The classroom door slammed against the wall, and Becky burst in, shouting, “Hey, you guys! Listen up! there’s a crazy lady out in the hall. Come see!”

Mrs. Kendall stopped mid-sentence and looked up. She adjusted the half-glasses encrusted with rhinestones. “Ahem! Students! English class isn’t over yet!” It was too late. Everyone was talking at once. Everyone except Michael Aragon, that is. He simply stood up and sauntered out the door.

Mrs. Kendall glanced at the clock, then excused us two minutes early without her usual “Carpe diem! Seize the day!”

Becky’s round face glowed like a lamp beneath her freckles. Excitement hissed through the network of wires on her teeth. She stood on one foot and then on the other and motioned for Sue Slater and me to hurry. “Come on, Sue! You too, Lacey! Hurry! You’ve got to see this nut case!”

Sue scrambled for her books and raced to the door, but a sixth sense told me to stay put. A chill crawled up my spine. I had a premonition my life was ruined.

Mrs. Kendall twisted the long chain holding the gaudy glasses and zeroed in on me. “Lacey? What’s going on?”

I shrugged and looked away. I should have known wearing the red sweater was bad luck. I only did it to please Isadora. She said dark haired girls looked good in red.

Mrs. Kendall perched atop her desk, crossed her legs, and pursed her lips. She was the kind of teacher who got right in your face, upfront and personal. “Lacey?” Why aren’t you rushing out like the others? Hmmm? Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

I could hardly see her through my long bangs. I shoved books into my canvas bag, then leaned over to pick up my violin case as if I had all the time in the world. In a way, I did. It’s like that moment before being escorted down the hall to the gas chamber. Mrs. Kendall waited. She liked to nudge students, one way or another. She once told me I wasn’t assertive enough. She said she took a special interest in me because I had talent, but she never said what kind. It wasn’t assertiveness, I guess.

Mrs. Kendall was the kind of person you couldn’t ignore. She wore bold shades of orange, coral, shocking pink - colors that fit her color code.

When I was new at Seaside High, she invited me over for lunch. I’d never been to a teacher’s house before. I went to find out about my talent. She served lettuce leaves and parsley, nonfat cottage cheese, and crackers as light as air. She made an icy drink in the blender with fresh peaches and nonfat frozen yogurt and protein powder that gave me terrible stomach cramps.

Her backyard was like a miniature park with a koi pond and lush dichondra and tropical trees. It was cool and shady with filtered light coming through the leaves. It would have been pleasant if she hadn’t invited a couple of Tens. They were juniors and I was only a freshman Slug.

As usual, Mrs. Kendall did most of the talking. She told us about her weight training program and her aqua jogging. She reminded us her pet peeves were run-on sentences and cop-out endings and the poor use of prepositional phrases. Then she announced that I had a way with words and should put forth more effort in class if I ever expected to write like Isadora Wintour, the famous poet who just happened to be my grandmother.

I sat there in total shock while the Tens blinked their blonde lashes. They were probably wondering how someone so famous could be related to a Slug like me. They stared their incredulous, blue-eyed stares and moistened their luminous, red glossed lips, and sighed softy. Mrs. Kendall waited, expecting me to recite poetry right on the spot, but I was as mute as a post.

After that, conversation came to a standstill. Undaunted, Mrs. Kendall got out her autoharp and sat cross legged on the lush lawn under the tropical trees right next to the fish pond and sang in the most gawdawful, off-key voice. I thought she was joking but, believe it or not, it was her actual singing voice. The Tens gagged, crossed their eyes, stuck out their tongues, made faces, and nudged each other as they made fun of Mrs. Kendall behind her back. She just smiled. She could take a joke. That was why kids adored her. She talked a mile a minute and repeated everything three times and tried to dig out personal information that was none of her business, but she could really take a joke.

Once she told the class she’d do anything if we’d all turn in our essays on time. Absolutely anything, she said. Everyone got together and decided to make it a hundred percent. Sure enough, Mrs. Kendall kept her promise and walked on desks. “I could get fired for this!” she’d said. She climbed up on Michael Aragon’s desk and started walking back and forth across every desk in the room, thirty in all. The boys thought that was real swell because they could try to look up her skirt, and the girls laughed until they cried. That was the day Mrs. Kendall proved to everyone she could keep her end of the bargain.

