Chapter 9: Ride Home

The final bell rang at 2:30 PM.

The sound echoed through the hallways, that particular ring that meant freedom, that meant escape, that meant six more hours before you had to do it all again. Students poured out of classrooms like water from a broken dam, backpacks bouncing, voices rising, the collective exhale of forty-seven minutes of holding it together.

I sat in my seat for a moment longer than necessary.

Mr. Yamamoto was erasing the whiteboard slowly, methodically, the way someone erases when they’re thinking about something else. The marker squeaked against the surface, that high-pitched sound that made some people wince but that I’d always found strangely soothing.

“Lottie,” he said without turning around.

“Yes, sir?”

“You did well today.”

“I didn’t do anything. I just sat here.”

“No.” He turned around, eraser in hand, with white dust on his fingers. “You showed up. That’s nothing. That’s the opposite of nothing.”

I stood up. Sling my backpack over my shoulder. Adjusted my father’s hat, which had slipped to one side during the fourth period, when I’d been too focused on the First Amendment to notice.

“Thank you,” I said. “For treating me like a student. Not like”

“Not like what?”

“Not like something that needed to be handled.”

Mr. Yamamoto set down the eraser. I walked over to where I was standing. He was shorter than I expected, not short, exactly, but shorter than he’d seemed from behind his desk, shorter than the authority of his presence had suggested.

“I’ve been teaching for twenty-two years,” he said. “I’ve seen students come to class in every possible state: tired, hungry, angry, scared. I’ve seen students who were pregnant, high students, students who hadn’t slept in three days. I’ve seen students who were so lost they didn’t know their own names.”

He paused.

“But I’ve never seen a student who was as present as you were today. Not because you weren’t wearing clothes. Because you were paying attention. Because you were asking questions. Because you were thinking about the material, not about yourself.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.

“Whatever happens next,” Mr. Yamamoto said, “whatever the administration decides, whatever the other students say, remember that you showed up today. That’s something no one can take from you.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

He nodded. Turned back to the whiteboard. Picked up the eraser.

I walked out of the classroom.

The hallways were emptying, students streaming toward the exits, toward the buses, toward the cars that were waiting in the pickup line. The energy was different than it had been in the morning, lighter, looser, the way energy gets when the pressure of the school day has been released.

I walked toward the front entrance.

The stars were still there, some of them, anyway, but they were different, too. Less curious, more familiar. The way you look at something you’ve seen before, something that’s no longer new, something that’s just ... there.

Keep walking.

You’re almost there.

Keep walking.

I pushed through the front doors.

The afternoon sun hit me like a blessing, warm and golden and so bright I had to squint. The air smelled like dust and exhaust and the particular sweetness of late August, when the monsoon season is almost over, and the desert is holding its breath for October.

The parking lot was chaotic, buses rumbling, cars idling, students shouting to each other across the asphalt. I scanned the rows of vehicles, looking for my mother’s Honda, looking for the familiar gray shape that meant home.

I found it in the same spot where she’d parked this morning. In the back row, near the fence, away from the crowds.

She was sitting in the driver’s seat, her hands on the steering wheel, her face turned toward the school. David was beside her. Maggie was in the back.

They were all watching me.

I walked toward the car.

The asphalt was warm under my sandals, hotter than it had been this morning, the sun having had seven hours to do its work. The distance from the front door to the parking spot was maybe two hundred feet. It felt like two miles.

I opened the back door. Maggie was sitting on the passenger side, her phone in her hand, her eyes red.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” Her voice cracked. “Get in.”

I climbed into the back seat. The upholstery was hot. The car had been sitting in the sun all day, windows up, no shade. The heat wrapped around me like a blanket, like an embrace, like something that wanted to hold me together even when I was falling apart.

Maggie reached over and took my hand. Her fingers were warmer than this morning, warmer than the air, warmer than anything else I’d touched today.

“How was it?” my mother asked from the front seat.

“Long,” I said.

“Did anyone”

“No. No one touched me. No one hurt me. It was just...” I paused. Searched for the word. “Strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Strange to be looked at. Strange to be the only one. Strange to sit in class and answer questions about the First Amendment while everyone stared at my body.”

David turned around in his seat. His face was paler than it had been this morning, paler than it had any right to be after a day spent waiting in a car.

“The First Amendment?” he said.

“Mr. Yamamoto. He’s the history teacher. He asked the class who decides what’s appropriate. And I said,” I stopped. “I said that community standards are just another way of saying ‘what makes the people in charge comfortable.’”

My mother started the car. The engine hummed that familiar sound, the sound of going home, the sound of leaving something behind.

“Did the principal say anything else?” she asked. “Before you left?”

“I didn’t see him after the second period. I think he was avoiding me.”