Misfit Toys Read online

  Misfit Toys

  by JC Doan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover by germancreative.

  Copyright© 2022

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission.

  Dedication

  Long live the Survivors’ Club.

  Chapter One

  “Suspenders and porn. Now, there’s two words you never think you’ll use together.”

  “Sure,” Hailey remarked, not bothering to glance up from the inch-thick stack of papers she was grading. Then she paused as the words sank in. “Wait. What?”

  Her grandmother lowered the binoculars just long enough to deliver a stern look over her bony shoulder. “You should see what that man is doing over there, Hailey Marie.”

  “What? What’s he doing?” Instead of chastising her grandma for spying on the new neighbor again, she dumped the clipboard and pile of essays on the couch. Suspenders and porn? “Let me see.”

  Grandma passed the binoculars over. “Okay, but it’s ugly.”

  The man in the house next door was naked except for a pair of Minions underwear held up by bright green suspenders. And Gran was right. He was watching a dirty movie.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “And they say nothing ever happens in Ohio.” Grandma made a grab for the binoculars. “It’s always the lesbians. I saw a whole thing about that on Donahue. Men love lesbians.”

  Hailey snatched them back, then tossed them onto the couch. “Stop spying on the neighbors. It’s bad for business.”

  “Is not. Beauty shops run on gossip. And business is booming ever since that one moved in next door.” Gran fluffed hair that, with a little help from a bottle in recent years, was almost as dark as Hailey’s. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room.” Where she undoubtedly had stashed a second pair of binoculars.

  Hailey just shook her head and settled back onto the sofa before moving to the next essay in the pile. It took all of thirty seconds to check off every question on both sides of the page.

  Accepting a long-term assignment at Villa Grove Junior High had seemed like a good idea back in January. Four months covering a sixth grade English teacher’s maternity leave? Piece of cake. Hailey had been an English Lit major. Granted, college had been a few years ago, but things hadn’t changed that much. And while she’d loved spending the past seven years subbing full time, lately the constant sea of new faces and last-minute schedule changes had begun to wear on her.

  Three and a half months ago, Villa Grove had been a perfect opportunity for a much-needed breath of fresh air. A sound decision, one even her older sister, Treva, had supported. Talk about a shock. Treva was thirty-three—only a year older than Hailey—going on sixty and showed no signs of easing up anytime soon. Hailey couldn’t remember the last time her sister had offered praise instead of criticism. Really, Hailey? A substitute? Isn’t that for college kids and retirees? I know you dropped out of college, but still. You need to go back, you know. To school. Unless you actually want to live with Gran for the rest of your life. Speaking of Gran, how is she?

  The only move Treva had fully backed within recent memory was Hailey’s decision to get rid of Michael, but that wasn’t saying much. Not even Treva could support staying with a man who’d been screwing around with his girlfriend’s younger sister.

  Gran thought she’d had it rough dealing with one sister. Hah. Try living with Treva and Maddie. Hailey marked the page with a bold red zero before flipping it to the bottom of the stack. She was running on black coffee and nerves and was tempted to put off grading the rest of the essays until later that night, maybe even tomorrow during plan period. But considering that, at the moment, her options for entertainment were either window peeping or thinking about the day she’d come home from junior year finals to find Maddie in bed with Michael...

  Hailey turned back to the essays, mentally bracing herself when she spotted the name at the top of the page. Dylan.

  Question one: Where do you see yourself in five years? In ten? Dylan had scrawled Happy wife, happy life on the line below the question.

  How did the speaker inspire you today?

  His response? Keep slangin bro.

  Hailey sighed. “Career day is a bitch.”

  ****

  The twelve-year-old boy holding the newly sharpened pencil to his own throat wasn’t the worst thing to happen that week in room 209. In fact, it wouldn’t even have made the top five in the chaos that was Mrs. Clementes’s sixth grade English class.

  Hailey blamed the flamingos. The classroom was filled with them: flamingo clocks, stuffed animals, and a desk that was littered with the pink paraphernalia. None of which could be mentally healthy for a roomful of pre-teens. She edged closer to the boy, careful to keep her eyes locked on his and block out the whispers and stares of the other students. She barely noticed the sporadic lightning streaks firing in the sky, just outside the windows of their classroom.

  “Tyler, come on, let’s talk about this.” Soft voice, non-threatening. The effort was rendered mostly useless by a boom of thunder.

  “No.” But this time, he lacked the conviction of a few minutes ago, when Rachel Lowe had rolled her eyes and thrown his note away at the start of second period.

  Another tentative step. “You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Tyler’s blue eyes took on a hard glint, and his grip steadied on the Ticonderoga number two. “Bullshit. I’m going to die alone.”

  Die alone? You are twelve years old. Sweet baby Jesus, why did I agree to sub for this class? The point of the pencil dug into Tyler’s skin, narrowly missing a huge pimple just below the space where neck met cheek. Hailey froze, then lifted her hands. “Okay. Okay.”

  Rachel stood up so fast she knocked her chair over. “Tyler, wait! I’ll go out with you.”

