin? Joanna and Jon? Couldn't she see this was about something bigger than that? Marc was a bully. He needed to be knocked down a peg.

"What's going on? Honey, I can see the anger dripping off you." My dad walked in from his study, standing beside my mom. "Care to clue me in?"

Slowly, my mom turned to look at my dad. She was vibrating with rage. Any moment she was going to grow giant and green and destroy things. And I would be dead. I'd be worse than dead. I'd be expelled and I'd have to live with my mother forever and I'd wish I were dead.

"Your son decided to load Marc Foster's locker with manure right before Christmas break. We now have to pay for all of his textbooks and school supplies, as well as pay to have that entire area cleaned by professionals."

I felt my body relax into a comfortable position again. They didn't know. They didn't know about the emails. They didn't know about the absolute public humiliation we had cause Marc to endure. I could live with manure-inspired disappointment.

"Right on," my dad smiled, a devilish glint in his eye. Then his mouth dropped as my mom hit him, full force, with her death glare.

"Oh, come on, Annemarie. This guy's been terrorizing our son since the third grade," I was surprised my dad had leapt to my defense. I had never seen him not side with my mom. "The kid nearly broke Jordan's nose a few months ago."

"Yes, and I wanted to call his mother, and maybe the police, and settle the issue then," my mom cut in, her arms crossed and her back tenth clenched. "But you told me that Jordan needed to learn to fight his own fights."

"And he does. And he did. He took matters into his own hands. And we're lucky he's not me. Because I would have settled things in a less orthodox method. I'd have been kicked out of school for beating the snot out of him."

I had never seen my parents argue, before. Not really. And definitely not about me. They were always on the same page. They always supported each other when it came to decisions about me. But I was with my dad on this. I didn't see what the big deal was.

"Steve," my mom said through nearly gritted teeth. "That was Jordan's principal. The school views this as vandalism. They want to pursue action against Jordan. This is bigger than a rivalry, right now."