The day she invited me for lunch, she made us sing right along in her parklike backyard. She told us it was our consequence for being disrespectful to a seasoned, tenured, ever-forgiving teacher like herself. We sang old songs from the seventies she considered true poetry, songs about freedom and doing your own thing and Vincent Van Gogh and giving up a little bit of yourself. She went to the trouble of going to her study upstairs, turning on her computer, and printing out the lyrics in Zapf Chancery font so we could each have our own copy.

“Well? Are you coming, Lacey?” Mrs. Kendall asked, holding the classroom door open to the mayhem in the hall.

I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and moved across the threshold to face my worst nightmare. I knew it was Mom by the way her dark hair bounced against her wide shoulders and how the worn down heels of her boots assaulted the floor. Light streaming through the high windows at the far end of the hall framed her silhouette. She was dressed in black from head to toe.

My mother who had never darkened the halls of any school of mine, not even for conferences, was striding in as if she owned the place. Her scarf spread like sunrise. Her mouth was going a mile a minute, and it was rapid-fire gibberish. ‘Hey, hey, hey, Lacey-Taylor-Ryder! Come out, come out, wherever you are!” I could have died on the spot.

Mrs. Kendall stood on her toes to get a better look over the crowd. “What on earth does that woman want?”

She wanted me, of course. I liked it better when Mom disappeared under piles of blankets and stayed there for days because she felt inferior and ashamed and full of dread. Her “lows” were almost easier to take than her “highs,” and she hadn’t been high in quite awhile.

I knew what I was in for. She’d stay up all night and start one project as soon as she finished another. She’d turn the stereo up real loud and work on a half dozen manuscripts at once. She wasted reams of paper, revising, editing, scribbling notes. She came up with answers for questions nobody even asked. She called talk shows to give her point of view. Living with Mom was like riding a roller coaster. There was only a split second when my stomach settled down and my heart wasn’t beating a mile a minute or stopping altogether.

She moved forward like a warrior, arms swinging, insomniac eyes bright. She thought she was queen of the world, superconfident, aggressive, and something to dread. “Hey, hey, hey, Lacey, Lacey, Lacey! Let’s get pacey, pacey, pacey! Hop to it, hop to it, pacey, spacey Lacey!”

I tried to shrink behind the crowd as her reflection slid along the glass trophy case. She wore Keith’s black leather jacket with silver zippers and snaps, rings and buckles. The boots made her more than six feet tall. She clutched the strap of an unfamiliar leather bag that bounced defiantly against her hip. She was wearing new black leather gloves, too, and mirrored glasses with gold rims. She carried Keith’s credit card, so what the heck did it matter since he owed her plenty, she always said. There she was, the awful truth of my life, my biggest nightmare, the secret no one knew about. Mom. I wanted to die.

“What...in...the...world?” Mrs. Kendall said. Never at a loss for words, she had none to describe my mother. “My goodness...there are rules.”

“Where do you people keep my baby in this cotton-pickin’ zoo?” Mom asked. Then she laughed, a loud, ear piercing shriek of a laugh because she thought she was being so clever and funny, a regular standup comedian. Boys snickered. Girls giggled. “Hey, Lacey Taylor Ryder, are you over there with that bunch of good-for-nothing, worthless teenagers who don’t know anything?”

Her words, at last, were clearly understood by everyone, even Mrs. Kendall. I heard a collective gasp as all eyes turned on me.

Becky’s chapped lips formed a perfect oval. Her tawny brows disappeared under the cinnamon fringe of hair. “Ooooh! She’s calling you, Lacey Ryder!” she exclaimed. She faced the crowd and announced in her loudest, most obnoxious voice “Hey, everyone, listen up! She’s looking for Lacey Taylor Ryder!”

I remembered all the reasons I couldn’t stand Becky Jones. I tried to hide behind my books and violin case. I concentrated on Mrs. Kendall’s toes. The polish was an orange-red, the color of the big fish in her backyard pond, the color of the tropical flowers in her wrap-around skirt, the color of hot, exploding lava.

Sue Slater stared at me as if I were a complete stranger. Then she leaned toward Becky Jones and said, “Holy cow, Becker! You don’t think that,..uh, crazy lady’s her... I mean, her...her...”

“Moth-er-r-r!” Becky shrieked, and it seemed the whole world shrieked right along with her.

“Oh! My gosh! I mean, well, holy cow!” Sue kept me in her yellowish green sights and exclaimed “But Lacey, I thought your mother was...dead!”

I glared right back. “Yeah, I killed her myself.”