  Hailey frowned. “You will not.” Then, “Tyler, you can’t just—”

  “You’re just saying that because you feel sorry for me,” he accused.

  “I’m not! I swear I’m not.” Rachel worried the pink strands in her black hair as she pleaded with him. The rest of the class held their breath as they took in the scene unfolding before them. Outside, the sky finally opened up, and rain began to come down in heavy gray sheets.

  The pencil pushed deeper, and when Hailey could no longer see the lead tip, she ditched diplomacy and jumped over the flamingo-print bean bag calm-down chair. Tyler panicked. He immediately dropped the pencil and ducked his head, using his branch-like arms as a shield and looking for all the world like he was about to be attacked, not saved.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Chapter Two

  “Riot!” a boy shouted.

  What looked suspiciously like a hot-pink, flamingo-shaped metal stapler whizzed by Hailey’s head. It missed her by a mile, if she had even been its intended target, and hit the large window beside the chalkboard. Glass exploded, sending shards mostly outward to the sidewalk far below and leaving a jagged hole in the window frame. Warm wind and pelting rain quickly filled the space. Loose papers swirled in the breeze created by the storm. And over the noise of all that, thirty simultaneous voices, one of which yelled, “Tornado!” The announcement was quickly followed by screams and stampeding feet as several of her students began to flee.

  Hailey should have been shocked at the fact the room was spinning out of control around her. But not much about room 209 or its tween occupants surprised her anymore. Wild Things meets Shakespeare, with a side of Days of
Our Lives. Yeah, what else was new? She stood front and center and planted both fists on her hips. “Everybody freeze.”

  Her teacher voice, honed to perfection in the trenches of middle schools all over Auglaize County, turned the words into a command that would be followed, or else. Two kids who’d been in the process of jumping ship halted in the doorway, backs going straight.

  “There is no tornado,” Hailey continued, hoping her tone carried out into the hall, where the majority of her class had disappeared to. The storm began to dissipate, dying down almost as quickly as it had come, just another Midwestern late morning pop-up shower. The damage was done, though. Most of her students were probably halfway to the office already, or in other classrooms, maybe even hunkered down in the bathrooms at the other end of the hall. She motioned for the handful of kids who were actually in the room to reclaim their assigned seats even as the hall began to fill with confused students and concerned fellow teachers.

  “We aren’t having a tornado. Look,” Hailey insisted once Rachel crawled out from under Tyler’s desk and peeked up at her through the now messy strands of neon-colored bangs. “See? It was just a storm,” Hailey said before picking up the classroom telephone and calling the front office to let the school secretary know there was a broken window in her classroom but no injuries—and that she needed a janitor. And an assistant principal to round up her lost flock.

  “But the window—” Stacey began as soon as Hailey ended the call. The girl stepped out from where she’d been crouched beside a slate-gray shelving unit. Her fellow student and Villa Grove Gazette writer, Allison, remained kneeling on the floor, scribbling in her ever-present legal pad, probably recording the events for the school paper. Fabulous. Just fabulous.

  “But that window—” Stacey said again.

  “Was the flamingo stapler being launched through it,” Hailey finished grimly. “And Dylan is going to the office when I find him.”

  “Oh.” Stacey’s shoulders slumped. “There really wasn’t a tornado.” She sounded disappointed as she and Rachel and several other students disregarded Hailey’s earlier instructions to take their seats. Instead, the small group crowded around the two windows that weren’t broken.

  “Nope,” Hailey said as she came up behind them. “The clouds are even gone now.” A thin layer of mist hung over the city, and in the distance, a bright rainbow arced across the highway that separated the north and south parts of town.

  Rachel smiled. “Tyler, come see this.”

  The room was silent, save for the muted scrape of a chair on threadbare carpet. A minute later, Tyler—looking borderline embarrassed—stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Ethan and Rachel. Hailey walked briskly to her own desk, sidestepping bits of glass and wet spots where the rain had blown in through the broken window. Neighboring teachers, following the trail of chaos, were now rushing into the room. Mrs. Lyndstrom, the school secretary, wasn’t far behind. She stared in shock at Hailey and stammered, “Ms. Jones, what on earth…” Mrs. Lyndstrom paused, tugging on the hem of her tight sweater and looking overwhelmed. But she recovered quickly and said, “I’ll stay with your class. You have a phone call in the office. It’s your grandmother.”

  And just like that, Hailey knew that her day was about to get a whole lot worse.

  The principal was already giving her a stern look by the time she made it downstairs to the office and picked up the phone. One that clearly said we are going to talk later. “Gran,” she said, lowering her voice a fraction and choosing to ignore Mrs. Presley for the moment. “What’s wrong?”

  There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line, a quiet that stretched for so long Hailey almost thought Gran had hung up. But finally, “Hailey, it’s your sister. Maddie has been arrested. Her neighbor just called.”

  “Maddie? Arrested?” Hailey echoed, bracing one hand on the secretary’s padded chair. “For what?”

  “Murder. She’s been arrested for murder.”

