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ghost.
    He raised his plastic mug to salute her. “I didn’t think you’d be able to get away from work.”
    Because Mom was top brass for a leading manufacturer of FDA-approved chemical mood-enhancers, dysfunction-solvers and ache/pain-reducers. A six-figure shyster, a drug dealer , but I learned to treat her career with a little cognitive dissonance. After all, her salary bought the most innovative, hands-on, private education a short attention span like mine could appreciate.
    The wall clock read 2:05 p.m. It would take at least fifteen minutes to get down to the Silver Bullet diner and keep my hard-won videotaping appointment with Savannah Lark. Ten minutes to wrap up this parent conference.
    “My son was obviously not the aggressor here,” Mom was saying.
    “We’ve found it incredibly difficult to get to the truth in situations like this,” Skaggs explained. “So we’ve adopted a Zero Tolerance policy on bullying and violence.”
    Mom’s phone rang, but she shoved her hand into her purse and silenced it. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “A kid can walk up to another kid in this school and sucker punch him— which is what happened —and the victim gets punished? What sense does that make?”
    “Madeline, we don’t need to get angry here,” Dad cautioned.
    The glare she gave Dad was about as cold as my ice pack.
    “I’m just saying,” Dad suggested. “Maybe if we brought the boys together and had them apologize to each other?” It was the same solution Dad offered the first time I got in trouble with Skaggs—shake hands and make up. But that time the truce was with Connie, who turned out to be my perfect counterweight. That was different. Guaranteed no way I’d have a change of heart and find myself buddying-up with Asshat.
    “I’m unconvinced that you could charge tuition and enforce a suspension simultaneously. I’d hate to involve legal counsel to work it out,” Mom told Skaggs.
    So much for a ten-minute resolution. To distract myself from the countdown, I zoned on a view through the office window—the steel Cape Fear Memorial Bridge stretching over the river with its two vertical lift towers. There weren’t many high places in my town, but this was one. My legs shuddered with the urge to climb one of those towers. My palms got moist. If only there was a zip-line from one to the other—a stunt to trip all the breakers in my nervous system. It wasn’t a suicidal urge, and it wasn’t fearlessness. It was the opposite of both, a siren call upward from the mundane ground, rising to where I could feel terrifyingly alive.
    Two-thirty was when they finally wrapped it up, having decided jack squat except that I was partially at fault for antagonizing the zoo animals. Once again, I was facing expulsion or at least suspension: big skull-and-crossbones marks on any college app. It was like I hadn’t cleaned up my act at all. I wanted to yell objection! I wanted Connie or Paige there to speak as character witnesses on my behalf.
    As soon as the VP said, “Welp, that’s it for now,” I scrammed, left the liquefied ice pack at the main desk.
    My shoes squealed on the hallway floor. I was in the clear, but just as I rushed past the drinking fountain, someone lurched out of the men’s room, straight into my path. I saw the fishing vest first, then my broadcasting teacher George Yesterly’s panicked eyes.
    We collided, and each of us took a seat on the floor. His fall was less graceful than mine. Poor Yesterly, with his chalky skin and body heat, looked worse than Paige’s gym class after their mile run on the track. I suddenly wanted a shower to wash away whatever might be catching.
    “Oh, man, I’m sorry, Mr. Yes,” I said.
    “No, Russ, no—it’s fine. I wasn’t looking where…” His voice trailed off. Something over my shoulder had grabbed his attention.
    Mom’s shoe heels clapped up behind me, and Yesterly watched her approach with a dumbstruck slow blink. I felt bad for