Lucy, Chapter Ten

Lucas hadn’t realized how much the secret about the pot had been weighing on him until he told his parents about it. After Mrs. Weaver had called them on iChat to tell them that he and Carlie had been suspended from school she called him into the room and let him talk to them alone. They had been upset, as he had suspected they would be, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d pictured in his head.

After he’d told them, his mom pointed the webcam away from them while they discussed what his punishment should be. They didn’t realize that he could still hear them. It was as if they were little kids who thought if you couldn’t see them you couldn’t hear them. There was some sort of technology disconnect when it came to his parents.

“I can’t believe he let Matthew and Micah take the blame for him,” his dad said.

“I guess he was afraid of how we’d react,” his mom replied.

“That’s not an excuse. I don’t want him to think it’s okay to take advantage of his friendships.”

“I don’t think he does. If he thought it was okay he wouldn’t have felt the need to confess.”

“True. I guess that took some balls. So what should we give him?”

They argued over his punishment and finally decided that he’d get the same thing as Matthew and Micah got – two weeks grounding when he got home and he’d have to watch the documentary about schizophrenia instead of going to homecoming this year. He tried to act surprised when they tilted the webcam back onto them and delivered the news.

“Think about it Luka,” his dad said. “This would have been much easier on you if you had have owned up at the same time as Matthew and Micah. You could have watched the documentary with them. Instead you have to do it all by yourself.”

Lucas tried to act serious and remorseful but he was secretly gleeful. He didn’t care about the punishment. All he cared was that his parents didn’t hate him.

Mrs. Weaver had to go back to work that afternoon so she dropped Lucas and Carlie off at Mr. Weaver’s work. He worked at a TV station on Mt. Coot-tha and seemed to spend a lot of time walking about hurriedly between different rooms and taking calls on his cell phone. He had an assistant who took them to the cafeteria and ordered them croissants and cappuccinos then speedily retreated back to whatever they were doing.

“What does your dad do?” Lucas asked.

“He’s a producer. He produces A Current Affair.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a news show.”

“Have you ever explored this place? I bet there are heaps of cool things to do.”

“Yeah, I know my way around. But listen, I need you to focus. I want to hear what happened again.”

Lucas sighed dramatically. “Again? You’ve heard this, like, three times now.”

“Yes, again.”

Lucas described exactly what happened in the most ridiculous detail and Carlie stared at him and nodded and prompted him to continue.

When he was done she shook her head. “There’s something I’m missing.”

She chewed on her thumbnail as she stared out the window at the forest of eucalyptus trees.

“Do you use a combination lock or a key lock on your locker?”

“Key. Why?”

“Do you have it?”

“No, the groundskeeper took it.”

“Why would she insist that the lock be cut off when you were right there offering to open it for her?”

“I dunno, dramatic effect?”

Carlie looked back at him suddenly, a new light in her eyes. “No. She wouldn’t let you open it because she knew it wasn’t your lock. Your key wouldn’t have worked on it.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

“But I haven’t finished my cappuccino,” he complained as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him from the table.

Carlie led him down a series of hallways and to a room where her dad was standing at a high table with a couple of other people murmuring over clippings on the table.

“Dad we’re bored, can we borrow one of the camcorders and make a documentary outside?”

Her dad looked up and smiled. “Of course honey, you know where they are.” He turned to one of his workmates. “She’s a news woman in the making, that one,” he said proudly.

Carlie went over to a tall closet and got a camcorder out. “Thanks, we’ll get out of your hair now.”

Her dad waved and went back to his work, then turned back to them. “Here, take my personal phone, just in case.”

Carlie called a cab and before long they were back at school. It was fifth period and everybody was in class so they had the school to themselves. She had him stand by his locker and describe, yet again, what had happened and then they took off in search of the groundskeeper. They found him weeding a garden bed outside the gymnasium.

“We were wondering if you would answer a few questions regarding the lock that you cut this morning?” Carlie asked as she trained the camcorder on him.

“Ah…” George stood up and removed his leather work gloves. “Sure, I guess so. Is this for a school project?”

“Yes, you could say that. Do you cut locks off lockers very often?”

“Not at this time of year. At the end of the year there are always a few girls who accidentally leave their lock behind and then I have to cut them away, but this is the first time during the school year.”

“Hmm… do you still have the lock?”

“It’s in the work shed.”

“Would we be able to see it please?”

“Sure.”

George led them up to his work shed, unlocked it, and took the severed lock from a draw under the workbench in the middle of the room. Carlie kept the camcorder pointed at him the whole time.

“Are you sure this is the lock you cut this morning?” She asked.

“Yes, this is where I left it.”

“Does anyone else have access to this work shed?”

“No. The cleaners might but they never come in here.”

“Is it possible that someone could have come into the shed and replaced this lock with a different one?”

“I guess it is possible, but it’s highly unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Because of the marks on it. I started cutting on the left side, but the angle hurt my wrist so I ended up cutting through on the right side of the lock. I’m sure this is the lock I cut off this morning. Why the cross examination?”

“Oh, we’re just trying to be thorough Mr…?”

