Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel Read online

  “Sit down!”

  A spurt of anxiety filled my chest, some leftover emotion from my own adolescent days, no doubt. “Of course, sir,” I answered politely, and took a deep breath.

  I began telling the principal why I was there, but he cut me off mid-sentence.

  “Let’s get something straight, Ms. Lyons, Abigail Pustovoytenko has every right to attend high school here if she so wishes. In fact if my schedule weren’t filled to overflowing with grieving students and parents, and a press conference scheduled with the mayor for noon, I’d argue the point with you until school let out at two-fifteen. But it is, so I can’t. You and your so-called client Gloria Pustovoytenko are dead wrong in your insistence that this poor child be forced to continue with a fake education because of her mother’s personal paranoias and prejudices.”

  He’d actually pronounced her last name correctly.

  I still wasn’t sure I could.

  Chapter 3

  He had cleverly just introduced what I knew could be one of the statewide challenges made to homeschooling sooner or later, that of racial prejudice. Maybe even nationwide. In other words, he was intimating that the hidden reason Gloria P. and others like her didn’t want their children attending California’s public schools was to keep them separated from some ethnically inferior group of children.

  I sidestepped this hot potato.

  “But sir, she’s currently enrolled at the…”

  He waved an impatient hand to silence me.

  “I am required by law to accept this phony school of yours...”

  “Not mine, sir. The homeschooling mother I represent has enrolled…”

  “…but I don’t have to respect the insulting lie that is underlying such a so-called school. And I doubt seriously there really is one at all. From my experience, these so-called schools are nothing but fronts for parents who are denying their children the right to a decent education, one that includes proper instruction in all of the basic subjects a public school offers…”

  He was yelling now.

  “…and doing so for purely selfish reasons, because they’d had bad experiences themselves, because they want to keep their children with them like little Peter Pans, never allowed to grow up. How does this mother know her daughter might not thrive in school? How does she know what Abigail might be capable of learning in a formal educational setting unless…” He waved an impatient hand again, this time at his own digression.

  “At any rate, at this point I have no time to argue with you. Abigail will be retrieved from her classes as soon as we locate her. You can wait outside.”

  “Locate her..?”

  Three parents were ushered in by the secretary who, still glaring at me, indicated haughtily that I should follow her. My two and a half minutes with the Prince were over.

  This time I was deposited out in the hall by the nurse’s office to do my waiting--where I imagined secretary Prichard hoped I would catch something contagious. Instead, I sat listening in as a young girl asked for her weekly supply of condoms. Nurse Janet Kaplan—according to the sign next to her door—proceeded to explain how to slide it over his member.

  “I already know how to use it Ms. Kaplan. Like, you told me all this junk last month, remember?” Nurse Janet was a sweet faced gray haired lady on the edge of retirement. I imagined she was as comfortable about handing out condoms as I would be if I had the job.

  As in not.

  I’m a prude.

  “Humor me. I’m required to read these instructions to you…” I heard her mumble.

  Definitely more than I wanted to know about today’s world. I settled back in my comfy new waiting chair, a metal on metal folding device no doubt meant to discourage students from wanting to see the nurse too often.

  Chapter 4

  A half hour passed during which I’d struck up a reasonably friendly conversation with school nurse Janet Kaplan about the sad events of the day.

  She asked me about my neck brace, which I’d become so accustomed to I’d forgotten I was wearing. I told her briefly I’d been in a car accident of my own just eleven days before, one in which fortunately no one had died. That my car had been rolled on a different freeway (and on what felt like a different dimensional plane) and I’d suffered a severe neck strain as a result.

  I was almost done with the pain, but talking about it reminded me I still hurt a little. My doctor was insisting I keep the brace on for a full month or suffer the return of the mind blowing pain I’d first experienced. I was trying. But I have to avoid mirrors all together before leaving the house.

  What I didn’t tell her was that the accident had been no accident. That someone in a white truck had tried to kill me, someone who had not yet been identified.

  I also didn’t tell her that this was the first day since the accident that I’d been out driving around on my own. Before this morning Matt had chauffeured me everywhere. Matt had another court case to testify at this morning, so he was unable to assist me. Our two apprentices were likewise busy.

  I’ve decided not to tell my doctor that I was driving again.

  Matt was the natural choice to do court testimony for our little company, on two counts: one, Matt’s thirty years’ experience as an officer in the Marine Corps made him a very credible witness, and two, my former career had been as a librarian.

  Librarians are not really known for their public speaking skills. Not that mine were bad, I just tend to say too much. It’s the Freedom of Information thing that librarians have at the center of their brains. You ask, we tell--or find a book that will do the same thing.

  Okay, maybe it’s not about being a librarian. Maybe I’m just too loquacious. Or…maybe I have this big need to sound like I know stuff.

  That would be because I was a second child, and the first child was very intelligent. And pushy. It’s called second child syndrome. But I’m giving you way too much information.

  Anyway, whenever our business became involved in any work that was to be used in a trial case, Matt did that work so he could testify.

