Last Dance. David Russell W.

most professional response to the situation, but to be fair, it did convey the general mood in the school hallway. By now a small crowd of educators and a handful of kids had gathered and were staring at the offending language on Tim’s locker. Someone had thought to fetch one of the janitors, who had already gone in search of some paint to at least visually eradicate the slur. Tim was standing next to me, saying nothing. I would have joined the teachers to discuss the educational meaning of the act — which meant gossiping about which student we thought was the graffiti artist — but I felt leaving Tim alone to engage in speculative student character assassination might be a little insensitive.

      The vice-principal proceeded towards us. “Are you happy now?” he barked as his presence filled my field of vision.

      “Not especially, no,” I replied casually. “Is there any reason that childish pranks perpetrated by imbeciles against targets selected on the basis of sexual preference should bring delight to my life?” As a general rule, the longer I’m in the building past three, the bitchier I get.

      “You’ve just got to stop getting yourself in so much hot water.” Tim finally spoke up for the first time since discovering the attack on his locker.

      “Any guesses?” I asked him.

      “How many people are there in the school?”

      “About sixteen hundred.”

      “That narrows it down to about fifteen hundred and ninety-nine.”

      “Yeah. I guess so.” We paused to stare some more at Tim’s defaced locker. Although there are many areas within the teaching profession in which I consider myself to be lacking, making small talk with students during awkward moments is chief among them. If they covered it during teacher training at Simon Fraser University, from which I had graduated less than a year before, I must have been sleeping. This event would certainly qualify as awkward. “But you can’t think of anyone in particular who has a beef with you?”

      “Only every homophobe who’s convinced they’ve ‘outed’ me.”

      “I guess they have,” I said, nodding towards his locker, now being covered with a fresh coat of paint. The locker now stood out from every other in the hallway in that it had received a coat of paint sometime during this decade. By this time, Principal McFadden was approaching us, and I silently vowed not to be sarcastic and snippy with him. I needed some reserves for the inevitable follow-up conversation with his direct underling.

      “Tim, I’m really sorry about what’s happened,” he began earnestly enough.

      “It’s not your fault, Mr. McFadden,” Tim replied with a sigh.

      “Still, no one should have to experience something like this, especially at school. We want you to feel safe here.” It sounded like a prepared statement, but there wasn’t a great deal more he could say. He turned his attention to me. “Maybe we can meet tomorrow morning.”

      “Sure,” I said. Word was clearly already out that somehow I had been enlisted in this current battle. McFadden placed his hand briefly on Tim’s shoulder and walked away towards his office. When it was clear the principal was out of earshot, his underling again approached us.

      “Don’t make this any worse,” Owen scolded me without stopping to wait for a sarcastic comeback. “Just let it go.” Then he was gone.

      “Mr. Patrick?” Tim asked after the silence had hung between us awhile. “Mr. Owen might be right. We should probably just let it go.” He said it, but his heart wasn’t in it.

      “I might have agreed, but the first part of your statement I just can’t go along with.” Confusion crossed Tim’s face then quickly abated when I added, “I will never concede that Mr. Owen is right.”

      Chapter Five

      Andrea Pearson is my best friend. And I don’t just say that because she could kick my ass without breaking a sweat. Truthfully, that feat wouldn’t be all that much. I’ve seen eighth graders who could probably do the same. But we’ve been friends since we were both little, and she would kick my scrawny butt each and every time I made a comment she perceived to be smart-assed, which was often.

      When we were very little, my comments were of the “girls can’t do” variety, and she would promptly demonstrate that I was wrong by ably completing the task and would also spend a little ass-kicking time punishing me for making the suggestion. As we grew into adolescence, the ass-kickings came following comments about how her body was failing to develop at the same rate as the other girls in our school. In our teenaged years, they were delivered in response to suggestions of how she and I might enjoy the developed parts of her body that had finally caught up to her peers in a way most teenaged boys in our school did not fail to notice. It was a history destined either to make you best friends or worst enemies. Andrea was sitting across from me in Las Margaritas Restaurant on Fourth Avenue, tossing back Coronas at a pace I didn’t bother attempting to match, interrogating me, as usual, about decisions I made in my life.

      “You’re really gonna piss Owen off,” she told me unnecessarily.

      “I know. It can’t be helped.”

      “Yes, it can,” she scolded. “Why do you insist on alienating yourself from everyone in authority?”

      “You’re still here. You have authority.”

      “Don’t you forget it.” In addition to being best friend and self-appointed guardian of my best interests, Andrea was also a prominent detective in the Vancouver Police Department, with a clearance rate unmatched by any of her peers. “But I can only fire at you. This Owen clown can fire you.” She smiled at her clever play on words.

      “No, he can’t. And that was awful.” Her smile didn’t fade: once she had decided her joke was funny, it really didn’t matter what I thought. “I’ve got the union. And, of course, my secret weapon.” Andrea raised her eyebrow as she tossed back the last of her Corona.

      “My charm,” I told her.

      She put the bottle down on the table and indelicately tossed the lime wedge — rind and all — into her mouth. With anyone else I would be appalled by her table manners, but with Andrea it had a certain perky wholesomeness. “I’ll be sure to save the want ads from tomorrow’s paper for you,” she said. “What about this ‘faggot’ thing on the kid — what’s-his-name’s — locker? You want me to look into it?”

      I chuckled. “You gonna shake down the student body, Detective Pearson?”

      “I’m just saying I could pick out the biggest, dumbest looking hoser of a guy and put the fear of god into him.”

      “That would be the Owen vice-principal clown.”

      “He wouldn’t have vandalized a kid’s locker.”

      “Not now, but I suspect it would have been about his speed when he was in school.”

      “You really got a hate on for this guy, don’t you?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Why? What’s the story with you two?”

      “He offends my sensibilities.”

      “That’s it?”

      “You need more?”

      She shook her head. My sensibilities were not easily explained, even to me. “You got any kids’ names I could work with?”

      “Don’t worry about it. That’s the clown’s job.”

      “What about the kid? What are you going to do about him?” I thought about that for a moment. Following my initial conversation with Bill, I had almost convinced myself that I would wash my hands of the issue. But I felt I owed Tim more. “Yo, Winnie,” she barked to bring me back into focus. “Stay with me at least until dessert.”

      “Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking.”