Of course, everyone knew I was lying because there was my mother, right in front of me as big as life. Mrs. Kendall glanced at me, then shoved her way to the front of the crowd. She raised a manicured hand, the diamonds in her ring flashing. “All right, students...uh, please! Settle down.”

Mom’s motor was really running, as if she’d had a jillion cups of coffee. “Lacey, Lacey, Lacey, baby, baby, baby, come on, come on, come on. What’s keeping you so long?” She was stoked, practically dancing, her long arms swinging, head bobbing, shoulders hunching, the bag bouncing against her hip. She tapped a foot as if she didn’t have a second to spare.

Mrs. Kendall stood on tiptoe. She put her hands on her hips and looked up at Mom, trying to meet her eye to eye. It was the first time I actually saw my mother, Ayn Taylor Ryder, the way other people must have seen her. There was an ethereal, otherworldliness about her.

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Kendall said to my mother. “Visitors on campus must stop by the school office, if they want to see a student.”

Mom pursed her glossed lips, yanked off her dark glasses, and surveyed Mrs. Kendall’s spandex top and the diamond pendant gleaming like a teardrop in the dip between her collar bones. Then she had the nerve to give Mrs. Kendall the evil eye. There was nothing like Mom’s evil eye. “I’m looking for my daughter,” she said as she peeled off a leather glove. I could see the store tag in the cuff. Nordstrom’s. They probably cost at least a hundred bucks! “Her name’s Lacey Taylor Ryder, in case you people don’t know. She’s had two fathers, both of whom have abandoned her. I’m the mother, her sole guardian, and her sole means of support. No institution on this planet has permission to hold her against her will. I have every legal right to remove my daughter from these premises.”

Mrs. Kendall stepped back, almost stumbling over her own narrow heels. Her mouth opened and closed like the big koi fish in her pond. “My goodness...uh, maybe...” She blinked, trying to figure things out. She had thought she could talk to Mom like a regular person.

The crowd distanced itself, but I could still feel heat from those staring eyes. I was rooted to the floor, unable to escape. Mom dug in her leather bag and pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and ignited it with a cheap lighter she must have swiped from somewhere because no one in my family smoked, not even Mom. Especially not Mom. She coughed, choked, and blew smoke out her nose. Then she stormed around like a bull. She only smoked when she was jazzed. She thought it gave her a Lillian Hellman sort of presence.

The corners of Mrs. Kendall’s mouth pulled down. “Smoking’s not allowed on campus,” she said. “You must go outside if you want to smoke.”

Mom pinpointed me in the crowd. She puckered her mouth to blow kisses in the air. Smack! Smack! “Lacey! honey! Sweetheart! Baby! There you are, bunchins!” She handed the cigarette to Mrs. Kendall. “Get rid of this coffin nail,” she snapped. Then she motioned for me to hurry. “Come on, come on. Hey, hi ho, paint, let’s get where we ain’t! It’s time to go, go go!” She was jumping up and down on her toes as if she had to pee. She didn’t have a minute, not one second to spare. She had projects to finish and a world to conquer or, more likely, destroy. “Get your rear in gear, Lace! Come on! Can’t you see I’m waiting? Emergency, eee...mer...gen...cy!”

With Mom, of course, my entire life had been one long emergency. I silently prayed I’d wake up, and Mom would be making chocolate pudding pie in our kitchen and Keith would be home again.

Instead, I seemed to float out of body above the crowd. I felt dizzy, and I was nauseous, too, like when I stuffed myself on too much of Isadora’s angel hair pasta with garlic and oil. I imagined what a relief it would be to collapse on the spot right in front of all the kids and Mrs. Kendall and be hauled off to the morgue. I felt hot, then cold, and I started to shake all over,.

Then something happened! Suddenly, the icy cold turned boiling hot, and I could see the color of the heat in my mind, right behind my eyes. It was cherry red. Like my sweater. Like blood.

All I saw was red. Red outside. Red inside. Red exploding. I lifted my violin case and book bag over my head. Someone was screaming at the top of her lungs, and it was me!

A hush fell over the crowd. There was only the sound of my screaming and the crash. My violin, locked inside the case, pinged in painful protest.

”Go get the school counselor!” Mrs. Kendall said. “and the VP, too!” No one moved. Everyone was transfixed. They watched as books and papers burst from my book bag and scattered across the floor. pencils and notebooks collided.

“Lace!” Mom reached out as if catching me from a high trapeze. We were a mother-daughter act gone bad. I gazed down at the debris that once was me.

