"Holly White, please report to the office immediately," the loudspeaker announced right in the middle of Mr. Weir's interpretation of The Man of LaMancha. Everyone turned to look at her. She rolled her eyes and grabbed her backpack as she stood.
"What the hell could it be this time?" she wondered to herself, "Did someone report me for smoking in the bathroom between classes?" Some little goody goody always seemed to be lurking around every corner just waiting for her to screw up so they could report it. She was sick to death of everyone trying to tell her how to act. What the fuck did they know about her life anyway?
She drew more than a few stares as she walked towards the office. Her outfit was more appropriate for a Halloween party than a school day. She was heavily into goth apparel and kept her hair dyed a deep almost purplish black. Her eyelids, lips and nails were all similarly hued. Her black and white geometric print mini was paired with a torn vintage Marilyn Manson t-shirt and heavy black Doc Marten boots. She had four piercings in one ear and 6 in the other. Her nose ring and lip ring were out because school rules prohibited piercings except for ears, but as soon as she walked out the door each day at 3 pm, they went back in.
Ms. Leland was standing in her office door waiting and watching as Holly approached. She felt like the guy in that movie, "Dead Man Walking", taking her last walk of freedom before getting the needle. "Yo, what's up Ms. L?" she quipped nonchalantly as she walked past the assistant principal and flopped into the chair in front of her desk.
Ms. Leland turned, looking annoyed and followed Holly, walking around to sit behind the desk before answering. "Thanks for coming, Holly," she said.
"Did I have a choice?" Holly remarked sarcastically, "cause if I did I'd like to just get up and leave now if you don't mind."
"No, it wasn't a choice," Ms. Leland remarked. "Do you know why I called you in here Holly?"
"No, but I'm sure I can explain whatever it is you've heard. I'm just an innocent victim, Ms. L. I haven't done nothing wrong, honest." Holly pleaded comically.
"I know you don't take this seriously," Ms. Leland offered in compromise, "You're such a bright kid, Holly. If you'd just stop trying so hard to prove how tough you are, you could accomplish anything. Look at what Flynn has done with his life. You have the same potential if not more. You're fifteen years old now. High school is going to last forever. Why are you wasting it all?"
"Yeah, my big brother Flynn is quite a guy. He overcame all the obstacles in his life to get a degree in graphic design and form his own company. Wow, what an inspiration! I guess I'm just too damaged, Ms. Leland. What can I say?" Holly said with fake sincerity as she batted her eyelashes at the assistant principal.
"Okay, enough," Ms. Leland finally interjected, "I've had it. We have a witness who saw you smoking in the bathroom on the second floor between 3rd and 4th period today. What do you have to say about it?"
"Um, that whoever told you that is a big mouthed bitch and that she should mind her own business," Holly replied saracastically.
"Do you deny it?" Ms. Leland asked.
"No, it's true. I'm not going to lie. I'm trying to cut back but I ran out of Nicorette this morning and you know how it is after lunch. I just gotta have my ciggy." Holly admitted.
"Well, I don't have a choice this time, Holly. I have to suspend you. This is the third time this month that you've violated school policy. There's no other option at this point." Ms. Leland explained. "I'll have to call your Mother and inform her and get her to pick you up. This will be a three day suspension but Holly if you don't get it together, you're going to end up at the alternative school for kids with discipline problems. Don't paint yourself into a corner here. You have a choice."
Holly had pretty much tuned out after the thing about calling her Mom. She hated the idea of having to hear it all again from her mother, to watch her mother struggle to hold back tears as she repeated the same old song that Holly had heard over and over again since fifth grade. "You're so smart. You have the world at your feet, can do anything. We all love you and want the best for you. Blah, Blah, Blah." She didn't think she could handle it even one more time.
Her Mom's last freak out had been last year when she'd found a baggie of pot in Holly's closet. She'd gone on for over an hour about what drugs had already done to their family. It had been pretty bad for a few months. Once school started her Mom had eased up a bit. Of course she still hadn't seen any of the notes or bad report cards sent home for her. Holly had become a pretty good forger so she'd kept all the problems hidden, at least until now.
"Do you have anything you want to ask me or to say before I call your Mom?" Ms. Leland finally asked.
Holly simply looked at the slightly frumpy middle aged woman across the desk from her and shook her head.
"Fine, then, just wait outside in the hall for a few minutes. I'll let you know when your mother gets here," the assistant principal instructed.
Holly took her book bag, walked out the door and sat in one of the chairs pushed against the adjoining wall. Everyone who passed her stared for just a moment. Holly White in trouble again. So what else was new? She was Walter White's daughter after all. It's like badness was in her genetics or something.
Holly couldn't remember a time when she hadn't known about her father. Her family had all tried to keep it from her when she was younger but other kids weren't so discreet. They started asking questions because they'd heard their parents talking. She found out her father had been a drug dealer, a really big time drug dealer. He'd killed people, even her Uncle Hank, Marie's husband. He'd abandoned the whole family and ended up dead in a drug lab somewhere years ago.
