Deceiving Mr. Bevison
Copyright 2014 Nanette Fynan
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
About the Author
Acknowledgements
I feel the deepest gratitude to all the people listed here. Without each and every one of them, I wouldn’t have begun or completed this book. I wouldn’t have learned about writing and editing, and I certainly wouldn’t have gotten to the point of publishing. I wouldn’t have laughed and cried, and I wouldn’t have become the person I am today.
My mother’s voice came to me many times as I flogged the prose. My kids helped me hone my skills by demanding engaging reading. My husband held it all together by writing checks and cooking brunch and washing the ever-present dishes. Thank you.
All the people in Leslie Keenan’s ongoing writing class, You Can Complete This Book: Leslie, our awesome teacher; Evlaleah, Janis, Michael, Christine, and all the rest. Thank you.
My editors: Phyllis DeBlanche, Alan Jones, and Christine Mann, who helped me with editing and formatting these pages. Thank you.
My cover artist: Sharon Eisley. Thank you.
Chapter 1
Bold. Outrageous. Cool. That’s what bagpipes are. Hey! You aren’t totally sure you like bagpipes? Get over it! I play in the St. Rupert’s Academy bagpipe band and I’m proud of it and seriously biased. Besides, it’s the people in this story who matter, not my so-called musical tastes.
Story? What story, you say? What story! Why, just the best caper that ever went down in the history of St. Rupert’s Academy for Boys, that’s all. Basically, the new school year found me, Charlie MacDonough, and friends plotting to keep our favorite teacher’s ex-husband, Harley Bevison, away from a . . . well, I don’t want to give away the whole story here. You could get the wrong idea about some people I really like if I don’t explain it all carefully from the start. So stay with me here, while I start at the very beginning, like my first day of school at St. Rupert’s Academy for Boys.
****
There I was, standing in the damp grass at the edge of the athletic field in the midst of a bunch of rumpled and silent guys. I mean, how uncomfortable can you get on the first day of school? My new-school nerves were about ready to redline, and my speech centers were frozen, so I just kept to myself, not doing much talking to the guys around me. But neither were they talking to me.
I mean, think about it. It was seven a.m., the crack of dawn, and we were having trouble just breathing in and out that early in the morning. Starting conversation was out of the question, don’t you think? Yes, we were waiting for the start of the first band practice of the year. I was straddling my good old bagpipe case, my arms wrapped across my chest, rocking on my heels to boost my confidence and to keep off the chill in the morning air.
My gaze wandered across the field to the row of trees on the opposite side. Through my bleary eyes, I could vaguely see a height-challenged female type straining on tiptoe to talk to a husky, balding dude all dressed up pretty flash in a suit and tie. She, however, was clad in plain jeans and a bulky sweater, and she was acting mega-incensed, like he was trying to sell her something she didn’t want.
I scented something very interesting going on there, so I perked up and watched the woman closely. The person in question was very animated, shaking her head and pointing, making little chopping motions with her hands. The guy was red in the face. Anybody watching the pair could see she wasn’t buying it, whatever he was selling. In fact, I would call it a very heated argument. Whatever was going down, it was serious.
My curiosity did an override on my good sense, and without thinking I turned and blurted my question out into the awkward void of silence that was echoing around me.
“Who’s the guy in the suit?” I croaked in my morning voice, wagging my finger in the general direction of the duo arguing by the trees.
The hip-looking blond dude next to me glanced languidly at the couple then paused a moment to stare back at me. He shrugged.
“No idea.” He studied me sideways in a way that didn’t set off my dread sensors too badly. Then he totally surprised me by shooting his hand out in my direction and giving me the full introduction.
“Ian here. Welcome to St. Rupert’s. How’d you get incarcerated?”
“Charlie MacDonough.” I reached across the gap between us and shook his hand. I even attempted a response. “I’m an employment orphan, Ian. That’s how I ended up here. My dad just took a job with a construction firm in the Middle East last week.”
“That’s rough, man.” He paused, either to ponder the data or just to go back to sleep for a minute. But now I’d started, he was just going to have to wake up and listen to the end. I had been so wound up before that my talk was all coming out of me at once, like hot steam out of a geyser.
“My mom decided she’d rather stay in the Mediterranean with Dad, so they could spend his time off together, instead of hanging here with me in the States.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, picking up his bagpipe case.
