A Second Chance -- Chapter 5

By Dawn Natelle

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016

English was the first class today, and Rachael went to the staff room and waited outside before the first class. Mrs. Cathcart came out of the room, and Rachael walked beside her to the class.

“I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday, Mrs. Cathcart,” she said. “That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to write a good paper.”

“It was a good paper,” the teacher said. “I went over it carefully last night, and found only a few errors. It is so much better than anything else you have done that I was quite certain that it was copied. But I compared the handwriting, and it is clearly yours. I have no choice but to give you a perfect mark on it, even though I am a bit suspicious.”

Rachael’s initial reaction was negative … the woman seemed incapable of accepting the work was hers. But she remembered her mission, and instead of a sharp retort, she said: “I’m sorry that my past work hasn’t been that good, Mrs. Cathcart. I really wasn’t very motivated … before the incident. But you are a good teacher, and I guess I have been learning things. I just didn’t put the effort into using them before.”

Mrs. Cathcart stopped dead and looked at the girl, trying to decide if this was sincere, or simply flattery. She finally decided on the former. “Thank you Rachael. If you keep up the good work you could end the year with a good mark, in spite of being on the borderline right now. In the old days you would be in danger of failing, but that doesn’t happen very often anymore. But other teachers have mentioned a turnaround in your attitude this week. Let’s hope it continues.”

With that they entered the classroom, with Rachael politely holding the door for her teacher. She was rewarded with a smile, probably the first one that Mrs. Cathcart had given her all year. The class had three other students read their assignments. None affected the class the way Rachael’s had, but several were quite good for Grade 8 work. Clearly they were the best assignments of the ones that the teacher had read the evening before.

At the end of the class, Mrs Cathcart made an announcement to the class about the Youtube video. “Apparently a few minutes of my class was videoed by a student, and posted to Youtube the other day. The principal and I have reviewed the video and we have decided to leave it online, since it was accurate and educational. Up to now there have been no school policies about videoing class activities, but this is changing and as of now you can consider that this is no longer allowed. A student doing so can be expelled at the worst. If you tape something that you think would be cool online, you need to get permission from the teacher and the principal first. There will be no ramifications from this initial attempt. What is it at now? Five million views?”

“Nearly 23 million, Mrs. C,” Leon said, looking at his cell phone.

Then the class was dismissed, but Rachael was held back by the teacher. Mrs. Cathcart handed her a page with five assignments listed on it. “You have missed five assignments during the year so far,” she said. “I can’t let you do them now, since you may have read the papers of your friends. So I wrote out some replacement assignments you can do instead, if you wish. Do one a week and by the end of the term you may be able to get an A in the class. Without them, you could get a C or a C+, assuming you continue to do well in the rest of the year.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cathcart. I will do them. I appreciate you going to the extra work of making these assignments and offering to mark them. This is why you are a good teacher, I guess.”

The elderly teacher was beaming as the young girl darted out to catch up for her next class.

Math and History went quickly after English, and Rachael was in the cafeteria. She stood at the door for a moment, and looked around, finally seeing Lucy Davners at the cheerleader table. She approached.

“Lucy,” she said as she neared the table.

“What do you want, freak,” Lucy sneered.

“I wanted to know if your foot is okay. I shouldn’t have hit it.”

“I knew you did it on purpose,” the tall blonde said. “Joke’s on you. It really wasn’t hurt that much. But it did get me out of Phys. Ed.”

“I just wanted to say ‘I’m sorry,’” Rachael said.

“Beat it,” Lucy said rudely. “Go find the rest of the freak show.”

With that Rachael walked over to her friends, who were looking for her. It had been an attempt to rebuild bridges, but Lucy didn’t seem too interested. Rachael would have to come up with another tack.

Afternoon classes went smoothly, and soon it was last bell. Michaela and Rachael headed over to the primary school, where they saw Bobbie coming towards them. They were about to head off, when they heard a shrill voice call out Michaela’s name. Rachael turned to see a small girl with the most beautiful blonde curls halfway down her back, running towards them.

“It’s my brother Danny,” Michaela said. “He is in Grade 1 here.”

“I wanna walk home with you guys,” he said. Rachael couldn’t get the idea of ‘girl’ out of her mind. The boy was smaller than most in the lot, and prettier than many of the girls, and of course all of the boys.

“You can’t,” Michaela said firmly. “Mamma has to tell the school. You need to get to your bus before they leave without you.”

“That would be okay,” Danny said. “Then I can walk with you.”

“Yes, but you will get in trouble. With Mamma and with the school. Do you want to get in trouble?”

“No, I guess not,” the boy said, turning and running away. Rachael realized that he even runs like a girl.

“So that is my bratty little brother,” Michaela said. “Let’s go, Mom wants me to pick up more stuff at that bakery. What we had last night was a real treat. The bread was gone by breakfast this morning, so I’m lucky I had made my lunch last night.”

“I have to pick up some things at DaSilva’s, too,” Rachael said.

“Oh, do you think Tony will be there?”

“He might. He does live there.”

“What, in the store?”

“There are apartments above the store. I just assume that they live there, on account of them just having started the place. I might be wrong.”

“No, it makes sense. I never thought about Tony not having a home,” Michaela said pensively.

“He has a home, silly. It’s just not a house. I bet they have more space than our house.”

“Yeah, your house is pretty small. But with only three, it seems cosy.”

“How many in your family, Mikki?”

“Huh? What did you call me?”

“Mikki,” Rachael said. “Don’t you like it? It is a nickname. Michaela is such a pretty name, but sometimes a shorter name is better. You can call me Rach if you want to.”

“No one has ever given me a nickname before,” Mikki said, choking up a bit. “Mom calls me Kayla some times, but I never had friends around here.”