“Crossey. George Crossey.”

Carlie nodded. “Thank you so much for your help Mr. Crossey. Now, Lucas, see if your key fits in this lock.”

Lucas fished his keys out of his pocket and Mr. Crossey handed him the lock. He held it up for the camera, slid the key inside and tried to turn it but he couldn’t. Carlie was right. It wasn’t his lock.

“Let Mr. Crossey try. He’s an impartial third party.”

Lucas handed him the lock and key and Mr. Crossey couldn’t get the lock to open either.

“That’s great! That’s proof that someone broke into my locker. We should go and show it to Mrs. Hoskins right away. Maybe she’ll un-suspend us!”

Carlie didn’t share his enthusiasm. “It’s not water-tight. She could say that you just went and got a different key and that’s why it doesn’t work. We need more. Besides, think about it Lucy, if Mrs. Hoskins knew it wasn’t your lock that means she knew you were being set up and was happy to go along with it. We need real proof. We need a confession.”

His heart sank back to its previous low. “How are we going to get that? We don’t know who did it.”

“No, but we have an idea who might know about it.”

They intercepted Zoe on her way out of English class.

“I need to talk to you,” Carlie said.

“Why would I want to talk to you?”

“Because I’m making a documentary. My dad said he might air it on his show. You could be on TV.”

Zoe’s eyes flickered and she bit down on her lip.

“It’s not bad. I promise you will look really good. We’ll do a soft lighting that’ll make your skin glow.”

“Okay. After Japanese. Where do you want to do it?”

“Ah…”

“In the library,” Lucas cut in. “I’ll get us a study room so the sound will be good.”

They went to the library and he sweet talked the librarian into giving them one of the study rooms to use. When they were inside Carlie started acting all shy.

“Um… Lucy, can you film me for a minute. I want to make a statement.”

He took the camcorder and watched her through the display.

She shifted in her seat nervously and pushed a strand of straight brown hair behind her ear.

“I’m Carlie Weaver and I’m a student at BGGS. In the first week of classes this term I had an accident in PE. I was trying to run too fast on the treadmill and I fell of the back of it and crashed into Lucas. We both fell on the floor in front of the whole class. For some reason we were sent to the principal’s office, even though we hadn’t done anything wrong.

“When I was in her office, Mrs. Hoskins kept on prodding me to say that Lucas had touched me inappropriately. She kept on asking if he had touched my breasts or my bottom. She called him a cunning fox and implied that he was dangerous to the girls at school. She made me feel like all I had to do to get Lucas kicked out of school was to say that he’d touched me.”

Lucas was stunned. Mrs. Hoskins had been out to get him all along. She must be the one behind the pot in his locker. His heart sank. It was going to be impossible to get un-suspended now.

“That’s it,” Carlie said.

He lowered the camcorder and turned it off. They sat staring at each other across the plastic-topped desk.

“I think Mrs. Hoskins set you up.”

He nodded.

“She’s a big fish to fry… actually she’s like a big whale to fry.”

He laughed. “No, she’s more like a sea cow.”

Carlie smiled. “Hey don’t offend the manitees, they’re lovely placid creatures. Hoskins is a great white shark feasting on baby seals.”

“A great white with little rectangular glasses, a ridiculous perm and annoying fake pompous accent.”

She laughed. “And that awful pink lipstick. Don’t forget the lipstick… Sonny Jim.”

Lucas leaned back in his chair and laughed freely. It was just like his dad said, ‘laughter is the best medicine.’ Even though he still felt like they were in an impossible situation, he felt a bit better when he and Carlie were laughing about it.

She made him hide behind a shelf of books when Zoe came to the library after her Japanese class. Carlie fussed over her as if she were a Hollywood starlet. She collected all of the desk lamps from around the library and took them in to the study room with them.

“I’m going to create the perfect lighting for your skin tones,” he heard her say as she closed the door.

It took about twenty minutes, and then Lucas watched Carlie and Zoe embrace and Zoe walk out of the library. He waited a few minutes to make sure she wasn’t coming back before going into the study room.

Carlie was sitting at the desk peering into the screen of the camcorder as she played back the interview.

“I think we got it,” she said without looking up.

He sat beside her and she angled the screen so he could see too and they watched together. In the video, Carlie gently coaxed and Zoe did a great impression of someone important answering important questions. He had no idea how Carlie did it, but within minutes Zoe was transformed from a suspicious, unwilling interviewee to a gushing fountain of information.

She talked openly about how Mrs. Hoskins had called her, Bess and Gina into her office one at a time to ask if he had ever pushed drugs on them.

“She said that another girl had come to her and told her that Lucas had offered her drugs. She wanted us to agree that he was a drug dealer, I could tell.”

“How could you tell?”

“Well, she kept on talking about how he was a blemish on the face of the school and a danger to us girls. She called him an American hooligan and said he wasn’t to be trusted. She kept on implying that the reason he’d left our group was because we’d stood up to him about the drugs and kicked him out.”

Lucas felt his face burning red. He was embarrassed and ashamed that Mrs. Hoskins thought that about him.

“And what did you say?”

