скачать книгу бесплатно
“It gets worse,” Cobb said. “The parents of the other girl in this … fracas, we’ll call it, have intimated that they will report the incident to the local newspaper if we do not take appropriate measures. I, for one, refuse to see this school’s good name dragged through the mud because of the actions of one troublesome student.” At that, Cobb glared at Amber, just to make sure everyone present knew to whom she was referring.
“Can I say something?” Amber asked.
“No, you may not.”
“Saffron’s the one who started it. She picks on anyone who isn’t as pretty and perfect as her and her friends.”
“Be quiet,” Cobb said sharply.
“I’m just saying, if you want to blame someone, then blame—”
“You may not speak!”
Amber answered her glare with one of her own. “Then why am I here?”
“You are here to sit and be quiet and let me talk to your parents.”
“But I could let you talk to my parents from somewhere else,” Amber said.
Cobb’s face flushed and her neck quivered. Amber waited for the pop.
“Young lady, you will be quiet when I tell you to be quiet. You will respect my authority and do as you are told. Do you understand?”
“So I’m not allowed to speak up for—”
“Do you understand?”
Her mother patted Amber’s leg. “Come on now, sweetie, let the nice old woman speak.”
Cobb’s eyes widened. “Well, I think I have identified the source of the problem. If this is how Amber has been raised, I am not surprised that she has no respect for authority.”
“Naturally,” Bill said, as composed as ever. “What’s so great about authority, anyway? It takes itself far too seriously, if you want my opinion. You have a little problem that you blow all out of proportion, drag Betty and myself across town for a meeting we’re obviously supposed to dread, and here you sit at your ridiculously large desk like a mini-despot, assuming you wield some sinister power over us. Betty, are you feeling intimidated yet?”
“Not yet,” Betty said kindly, “but I’m sure it will kick in soon.”
Amber did her best not to squirm in her seat. She’d seen this enough times to know what was coming next, and it always made her uncomfortable. Her parents had only so much tolerance for people they viewed as irritations, and the level of punishment they doled out depended entirely on how they were feeling on any particular occasion. The only thing Amber didn’t know was how far they intended to take it today.
Cobb’s unremarkable eyes narrowed. “Obviously, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. I can see where your daughter gets her attitude.”
Mrs Cobb was now little more than a lame wildebeest, the kind Amber had seen on nature documentaries. Her parents were the lions, moving through the long grass, closing in on both sides. Cobb didn’t know she was the wildebeest, of course. She didn’t know she was lame, either. She thought she was the lion, the one with the power. She had no idea what was coming.
“You’ve just said, essentially, the same thing twice,” Bill pointed out to her. “Added to this, you seem to talk entirely in clichés. And we’ve been entrusting you to educate our daughter? We may have to reconsider.”
“Let me assure you, Mr Lamont,” Mrs Cobb said, sitting straighter and smoothing down her blouse, “you will not have to worry about that any longer.”
“Oh, excellent,” Betty said happily. “So you’ll be leaving the school, then?”
“No, Mrs Lamont, it is your daughter who will be leaving.”
Betty laughed politely. “Oh no, I don’t think so. Bill?”
Bill took out his phone – what he half-jokingly referred to as the most powerful phone in Florida – and dialled a number.
“We do not allow cellphones in the Principal’s Office,” Cobb said.
Bill ignored her. “Grant,” he said, smiling when the call was picked up. “Sorry to be calling in the middle of the day. No, no, nothing like that. Not yet, anyway. No, I’d like you to do me a favour, if you would. The principal of Amber’s school, you know her? That’s the one. I’d like her fired, please.”
Faint fingers of a headache began to tap on the inside of Amber’s skull. So this was how far they were willing to take things today. All the way to the end.
“Thank you,” said Bill. “Say hi to Kirsty for me.”
Bill hung up, and looked at Cobb. “You should be receiving a call any moment now.”
Cobb sighed. “This isn’t amusing, Mr Lamont.”
“Don’t worry, it’s about to get decidedly funnier.”