Mrs. Kendall rushed over to survey the damage. When she saw the beginning of the first-draft autobiography I hadn’t turned in yet, she dropped Mom’s cigarette on the floor and knelt down. Her most impossible assignment to date - to write an essay about a time in a group situation when you felt you wanted to disappear - would never wind up in her wire “finished” basket. She attempted to read my words upside down, trying to discover what made me tick. Then she stood up, squashed the smoking cigarette beneath the toe of her dainty shoe, and asked, “Lacey? Is this woman your mother?”

My chances for an “A” in English were ruined. I shrugged. It could have meant anything. She frowned and clucked her tongue. “Well, my dear, rules are rules. if your mother wants to check you out of school, she must stop by the office.” Her scolding finished, she brushed her hands together as if removing chalk dust. Then she turned to the crowd. “All right, the excitement’s over. Go on to your next class.”

Everyone waited, but Mrs. Kendall waited better, and finally the crowd dispersed. Jocks headed for the gym. Surfers saw their chance to cut to the beach. Tens floated off to arrange dates and plan events. Like the Slugs they were, Sue Slater and Becky Jones didn’t budge.

Mrs. Kendall caught the sleeve of my sweater. “Lacey shouldn’t be late for class,” she said. Then she made the mistake of asking, “Is there some problem I can help you with, Mrs. Ryder?”

“Yes, yes, yes, there’s a problem?” There’re spies in every corner, if you must know. You simply can’t trust anyone.”

Mrs. Kendall blinked. “Uh, I don’t think I understand,” she said.

“Voices,” I mumbled, trying to give her a clue.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Kendall said, leaning closer. “What did you say, dear?”

“She hears voices in her head,” I said.

Mrs. Kendall frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Mom’s antenna shot up. “Understand? No one understands! It’s an enormous puzzle, don’t you see? It’s a plot, nothing but misunderstandings, miscommunications, misconceptions, missed opportunities, missed hopes, missed dreams, missed periods, missing people . . .” As usual, her words fell on deaf ears and trailed off into gibberish she considered brilliant and more than appropriate.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Ryder?” Mrs. Kendall asked, touching Mom lightly on the arm. “What’s wrong?”

Mom jerked as if struck by lightning. “Wrong? Everything’s wrong! Politics, smolitics. Media, pedia. Government smotherment. It’s a mind game, don’t you see? Do you think those UFO’s are out there for no reason?”

Again Mrs. Kendall tried. “Why don’t you come to the front office and sit down a moment? Mr. McGregor will be happy to drive you home, and we can allow Lacey to go on to her next class.”

Mom glared at Mrs. Kendall, her lips drawn, her toe tapping. There was a long, agonizing beat. Then she said, “Horsepucky!” and snatched me.

Mrs. Kendall reached out at the same time. Red yarn threatened to unravel as my sweater stretched between them. Mom won, of course, and we didn’t stop by the school office. She didn’t even ask where it was. We stormed down the hall toward the big double doors. Mom, panting like a lioness, was stalking more than walking, and moving fast. Her hand cuffed my upper arm, shutting off the circulation. “Lacey-lacey-lacey, listen, baby, you simply can’t trust a woman who dresses like that.”

I tried to pull my arm free, but I was caught in her grip. “Kids like the way she dresses,” I said. “Everyone thinks she’s got great clothes.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you say, but how do we really know? What evidence do we have? How well do you know that woman, anyway? Can she be trusted?”

“She reads poetry aloud.”

“Song lyrics, no doubt. Pure pop.”

“She read some of Isadora’s poems,” I said.

“Aha! But has she ever read mine? Never mind. Of course not. A woman like that would never risk reading mine. My poems speak the truth. Truth is dangerous, you know. Truth can be deadly, in fact. Well, I forbid it, do you hear? I forbid you to see that woman again.”

“But Mom! She’s my English teacher!”

“Don’t be rude!”

“And we’re going to study Romeo and Juliet!”

“Oh, Lacey, Lacey, sweetheart, give me a break! Shakespeare! He wasn’t who people thought he was, now was he? He was probably somebody entirely different, maybe not even himself. Did she bother to tell you that? And that play is pure trash, practically pornography if you ask me. Who in his right mind would write about young kids in love? It’s subversive, that’s what it is! Criminal! Besides, they both die in the end, you know. Everyone dies in the end.”

Mrs. Kendall rushed after us, and she wasn’t even winded. She was somewhere in her fifties, but she was in great shape. We saw with our own eyes how she walked across the tops of our desks. Everyone knew how she won marathons in her age division and worked out with members of the football team when they ran up and down the bleachers. She ran in Chicago and Boston, Los Angeles and New York.