Her mother had cried as she told Holly that her father was really a good man and had loved them all, that he had never meant for any of the bad stuff to happen. Right, mom, tell that to the kids on the playground who were calling her Druggie White.
It only got worse as she'd gotten older. In middle school, kids actually approached her and asked if she could sell them drugs. Guys had always assumed she was easy. I mean if your dad is a drug dealer and a murderer, you can't exactly play sweet and innocent, can you? It got to be simpler to just act like she didn't care. To dress weird and act like a smart ass. It kept people at arm's length most of the time. And, it was what they expected anyway.
This was going to be bad, though. Her mom was always just barely keeping it together. She smoked continuously and slept only a couple of hours a night. She lived on black coffee and nicotine while she worked two jobs to try and make ends meet. Yeah, this was going to be a total melt down freak out, and Holly didn't know if she could handle it today.
She glanced into the office window to her left. Ms. Leland was still on the phone, speaking earnestly and nodding. It was still 10 minutes until the next class change and no one was around at the moment. She stood and walked out far enough to peek around the corner. No one was around and the front doors to the school were only a few feet away. She didn't hesitate or think twice but simply ran, ramming through the front door as fast as possible and then running down the street.
She wasted no time in diverting into a neighborhood. Ms. Leland would, no doubt, have the school safety officer out looking for her not to mention Holly's mother. She cut through a few back yards and down a few alleys. After about a 20 minute walk, she was near a small shopping center. She decided she'd slip into one of the stores for a while to cool off and hide out.
The stores were all connected into a strip shopping plaza. It was old and run down, had probably been built 30 or 40 years before. There was a laundromat, a Chinese restaurant, a drug store, a pizza place and on the very end, something called The New Mexico Wood Artisans Guild.
The windows to the weird shop held all sorts of hand made wooden items, chairs, boxes, tables, carved figurines. It was a strange thing to find in such a place but the things on display were so beautiful. Holly decided to go inside and have a closer look.
A small bell tinkled as she opened the door. The cool air rushed to meet her as she walked in. The place seemed empty. It was just one large room with more shelves and tables displaying work with small cards naming artists and information about the designs.
She walked from one to another marveling at the intricacy and detail of the workmanship. It was amazing and intriguing.
Suddenly, a rough, almost hoarse sounding voice from the back of the store startled her. It was a man, middle aged, kind of short with close cropped gray hair. Despite his obvious age, he was dressed like a teenager in baggy jeans and a rock band t-shirt. "Anything I can help you with young lady?" he asked.
"No, just looking. This stuff is awesome." She told him.
"Yeah? Glad you like it. I always found it pretty awesome myself," he said as he walked toward the front of the store.
One particular box on the table in front of her caught her attention. It was so smooth and soft and there was a pattern of darker wood inlaid in a sort of Celtic knot pattern in the center of the lid with a tiny blue stone in its center. "I really like this," she commented.
"That is a nice piece," he agreed. He stood by silently for a while before awkwardly asking, "Look, I'm not trying to be nosey but shouldn't you be in school now? It's only 1:30, and don't tell me you're graduated already. You're wearing a high school ID badge around your neck."
God, why did old people always have to be in her business, Holly thought. "Okay, you got me. Want to call the cops or my Mom or something?" she remarked with cutting sarcasm.
"Nope, just wondering. What are you doing out here all by yourself…" he reached and touched the ID on her lanyard, "Miss Holly White?" He seemed to hesitate a moment before saying her name. Weird, she thought.
"I skipped, okay? School is lame, teachers are lame, kids are assholes. I just needed a break," she told him bluntly and with no shame.
He chuckled under his breath and looked down at the floor, "Yeah, that sounds familiar. I had days like that myself. Of course, I had some major issues at the time. What's your story, Holly? Or is it just everyone else who has the problem?"
"Yeah, it is everyone else," she started but something about this guy just made her want to spill it all, "But there's a lot of stuff, way deep family shit, you know? I'm just tired of being me. You ever feel that way?"
The old man nodded, "Oh I felt that way for a very long time. Sometimes I still do. I had some way, deep shit happen when I was younger. It changed a lot of things in my life. I had to work hard to get past it, to make it better."
Holly stepped back and took a long hard look at the guy. There was something about him. "So what did you do to screw your life up?" she asked.
"I don't think I know you well enough to divulge all my secrets," he said.
"Right, well, I'm just gonna look around some more and then I'll be going," she told him.
She walked away and glanced around at other items in the space. She wished the old guy would just go back to whatever he was doing in the back of the store. She really liked the box and it would be super easy to grab it and run if he turned his back for a moment. Heck this place didn't even have cameras but he just stood there and kept watching her.
After a few minutes, he cleared his throat and asked shyly, "Um, this may be a strange question but was your Dad named Walter?"
A white hot bolt of anger sliced through her at the question. She could never get away from it. "Yeah, it was. Walter White aka Heisenberg aka the biggest drug dealer in New Mexico's history was my father. I don't remember him. He died when I was about a year old but yep, that's my old man. You got a problem with that?"