“I have made my decision. There is no arguing—”
Bill held up a finger for quiet.
Cobb was obedient for all of four seconds before speaking again. “If you’re not going to talk rationally about this, then I have nothing more to say to you. It is unfortunate we could not work out our—”
“Please,” said Betty. “Give it a moment.”
Cobb shook her head, and then her phone rang. She actually jumped.
“I’d answer it,” Betty advised her gently. “It’s for you.”
Cobb hesitated. The phone rang twice more before she picked it up. “Hello? Yes, yes, sir, I’m just … what? But you can’t do that.” She turned her face away. She was pale now, and her voice was hushed. “Please. You can’t do that. I didn’t—”
Amber heard the dial tone from where she was sitting. Cobb sat frozen. Then her shoulders began to jerk, and Amber realised she was crying.
Amber felt queasy. “Bill,” she said, “maybe we don’t really have to get her fired, do we?”
Bill ignored her and stood up. “Right then,” he said. “Amber, we’ll let you get back to class. You’re working at the diner later, aren’t you? Try not to eat anything – we’re having duck tonight.”
Her folks headed for the door, and Amber looked back at Cobb, who stood up quickly.
“Please,” Cobb said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re obviously very important people and … and Amber is obviously a very special girl.”
“Very special,” said Bill, one foot already out of the office.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognise that,” Cobb said, hurrying out from behind her desk. “Special students deserve special treatment. Latitude. They deserve latitude and … and understanding. Leeway.”
“Leeway, latitude and understanding,” Betty said, nodding. “They’ve always been our touchstones for a happy life.”
“Please,” Cobb said. “Don’t have me fired.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Betty. “It’s really up to Amber. Amber, do you think Mrs Cobb should keep her job?”
There was some part of Amber, some sly and distant part, that wanted to say no, that wanted to punish her principal for her shrillness, her pettiness – but this was a part that wasn’t thinking of Cobb as a person. No matter how much Amber may have disliked the woman, she was not prepared to ruin her life just to teach her a lesson.
“Uh yeah, she can keep it,” Amber said.
“Thank you,” Cobb said, her whole body sagging. “Thank you.”
“Wait a second,” Bill said, stepping back into the office. “Mrs Cobb, you accused us of being bad parents. If you want your job back, you’re going to have to do more than just apologise.”
“Oh yes,” Betty said, clapping her hands in delight. “You should beg for it.”
Amber stared at her parents in shocked disbelief, and Cobb frowned.
“I’m sorry?”
Betty’s smile vanished. “Beg, I said.”
Amber had been wrong. She thought she had known the full extent of her parents’ punishments, but this was a level beyond. This was vindictive, like they were running out of patience on some scale no one else could see. This was something entirely new.
Cobb shot a quick glance at Amber, then looked back at Bill and Betty. “Uh … please,” she said quietly. “Please can I keep my job? I … I beg of you.”
Bill shrugged. “Yeah, okay.” He swept his arm towards the door. “Shall we?”
They left the office, left Mrs Cobb standing there with tears running down her face, and walked the length of the corridor without speaking. Right before her parents turned right, for the parking lot, and Amber turned left, for the classrooms, Bill looked at her.
“This girl you had the ‘fracas’ with,” he said, “Saffron, right? Wasn’t she a friend of yours?”
“When we were kids,” said Amber, her voice soft.
He nodded, considered it, then walked away.
Her mother patted Amber’s shoulder and looked sympathetic. “Children can be so cruel,” she said, and followed her husband.
(#ufbc59ab5-a287-5422-a79b-6b57fe88f674)
THE HEADACHE THAT HAD been building since lunch finally struck by the end of school, driving thin needles of pain deep into Amber’s temples. She popped a couple of Tylenol and, by the time her shift at the diner was half over, the pain had faded to a dull throb somewhere at the back of her skull.
“My folks are getting weirder,” she said.
Sally looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Sorry?”
“My folks,” Amber repeated as she wiped the table. She did her best to sound casual. “They’re getting weirder.”
