daisy4

The school bell rings. Stan Brown watches the young ladies in their blue
skirts and white shirts as they hurry from one classroom to another,
chattering and laughing among themselves. He scans the crowd, looking for
the tall girl with the long, braided hair.

There she is. The security guard gives her a friendly wave, but she
shuffles past him with her head hanging. He hasn't been able to catch her
eye, let alone say a word to her, in the four days since he found her
huddled on the floor of the math room, beaten and bawling. He hasn't heard
her speak to anyone. Even the vacant expression on her face hasn't changed.
Mr. Brown hopes the dozens of vicious welts the principal raised on her
backside and legs with his belt have stopped stinging. The guard sighs and
pushes his copper-colored bangs off his forehead. He wishes he could think
of a way to reach the girl, but he doesn't even know her name.

She disappears into a classroom at the far end of the hall. Mr. Gillis, an
enthusiastic science teacher with a gold ring in one ear, closes the door
behind her.

Daisy slips into a desk at the back of the room. Her tender bottom starts
to throb as soon as it hits the hard plastic seat. She scowls at her shoes
and tries not to think about her burning buns as Mr. Gillis tells the girls
to open their textbooks.

"Daisy, please start reading aloud at the top of page 64," the teacher says.

Daisy shrugs and shakes her head, keeping her eyes glued to her loafers.
She ignores the science book on the desk in front of her.

"We're waiting, Daisy. Look for the page with the picture of the Big Dipper
on it," Mr. Gillis insists. "You only have to read a few paragraphs, then
someone else will take a turn."

Daisy opens the book reluctantly. The silence in the classroom gets louder
and louder as she searches for page 64. By the time she ferrets out its
hiding place, right between pages 63 and 65, her face is flushed with
frustration and embarrassment.

"For thousands of years, people have gazed up at the night sky and wondered
about the stars," she reads in a flat, bored voice. "Many fan--fan--"

"Sound it out," the teacher prompts. "Fan-tas-tic."

"Yeah, whatever. Many fantastic stories have been told about groups of
stars that appear together. These groups of stars are called con--con--"
Daisy falters and trails off, then starts again. "These groups of stars are
called--"

"Constellations, stupid!" a green-eyed girl across the aisle hisses.

"See me after class, Jenna!" the teacher raps out. "Good job, Daisy, go
on."

"What a moron!" Jenna sneers, stirring up a flurry of giggles in the room.
"Can't even read!"

Daisy tosses the science book up the aisle like a hand grenade. She erupts
out of her chair and jerks Jenna to her feet by the collar of her white
shirt. She presses her knuckles against the throat of the startled girl and
twists the collar tight. Jenna's green eyes get as big as hubcaps in her
pale face.

Mr. Gillis makes it to the back of the room in a few quick strides. He
tries to break the iron grip Daisy has on the collar of her tormentor, and
then, having no luck, he whacks the seat of her regulation skirt, three
times in a row, with his open palm. Smack! Smack! Smack! Daisy hears the
sharp crack of the blows in the quiet classroom, and in the next instant her
smoldering buttocks burst into flames. She lets go of Jenna and dodges away
from the science teacher.

"Sit down." Mr. Gillis prods Jenna unsympathetically toward her desk. The
girl sags, trembling, into her chair.

"Pens and paper out, everybody," the teacher barks, taking Daisy firmly by
one arm. "One hundred lines, due at the end of the period--I will treat my
classmates respectfully at all times."

"But Mr. Gillis, we--" someone whines.

"Add an extra ten," the teacher says coolly. "Any more complaints?"

Silence falls. Mr. Gillis marches Daisy out of the room, picking up her
science book on the way to the door.

"I'm sorry, Daisy, but if you can't control your temper in my classroom,
you'll have to study out here by yourself." The teacher hands the girl her
textbook and gestures toward a straight-backed wooden chair at the end of
the hall. "Sit there till the bell rings. You can't jump up and throttle
one of your fellow students, you know that, even if she flaps her mouth too
much."

Daisy plunks herself down on the chair without a word. She folds her hands
on top of her science book and stares at her shoes again.

"Page 64," the teacher urges. "You need to finish reading about the stars
and answer the questions at the end of the chapter before you come to class
tomorrow."

"Get real!" Daisy blurts out, suddenly in tears. She springs up off the
chair and lets the book fall to the floor. "Do you think I would have made
a total ass of myself in front of all those hags in there if I could read
that crap about the stars?"

Mr. Gillis opens his mouth to say something, but the dam inside Daisy has
broken, and the teacher never gets a chance to speak. Crying hard, Daisy
kicks the science book away on the slippery floor. She snatches up the
chair, raises it over her head, and slams it down with every ounce of force
she can wring out of her arms and shoulders. The crash echoes off the
concrete walls in the empty hallway like a clap of thunder. A crack starts
at the back of the chair and travels along the wood grain all the way to the
front edge of the seat.

