Rock Chick Reborn (Page 25)

This was because Roam’s history teacher had called and asked me to come in to have “a discussion.”

I hated schools. I’d take visiting a hospital or walking my ass into a police station over walking into a school.

And with my old profession, both of those were saying something.

Not to mention, with my membership in the Rock Chicks, being able to visit a hospital or walk into a police station was an important skill to have.

Moses told me he often didn’t have his phone on him when he was at work.

Still, for whatever reason, I pulled up his text string, which had seven texts (yes, I counted). Him giving me his address. Me confirming I got it. Him saying something sweet after I confirmed. Me telling him I was on my way to his house last night. Him confirming he got that and telling me he was looking forward to feeding me. Me texting that morning to say I’d had a good time the night before. Him replying, telling me he did too.

I’m at the school. Roam’s teacher called. I’m worried, I typed in.

Neither boy had had trouble with school. It took some tutoring to get them up to scratch when they started back after being out for so long, but then they just assimilated.

Easy as pie.

Which freaked me out.

I’d talked to Jules about it because I’d found that odd. I thought that would be a battle too and was surprised when it wasn’t.

“We’ll keep an eye, Shirleen,” she’d said. “But not for the normal reasons. Sometimes, when kids get it good after they’ve had it bad, they try overly hard to prove they deserve to have something that’s just their due. Like an education. They don’t want it taken away, so they go beyond the pale to make certain it isn’t.”

It didn’t seem like they were trying overly hard. I didn’t have any practice, but it just seemed normal. They didn’t have an aversion to school like I did when I was their age. They didn’t jump for joy every morning at the prospect of hauling their asses out of bed, shoving their books in their bags and heading out with a pep in their step.

Since it was seemingly normal, we just rolled with it.

And now I’d been called by a teacher to come in “as soon as you can, Miz Jackson,” and have “a discussion.”

I stared at the text, wondering if I should send it.

In usual circumstances, I might text Daisy, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t talking to her that I didn’t type the text into her string.

It was just . . .

Now there was Moses.

Before I could chicken out (of a lot of things), I hit send, opened my door, pulled myself out of my car and hoofed it on my high heels to the school.

School was out for the day so the halls were quiet, but I could see through the windows there was a woman at the reception desk in the administration office.

It took a lot, but instead of giving in to my heebie-jeebies I was in a school and turning around to walk right out, I walked in there.

She looked up.

“Hey,” I greeted. “I’m Shirleen Jackson. Mr. Robinson called and said he wanted to talk about my boy.”

She nodded. “Just out the door, to the left, down the hall, take a right at the end. Mr. Robinson is in the second classroom on the right.”

I nodded back, muttered my gratitude and took off, my heels echoing on the tile in the empty hallways, my hackles coming up.

I’d had to have meetings with the folks at school to get the boys admitted. I’d also had to go to parent-teacher conferences for three years running. None of this had been comfortable, and not because I was worried about my street-tough boys in new environs (or not only because of that).

And I was seeing right then it was because it was bringing it all back.

This wasn’t just Leon and starting things with him when I was a junior and he was a senior and how bad that all went.

It was that, back then, I hadn’t come into me. I was awkward. Uncertain. My older sister was popular, I was not. I hadn’t found my way and looking back at it, I’d always felt embarrassed, even humiliated at how I’d handled myself.

But now I saw that there was no way I’d understand who I was, what I wanted and how to get it.

Hell, I wasn’t sure I knew any of that now.

But then, I was a kid.

Why did I expect so much of myself?

I found the room and knocked on the open door, my eyes to the handsome, somewhat disheveled man sitting behind the desk.

At my knock, he looked up at me, and I was relieved when he smiled.

“Miz Jackson,” he greeted.

“That’s me,” I answered, taking a step in.

He stood. “Thanks for coming.” He gestured to the student desks in front of his own. “Please come in.”

I walked in farther as he looked down, shuffled papers around, grabbed some and rounded his desk.

“Have a seat,” he invited, and as I took a seat at one of the student desks, he didn’t return to his own. He sat at the one beside mine. “We met at parent-teacher conferences last winter.”

“I remember,” I told him.

“Sorry to take your time, but I thought this was important,” he said.

“What was important?” I asked.

He offered the papers he had in his hand to me.

“My students turn in their papers online. I printed this one out. It’s Roam’s report on the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War.”

Slowly, I reached out and took it.

When I did, I felt my heart start beating faster because in the top left corner, it said:

Perspectives of American Military Action in Vietnam

American History

Mr. Robinson

By Roam Jackson

Roam Jackson?

Roam’s last name wasn’t Jackson.

Mine was.

“Do you go over your boys’ homework, Miz Jackson?” Mr. Robinson asked.

I looked from the papers in my hand to him. “Sometimes. When they ask me.”

He dipped his head to the paper. “Did you read that?”

I looked down at it, forcing my eyes to anything but the words Roam Jackson.

There were no marks on the paper. No grade.

I read the first couple of lines and saw this was not something Roam had asked me to look over.

I looked back at Roam’s teacher and shook my head.

Mr. Robinson nodded his. “Right then. Outside of it being glaringly obvious he did more than watch a couple of episodes of Burns’s documentary, a lot more, I’m not entirely certain how to describe the prose of that report.”

I felt my back hitch straight. “What are you saying?”

He looked me right in the eye. “It’s well beyond a high school senior’s aptitude.”

That was when I felt my eyes narrow. “You sayin’ my boy plagiarized this report?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m saying Roam is an exceptionally gifted and intuitive writer.”

Say what?

I stared at him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring this to your attention before,” he went on. “However, even if his earlier reports and test essays were very good, I’ve noted as the semester wore on, his talent has markedly increased. That said, I’ve seen nothing from him like that.”

“He hates writing reports. It drives him ’round the bend,” I said quietly. “Like, seriously.”

Mr. Robinson nodded. “I’m not surprised. For many outstanding writers, their need to tell their story, get their point across, doing this in the way they want the words to be crafted to share their narrative is a painful process. It can be very frustrating, as they can be very hard on themselves because each word has to be the perfect one and more, they all have to fit just right.”