“Is that possible?”
“I didn’t think so. But do you know what they did today? They were called into my school and they made my principal cry. She literally shed tears. She was begging and everything. They … they traumatised her. It was so messed up.”
Sally shifted position, leaned back on the countertop in her red and yellow Firebird Diner T-shirt, and looked thoughtful. “That,” she said eventually, “is awesome. I would have loved my folks to have made my principal cry when I was a teenager. When my two start high school, I want to make their principal cry. I hated mine. I hated all my teachers. They always said I’d never amount to anything. But look at me now, eh? Thirty-three years old, no qualifications, and a waitress in a crappy diner with a neon Elvis on the wall.”
Amber gave her the thumbs up. “Living the dream, Sally.”
“Damn right,” Sally said. “And hey, at least your parents are taking an interest for once, right? Isn’t that something?”
“I … I guess.”
“Listen to me. Just stick it out for another few years and then you can go off to college somewhere and build a life for yourself.”
Amber nodded. New York, she figured, or Boston. Somewhere cooler than Florida, where the air alone wouldn’t make her sweat.
“My point is,” Sally continued, “wherever and whenever you decide to start your own family, you can do it right.” She gave a little grin. “Okay?”
Amber could never resist one of Sally’s grins. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
“Attagirl.”
Customers came in, and Sally put a spring in her step as she walked to greet them. “Hi there!” she said brightly. “Welcome to the Firebird! Can I show you to your booth?”
Amber watched her, marvelling at how natural her sudden cheerfulness seemed. A smile from Sally could turn a bad mood on its head – it was a phenomenon that Amber had witnessed on multiple occasions, and it rarely failed. The customers smiled back and they exchanged a few words and Sally led them to a booth by the window. Even though the Firebird was the third most successful fifties-themed diner franchise in the state – and Amber had no idea where that statistic had sprouted from – Wednesday afternoons were always slow. On slow days, it was policy to sit as many patrons by the window as possible in order to entice people in. Hungry people liked eating with other hungry people, it seemed. Amber had never been able to understand that. For as long as she could remember, she had always hated people watching her eat. She didn’t even like eating meals with her parents.
Although, if she was to be honest with herself – and if she couldn’t be honest with herself, then who could she be honest with? – their inherent weirdness might have had something to do with that.
Her parents were odd. Amber had known that for quite some time. Ever since she could remember, it was like they shared a private joke that she’d never been let in on. She loved them, of course she did, but she’d always felt like an appendage. She didn’t complete the family because the family didn’t need her to be complete. Bill and Betty Lamont were so perfect for each other that there were no gaps left for Amber to fill.
Two guys walked into the diner, both in their late teens. Joking and chatting, they stood at the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign and only looked at Amber when she smiled and said “Hi!” in her perkiest voice. “Welcome to the Firebird. Can I show you to your booth?”
“Don’t see why not,” said the first guy.
She smiled again and turned on her heel, making sure to keep the smile in place. She wasn’t pretty like Sally, wasn’t tall like Sally, wasn’t captivating like Sally and certainly did not look as good in her yellow shorts as Sally did, but, even so, there were so many mirrors in the diner that to lose a smile at any point could mean a drastic loss in tips. She stood by the booth in the corner and her two customers slid in on opposite sides of the table.
“My name’s Amber,” she said, taking her notepad from her back pocket, “and I’ll be your waitress this evening.”
“Hi, Amber,” the first guy said. “My name’s Dan, this is Brandon, and we’ll be your customers.”
Amber gave a little laugh. “What can I get you?”
“We’re keeping it simple today. We’ll take your cheeseburger deals. The whole shebang.”
Amber marked the orders down. “Two cheeseburgers with the works, two fries. No problem at all. And to drink?”
“Coke,” said Dan.
“Coke it is.”
“Actually, no,” said Dan, “I’ll have a strawberry milkshake instead.”
“One strawberry milkshake, gotcha. And for you?”
Brandon didn’t look up from the menu. “Do you have 7-Up?”