  My mind drifted back to the mild anxiety I was carrying around over Abigail’s reaction to my doing her mother’s dirty work. Our relationship was through the Quilted Secrets bees as I’ve already stated, and I needed that relationship to stay friendly. Consequently, I’d made up my mind that if Abigail refused to accompany me I would just leave without her and tell Gloria to deal with her daughter when she got home from work.

  Problem was, Gloria was head nurse of CCICU and often did overtime. This morning when she’d called she told me she’d been working twelve- to fourteen-hour days since the accident on Wednesday and she didn’t expect that to let up anytime soon.

  Aside from dealing with the deaths of the five boys, three of whom made it into her ICU, she still had Jimmy Winters to deal with twenty-four seven. And one of the dead boys’ fathers had been delivered to her with a heart attack mid-day yesterday.

  That had been George Baker’s father, a local Baptist pastor and an African American. Two health strikes against him, in my book. George Baker senior had a very stressful job as a pastor. And my knowledge of health issues for African Americans included high risk for heart disease, especially if they were overweight. Gloria told me Baker was carrying an extra fifty pounds and the prognosis was iffy. They weren’t sure he would pull through.

  The now dead George Baker junior was his only son.

  So my thoughts were that Gloria deserved all the help she could get. I could never deal with the deaths of five young men the way she was now doing. And frankly, I liked Gloria P. a lot. She has spunk.

  And I also thought that Dr. Forsyth wasn’t the only one with an overly full schedule, and if Gloria could have been here she would have done a masterful job at defending her decision to homeschool Abigail.

  She would have pointed out the hours of endless boredom that constituted much of the public school day.

  She would have pointed out the clear evidence of failure of the mass pr
oduced education system that has evolved today, a public school system nothing like what it once was a hundred years ago.

  She would have cited dropout statistics, the increasing incidence of school violence in recent years, and the eight-foot-high fencing surrounding the school campus to keep terrorists out.

  She would have pointed to the over-sexualization of our young people that was spreading like a disease through all American public schools. And the superior test scores of homeschooled children as compared with public schooled children.

  But she wasn’t here, and I wasn’t eager to get into any debate of this nature. I just wanted to retrieve Abigail and be done with it.

  Another young pimple-faced female arrived to see Nurse Janet—this one looking like she was experiencing menstrual cramps, and my sore backside and restless nature drove me off the metal chair and out into the main hall in search of interesting displays.

  Chapter 5

  In between the grease stains and almost washed off graffiti on the institutional green walls there were several glass fronted cases lining the main hall. Most of them were filled with sports trophies. I finally found one that celebrated last month’s academic excellence award, with the catchy title, “September’s BraiNerd” and the winner’s photograph.

  He looked like a BraiNerd. I was willing to bet most of the students would die of humiliation if they found their own picture on this wall display.

  I smiled and continued to ponder the situation with Abigail while perusing several more trophy cases. I have to say, trophy cases are a complete waste of space. At least they broke up the monotony of filthy walls. But why not try to teach something in this space?

  I did learn that Pinto Springs had a pretty good football team. But its baseball and basketball teams could use some improvement. I had yet to find the soccer team’s trophies at all.

  A bell rang, reminding me of a fire drill I’d practiced centuries ago, and the halls of knowledge filled with disorderly, rude, weirdly dressed, large and small, tall and short, young people. They trailed a peculiar odor behind them. I clung to the piece of grimy wall I happened to be at when this river of youth had flowed out of the classrooms and prayed I wouldn’t accidentally be swept up and carried into a room when it was all over. I had learned from my own years at high school so many moons ago that there was no getting out of those rooms once the doors closed.

  Lockers opened and slammed back shut. Girls screeched and giggled, boys slunk their way down the hall, some of them desperately clinging to their pants which were clearly too large. You get the picture.

  At one point I remembered why I was here and began searching the faces of the kids swarming around me, but I didn’t see Abigail anywhere.

  Another siren rang and the torrent of teens was sucked into the rooms again like water down a drain and the noise ceased as abruptly as it had begun.

  I was a visitor from outer space and this was the first thing I was learning about the life forms on this particular planet. I wasn’t staying long.

  The odor dissipated, my brain tried to identify it, drugstore perfume, sour clothes, cigarette smoke, urine and sweat…well, you get it.

  I was alone. For several seconds I savored the calm in the hallway until I was reminded of the events of this week. I casually pushed myself off the sticky wall, pulled down on the hem of my short jacket, straightened my hair a bit and continued my stroll.

  Two young girls rounded a corner ahead of me, probably from another hall, one I hadn’t explored yet. They were bawling their way toward the nurse’s office. The near-hysterical sobbing echoed off the tile and plaster walls and somehow ushered in a small knot of kids through the double doors at the other end of the corridor. They were carrying black ribbons over their arms. I watched for a moment as they began attaching them to a couple of classroom doors.

