At this point, Celeste stomped to the boxes and brandished the letter opener.
She was mumbling and slitting open a box when she went on.
“I always get picked on when stuff like that happens.”
I had very little doubt.
Curvy girls thought thin girls had it so good.
Beautiful girls were passed up for dates to the prom because boys were so intimidated by their looks, they were too scared to ask.
Smart girls were destined to feel odd and wrong, because it was understood that they should be more worried about fashion than interested in code or equations.
As I’d noted, life was a daily battle.
For everybody.
Particularly if you were a girl.
She moved to shelve more books.
I moved to arrange more things.
“So she embarrassed you,” I noted.
She made a noise that was frustrated but also remarkably attractive. It sounded like how Celine Dion might grunt.
“Do you need chemistry to get into college?” I asked.
“I’m going to do hair. I’m really good at hair,” she decreed. “All my friends, and people who aren’t my friends, always ask me to do their hair. People say I’m even better than Shelly, who’s a stylist in town. The most popular one. Everyone goes to her. She’s sweet, and she taught me a few things. I even do the highlights and lowlights in one of my friends’ mom’s hair, and I haven’t gone to school to learn how or anything. Just got a few tips from Shelly.”
Her shoulders went straight for the first time since I’d known her, to the point I hadn’t realized they were slumped.
She then finished, “And my friend’s mom says it looks like she paid two hundred dollars for it.”
She was very certain about this statement for her future. Certain and proud of her talent.
It was not a make-do-because-I-live-in-a-small-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-and-I’ve-been-raised-to-understand-my-options-are-limited decision. Nor was it a people-like-my-chemistry-teacher-have-ingrained-in-me-I’m-not-good-for-anything-else decision.
She wanted it.
“Then why are you in chemistry?” I pressed.
Celeste Bohannan was not difficult to read now.
Her story was lit in neon.
In this case, her cheeks went pink.
A boy.
“She embarrassed you in front of your boyfriend?” I asked quietly.
Her gaze came to me, startled.
And she was even more beautiful.
Lord.
“How did you—?”
“I’ve lived a lot more life than you,” I lied.
She turned her head, dipping her chin almost to the point she rubbed it against her collarbone.
With that, she returned to the boxes.
It took a few minutes before she told me, “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“But it’s a boy you like.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
All of a sudden, I’d gone stone-still.
This girl’s fragility had nothing to do with recently being embarrassed in front of a boy she liked.
No, it was something else.
Perhaps her teacher was aware of it. Perhaps not.
But I’d lay money, a good deal of it, on the fact that her teacher was not conventionally attractive. She might be young. She might be old.
However, she saw the beauty and promise of Celeste Bohannan, and even if there was no excuse to single any child out in class for ridicule or to be made an example of, the fact it was Celeste was maliciously conceived.
And as such, I was livid.
Consumed by it to the point I was unable to move.
“Ms.…uh, Larue?” Celeste called.
I turned to her with a jerk.
She blinked.
“I’d like you to call me Delphine,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said shyly.
There was a time I’d been shy.
I was that no longer.
Including right then.
“There are occasions, Celeste, in anyone’s lives where we have to make decisions. Decisions about situations that it was not our choice to be in, but regardless, it’s up to us to make those decisions. It seems now the decision you made to curse at your teacher was a faulty one. But I can assure you, in the future, when you realize you found the courage to stand up for yourself, you will understand that the consequences you face, which arguably you should not be facing, were entirely worth it.”
Now she was staring at me.
“Of course, a school will need to have zero tolerance for that behavior,” I continued. “There are many lessons you learn in high school, and they need to do their best to blanket them so the same rules apply to everyone. And sadly, for the most part, that has to be no matter the extenuating circumstances, which is totally unfair, but it’s a way to teach a lesson. But this particular one, what was happening to you and how you refused to accept it, is precious because it’s yours and yours alone. And I hope you will stand on that decision many times in the future. Stand on it as your foundation so that you allow no one, not one single soul, to shit on you again.”
She was still staring at me, now understandably astonished.
“You’re helping me immensely,” I told her. “The kitchen is done, so this is the biggest job that’s left.” Not including my closet, of course, but she didn’t have to know that. “It was blocking me psychologically. I’m glad you came up to—”