Chapter 2: School and the Principal’s Office

Austin arrived at the school a few minutes before the bell rang. With Kazzy strapped to his back, he jogged for homeroom as the bell rang. He slid into his seat, switching Kazzy from his back to his chest. He made it through homeroom but then he had history and Mr. Martinez did not like Kazzy one bit.

He slid into his seat and sighed. Made it in time.

“You look tired, are you okay?” the girl next to him asked. She leaned over to look at the baby in his arms. “How’s the little Kazzy?” she played with her tiny hands and smiled. "Too cute!"

" Yeah, " he answered. “DJ was being terrible this morning, Rome and Venice were causing trouble, and like usual, Mom was already at work.”

“At least you only have to deal with Kazzy now,” Demetria shrugged. Almost on cue, Kazzy started to cry.

“Shhh,” she tried to soothe her. “Sorry, Austin.”

“She’ll settle down evetually,” he waved it off. “But, since you made her cry, you can hold her.”

Demmy laughed and reached over for her. “Gladly!” she cradled her in her arm and wrapped a blanket Austin handed her around the baby. Kazzy stopped crying eventually.

Mr. Martinez began to talk. “Open you books to page 374. Today we will finish talking about the French and Indian War.” He droned on and on and Austin stopped listening when he said the page number.

He pulled a notebook out of his backpack and grabbed a pencil. He opened the notebook up to the second to last page and began to draw. Austin was never a good drawer but the picture he drew was magnificent. In the middle was a dot and spreading out from it like spokes of a wheel where tiny veins. Even tiny viens branched off of them, going in every other diretion. He went back and adding a little bit of shading and texture, making it seem to pop off the page.

He didn’t know what he was drawing or why but the image just poured out of his pencil and onto the page. The next thing he knew the bell was ringing and it was time for the next class.

He took Kazzy from Demmy and continued on with the rest of his day without any problems. It was only went he exited the school that they started.

Ausstin zipped his coat up around himself and Kazzy as he jogged over to the middle school. He leaned up against the chainlinked fence waiting for his younger siblings to be let out. Roxanne was pushing younger kids on the swings, Rome and Venice were swinging, and DJ was yelling at a kid. He brought his arm back and within a flash, he let it loose, hiting the other kid in the eye.

“DJ! Stop!” Austin yelled but way too late.

He quickly climbed over the fence, careful not to knick Kazzy on it, and jogged towards him. Roxanne stopped pushing the kids, and Rome and Venice stopped pumping their legs on the swings.

“Donald Junior!” one of the teachers scolded, arriving on the scene before Austin did. “Go to the principal’s office, now!”

Austin stopped when he heard that. His shoulders sagged and he sighed. DJ glared at the teacher and then the boy on the ground in turn and then headed for the open gate. He followed DJ out of and motioned for the his siblings to follow him. Roxanne waved goodbye and Rome and Venice both jumped off the swings and ran to catch up. A teacher joined them.

No one said anything as they walked through the virtually empty hallways of the school. The teacher opened the door and ushered DJ and Austin in. The others sat outside on the bench, waiting for it all to be over.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Smith,” Principal Julie looked up. “And DJ and Austin. What can I help you with?”

“I didn’t do anything bad!” DJ blurted. Austin clamped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, signaling for him to shut up.

“Punching someone in the eye is very bad,” Mrs. Smith argued. She looked at the principal. “Mrs. Martinez wanted me to make sure you do something about it this time.”

So that teacher is Mr. Martinez’s wife, huh? No wonder she hates DJ so much. He follows right in my footsteps. Austin thought.

“I see,” Julie tucked her pen behind her ear. “You may go back to your class, thank you.”

Mrs. Martinez nodded and turned and left but not without glaring at DJ one more time. Austin gritted his teeth. He hated that whole family.

“Did you punch somebody again, Donald?” Julie said a tinge of tiredness in her voice.

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” It was almost as if he was proud of it. Austin sat down next to him.

“And why did you do it?” she pressed.

“He was being a jerk,” he crossed his arms.

“You half to be nice to people, Donald,” she sighed.