  This brought my attention to the closest classroom doors and the decorations hung on them. The doors already had a sprig of flowers of one type or another hanging from them and some small phrase expressing grief--no doubt decided upon by the homeroom class for that room. The nearest one said, “To Leo, Rats, Ricky, Kim and Bro. We will never forget you.” I followed the signs further away from the main offices of the school, reading as I went. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Another proclaimed, “DON’T DRIVE STONED FOOLS!” A third said, “Death is NOT glorious. It’s just dead.”

  Dead was written in blood red ink.

  Obviously the teachers had directed some of the messages. The preachy signs outnumbered what I felt were the students’ actual feelings, namely shock and grief.

  Teenagers were emotional anytime, half estrogen driven, half testosterone, and all borderline crazy with their frightening life-change. The introduction of mass-grief into this chemical witch’s brew had the potential to be dangerous.

  A memory flitted into my brain and out again, of a study I’d read in one of the many colleges I attended over the years in hot pursuit of a workable degree. The study was on teen suicides and the contagion of emotions. Within that study was a simile of the transition children go through during their teens. A simile for those who don’t know is a form of figurative language. This one was something to the effect, What would it feel like to wake up one morning in the body of an octopus?

  For me, this simple simile had summed up adolescence in one short sentence. Until now. By the time this event with Abigail was over I would have a new definition of adolescent stress forever lodged in my brain. Like a permanent splinter.

  Chapter 6

  Along with his five friends, Jimmy Winters’ car crash had claimed another life. It wasn’t the truck driver, he survived but he was in bad shape mentally. The other victim was a hapless driver who had gotten caught up in the deadly dance between Jimmy’s car and the HappyFoods sixteen wheeler. A father of three on his way to his second job in the early morning hours, the poor man died at the scene.

  Anonymous had already posted pictures on a popular internet site showing the aftermath of Jimmy Winters’ fatal error in judgment. I won’t elaborate. They were gross. So is Anonymous.

  It seems to me the human race was growing less sensitive to each other’s pain and agony with each passing day thanks to modern technology—if indeed it had ever been truly sensitive. The Romans certainly showed little sensitivity toward the gladiators.

  Maybe insensitivity was more our true nature, and only with the aid of religion and other educational efforts did we learn to relate to each other’s suffering.

  But enough philosophizing. I return to the reason I was here. In the middle of all the high emotion of the past three days, Abigail Pustovoytenko had decided to make her dash to freedom. She’d enrolled herself using her mother’s work as an excuse for not having a parent with her. In a matter of minutes, she’d filled out and signed the forms, was quickly sent to a counselor’s office to select a curriculum and was sat right down in her first class. I know all this because Abby bragged to me about it much later.

  She has spunk, too.

  So now she was officially registered as a freshman at PSHS, despite having no record of prior formal education, despite having no parent with her, just sign here little miss, no questions will be asked.

  What a stunning legal world we live in today.

  The PSHS school officials didn’t care about parental rights. What they cared about was adding another student to their decreasing rolls so they could bring in more money and keep their jobs.

  I didn’t know if attending public school was a good idea for Abigail Pustovoytenko or not. What I knew was that at the tender age of thirteen she was an accomplished artist who appeared to know as much about history as I did. And I had a bachelor’s in the subject. Of course that was decades ago. My excuse for being impressed.

  She’d done the impressing at that first bee I keep telling you about, where she spent hours regaling us with her knowledge of early American history and the history of quilting. It helped pass the time.

  Abigail even had her own
website, one that she’d actually designed and that a fellow homeschool student had launched online for her. I’d seen the site and it was beautiful.

  These homeschooled kids were no dummies.

  Aside from discussions about American history, we’d collectively done a lot of sharing about our early childhoods at the bee. Each of us had shared a story we remembered about ourselves as an exercise intended to introduce me to the others in the group. I was the new-bee after all. Pun intended.

  I blame all this sharing business on the Internet. I blame a lot of things on the Internet, including the near demise of public libraries, but that’s another story for another time. The libraries have survived by adapting, as we all have.

  The reason I bring this up is that Abigail shared a poignant tale about her father. Joseph Beardsley suffers from chronic kidney failure.

  Beardsley and Abigail’s mother are now estranged. I don’t know whether the split was caused by the stress of his disease. I just know that he now lives somewhere in south San Diego County and that he has pretty much withdrawn from his fatherly duties.

  Gloria Pustovoytenko emigrated from the Ukraine late in her teens. Once here in the United States she finished her nursing degree, and met and married Joseph Beardsley.

  In the early part of their marriage, after Abigail was born, Gloria brought her mother over to live with them. Abigail’s grandma was called Nana—which I realized also means grandmother. I had no other name for her and really didn’t need one since I didn’t expect to ever be talking with her.

  I should also say that I can barely understand Gloria because her Ukrainian accent is so thick. Life in the Pustovoytenko family must be very interesting with Abigail speaking only English, Nana speaking only Ukrainian, and Gloria speaking some bastardized combination of both languages.