“Could be worse,” I blithered on. “It was a no-brainer that I had to finish high school in the States.” I paused a moment for breath as we walked onto the athletic field lugging our bagpipe cases. I set my case down and opened it.
Squatting down, I began to assemble my bagpipes. The polished wood shone in the early morning light. I slid the parts together, giving them a twist to make sure they were snug. I got a feeling of confidence from just handling my well-worn, much-used instrument. I stood up and occupied myself with fiddling with the mouthpiece so that my new-school nerves could have a chance to chill. That moment of repose didn’t help. I felt another burst of talk coming on.
“By the way, does St. Rupert’s band compete?” I asked.
“Yeah, we try.” Ian’s blue eyes lit up in an eager way. Competition might be the love of his life from the way he acted. “We’re not hot, but Ms. Kent gives us something of a competitive edge.”
“Ms. Kent?”
“Yeah, our pipe major, Amanda Kent. What year are you?” he asked.
“I’m a sophomore. I’m lucky my mom cared enough to scare up a school with a pipe band for me.”
“Yes, you are. Okay then, so St. Rupert’s it is. We are ‘it’ when it comes to boarding schools with bagpipe bands. We’re lucky to have you.” Ian smiled a friendly smile, and we subsided back to our awkward silence. He finally nodded at me before drifting off to talk to someone else.
So there I stood alone, fidgeting awkwardly, my bagpipes on my arm, waiting for band practice to start. To ease my edgy nerves I did a panoramic scan of my surroundings. Ahhh, picturesque St. Rupert’s Academy with its decrepit, medieval-style buildings covered with untidy ivy. Yup, a boarding school run by Episcopal brothers is what St. Rupert’s Academy looked like, and that’s exactly what it was.
Just like in the brochures, there were lots and lots of trees scattered across the hushed green lawns, pines, maples, and a few oaks. There was a peaceful air to the place, with plush green moss nosing between the cracks of the crumbling old stone of the dormitories. The classroom buildings slumbering in the morning sun had yet more ivy clinging around the arched windows and doors. All in all, the buildings pictured in the brochure had seemed fresher somehow. I guess for the benefit of the parents, the brochure’s artist had airbrushed out
a lot of embarrassing details, like the peeling paint on those old window frames and the loose gutters dangling from those ivy-choked eaves.
I felt my uneasiness leaching away from me as a couple more guys arrived. Here be pipers, spare and stout, tall and squat, meandering onto the mist-covered athletic field. There was one consolation. If nothing else, we had one thing in common: bagpipes.
The guys and I were kind of clustered in a mob at the center of the field, kind of like we were all trying to stand on a small iceberg together, when I heard a voice of thunder erupt from the edge of the throng.
“You, MacDonough! You know who I’m talking to. Come on over.” I remember to this day how I cringed as that hearty voice shattered the morning calm. My name echoed raucously off the nearby buildings, and I felt utterly exposed. Admittedly, the voice sounded friendly, just loud, especially to those of us suffering from early-morning-fragile-nerves syndrome. And the boys, all turning to stare interestedly at me, parted their cluster to reveal our new pipe major, the same height-challenged female I had seen talking to the suit by the trees. She strode through the boys’ midst, showing a lopsided grin on a very humor-filled face. She looked up at me—way up. I am kind of above average height. This new teacher took in my flabbergasted look and extended her hand like I was supposed to shake it. I stumbled forward and stuck my hand in her direction. She grabbed it and shook it so emphatically that her head with its glossy brown hair bobbed along in time. I summoned the vigor to return the handshake as it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, this first day of school wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
“Pipe Major Amanda Kent here. Welcome to St. Rupert’s Pipe Band. Charlie MacDonough, right?” I could feel her grilling me with her friendly green eyes, sizing up my character. I guess I passed judgment; she was still smiling. I gave a feeble grin in return.
“Band! Circle up to receive order of practice.” My new pipe major turned smartly on her heel to face the band.
There were seven guys, besides myself, in gray sweatshirts and navy pants. One and all were “Hey, dude”ing me, nodding and smiling, milling around as we formed a circle around tiny Ms. Kent.
“C’mon, boys, the morning is wearing on. If you haven’t got your pipes out, get them out, circle up at the goal line, and get those bagpipes tuned.”
Ms. Kent turned to me. “Your place is next to that bedhead on the end, MacDonough,” she said, pointing to a brown-haired, bleary-eyed boy with his mussy sweatshirt half out of his school uniform pants. “This is Mort, himself.” Apparently Mort wasn’t awake enough to make a snappy comeback; he just gave me a weary half-nod and half-wave as he fumbled his instrument out of its case.
