Edenville Owls

Chapter 14

There was a substitute teacher for Miss Delaney on Monday and Tuesday. We tortured her until Miss Delaney came back on Wednesday. There were some bruises showing on her face.

“I fell down the stairs,” she told us. “I just tripped and fell.”

“You drunk, Miss Delaney?” Russell said.

Everyone laughed, including Miss Delaney. It looked to me like when she laughed, it was uncomfortable.

“Sadly,” she said with a smile, “I was not.”

After class I hung back, and when no one else was in the room I went to the desk where Miss Delaney was sitting marking something in her rank book.

She didn’t look up.

“Did he do something?” I asked.

“Who?” she said.

“That guy,” I said. “The one I saw you with.”

She looked up at me.

“Bobby,” she said slowly, “it is none of your business.”

“I just want to help,” I said.

“You can help by saying nothing more about it, to me, or to anyone else,” Miss Delaney said, “as you promised.”

“I’ll bet it was him,” I said.

“No,” Miss Delaney said. “It was not.”

She looked straight at me. Neither of us said anything else. I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I turned and walked out of the room.

Outside in the school yard the Owls were already practicing. They were running up and down the court passing the ball back and forth, not dribbling at all. It was Russell’s idea. We got to work on our wind and our passing at the same time. The object was not to take more than two and a half steps with the ball. It was pretty cold, and it was getting dark earlier and earlier. But as long as it didn’t snow, we were all right, even if we had to play with too many clothes on.

Billy dropped out of the running and came over to me.

“You talk to her?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Did he do it?” Billy said. “That guy?”

“She said no.”

“What’d you say?”

“I said I thought he did.”

“She get mad?”

“Kind of,” I said. “I told her we just wanted to help.”

“What’d she say about that?”

“She said it wasn’t him and she kind of gave me the evil eye, you know?”

“Oh yeah,” Billy said. “The mean look. She’s usually so nice, you can’t friggin’ believe it when she gives you that mean look. So what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You guys gonna practice?” Russell said. “Or you just gonna chew the fat all the rest of the day?”

“Maybe we should tell somebody,” Billy said.

“We promised not to,” I said.

Billy shrugged.

“Hey,” Russell yelled. “You too good to practice?”

Russell liked being in charge. He fired the ball at us and it bounced off the school wall and rolled away. I went after it, and got it and dribbled it back toward the practice area.

“Okay,” I said. “Watch yourself. Murphy’s on the move.”