"This is all part of your act, Amber"
Mr. Hendricks was typing a report at his desk when a teenage girl with purple hair stepped into his office at the Belmont High School. She wore a black v-neck t-shirt, dark purple jeans, and a twine necklace with a metal pentagram hanging from it, and she had a tiny crystal skull piercing in her left nostril. “I’m supposed to see you,” she said with her arms crossed over chest.
Mr. Hendricks stopped typing and faced her. “Hello, Amber,” he said. “Why don’t you have a seat in the conference room?” The office connected to a larger conference room with a round wooden table, four metal folding chairs, and a window facing the school parking lot.
“Whatever,” she said, and she sauntered into the conference room and threw her book bag into the corner.
Mr. Hendricks saved his report, and then logged off the computer. He grabbed Amber’s file from the desk and a few blank forms from a filing cabinet behind him. When he stepped out of the office, Amber was lying on her back on the conference table looking up at the ceiling.
“Amber,” he said, “what are you doing?”
She tossed a purple lipstick tube into the air, and as it fell back to her she caught it. “Looking at things from a different perspective,” she said.
“Get off my table,” he said.
Amber sat up on the side of the table with her legs dangling off of it. She stepped off the table, strolled over to the window, and climbed into the windowsill. She watched him as he took a seat at the conference table and opened her file. He jotted something on one of the forms in the file. “I have to ask you some generic questions before we get started today,” he said. “I’m going to need you to answer as honestly as possible.” He thumbed through her file. “Do you have any visible marks on your body today?”
She held up her cellphone, as if she were taking a picture of him. “Do you smoke grass?” she asked.
He tapped his pen on the table. “I’m not going to validate that with an answer,” he said.
“You should smoke a joint right now,” she said. “You’re wound up tighter than my mother’s jeans.”
He folded his hands on the table and narrowed his eyes on her. “Stop the act, Amber,” he said.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“You’re putting this on,” he said. “You think if you rattle me, I’ll let you go. It’s a nice scene, but it won’t work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
He reached behind him and swung the conference room door shut.
She grinned. “You’re the one trying too hard, Eddie,” she said. “Eddie, do you prefer Eddie or Ed?”
“Mr. Hendricks,” he said.
“Eddie, I know your little secret,” she said.
“Amber,” he said, “it’s not working.”
“I know about your wife,” she said.
His eyebrows rose slightly. “You don’t know me,” he said. “This is all part of your act, Amber.”
She hopped down from the windowsill and stepped toward the table, slowly. “I know you go home every night to your lonely little shit-hole,” she said.
“Sit down,” he said.
“You go home and you touch yourself,” she said, with a cruel smile. “You touch yourself while you think about pretty Belmont High girls.”
“That’s enough, Amber,” he said sharply.
“You do,” she said, leaning on the table. “You smear lotion over your little dick, and you conjure us up in your head.” Her eyes caught the gleam of the fluorescent lights in the ceiling. “You want to fuck me right now, don’t you, Eddie?”
His eyes narrowed on her.
“Fuck me, Eddie,” she said, shaking the table and moaning. “Fuck me real hard.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and maintained eye contact with her. “Are you done?” he asked.
Her cellphone vibrated in her hand. She glanced at the screen. “Well,” she said, “Mother’s waiting on me.” She walked up to the corner of the room and grabbed her book bag.
As Amber stepped out of the room, Mr. Hendricks got to his feet. He walked over to the conference room window and looked out. A blue minivan with a dented passenger side door had pulled up to the school. Amber was walking down the sidewalk to the minivan with her book bag slung over her right shoulder.