Then a sharp squealing and squeaking of pipes began. An unpleasant sound, to be sure, but it was the welcome clamor of pipers testing out their reeds and readying their pipes for action. A sense of excitement filled me as I slung my bagpipe’s drones over my shoulder, clutched the bag, positioned it under my elbow, and, giving it a squeeze, joined in the cacophony.
“Time to wake the dead, laddie, or at least the sleeping peeps over there in the dorms.” The kid on my other side was more verbal than Mort. “Prakash here,” he said, extending his hand and giving mine a brisk shake. Prakash was a slender dark kid with Indian-subcontinent-kind-of features and glossy black hair.
“Look at that. We’ve already woken up that flock of crows,” he said with glee. True enough, the flock was headed in an arcing swath for a stand of pines and maples on the other side of the athletic field. But as soon as my attention drifted to their flight, Prakash caught me up with a quick “Chin up, laddie. Suck that gut in. No ogling the birds.” He snickered at his own trick as he went back to noodling on his pipes.
I rolled my eyes as I wondered how I was going to deal with this one. I’d take my cues from the other guys, like Ian, the dude I had been talking to earlier. He had some serious self-confidence written on his face as he walked up, saying, “Prakash, move it over so I can get in line.” Prakash shifted over ever so slightly. Ian just gave him a don’t-mess-with-me look as he worked his broad shoulders deftly into line.
“This, young Mac, is our student officer, Pipe Sergeant Ian. He’s a regular bo,” Prakash confided to me by yelling in my ear. Ian, I had met, but I couldn’t say so since the tuning noise was so loud.
Bagpipes are rumored to be loud enough to be heard three miles away. That’s why they were played during battles in ancient Scotland. That’s why we play with earplugs. It is better to kill conversation than to lose hearing.
“Less of it, Prakash,” Ian mouthed. He lazily threw his drones over his shoulder and began playing with impressive ease. Tall guys, like me, are supposed to be gangly and uncoordinated, but Ian was all coordination.
Ms. Kent caught our attention as we formed a ragged circle. She stood resolute, clipboard in hand, surrounded by boys at least a head taller than herself. “Firstly, welcome back, band. It’s great seeing you all again. Secondly, order of practice: ‘Scotland the Brave’ and ‘Highland Laddie.’ Thirdly, roll call. Answer ‘present’ when your name is called,” bellowed Ms. Kent warmly—if you can shout warmly—“and that will help us identify ourselves for MacDonough here, since I already know everybody here.”
As they called out “present,” I tried to put their names to their faces. Prakash, Ian, and Mort I had met. Pete was memorably square with a stocky build like a truck with a crew cut. Jerrod was memorably not memorable except that he had dark curly hair and a hawk nose like me. Arthur Brookstone, aka Brookie, was easy to remember if you didn’t get dizzy trying to follow the hyper kid with your eyes. He was red-headed, very red-headed. Eric was the runt of the litter and apologetic about it, as though he could help being so small. I nodded at each one even as the names turned to a muddle in my mind.
“Right. Now let’s form up in two rows of four and march down the field to the tune of ‘Scotland the Brave.’” Ms. Kent counted us in for the beginning of the tune, and we struck in the first note.
We then got put through our paces in a drill I’ll never forget. Ms. Kent had a style all her own, not at all like anybody I’d ever played with before. She didn’t just stand in one corner and yell insults. Don’t get me wrong. She was very tough on our playing, but not on us, if you get my drift. She still had plenty of wind left to talk to me after traipsing down the field, trying to keep up with us on her short legs. She caught up to me and marched right alongside as I played. She looked up at me with an encouraging grin as I tried to play my best and keep my marching in step. You try it, if you don’t believe it’s hard.
We paused to turn at the bottom of the field, and she nodded in approval. “You’re doing fine. Really, Mac, save some air for yourself. You’re breathing so fast you’ll keel over from hyperventilation soon. We can’t have that.”
She swiveled around with the group as it made the turn. Walking backward in front of us, she raised her hands to call a halt halfway down the athletic field. “Not bad. Not bad at all for first practice. I think we were all playing the same tune. And if we’d all been playing together, we’d have sounded really grand. Soon we will, soon we will,” she said, rubbing her hands together like a mad scientist with a potion on the boil. It sounded encouraging, maybe a little ominous.
