Free Fat School Confidential by Joe Rourke Page B

silence on the other end. Then, “Go ahead. I can always fix it later.”
        And with that, Juanita got the job done. Danni tried the dress on again, coming out to show the finished piece. She spun around to show the changes—the alterations were seamless.
        Danni looked great in the dress—Audrey incarnate. But could she pull off playing Audrey? She gave me the faintest, coyest of looks.
        I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes past six. We weren’t going to make it back to school in time for dinner. After a quick goodbye, we were off again. We stopped at Subway. We made small talk as we ate our turkey-no-cheese-no-mayo-no-flavor-on-wheat sandwiches.
        The girls talked of their respective programs, their families back home, and the boys—the few there were—on campus. I made the best of it, laughing at their digs towards staff and fellow students. I should have discouraged them from such character assassination, mild as it was. Then again, part of me was really enjoying this.
        Academy bound, we drove through darkened flatlands. Veronica and Brenda continued their chat in the backseat. Danni, riding shotgun, marveled at her newly altered costume folded on her lap. Twirling long blonde locks around a finger, she turned to me. Without missing a beat, she said, “I bet your wife doesn’t look as good in this dress as I do.”
        What the hell did she just say? Did she even think before making that comment? Was it her intent to be provocative or catty or what?
        Maybe I was reading too much into it. She didn’t actually think she was more attractive than Ellie, right? Danni was fifteen years old—a kid.
        I glanced behind me to see the other girls’ reaction—they were still chatting away. Glancing at Danni, I returned fire.
        “ My wife isn’t a size sixteen.”
        If anything could shut up an overweight teen girl, my rebuttal did the trick. Maybe I shouldn’t have responded in kind. Maybe I should have ignored her. On one hand, she was a privileged, self-entitled teen from back East. On the other, she was struggling L.T.W.C. with a good fifty pounds to lose. Danni must have thought of how inconsequential her life was when she made that comment to me. Either way, nothing more was ever said concerning Ellie—at least from Danni’s standpoint.
        Back home, I related the Danni incident to Ellie.
        “ I told her you weren’t a size sixteen.”
        She cracked up, not out of any spitefulness but of knowing whom I was dealing with.
        “ What did she do?”
        “ Nothing. She didn’t say a word.”
        Ellie gave a knowing smile before replying, “Good for you.”
        Shaking my head, I replied, “I should have seen it coming.”
        This statement alarmed her. Trying to read my face, she stared at me.
        “ Did she give you any sign of it?”
        “ No. I don’t think she did.”
        “ You’ve got to talk to somebody about this,” she said.
        “ Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.”
        Reading her face, I could tell she didn’t like my answer. She knew that whenever I’d say, “I’ll handle it,” what I really meant was, “I’m going to do nothing about it, and on top of that, I’m not going to tell anyone else about it, least of all my superiors.” Ellie was never one to let anything slip by, especially when it involved my safety or my job. Back in my L.A. Unified days (it seemed such a long, long time ago, in a county, far, far away), she begged me to report on each and every incident—like the shooting, and the threats, and even the one or two occasions when a female student acted inappropriately.
        “ How old did you say she was?”
        “ Fifteen.”
        Ellie flashed a grin.
        “ What would you have done if she were eighteen?”
        “ Nothing. She’s a student.”
        “ Uh huh.”
        Internally, I began to squirm.