TWO: A MISERABLE MAN

Orla

Orla had always hated the principal's office.

She never got called there for anything positive, always dreading when Mrs. Gorn's assistant came striding into the classroom with a summons in his hand. Orla hated that man and his checkered pants. She hated the office and its waiting room, the wilting snake plant on the coral-colored counter, the smell of dust in the air, and the ringing phone that interrupted the heavy, tomb-like silence. She hated it, but she really hated being there with Mr. Byrne.

The man seated next to Orla on the cheap couch with its pilling fabric was tall, thin, and somewhat gaunt in the face. Though Orla didn't think him older than his late thirties, he carried a heaviness that belied the lack of lines on his long, unsmiling face. Thick white bands at the temples streaked his black hair, and if he let his beard grow in as he would do in the worst of his fits, the hair sprouted silver and gray.

Today, his chin had been shaved clean, but he didn't smile, and he didn't look at Orla next to him. He held his crossed arms against his chest and kept his half-closed stare fixed on the wall across from them, the yellow light from the fluorescents glaring on the surface of his spectacles. He wore what he'd always worn for as long as Orla could remember—a pair of dark gray pants he called trousers and a plain buttoned shirt with the too-short cuffs rolled back from his wrists. His clothes always erred toward shabby, just as Orla's did, but he had nice shoes. They were a pair of leather loafers with meticulous, even stitching and precise broguing along the toe cap. Orla once asked where he'd gotten them, and he'd told her to mind her business.

"This school never ceases to amaze me in the ways they waste my time," he commented without bothering to lower his voice. It was deep, affected by a lilting brogue flattened by years in America. He'd once admitted to being from Ireland, but he'd been reluctant to speak on the topic and always snapped if Orla asked too many questions.

"It's not like you were busy," she grumbled, stung by his irritation, wishing he hadn't come. He was never busy. He never left home.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing...."

The door to the office opened, and the pudgy, sandy-haired Mrs. Gorn stepped out. "Henry. You and Orla can come in now."

Orla scrambled to her feet, clasping her empty, torn backpack in one hand. Mr. Byrne leaned onto his feet and stood to his full, looming height, letting his arms unfold to his sides. "Let's get this over with," he said.

She shuffled into the stuffy room after her guardian, and she sank into one of the clunky, padded chairs in front of Mrs. Gorn's desk. Mr. Byrne folded his long, lanky limbs into the other. Orla chanced a glance at him, but Mr. Byrne kept his attention on Mrs. Gorn and didn't acknowledge her.

"Thank you for coming down, Henry. Unfortunately, we had an incident today in the cafeteria." She cleared her throat. "A fight broke out, one that was instigated by Miss Tiernan here...."

Orla didn't pay much attention to what Mrs. Gorn said. She didn't want to hear Marissa Mallard's lies and what her horrible friends had backed her up on. The gym teacher had already gone through her bag after they found it tossed in the trash, empty, the zipper torn, and she'd been asked to turn out her pockets. She didn't have a weapon, but she didn't expect that to mean much to the teachers—or to Mr. Byrne.

"Will there be charges?" he asked at length, and Mrs. Gorn told him no.

"The Mallards have decided not to pursue assault charges," she said, sounding disappointed. "However, we can't allow this behavior to continue unchecked. She's obstinate, deceitful, destructive, and clearly out of control. I see her in this office at least twice a week. She just had detention yesterday. Something must be done, and I suggest it start at home, Mr. Byrne. She refuses to take accountability for anything."

Orla stared at the floor, her knee still throbbing and painful. No one had asked her to tell them what happened in the cafeteria. Nobody cared for her side of the story; they looked at Orla and saw nothing but a liar.

Morty leaned his shadowy weight against her leg, his thoughts brushing hers like warm, tired breaths. "Peace," he said. "Peace. Relief. Acceptance."

Orla pressed her mouth into a firm line. This is your fault, she wanted to say, but she didn't. At least I'll have company if they decide to send me to juvie.

