Gym class is mind-numbing. Bella spends it thinking about introversion - Andi finds it peculiar and kept asking her questions about it. Bella's not an extreme case of the type, but definitely qualifies. Andi always has more friends - needs more friends - than Bella does.
Bella shrugs, glances at the clock. "I'm going to call in the Chinese food now so it'll be ready when Renée passes the place on her way home from the teachers' meeting." She picks up the phone, dials the number from the takeout menu, and orders all of the listed things, eggrolls included.
It also incidentally reveals some nasty-looking bruises that were previously hidden by his shirt. One just under his colarbone on the right, one on his left shoulder peeking out from under his sleeve.
She looks at the bruises.
She concludes her phone call - "the name is Swan" - and hangs up.
"What happened?" she asks, gesturing at the bruises.
"If Renée sees those bruises, she will not in fact want to know, but might feel obliged to ask."
"She'll probably believe you. When I was in the first grade she got some pointed questions from my teacher because I often have violent disagreements with staircases. It blew over, but she's at least aware that there are multiple reasons someone might appear injured."
Trouble laughs. "What was the teacher doing grilling her? If something was up she'd just lie about it, right?"
"Well, Renée teaches kindergarten - you can't really work with kids any more if there's an accusation like that out in public, even a false one. And the first grade teacher had met me - she hadn't seen me fall at the time she got suspicious, but she'd seen me use walls for balance, and stumble, and knock things off my desk. Renée told her to talk to my gym teacher, and to call Charlie if she still wasn't sure, and then there's the fact that Andi was always fine. No scandal, Renée keeps her job, I am generally known to be accident-prone."
"The gym teacher had already confirmed with me at the start of the year when Renée told him that I couldn't be playing soccer with the other kids, so I guess the first-grade teacher didn't feel the need to follow up," shrugs Bella.