Romeo and Juliet

We have been reading Romeo and Juliet in the 9th grade lit.

I found A out in the hallway first period, sobbing.

It was very strange for me to see that, watching him just bawl, the little Latin King with his hair slicked back.

I got him downstairs to the conference room. Finally I found out what happened.

He had been dating a girl for about a month, another freshman, very quiet in class but very active on the streets. She was very attractive and very sexual. They both started getting in trouble, cutting class to make out or worse, never doing their homework. I had watched all my progress go to nothing, but I was very worried. I knew that she was much more experience than him, and a lot more dangerous. I could not tell him this.

I also knew that she had high social work minutes, and that she had missed time at the beginning of the school year because she had an abortion that went wrong.

Finally he calmed down enough to tell me what happened. He told me that she had gotten arrested or ticketed for driving without a license. She had thought that her sister's boyfriend (she is an upperclassman, he is in prison) had somehow gotten out or was there threatening her. Turned out to be a different guy.

Anyway, the girlfriend lives with her mother, an alcoholic. Somehow it was decided over the weekend that she would have to move in with her father, who lived in Iowa, and who has a highly abusive alcoholic. "A" found out about this from the sister this morning.

I got the principal in and the sister. We started calling people. An aunt, who the sister lives with, agreed to come in. But she was late, and when she did come I was out of the school. We talked to the social worker. We tried phones, some rang and no one picked up, most were numbers that were no good.

Picking up lunch.

We never saw her again.
He had a new girlfriend the next week. We never spoke of this.