Free Home Song by Lavyrle Spencer Page B

your partner if you want.” She rushed on. “I mean, most seniors want a senior, but not enough of them volunteered, so I was recruited. And I’m not a boy, so I can’t take you into the locker rooms, but I can show you everything else.”
    â€œI’ve already had a tour of the locker rooms, so thanks. Lead the way.”
    Tom Gardner saw his daughter leading Kent Arens from the library and felt a ripple of panic. She waggled two fingers at Tom in goodbye, and he waved back. But his hand lowered slowly to his side as he watched them go out the door. It’s nothing , he thought. Joan recruited her, and she just happened to approach me when I was talking to him. And they just happened to sit together. She’s always been school-minded, and this is just one more extracurricular duty she’s taken on because she knows it pleases her mother and me .
    It’s nothing .
    But the panicky feeling persisted.
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    â€œYour dad is nice,” Kent said as he followed Chelsea from the library.
    â€œThanks. I think so too.”
    â€œBut it must be weird, having your father be the principal.”
    â€œActually, I kind of like it. He’s got a mirror inside a cupboard door in his office, and he lets me keep a can of hair spray in there and a curling iron, and I can go in there whenever I want and fix my hair. And we get refrigerator privileges in the kitchen for after-school activities. I mean, sometimes I might have practice for something right afterschool, then another activity in the evening, and I don’t have time to go home between. So I bring a sack lunch and get to put it in the lunchroom cooler. But the neatest thing is, we always know what’s going on around the school building because both Mom and Dad talk about it at home.”
    â€œLike you talked about me last night?”
    She cast him a sideward glance as they walked down the hall. “It was all good, I assure you. Dad was very impressed by you.”
    â€œI was impressed by him, too.” After a pause he added, “But don’t tell him. I wouldn’t want him to think I was brownnosing.”
    â€œI won’t.” She led him through a doorway. “Now this is your first-period classroom. Hi, Mr. Perry.”
    â€œWell, Chelsea . . . hello there.”
    As they went from room to room, Kent said, “Everybody knows you. You must do this kind of stuff often.”
    â€œI like doing it, and my parents like us to be really involved in school. We’re not allowed to have jobs until after we graduate.”
    â€œNeither am I.”
    â€œScholarship first.”
    â€œYeah, that’s pretty much what my mom says.”
    â€œSo you like school too.”
    â€œEverything comes easy to me.”
    â€œAre you going to college?”
    â€œStanford, I hope.”
    â€œI haven’t picked one yet, but I know I’ll go.”
    â€œMom says Stanford’s got the best engineering program, and I want to play football, too, so it seems like a logical choice.”
    â€œYou’re going to be an engineer?”
    â€œYeah, same as my mom.”
    â€œHow about your dad?”
    Kent paused a beat before replying, “My mom’s never been married.”
    â€œOh.” Chelsea tried not to show her surprise, but she felt it inside. She’d been hearing the term “nontraditional family” for years—her parents tended to talk in terms that the counselors used at school—but the idea of a mother who’d never been married sent a shock through her.
    An awkward moment passed before Kent said, “She made sure I had everything I needed, though.”
    The reassurance left Chelsea with a heavy burden of pity: how awful it would be to have no father. She’d heard so many sad stories at home about various students whose broken or single-parent homes had torn them up or made their lives miserable; about how divorce had a negative effect on