“Mrs. Ryder, please! Won’t you reconsider? Let’s go by the office and check Lacey out legally. You don’t want us to get her into trouble now, do you?”

She tried to be on my side since I nominated her for Teacher of the Year. Only Tens nominated teachers not Slugs, and certainly not freshman, unpopular, no-talent, unassertive Slugs. It was a miracle my essay got into the finals.

Mom faced Mrs. Kendall. “I’ll thank you to mind your own business and stay away from my daughter. This is between Lacey and me, and I don’t like the ideas you’re putting into her head. She’s only fourteen.”

“What ideas?” Mrs. Kendall asked, dumbfounded. There was no way she could make sense of Mom’s nonsense. She looked at me with alarm. Then she said, “Hmmm, Lacey, you’d better come with me, dear, and I’ll see that you’re checked out of school properly. After all, there are rules here. We certainly don’t want Lacey marked truant, do we, Mrs. Ryder?”

Mom didn’t answer. She couldn’t have cared less about truancy since she’d been a high school dropout. She finally got her GED, and then Isadora insisted she go to community college and then on to a university where she got a bachelor of arts degree. Mom did everything different from everyone else. She didn’t understand rules and regulations. She was above the law, beyond procedures and borders and boundaries. She got a teaching credential and a job that lasted until she used up her sick leave and stopped going to work altogether. “Why should I go?” she’d said. “It’s too humiliating! All those demanding kids! All those interruptions! No one in her right mind would ever teach school!”

Eyes flaming, hair wild, she yanked me past the trophy case. I could hear Sue and Becky following as we slammed through the front doors.

“Holy cow! Get a load of that chopper!” Sue exclaimed.

“Oh, my gosh!” Becky gasped.

Even Mom had to catch her breath. Just the sight of Keith’s bike must have reminded her of better times. Sun glinted off the polished chrome of his modified Harley. Orange flames on the jet black fuel tank gleamed. The tailpipes shone. Like everything else - Mom, me, his books, his jacket, and music - he left his prized Harley behind. He just got tired of Mom’s paranoia and walked out one day, got into his VW van, and didn’t come back.

“Where’s the truck?” I asked.

“Bearings went out,” Mom said.

“Keith told you to check the oil,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I took the Harley.”

Sue and Becky, weak with disbelief, held onto each other. Slugs didn’t have Harleys. Slugs didn’t even know anyone with a Harley.

“I had to pump up the tires,” Mom said. “Took me at least an hour. And the battery was dead. Keith didn’t take the cables off, the schmuck! Had to buy a new battery on my charge card. A guy in a pickup helped me out.”

“What guy?”

“How should I know? Some guy on the street. Real nice, too. Gave me some cigarettes. All you have to do is ask, Lace. People will help you out, if you ask.”

A bouquet of flowers wrapped in green tissue lay across the Harley seat. She snatched them up and slammed them against my chest. “Here, these are for you, babe! Happy birthday, Lace!”

I cradled the flowers in my arms, not knowing what to do or say. “But...Mom, my birthday was months ago!” I said.

She shrugged. “So it just came at a bad time, that’s all.” She tossed her head and sniffed as if that settled it. “Anyway, guess you oughta get flowers at least once in your life.” She straddled the Harley, her long legs stretched out. “Hop on, Lace. This thing weighs a ton.”

She flipped a switch and turned the key. The roar was deafening. Rrrrr! Rrrrr! Then the sound changed, becoming smooth and mellow. I climbed on behind her, my heart racing just as it did when I rode with Keith. This time, with Mom, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t trust her the way I trusted Keith. The flowers, so fragile and temporary, trembled in my arms. “Ready?” she asked.

Mrs. Kendall came rushing through the big double doors of the school, holding out my violin as if I was supposed to run back and get it. The edge of her skirt lifted in the breeze. Her knees were clenched like fists.

I sat high behind Mom, my feet on the pegs, and leaned against the sissy bar. The end of her long scarf snapped against my face. She gunned the motor and peeled out. Sand sprayed my legs and peppered my cheeks. My bouquet of flowers was crushed between us. Bits of color stuck on my sweater. Petals, leaves, and shards of tissue spun past my face and flew out like confetti to mark our trail.

Somewhere in the roar of the Harley. I heard Mrs. Kendall calling my name, but I didn’t look back.