I didn’t sob aloud, but I could feel the tears escaping my lids and starting to zigzag their way down my cheeks. I quickly wiped them off.
“However, considering your history here, I would like to know why you did such a thing, Semantha.” He sat back again and waited.
I took a deep breath. “My mother had a miscarriage a few days ago. She is still seriously ill because of it.”
“More reason for you to behave yourself,” he quickly interjected.
I nodded. “As soon as I sat down, Roxanne began to say nasty things about my mother, and I just wanted to shut her up. I’m sorry I hurt her.”
“What should you have done instead?” he asked softly.
“Ignored her. I tried to do that!” I cried. “But she wouldn’t stop.”
“What else could you have done?”
I knew what he wanted me to say, but few girls or boys I knew in school would have done it.
“Raise my hand and tell the teacher what she was doing.”
“Exactly. Then she’d be the one sitting here in front of me, and not you.”
Yes, I thought, but afterward, every student who still liked me would hate me for being a rat. They would even begin to tease me more every chance they had, especially all of Kent’s friends. Why didn’t Mr. Hastings know this himself? He was a student once, and I was sure he had been harassed by someone and hadn’t just turned them in to the teacher.
“As I said, no matter how good the reason for what you did seems to you or even to someone else in the classroom watching it all unfold, it was still absolutely forbidden in my school. Small acts of violence have a way of becoming bigger and bigger acts, until someone gets seriously hurt or killed. We see it happening everywhere these days.”
He leaned forward, glaring at me.
“It won’t happen here. Not on my watch,” he said. He sat back again, pausing to calm himself. “Is your father at the hospital with your mother?”
“No, he’s in Lexington. We’re opening a new store there. Then he’ll go to the hospital.”
“What is his cell-phone number?” Mr. Hastings asked. “Or the number at the store?”
“I don’t know the store number. His cell phone is 555-5454.”
Mr. Hastings jotted it down. “Your sister’s name is Cassie, correct?”
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t help looking more frightened of her than of my father, and I saw how that surprised Mr. Hastings.
“Is there anyone, another adult, at your home now?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even a housemaid?”
“We don’t have a housemaid.”
He raised his eyebrows, then opened one of his drawers and took out a file. He flipped through it and nodded. “She has permission to drive to school and park in the lot. Did she do that this morning? Drive here with you?”
“Yes.”
“Unfortunately, then, your sister will have to take you home and remain with you until your father makes other arrangements. I don’t send students to an empty home or one where there is absolutely no supervision. I’m suspending you for one week, and you will not be permitted back until your father brings you back and we have a meeting with you in my office.
“I’m sorry for your family’s trouble, but if anything, that should have given you more reason to behave yourself. There are no mitigating circumstances when it comes to violence in my school, and no one is treated any differently from anyone else when it comes to that.”
My tears came again, but this time, I didn’t bother to wipe them away. I let them drip from my chin.
“Go back to the outer office, and take a seat until your sister comes for you.”