Bitch.
CHAPTER SIX
“Ms. Morgan?”
Siena looked up from her phone. Dr. Granger, Geneva’s school counselor, was leaning out of her office door, smiling at her.
“Hi, yeah.” She swiped Twitter away and tried to tamp down the existential angst and generalized outrage she always felt after ten minutes on that hellsite. The specific angst and outrage she’d felt upon being summoned to the high school, on the other hand, she kept close to her heart, in case she needed it to energize her advocacy for her sister.
Shoving her phone into her bag, she stood and hooked the bag firmly on her shoulder. Dr. Granger stood so she held her door open with her body and ushered Siena into her office ahead of her.
“Thank you for coming in on such short notice,” Dr. Granger said as she closed her office door. “Please, sit.”
Siena sat in the chair the counselor had indicated. “Is Geneva okay?”
“She’s safe, yes. It’s nothing like that.” Dr. Granger sat at her desk and sighed. “I’d been planning to contact you soon to set up a meeting anyway, but after hearing from three of her teachers in the past week or so, I thought it best to make this a priority.”
That sounded very bad. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I’m not sure anything in particular happened. I’m not sure somethingdidn’thappen, either.”
Far too wound up to tolerate such circular talk, Siena leaned forward and put her hands on the desk. “Look. You’ve got me worried, and talking like that is only making it worse. Just be straight, please.”
Dr. Granger put an obviously well-practiced smile on her face. “Fair enough. I’ll start with the reason I was thinking we should meet soon, and then I’ll explain why that became potentially more urgent. Will that do?”
Siena was so tense her attempt at a nod felt robotic.Please, lady, justsayit.
“I know you attend PTA meetings fairly regularly—”
“Every one I can, yes.”
Dr. Granger accepted her interruption with a nod and that practiced smile. “So as you know, teachers in the ninth-grade cohorts convene at the end of each semester to do curriculum mapping, norming of student work, and other kinds of assessments of instruction.”
“Geneva’s grades were great. Mostly As. A B+ in PE.”
Again, a nod at the interruption. This time, the smile faltered a little. She could go ahead and be irritated; Siena was about to come out of her skin with simmering rage.
Geneva was a bullied kid and had been since kindergarten. She was introverted, she was brainy, her interests were nerdy, and she either didn’t understand or didn’t want to bother with most of the social customs of childhood. For as long as Siena had been Geneva’s guardian—before that, really; from the time their mom was too sick to do it—she’d had meetings with school counselors. It chapped her ass that all these educational professionals saw a bullying situation and thought it was the bullied kid who needed to change and not the bullies.
When the bullies got consequences, if they even did, those consequences were directed at the particular incident—to address that one thing they’d done. But counselors like Dr. Granger wanted Geneva to be a differentperson. If a kid knocked her down on the playground, that kid got detention for knocking her down. Geneva and Siena had to meet with the counselor to hear about how Geneva needed to act more like the other kids.
Why the fuck didshehave to be different?Shewasn’t the one going around calling other kids nasty names, knocking them down, ruining their schoolwork.
So yes, after years of this bullshit, Siena sat before Dr. Granger and was ready to blow.