“Kayla is cool, I can use that.”

“No. I like Mikki. Please call me that.”

“Okay. So … your family?”

“Oh yeah. You met Danny, who is the baby, and still gets treated like one. He can get away with anything from Mom. Dad, not so much. He kinda wants Danny to be more … boyish, like Kyle. Kyle is in Grade 10 and is a real pain. The only thing worse than a younger brother is an older one. Dad works in the city … Mississauga actually, so he has a two hour drive to work every day. We don’t see him much except on weekends and holidays. Mom works at the bank downtown.”

“It must be nice having a Dad,” Rachael said wistfully.

“What happened to your Dad? Did he die or something?”

“No, he skipped off when Mom was pregnant with Bobby. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I guess I can understand it, he was only 20 years old, and having two kids. He just ran away. But he left Mom, who was only 19 with two kids. Well, one coming. It is hard for her. She never dates or anything.”

“Maybe she will meet someone rich, and you can move into the biggest house in town and have all new clothes, and a new car when you get old enough,” Mikki dreamt.

“I would settle for someone who would work hard, and love Mom and me and Bobby. We are used to being poor. Being happy is so much better.”

The long chat ended when they got to M. Verdun’s house, where the old man was sitting on the porch holding a pile of papers. “Ma jeune filles,” he called as they walked up the drive. “And the petit soldier boy. I knew you wouldn’t forget an old man.”

“Are you kidding, M. Verdun,” Rachael said cheerily. “Bobby would go nuts if we didn’t stop in to see his hero. And Bobby doesn’t get angry easily.”

“He is a good boy,” the old man said, and Bobby beamed.

“You got any war stories to tell me,” Bobby asked.

“Oui, oui,” M. Verdun held up his papers. “I got my old book out. About 30 years ago I was going to write my stories down, but then Marie, ma chere, she passed on.” He choked up for a moment, and it was clear to Rachael that he still wasn’t over the loss of his wife. She broke the moment by asking to see the papers. They were handwritten in a spidery pen, with English and French intermingled just as the old soldier spoke. Rachael was able to translate as she read, although Mikki, looking over her shoulder, had more trouble where the prose changed into French.

“This is wonderful stuff,” Rachael said after reading a half page about a skirmish a few miles in from Juno Beach. “It comes alive.”

“Bah, just the ramblings of an old man. I have much more inside. I just brought this bit out to help me remember for young Bobby’s stories.”

The three of them spent a half hour fascinated by the tales he told them. It was only when Rachael saw that he was getting tired that she said they had to get home … to Bobby’s chagrin. Rachael and Mikki helped him into his messy living room and set him down in his recliner. He was asleep before they left, locking the door behind them.

“He is very old, isn’t he,” Mikki said as they walked on home.

“I’m sure. The war started in 1939, and he was at the Dieppe raid in 1942. That was a fiasco, with the Canadian troops left on their own when the British Navy didn’t do their bit. M. Verdun was one of the few that got back, I don’t know how. Most of them wound up as prisoners for years. That means that he would have to be born before, say 1924. That would make him just over 90 years old.”

Mikki was staring at Rachael in amazement. “How do you know all that?”

“It’s just math,” Rachael said.

“No, the stuff about the war. Dates and what happened and why.”

Oops, Rachael thought. I got carried way there. I can’t really tell her that Ron was a history buff, and well-read on the wars. “I read a lot,” she said. “I guess I remember things, well.”

Michaela stopped in for a few minutes and helped make Bobby’s snack, giving him a battalion of carrot soldiers, along with another batch made from a celery stalk. As they chatted in the kitchen Mikki asked: “What are you going to do this weekend?”

“I dunno. Stuff with Bobby, I hope. Mom should have the day off, so I don’t know. Come on over if you want.”

“What time?”

“Probably around 8. After that you will find us at the park, I guess. In the afternoon I will be at M. Verdun’s”

“Vet Park? I won’t be up until 10 at least on Saturday. I like to sleep in.”

“Bobby does too, but I’m not letting him. Mom needs a morning off. Sunday we will go to church, and then I’m planning a big dinner.”

“You cooking again?”

“I like it. It is rewarding when people enjoy the things you made.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It was cool when my Mom was eating those biscuits we made. Where do you go to church?”

“Not sure … this is the first time. Since … well, Monday … I feel I need to go, and Mom said she and Bobby would come with me. Probably that little Presbyterian church on the corner. It is only a couple blocks to walk. If we are still doing this in winter we don’t want to walk a long way.”

“That’s right, you don’t have a car, do you? Our church is the United one, closer to downtown. Not that we go very often. Easter and Christmas mostly.”

After Mikki left, Rachael made dinner, reading with Bobby while things were cooking. She had bought a pound of hamburger at DaSilvas and some rolls at the Bread Baron, so tonight was Sloppy Joe night. Bobby made the salad again, and when Maria got home she was nearly in tears knowing that she didn’t have to cook. Bobby, who had never had Sloppy Joes before, pronounced it his new favourite food, surpassing even pizza.

The bad news of the evening was learning that Maria had agreed to take shifts at the restaurant on Saturday and Sunday evening, after one of the other waitresses got pissed off at the owner Joe’s temper tantrum of the day, and quit on the spot.

That evening, after another half hour of Harry Potter with Bobby, and her homework done, Rachael knelt at the side of her bed and began her confessions.

Dear Lord

Thank you for giving me this wonderful opportunity to do good. The first school week gone, and mostly going well, although I still need to work on Lucy. Perhaps I can’t make everyone my friend, but at least let her not feel she is my enemy. Look after Mom and Bobby, Mikki and Danny and their family, M. Verdun, and all the people at the school.