“You know, band . . .” Ms. Kent paused, putting her hands on her hips and stretching her back. “I want to let you know, as tactfully as always, please have the notes, and I mean all the notes, for ‘Mairi’s Wedding’ memorized by tomorrow.” She quickly bent down to put her pipes in their case.
Ms. Kent opened her mouth to say more, but she was interrupted by the hollow clanging of the breakfast bell. Food called.
“Band, dissss . . . missed. Break ranks for breakfast,” she bawled. The bagpipes were all back in their cases, and the guys were moving toward the smell of food, almost before the words were out of her mouth.
“What a practice,” muttered Ian softly, pulling off his soaked sweatshirt as he walked besi
de me. He doused his blond head in the water fountain as we paused near the rickety-looking stands by the field house. Bagpipe playing was hot work, even in September.
“That is one amazing pipe major, Ian,” I said, gazing raptly at my new teacher. It was okay to be pretty. But as far as I was concerned her good looks dimmed next to what really mattered to me: her bagpipe ability. Ms. Kent was a dream come true, the best pipe major I’d ever had a chance to play with.
My attention was drawn away from Ms. Kent by Ian. He lingered a little behind the others, strolling loose-jointedly along with his sweatshirt draped around his neck.
“Great playing, man.” He turned toward me, and we halted briefly.
It felt great having an upperclassman give me a compliment.
“So what is our gig schedule like, then?”
“Let’s see—we do football season for home games, unless our team gets into the playoffs, which we never do.” He was keeping track on his fingers. “We do Parents’ Weekend, fund-raisers, holidays, and then around April, we start the Highland Games band competitions and what-have-you.” Ian took a sudden sniff of the air.
“God, I love the smell of bacon. Shall we go in?” he said in a startlingly wolfish way and strode toward the Refectory.
It was quickly being surrounded by students lining up to go in for their meal. The old iron bell under the eaves on the porch was still tolling away with a persistent clang-clang, clang-clang.
The line at the door had formed a circle around one of the brothers of St. Rupert’s and began singing the doxology as we came up and joined in.
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Morning voices croaked out the words and gained strength as they continued. “Praise him, all creatures here below. Praise God above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Aaaa-me—”
The end got kind of cut off in the stampede for food. We were way thankful for the meal, of course, but we wanted to get on with the eating of it. Ian and I followed the line through the door to the hot tables. I was enveloped in the warm smell of school cafeteria the moment I entered.
“Ham, bacon, and eggs, thanks,” Ian answered as the server prepared to dish out his food. “How about you, Mac?”
Early morning exercise gave me a hunger as keen as a knife’s edge. “Same for me, ma’am.” I reached over to the toaster table to snag an English muffin from the top of a huge stack of freshly baked muffins. Looking around, I saw the pipe band members localized at a battered oak table near a diamond-paned window that looked out on the Refectory’s mossy stone porch. As we joined the guys, I spotted Ms. Kent on the porch. She was speaking vigorously to her cell phone.
I grimaced. “Is she always like that?” I shrugged my shoulder in her direction as I put my tray down next to Prakash’s.
Ian threw his leg across his chair and sat down. “Nope, usually pretty calm, but with the . . .” His words were lost when he began stuffing his mouth with breakfast foods.
“Say what?” I asked, confused.
“Sorry,” he said, swallowing. “Instincts of a born killer, our Ms. Kent.”
I got it. “Oh, just your normal high school teacher, then.”
Ian nodded, chewing.
“I mean—we saw her talking earlier to a dude on the field, before practice.”
Taking a swallow of juice, Ian started to respond, but Prakash interrupted. “That was her ex. I think he bugs her sometimes. She’s teaching here—just the one class, bagpipe—and going to college . . . so she doesn’t have to keep teaching here.” He broke off to laugh at his own humor. Then his brown eyes took on a mischievous glint. “What species is this?” Prakash picked a sausage off his plate, eying it from several angles.
“Hey, it’s not bad for monastery chow. I thought we might get gruel or something this morning,” I said in appreciation of the meal.
“Don’t ruin my breakfast with your carnivorous banter, laddie,” said Brookie, giving Prakash an ingenuous look. His face was fully freckled with burnt umber patches.
Prakash chomped the sausage savagely with very white teeth while looking sideways at Brookie. “What, not going to give us another lecture on vegetarianism, Brookie?”