  ****

  Hailey sat on the bench until the ice had melted in her cherry slushy. Until the heat from the aluminum had seeped through her pinstripe pants and she was in real danger of not making it back to class on time. Today, she didn’t care. A lunch break was the last thing she’d expected to get from Mrs. Presley. She had expected to be shown the door earlier, to have her assignment terminated after the fiasco with the broken window and the students running amok that morning.

  But, after the phone call with her grandmother, Hailey had turned to Mrs. Presley only to be waved away and instructed to return to her classroom. She’d been granted a stay of execution until classes ended that day at three, at which time, she would likely be fired. So she took the lunch break as soon as 11:30 rolled around, bypassing the cafeteria in favor of the parking lot and her car even though leaving campus was frowned upon. She picked up a sandwich and a drink from a gas station on her way to the park. Not because she actually thought she could stomach any food at the moment. But she had needed the break. She still needed … something. A do-over and maybe a good stiff drink topped the list.

  She chugged the sugar-rush of a slushy instead. She was probably going to be late. She was definitely going to be fired. Losing control of her classroom the way she had this morning was bad enough without compounding that sin by being late twice in one month. The first time had been after she’d gotten stuck chauffeuring Gran and all her friends from one bingo hall to the next in a rented fifteen-passenger van and overslept the next morning. The second time would be today in about nine minutes, she decided, glancing down at her cell phone.

  And why was she even stressing over her problems—was never darkening the doorway of Villa Grove Junior High ever again actually a problem, anyway?—when her little sister was sitting in a jail cell and staring down twenty-two to life for allegedly offing her latest boyfriend. Compared to that, Hailey’s job loss seemed totally inconsequential. Her phone screen went dark but almost immediately lit back up, showing an incoming call from Treva. She clicked ignore and set her phone down on the bench, then wrapped both hands around her slushy and stared off into the distance.

  Hailey had already made it through one more call from Gran and two from Treva. “Are you really surprised, Hailey? I always knew Maddie would snap one day.”

  Then there had been the text message from Mrs. Presley’s secretary, reminding her that they still needed to talk before she left for the day.

  ****

  Hailey rubbed the space between her eyes, on autopilot as she navigated the light traffic. She may not have gotten the ax—mostly, she suspected, because nobody else wanted to be overseer of Mrs. Clementes’s flamingo hell—but after today, she was sure to be legendary. Or maybe notorious was a more accurate term. News of the fake tornado and flamingo stapler incident had spread through the tween grapevine with astonishing speed. The story had gotten more distorted with each re-telling.

  At last count, and by the end of the school day, no less, rumor had it that one of Hailey’s students—no one was really sure which one—had been caught with a gun, which Hailey had failed to successfully wrestle away from said student, resulting in a window being blown out. Public opinion was evenly split between Hailey being massively incompetent and the coolest sub ever. On the upside, Hailey figured the student body would be set straight when the full account of her day of woe was published in the Villa Grove Gazette, thanks to the detailed reporting of Stacey and Allison.

  She made a concerted effort not to dwell on that during the rest of her drive home. Of course, that meant the mess her sister had landed herself in was shoved front and center in her mind. Maddie. Former captain of her high school dance squad, fake-as-hell perpetual “good girl,” voted most likely to succeed, even after getting pregnant at fifteen—nobody could schmooze and bullshit people like her little sister—had been arrested for murder. Hailey couldn’t believe it. Tax evasion or a drunken bar fight, she could have believed. Maddie was thirty now and a long way from the perky redheaded cheerleader she’
d once been.

  Hailey hadn’t seen or spoken to her in seven years, but some of the veneer was bound to have worn thin with age to expose the person her sister really was deep inside, someone who was an expert at manipulating other people. But murder? No. No way. She couldn’t picture it, even though Treva had no problem making that mental leap. To the best of Hailey’s knowledge, Treva hadn’t talked to Maddie in nearly a decade, either. The only person in the family Maddie had kept in touch with since moving to Alabama with her daughter was Gran. Besides their great-aunt, of course. Gran’s lifelong feud with her own sister, Maisy, had made the woman not only willing but eager to take in Maddie and Violet. In less than two years, Maisy had died of cancer and left Maddie her house.

  Forty minutes later, Hailey turned into the ultra-wide driveway that was Shear Madness’s parking lot and shut the car off. She grabbed her purse and headed inside after entertaining only brief fantasies of hiding in the car for the rest of the night. The headache that pulsed behind her burning eyes increased two-fold the minute she stepped through the front door. Every light in the house had been left on, a virtual beacon in the night that spoke volumes about her grandmother’s mental state. Not good. Gran was in plan mode. Hailey checked the kitchen first, switching off Tiffany lamps as she went, then grabbing a sticky cinnamon bun from a platter in the center of the kitchen table. “Gran?” she called out around a mouthful.

  “In the bedroom,” Gran called from the back of the house.

  Hailey polished off the cinnamon bun as she made her way down the hall toward the bedrooms. She stopped long enough to wash her hands in the bathroom and pop a couple of Tylenol from the medicine cabinet, washing the pills down with tap water from the sink.

  “Hey,” she said a minute later, leaning against the doorframe to her grandmother’s bedroom, not seeing her, but craning her neck toward the attached master bathroom and walk-in closet. “I’m home.”