Daisy lifts the chair and smashes it down again, doing her level best to
drive it through the floor and into the basement below. She doesn't feel
the science teacher tugging on her left shirt sleeve or notice the tearing
fabric as she wrenches away from him. She doesn't hear the thud of running
feet on the linoleum as Mr. Brown approaches. She pounds the seat of the
chair with her balled right fist, cursing and sobbing, till she rips her
knuckles on the splintering wood. The crack in the chair deepens, then the
seat splits in two.

The next thing Daisy knows, both of her arms are pinned behind her back. Mr
. Gillis is dragging the broken chair away from her. Daisy snaps her head
around to see who has her in a death grip. That nosy old security guard!
God, why him!

"Get your damn hands off me!" Daisy twists and squirms fiercely in his
powerful grasp for a few moments, still sniffling a little. She manages to
land a few savage stomps on the toes of his leather boots, but he doesn't
flinch, and Eventually she gives up, disgusted and out of breath.

"That's right, cool your jets," Mr. Brown says quietly. He glances at the
science teacher. "What in the world set her off, Larry?"

"Beats me." Mr. Gillis tells the security guard what happened in the
classroom, then adds, "Keep an eye on her for a minute, would you? I have
to check up on my other students."

"You head on back to your teaching," Mr. Brown answers. "Daisy and I are
going to talk."

"I got nothing to say to you!" Daisy snarls. "Let go of me, damn it!"

"Not till you settle down." Mr. Brown doesn't look away from the science
teacher. "By the way, Larry, don't take this to the principal, okay? Wait
till he hears about it and comes to you."

"Sure, no problem. I'll have to tell him the truth when he asks for it, but
till then, the girl is in your hands."

"Thanks. The last thing she needs right now is a tongue-lashing from Dwight
Landon, probably a whipping on top of that."

Mr. Gillis nods. "That man is too much. A real blowhard, to say the
least."

"A sadistic bastard, more like it," Mr. Brown mutters as the science teacher
disappears into his classroom.

The security guard spins Daisy around to face him, clasping her shoulders
tightly. "Are you ready to quit acting like a spoiled brat?"

"What's it to you?" Daisy asks sulkily.

"We have some work to do." Mr. Brown lets go of the girl, picks up the
broken chair, and motions for her to follow him down the hall.

Daisy doesn't move. She folds her arms across her chest. "I don't have to
go anywhere with you."

"That's true." The guard stops walking and speaks in an even tone. "You
have a decision to make. You can skip the back talk and come with me now.
Otherwise, I'll give the principal a buzz on my radio, and we'll wait right
here for him."

"Is that a threat?" Daisy tries to keep the fear out of her voice.

"No, it's a choice." Mr. Brown stays maddeningly cool. "Which will it be?"

Daisy hesitates for an instant, then lets her arms drop to her sides.
"Where are we going?"

The guard doesn't answer. He just starts walking again. Daisy follows him
along the hall and down the basement stairs. He unlocks the door across
from the cleaning closet where the janitor stashes his dirty magazines. The
smells of sawdust and drying paint drift out into the corridor.

Mr. Brown steps into the cluttered workroom and flips on the light. He gets
a small metal box off a shelf and rifles through it till he finds a bottle
of peroxide and a couple of Band-Aids. He takes Daisy's right hand gently
and dribbles peroxide on her torn knuckles. She winces, and he gives her
wrist a reassuring squeeze. He bandages her knuckles and puts the first aid
kit away.

Then, while Daisy watches, he sets the broken chair on a low counter, upside
down, with its back hanging over the edge. He jockeys a screwdriver into
the crack on the seat, carefully prying the two pieces of wood apart.

"Come give me a hand with the screwdriver," he says. "Put some pressure on
the handle. Yep, that's perfect."

Daisy keeps the crack wedged open while Mr. Brown squirts a stream of thick
white glue between the two pieces of wood. Then he shows the girl how to
press the sides of the seat together while he sets a clamp in place.

"There. That ought to hold." The guard twists the lever that tightens the
metal clamp. "Now we'll brace the seat from underneath."

He rummages in a drawer till he finds a few strips of scrap wood and a box
of short nails. He lays the wood strips on the underside of the seat, one
along the front edge, one along the back, and one down the center where the
crack is. Daisy keeps the strips from moving while Mr. Brown nails them to
the bottom of the chair.

"Good job," he says as he taps in the last nail. "I'll take the clamp off
once the glue dries, and the chair will bear weight as well as it ever did.
After I touch up the crack with some dark stain, it'll hardly show at all"

"So when are you gonna yell at me?" Daisy asks.