“I told the truth. I said the reason he left was probably because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of sitting with the popular girls, so he went and found unfashionable people to sit with.”

He was gob smacked by the depths of her arrogance.

“What about Gina and Bess? What did they say?”

“Mrs. Hoskins told us not to talk to anyone about it. I’m probably going to get into heaps of trouble for talking about it on TV…” She hesitated.

“You look great Zoe,” Carlie interjected. “The school tie really brings out the blue in your eyes in this lighting.”

“Really?” She touched her face with manicured fingers.

“Yeah, for sure. You look stunning.”

Zoe smiled into the camera.

“So what did Gina and Bess say?” Carlie prompted.

“Well, we weren’t supposed to talk about it but of course we did. When Bess was there Gina said she thought Lucas had left the group because he liked Bess but she didn’t like him in the same way and he couldn’t handle being around her any longer, but when we were alone she told me that she really thought that Lucas liked her the best.”

“Uh-huh, and what about Bess?”

“Bess went along with what Mrs. Hoskins said.”

“Bess said that Lucas had offered her drugs?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t a big deal. There was already someone else who’d said it and Bess was just going along with it. It’s not like she lied, she just agreed with something that wasn’t true.”

“Right, that’s understandable. Did Lucas ever offer you drugs?”

“No,” she scoffed.

“Did he ever talk about drugs, or even alcohol?”

“No.”

“Do you think he offered Bess drugs?”

“No.”

“Why do you think she would say that he did?”

Zoe shrugged. “You know Bess, she’s just looking for attention.”

“Right. Well it’s good to know there are still some people out there who aren’t attention seekers.”

Zoe didn’t catch the sarcasm in Carlie’s voice. She smiled and said, “Yes. I’m very down to earth.”

That was essentially the end of the interview. They put the desk lamps back out on the desks that they came from and were walking out of the now deserted school when Carlie suddenly pulled him behind a tree.

“What?”

“It’s Mrs. Hoskins,” she whispered as she took the camcorder out of its case and held it up to start recording again. She got footage of Mrs. Hoskins walking from the administration building, across the pathway and to the staff parking lot. “Come on, watch this…”

“Mrs. Hoskins!” She called out as she jogged towards the school principal.

The old bat turned briskly and her eyes went wide with alarm when she saw Carlie jogging towards her brandishing a camcorder. She hurried towards a stately black Mercedes.

“Mrs. Hoskins, would you answer a few questions for us regarding Lucas’ suspension.”

“I have nothing to say!” She cried indignantly.

The vehicle’s unlocking mechanism bleeped and she opened the driver’s side door.

“Mrs. Hoskins, we just have a few questions…”

She raised her hands to shield herself from the camera as she plunked herself down into the big luxury car.

“Mrs. Hoskins, what do you have to hide?” Carlie cried dramatically.

She slammed the door and the car jumped to life, almost running over Carlie’s foot on its quick retreat.

Carlie turned to him and smiled a huge, delighted grin. “That couldn’t have gone better.”

“What do you mean? You didn’t get her to talk at all.”

“Exactly. She wouldn’t talk, which makes her look guilty. Come on, let’s go show my dad.”

When they were back at the TV studio, Carlie managed to pull her dad aside to look at her ‘documentary’. He started off just nodding every now and then, but after the interview with Zoe he was smiling and when he saw the footage of Mrs. Hoskins running away from the camera he got out his phone and started making calls.

He took the camcorder off Carlie. “This is amazing honey, I’m so proud of you. We can probably run it tomorrow night.”

“No, wait dad. Don’t you think we should ask mum first? I mean, what if we can come to a better agreement without airing it?”

“Use it as leverage?”

Carlie nodded.

He hesitated for a moment. “This is good stuff Carlie, news worthy… but it is yours to do what you want with. I can help you to cut and edit it this evening and you and your mum can decide what to do with it.”

They spent the evening at the TV station. Mr. Weaver called Mrs. Weaver, who drove up after work to see what they were doing. They ate dinner in the cafeteria and talked about what Mr. Weaver should say in the voice-over commentary that would guide the viewer through the story.

In the end, when Mr. Weaver had cut and spliced and added a voice over, stock footage of the school, some music and special effects it was very dramatic and felt like a real news story. He blurred Zoe’s face and changed her voice and added the words ‘identity concealed for student’s safety.’ It was all very impressive.

“Let’s hope that this is enough to tip the scales in our favor tomorrow,” Mrs. Weaver said.

Lucas felt a mixture of emotions. On the one hand it had been an awful day full of nasty surprises, but on the other hand Carlie had stood up for him so vehemently and with such complete confidence in his innocence that he felt happy to have found that she was such a good friend.

Telling his parents about the pot in Micah’s backyard and how he’d let Matthew and Micah take the blame for him had been difficult, and they’d been mad, but in the end he was so relieved to not have to carry the secret around with him anymore that it more than balanced out the punishment they’d given him.

He wasn’t sure what was going to happen tomorrow but he kind of hoped he got to see Mrs. Hoskins’ face while she watched Carlie’s documentary. That, and he wanted to see Mrs. Weaver in action.