I frowned at Prakash for a moment, not wanting to ask the obvious yet politically incorrect question: why an Indian wasn’t a vegetarian.
“Yeah, Prakash rebels against his Indian heritage by being true-blue Episcopalian, which includes roast beef dinners on Sundays. Me, I rebel against my Canadian cowboy heritage. Must be off. See ya, Prakash.” Brookie stood up, expertly flipping and spinning a bagel in the air and catching it backhand while shoving his chair in with one foot, all in a single motion. He draped himself along the back of my chair. “I’m also the band’s only real jester and juggler,” he whispered, nodding at Prakash. “I don’t have to make cracks about other people’s food choices for a laugh.”
Brookie straightened up and slapped me on the back. I gulped and choked on my toast. He smiled and said, “Pleased to have you aboard, MacDonough. You have now met all of your roommates.”
There was major laughter. The rest of the guys—Mort, Eric, Peter, and Jerrod—thought my look of alarm was charming, I’m sure. “You could have been initiated by us, you know,” said Jerrod, “instead of having Brookie for a roommate.”
“That’s . . . okay . . .” I wiped my eyes and coughed to clear the toast from my throat. Last night was a little rough, being in the Newby Dormitory, not knowing anybody or what to expect. They’d said I’d move to my real dorm today. Now I knew the people, and it was okay.
“I’ve never been away to school before, so I’m sure you guys will take real good care of me.” I spoke cautiously, having just experienced one of Brookie’s caring gestures.
Suddenly looking guiltily at someone behind us, Brookie straightened up hurriedly, saying, “Later, guys” over his shoulder as he sprinted for the door of the Refectory.
“Okay, what did I miss?” growled a suspicious female voice at my back. Ms. Kent had come up behind my chair with her breakfast tray balanced in one hand. She was staring hard after Brookie. The dangerously ancient orange plastic chair Ian pulled out for her gave an agonized squawk as she sat down, cautiously.
“Believe it or not . . . nothing, this time,” Ian replied blandly.
“Well, I’d rather have been here, Brookie and all,” she said, settling her tray and reaching for the salt. “Whew, that was rough.”
“Is your ex bothering you again?” asked Prakash.
“Hey, Prakash. Too much information in front of the guys, okay?” She stared at him with an offended look. “Too much of my personal information, I might add. But since you are kind enough to ask, yeah, he is getting persistent again.” She stabbed at her bacon like she thought it was her ex. “You guys let me know if you see him hanging around here.”
“Wow, what’s he doing here?” I couldn’t help asking, curiosity being my main flaw.
Ms. Kent slathered butter on her toast and rested her elbow on the table. She paused with her mouth ready to bite the bread. She answered us instead.
“I’m perplexed. I have no idea why a grown man would want to hang around here—no offense, guys.” She paused to chew. “MacDonough and the rest of you,” she said, turning to me, “let’s get this straight. I am not gossiping. Nobody—not my ex, not your uncle—nobody for any reason is supposed to be on school grounds without permission, which is why I’m telling you any of this. Because we have a major school rule broken here.” She eyed each of us fiercely, and we prudently looked down at our plates as though we weren’t really drooling with interest. After chomping on her toast a bit viciously, chewing, and thinking for a minute, she startled us all by slamming her hand on the table.
“What was he thinking, coming to the school like this? Somebody’s going to think I was stupid enough to invite the basta . . . ah . . . I mean, man.” She looked a little embarrassed at her own outburst. I was agog. Mort, Jerrod, Eric, and Peter
had shoved aside their trays and were leaning in closer so they wouldn’t miss anything. Their faces were a study in their clashing interests. Sympathy for Ms. Kent was warring with their curiosity over the lurid details.
Shaking her head as though she could shift the problem out of her mind, she went on: “Anyway, nothing worse than trespassing has happened, guys. We can be thankful for that. Call my cell if you see him lurking on school grounds again.” She handed around her phone so we could all enter the number.
“Some of us don’t know what he looks like, you know,” Ian pointed out.
She took a big sip of coffee, giving us a solemn look over the brim of her mug. “I’ll see that you all get pictures. I can dig up some from our past life together and send those.” Her green eyes were a little sad, but she brightened, pointing to the clock. “Assembly, dudes.”
As we leaped from our chairs and charged out, I could see her smiling, looking more encouraged now. It seemed to cheer her up to see us scrambling frantically not to be late.