“What do you want me to do? Give him handshake and hug and be like, ‘It’s okay, buddy! It doesn’t matter that you’re spreading rumors around school, we’re still friends!’” he said sarcastically. Austin was done trying to get him to stop. “There’s worse I could have done to him. I could have dumbed water on his pants and held him on the metal slide till he froze to it. I could have pushed him in the way of the swings or stuck him under the merry-go-round and then turn it super fast. Punching him in the eye is nothing compared to what I could have done.”

That is not helping anything, DJ. Just shut up please before they expell you. Austin thought so hard he was almost certain he’d sent the message to him mentally.

“Donald, while punching someone in the face probably is the least you could do to him, it doesn’t make it okay,” Julie pointed out. “You’re gonna have after school detention

for one week.”

DJ’s jaw clenched. He didn’t say anything.

“Now, you can leave, I need to talk to Austin,” she nodded at the door and DJ happily got up and left, swagging a little as he left. He’d done worse before.

“I didn’t do anything,” Austin immediatly said.

“No, you haven’t,” Julie folded her hands and set them on the desk. “But the school board has a done and made a lot of sacrafices for your family. Over at the highschool, they’re letting you bring Kazlynne to school, and over here, we’ve put up with a lot of stunts from your younger brother.”

They said this everytime something happened. Everything always got blamed on his home situation.

“He needs to get his act together or it’s only going to get worse,” Julie continued. “Please promise me you’ll do something about it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered politely.

“Have a good rest of the day, Austin,” she smiled. “And be safe, okay?”

He nodded.

Stepping outside, he headed for the exit. The others followed him and soon they were on the way home. They stopped to pick some things up from the store along the way but they made decent time.

The moment Austin stepped inside the door, his phone rang. It was Demmy.

“Hey!” he answered.

“Hey, um, Dad has a meeting at the office so I was just gonna call and see if it’d be okay for me to drop by while he’s gone.” she said, cutting straight to the point.

“Yeah, no problem!” he said. “When ya gonna be here?”

“Dad can drop me off on the way,” she told him.

“Okay, see ya then,” he ended the call. DJ and the others were already upstairs working on homework so he settled down at the kitchen table and pulled out his notebooks. The first notebook was history. He opened it up to look at his notes and then remembered he didn’t take any because he’d been drawing. He flipped to the page he drew on and looked at it. Slowly, he turned back to the homework at hand and set to work but he kept a pencil on the drawing so he could quickly turn to look at it.

A hour later, the doorbell rang. He stood up and walked to the door. Opening it, he saw Demmy standing there, her backpack hung over her right arm.

“Hey,” she said.

He opened the door and let her in. She’d been to his house many times seeing they grew up together and she came over frequently to watch the kids or help out.

She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and leaned over to look at his homework.

“You’re still on history?” she asked with a little laugh.

“Yeah, I wasn’t really listening and I didn’t make any notes,” he admitted, shutting and locking the front door. “I got to work on dinner, ya hungry?”

“Yeah, sure,” she nodded. She sat down in the seat and flipped through the notebook looking at the occasionaly doodle here and there. Seeing the pencil in the back of the notebook, she flipped to the page it was on.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the sketch. “It’s good.”

“Ah, thanks,” he walked over next to her. “I don’t exactly know what it is but it looks like something a superheroe\ would have you know, the thing that grants them their powers sorta deal.”

“I think the villian would have it actually. It just looks too -- evil for a superhero,” she said.

He took a step back and began to think. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Let’s say that the person that has this power-giving thing is a villian but maybe they started out as a superhero but it was just too boring,” she suggest.

He smirked. “What?”

“Well, wouldn’t you get fed up with saving things all the time and never getting to smash a building or crush a bus? I know I would,” she stood up and started to clear the table off. She had the table set before he said anything.

“Or maybe he was bad from the beginning,” he added.

“I don’t think everybody starts out bad,” she said. “I think they deteriorate to that point.”

Austin glanced at the sketch one more time before she shut the notebook and set it off to the side.

His insides turned and he felt like he was going to puke. He turned back to the boiling water on the stove and glenched his teeth.

“Get a grip, Austin,” he glenched the edge of the counter.

The image of the sketch flashed into his mind. There was something about it that made him feel uneasy. He wished he hadn’t have drawn it.