Mr. Brown sits on the edge of his workbench. "Is it me who needs to do the
talking, Daisy?"

Daisy scuffs her feet uncomfortably on the floor, not sure what to say. The
silence seems to drag on forever.

"You've got nothing to hide from me," the guard finally says. "I saw what
Mr. Landon did to you last Friday."

"It wasn't fair!" Daisy bursts out, blinking back tears. "He just wanted to
be mean!"

"I know. And you felt hurt and angry. So you crammed the pain down in your
heart, and it got mixed up with a whole lot of sorrow that was already
there." Mr. Brown puts a finger under Daisy's chin and tips her head up so
he can rest his eyes on her face. "When you squirrel away sadness like
that, it boils and boils inside you, and sooner or later it all gushes out.
That's what happened when you broke the chair, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I don't blame you for that. But no matter how you feel, you got too old to
pitch hissy fits a long time ago. Do you agree?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Daisy repeats, trying to look away from Mr. Brown.

The guard cups her chin in his hand and keeps his gaze on her face. "And no
matter how you feel, you can't yank a girl to her feet by the collar and
choke the sense out of her. Do you agree?"

"Uh huh. She made me so mad, though. I wasn't thinking."

"You've got to think, Daisy. You'll save yourself a heap of trouble when
you learn to drop your brain in gear before you blow your top."

"So what?" Daisy bolts toward the door of the workshop, glaring. "I don't
need your free advice. How much do you get paid to be nice to me anyway?"

"Hit the brakes, honey. Wipe that scowl off your face and come back over
here." Mr. Brown waits for Daisy to obey, then goes on. "I pin a bright
red security badge on my shirt every day so I can break up fights and keep
order in the halls, hunt down girls who don't show up where they need to be,
and referee when the principal or the shrink has to drop a load of bad news
on someone. Are you saying I do all that just to earn a paycheck?"

"You got it."

"Then why have I spent the last half hour with you? I could have plopped
your butt down in front of the principal and gone on my way without thinking
twice about it."

Daisy mulls the question over for a minute, then shrugs. "Okay, how come
you didn't dump me off on Mr. Landon? How come you've been asking me how I
feel and stuff instead of jumping down my throat like everybody else does?"

"You remind me of a cranky old porcupine. You roll up in a ball and shoot
your quills out at anybody who gets close to you. But I see a special
person peeking out from underneath all those prickly spines."

"A special person?"

"Absolutely. You're a smart girl with a kind heart. Once you learn to take
responsibility for your actions and keep your temper in check, there's no
telling what you'll be able to do with your life."

"How do you know?"

"Because you aren't a quitter." Mr. Brown picks up the science book and
flips it open to the page with the picture of the Big Dipper on it. "Mr.
Gillis said you were reading about the stars."

"Who cares? It's only a dumb science book." Daisy laughs bitterly. "The
words in it are too hard for me."

"I have an idea. I'll go home and have supper with my wife and kids, and
then I'll come back and look over your reading assignment with you." The
guard traces the picture of the Big Dipper in the textbook with his
forefinger. "I'll bring my telescope along, and when it gets dark, we'll
set it up and see if we can find some constellations in the sky."

"What's a telescope?"

"You'll see." Mr. Brown stands up. "Let me grab you a fresh blouse from
the laundry room. There's no reason for you to face Mr. Landon with a torn
shirt sleeve."

"No!" Daisy cries out. Her hands flutter back to cover the seat of her
skirt. "Look, I got out of line when I busted up the chair, and I shouldn't
have laid a hand on Jenna! I'm really sorry! You can spank me if you want
or send me to see the judge again or whatever, but please don't take me to
the principal!"

Mr. Brown touches Daisy gently on the shoulder. "You have to talk to him,
sweetheart. I believe you ought to get your bottom tanned for the way you
acted, and I'd do it myself if I could. But Mr. Landon hands out the
serious discipline around here, I don't. He probably already knows about
your outburst, and the sooner you get it dealt with, the better off you'll
be."

"You saw what he did to me!" Hot tears fill Daisy's eyes and trickle down
her cheeks. "You don't care, do you! You never did! I should have known!"

"I do care, and I won't leave you alone with that man, no matter what.
You'll have to take the punishment you brought on yourself, and maybe the
hot seat you get will teach you not to throw tantrums like a little girl.
But I'll make sure Mr. Landon doesn't go too far."

"Promise?"

"I promise. Wait here while I rustle up another blouse for you."

Mr. Brown leaves the room and comes back a moment later with a freshly
ironed shirt. He steps out into the hallway so Daisy can get dressed, and
by the time she joins him, straightening her clothes, she has stopped
crying. The security guard locks the workshop, and he and Daisy climb the
stairs and head for the main office together.

Daisy Lane, 11-2000