"I want to know why," Lorraine hollered at the woman who sat primly in her gold-buttoned dress behind the stiff frame of her metallic desk.

"If only parents would speak to their children...", the red-headed principal barely glanced up from a pile of paperwork and remarked in a stuffy tone.

"All we do is speak to her - she won't breathe a word about who did this!" She shook her head in disbelief as Jen rubbed the cusp of her shoulder. Although she was trying her best to remain calm, the woman's pretentious manner irked Lorraine.

She turned to stare at the window ledge where a terra-cotta pot filled with perfectly rounded, plastic leaves was centered. Great, Lorraine rolled her eyes as she thought, 'even the plants here are phoney!'

"Take it easy, darling," Jen murmured, then slid her wobbly-legged chair toward the rigid desk. "We believe Andy is covering up for someone," she addressed the principal, a woman she'd once attended this same high school with.

"Or something." Lorraine rose from her seat to meet the woman's blank eyes.

"Something like what?" Her fleshy cheeks puffing as she asked, Lucille Killvale (her full name was inscribed on the embossed placard at the end of her desk) peered unblinkingly at them. Lorraine recalled Andy's comment that the students had nicknamed her 'Mrs. Killer Whale'. It seemed typical, Lorraine noted, of teenage immaturity that the woman was only slightly plump. Jen had confided how Lucille had been dubbed 'Lucy Looselips' as a teen because of her reputation as a boy chaser.

"Like harassment!" Lorraine stated, frank about the intolerance simmering beneath the surface of their oblivious community. More confident since her liberation from the oppressive days of hiding who she was, she wasn't about see Andy bullied for being the daughter of a 'queer'.

"I'm sure you'll agree," Mrs. Killvale placed two fingers to one side of her pursed lips and batted her lashes as she pronounced, "Andrea's case is unusual, not having a... err, usual home." Her placid voice flimsily masked her seething disapproval.

"Mrs. Killvale," Lorraine arched one brow sharply as she asserted, "we may not have a 'usual home,' but we are as genuine a family as any."

"I'm afraid I must differ with you on that point." The woman's thick lips seemed to wiggle in stilted slow-motion as she spoke. "A 'usual' home is comprised of a 'normal' family with a mother and a father."

Sensing her partner was about to raise her voice, Jen thrust back her hand and gripped Lorraine's wrist with distinct pressure. Lorraine's nostrils flared as she inhaled, then turned to face the transparent blue-curtained window. Numbly, she gazed out at a group of laughing teenage boys chasing one another with a football around a deep, green field. Three girls periodically waved at the boys from a row of white bleachers.

With a restrained smile, Jen ventured in a diplomatic tone, "Mrs. Killvale, we are not here to debate our views on 'normal' family values. All we want to know is why Andy," she looked at Lorraine, then back to the principal again, "why our daughter, a quiet, honors student, came home from school today with a black eye."

Andy was about to graduate and, though she'd been silent and friendless, seemed settled in her routine of school and a new job at the local hamburger joint. Everything appeared to be going smoothly until the week before her graduation. Though she'd been hunched over with what she'd called a 'stomach ache', even the thick hair hanging in her face couldn't hide the bulging shiner ringing her right eye. Lorraine and Jen had pleaded with her to name the culprit, to no avail. She'd stubbornly refused to discuss the matter which, they could only conclude, must have been the result of harassment at school.

"And why," Lorraine swerved from the window, her eyes narrowed to dark slits as she glared at the principal, "no one here seems remotely concerned that she was physically attacked!"

"Ms... umm," the woman glanced mechanically at the open manila folder on her desk, "Ferguson, this is a high school full of teenagers, a volatile population."

'Tell me something I don't know', Lorraine longed to shout into her expressionless face.

"As young adults they may be subjected to... confrontations beyond our control." Dabbing the tip of her index finger on her tongue, the principal flipped through papers in the folder. Sighing impatiently as though they'd wasted enough of her precious time, she stated dryly, "According to her teachers, Andrea doesn't make the slightest attempt to befriend her classmates."

Incensed by the accusatory nature of her statement, Lorraine sneered at the apathetic woman. "What would you suggest, Mrs. Killvale, that Andrea join the cheerleading squad or try out for prom queen to avoid being hit in the face?" Jen fluttered her eyes at Lorraine - she'd warned her on the drive over not to '...lose your cool in there'.

Lucille's gold necklace jingled on her buxom chest as the woman stood and declared with blatant snobbery, "Isn't flaunting your obvious 'relationship' the cause of your daughter's black eye?"

As though the floor had shifted beneath her feet, Lorraine clutched her head which spun dizzily with questions. Had they been too 'obvious', even flaunting, enough to have provoked this in their stodgy town? And why hadn't Andy felt she could discuss any harassment with them? As though the judgment, 'behold the incompetent mother', was stamped all over the woman's smug expression, Lorraine turned to face her gloating stare.

Just then, Jen, who'd been watching the crimson blush spreading on Lorraine's face, sprang from her chair. Her golden hair swinging across her shoulders, she slapped one hand on the desk with a thud, wagged a stern finger at the gaping woman, and cried out, "You've got some hell of a nerve looking down your nose at anyone, Mrs. Looselips Killer Whale!"

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