"No, no. I just, well, I knew Mr. White," the guy told her. He hesitated a moment or two before continuing, "He taught chemistry when I was in high school. He was my teacher."
Holly felt such a relief. She'd never met anyone who described her dad as someone other than a bad guy. "Did you, uh, did you like him? Was he a good teacher?" she asked almost shyly.
The guy in front of her, looked away and sort of cleared his throat as he answered, "Oh, yeah! Yeah, he was a good teacher. Tried to make it fun, you know? He was kind of a bitch sometimes but could be cool, too. We treated him like crap cause he let us get away with it. I, ah, I had already graduated when everything else happened."
Holly felt like crying. Her dad had been a regular guy once, a stupid, boring chemistry teacher that kids made fun of. "How long after that was it before all the drug stuff happened?" she asked him.
"I'm not sure exactly, a few years at least. He got sick, you know. I guess you know all that. He had cancer and it, I mean I think that's what messed with his head. That's why he did all that other stuff. I always thought that was it, anyway," the shop owner told her.
Holly walked back over towards the old guy and sat down on a stool. She felt somehow lighter than she had when she'd come in here. Thinking about her dad as just a normal man was a new experience. What would it have been like if he'd just been a teacher and was still around now to be a dad?
"You must take a lot of crap off other kids about your old man," he said to her.
"You think?" she remarked sarcastically, "I get so sick of it. If it's not questions about the father I never knew, it's people talking about what a great role model my brother is. No one ever seems to notice that I'm there. I'm a real person. Maybe I have my own ideas about what I want for my life. My mom's the worst. That's really kind of why I'm here today."
"Hiding out or running away?" he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders as she answered, "Both maybe. I don't know. Hiding out for sure. I wish I could run away sometimes. Just start over somewhere that no one knows me or my family history, where I could just be Holly, not Walter White's daughter."
"You could do that, maybe, one day. The thing is that it doesn't really matter where you are, though. Until you have it figured out in your own head, you're going to drag that crap around with you. I was pretending to be somebody I wasn't for a long time, trying to be tough, be bad, act like I didn't care. It got me into a lot of trouble," he told her.
"Oh, god, please spare me the sermon. I've heard it all a thousand times. Don't throw your life away. Don't be like your father," Holly told him while rolling her eyes.
"I'm not telling you what not to be. I'm telling you be yourself. You seem like a smart kid, a little bit of a wise ass but cool. You keep pushing everybody away with this tough chick routine, you're gonna get stuck in a life that you maybe don't want and it may not be so easy to start over." The old guy shook his head, "God I sound like some high school counselor or something, sorry."
"So, what makes you so smart?" she replied.
"What you asked before about what I did to screw my life up? I got into drugs, started hanging with some bad guys. I ended up involved in some criminal activity. I made a lot of money, a huge amount of money, but in the end, I lost all the money, lost my family, lost a woman I really loved, nearly got myself killed. It took almost ten years for me to get my life back or at least a piece of it. My family still doesn't speak to me. I still have nightmares about the stuff that went down. It may sound like the same shit you've heard before but it's real. That's it, so…. I'm not smart, just been there, done that, got the t-shirt," he offered almost apologetically.
"So, it's do as I say not as I do, right? SSDD, man. Same shit, different day," Holly told him with a roll of her eyes. "I've heard it from everyone. 'Get an education, Holly. Don't smoke, Holly. Wash your face, Holly. Stay out of trouble, Holly. You're so smart if you'd only apply yourself.' You're not telling me anything new."
The man in front of her suddenly threw his head back and laughed. "This is some ironic shit, little girl. You don't even know. It's like hearing a tape recording of myself being played back in your voice. I was just like you, thought I knew more than everybody else, thought I was cooler. No one understood me. It took a lot to make me finally change my mind. I hope you don't have to face that, face a situation where you have no control over what is happening and you're scared shitless. You think you're about to die and you remember all those times your Mom or your teacher tried to help you and then pray that it's not too late, that you can get just one more chance. That's what it took for me. I got that second chance thanks to…some help from an old friend. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."
Holly had been sitting very still listening to the old guy talk about his past. There was something different about him. The way that he talked to her wasn't condescending or sermony. He was being honest and in that last little speech, he'd gotten kind of scary. Holly suddenly felt very vulnerable and just a little afraid, not of him exactly but of how his words had made her feel. He struck a nerve for sure.
She stood up and picked up her backpack. "Well, I guess I should get back. My mom is probably batshit by now, you know? Thanks for letting me crash here for a few minutes. You got some nice stuff, Mr. … Um what is your name anyway?"
The man stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled, "Just call me Jessie, okay? Come back by and see me if you feel the need to hide out again, Holly White."
"Okay. Thanks for ya know, talking and stuff," she said as she walked out the door. She turned back to wave as she stepped off the sidewalk and saw the old dude standing against the glass door. For the first time, she noticed the words printed on the glass. It was the store hours and just underneath in smaller print were the words 'J. Pinkman, Owner'.