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Fourth hour, I was in Ms. Strauss's room watching Hope. She was sitting to the left of me, leaning forward in her chair and kinda rocking back and forth. She had her mouth shaped into the letter O like she was about to ask a question, and she seemed to be staring right through the wall. I wondered what she thought of her parents. Did they even seem like parents to her, now? And what would it be like to not know who your real parents are? You'd be asking yourself who are these strangers who you've never met and why did they give you up? And the people who raised you, they'd suddenly seem like strangers, too. You'd be a stranger to yourself. Then I started getting that same feeling I had a week earlier: a deep, deep sadness, the kind that made me feel sorry for the whole world and made me want to reach out and hold somebody. The thing is, Hope didn't look like she wanted to be hugged right then. She looked like she wanted to disappear.
Makayla was sitting at the next table, looking flushed in the face and nervous. She was chewing on her pencil and literally shaking, vibrating in her chair. I thought about all the shit she'd been through, being abused by her dad and then abandoned by her parents, just trying to get by, trying to get through school and not taking her medication, or not being able to get it. And now her boyfriend was at home with his skull all busted up. She was all alone and so damn crazy that she wouldn't let anyone get close enough to her to help her or even comfort her. I tried to imagine being her and having those types of problems—the kind you could never escape from.
Up near the front of the room was Trent. Just two weeks ago, he helped beat Makayla's boyfriend almost to death, and now he was sitting in Algebra 2 like nothing had happened. And Russ, Kyle and, Andy—they were in there, too, and they'd taken part in beating Bobby. It didn't seem right. It didn't seem right that we were stuck in there having to pretend like nothing happened, pretending like we were just there to learn—but that's what everyone was doing. And why was Ms. Strauss up there, still trying to teach us, and going on and on about the quadratic formula as if it had any importance for anybody in that room, right then? I mean, after all the cruel and mean things that'd been done to her, why hadn't she just packed up and gone home? Then it occurred to me that the only people who were acting like something unusual had happened, the only people who didn't have to take part in the charade, were Tammy and Corena. Because they had power.
As I sat there thinking about these things, I realized that nothing had changed; in fact, it was worse than ever. I thought about the week before when Tammy and Corena weren't even at school, and how the teachers kept discouraging us from talking about what happened. You could see it in their eyes—they were scared. They were scared of what Tammy might do if she found out the kids were talking about her and how she'd screwed up. And the kids, the way they'd whisper to each other, leave out names, and keep watch to make sure no one was listening. They were scared, too. That's the power that Tammy and Corena had. Because even when they were hiding out at home or in Tammy's office, people respected them and respected their power.
What really pissed me off was that I was surrounded by people who didn't realize what a bunch of cowards they were…or they didn't care…or they had no sense of right and wrong…or they were so wrapped up in their own lives that they didn't want to do anything about it. You see, I was used to Tammy and Corena—their meanness and all the fucked-up shit they would pull. But I was surprised at how everybody else in the school was willing to stand by and just watch it happen, and then pretend like it didn't happen. Ms. Strauss—standing up there talking about imaginary numbers. She was making jokes about how there weren't enough real numbers to go around, so mathematicians had to invent imaginary ones. It was fucking bullshit. I felt like walking up and hitting her over the head with a book and yelling, "Do you see what's going on here? And why aren't you trying to do something about it?"