Sometimes, in her worst moments, Orla questioned if she was mad. Maybe Morty really wasn't there, and it was all in her head, and maybe she did throw that custard and maybe she did have a knife. Maybe she was as deceitful as they said she was and just didn't know it.

She chanced another look at Mr. Byrne.

His expression had grown stormier as the meeting progressed until he was blatantly scowling, and Orla felt sick to her stomach.

She wondered if Mr. Byrne would ever send her away, if there was a line she could cross that would finally break the usually cold, stoic man and force him to give her to another family. He'd never threatened to do so, and though Orla hadn't worried about it in years, the thought nipped at her like a persistent, hungry dog. She couldn't figure out why a guy like him had decided to take on a child to begin with.

"Orla," Mr. Byrne said, voice soft. "Go wait outside."

She blinked at him, having missed what was said. "Erm—?"

"Outside."

So, Orla got up without another glance toward Mrs. Gorn, threw her ruined backpack over her shoulder, and headed out of the office. She stepped from the main door into the heat once more, squinting against the sunlight that streamed across the parking lot through the iron gates. She felt more than saw how Morty rested in her shadow, stretched and made long by the growing hour.

She didn't have to wait long, though she startled when Mr. Byrne spoke from behind her. He had an eerie way of moving, slow and quiet, like a cat stalking a mouse, and he'd caught Orla out on her mischief more than once by sneaking up on her. Even now, he slipped from the building without a sound and crossed into the light of day, his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers.

"We're leaving," he said, walking forward without pausing. Orla lurched into motion after him.

"What happened?" she asked, falling into place at his heels. "What'd she say?"

"You've been suspended," he replied in his usual dull tone, and he didn't explain further as they started across the lot's sun-baked asphalt toward the empty street. They passed through the gates, and they slammed shut behind Orla. Mr. Byrne didn't have a car, not that it mattered much in Dirgemore. It barely qualified as a town in size. They walked everywhere they needed to go if her guardian left the house at all. "I thought we'd spoken of you fighting with the other children."

"It's not my fault," Orla objected. "And we're not children. It's high school, Mr. Byrne."

He ignored her comment and addressed the first part of her reply. "Then whose fault is it?"

Orla opened her mouth to say Morty, but she didn't because doing so would mean getting called a liar and losing all privileges. So she clenched her jaw shut, glowering at the lot underfoot.

"It wasn't my fault. It's not—I didn't throw any food, and I definitely didn't hurt stupid Marissa! I don't, didn't—." Orla exhaled in frustration as Mr. Byrne kept going, his back to her, barely seeming to hear a word she said. Why wouldn't he ever believe her? Did he think her such an awful, lying person? Or did he just not think anything of her at all? "It's not fair!"

She could hear laughter—other students leaning on the hot gate with their sleeves rucked down over their hands to protect their skin. They found wicked delight in watching Orla get marched out of school like a snotty little girl, and that laughter only increased, itchy like pollen in the air as Mr. Byrne stopped and turned on her. He bent nearer to Orla's level, glaring at the ground behind her as if he couldn't meet her eyes. As if he didn't want to.

"If you ever do something like that again," he whispered, his tone cold. "I'll make you regret it." He straightened once more as Orla fumed with indignation. "Gods, Moira," he sighed as he kept walking.

Orla didn't follow at first. She gazed past Mr. Byrne into the distance, where the hill rolled down toward the coastline, and she thought of the docks that laid mostly quiet in the fading hour, though a few men would still tarry, getting their boats ready to set out in the morning. The fishy smell would cling to the rocks where the gulls picked at bait scraps that had washed ashore or had been dumped into the water. Orla ignored the stinging behind her eyes and thought of where the breakers rose beyond the harbor's jetty and bashed themselves on the rocks. She wondered what it would be like to be out there, leaving Dirgemore behind until it was a blip of light on a dark shoreline.

But it was only just a thought.

"My name's not Moira. It's Orla," she muttered to no one, shifting the empty weight of her ruined bag against her back. Orla swallowed unshed tears and hurried after her guardian, both headed towards home.

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