Half the room turned to stare at him. Oleksa uttered something in Ukrainian and looked annoyed to share a lab table with him. Rankin raised an eyebrow at Eric. “You are quite obviously behind on your reading or you’d know that hydrofluoric acid is lethally toxic and highly corrosive.” His gaze drifted down to the orange juice stain on the front of Eric’s white shirt. “And given that you are infinitely clumsy, you would do well to stick with the assignment at hand.” Rankin leaned over his desk and stared around the room, waiting for our laughter to hush. “I’ll take a moment to recognize our top three scholarship candidates: Anh Bui, Nearly Boswell, and Thomas Wiles, in that order.” He nodded to the seat behind me. “Does anyone know if Mr. Wiles plans to join us today?”
We all turned to TJ’s empty chair. As if summoned, his blue-and-white letterman jacket appeared in the door. “I’m sorry I’m late.” He eased into his chair, leaving his stiff left leg protruding into the aisle.
“Do you have a tardy slip?”
TJ frowned. Sweat pinned his dark curls to his forehead and trickled into the neck of his jersey. He didn’t have a car and varsity football players wouldn’t be caught dead on the bus, no matter how long or hot the walk from Sunny View, or how hard it was on a bum leg.
“No, sir,” he said quietly. Rankin nodded gently. No sarcasm. No witty admonishments. He simply said, “Don’t let it happen again.” Then he looked at the wall clock. “Forty-two minutes.”
A flurry of activity and whispers broke out around me.
I looked down at the assignment and started to write my name.
“Miss Boswell,” Rankin spoke over the heads of students as they gathered Bunsen burners and titration equipment from the cabinets at the front of the room. “A quick word if
I may?”
The tip of my pencil snapped, scattering lead over the page. Beside me, Anh bit her lip and glanced at the clock. I pushed back my chair and walked with my head down. Students in white lab coats hunched in circles, talking in low tones behind cupped rubber gloves as if the odd heaviness in the hall had followed TJ into the room.
Rankin spoke quietly. “You won’t be tutoring Emily this afternoon. Miss Reinnert was involved in an unfortunate set of circumstances on Friday. The principal informs me she won’t be returning to school for a while.”
“Is she okay?”
Rankin’s eyes flicked to TJ and he lowered his voice, apparently as aware as everyone else that TJ and Emily Reinnert were dating. The small show of sensitivity was out of character and I suspected Emily’s situation was worse than he let on. “Marcia Steckler is on the waiting list for a math tutor. I’ll arrange for you to meet with her on Mondays so you don’t fall behind in your community service. I’ll send a note to her second period class and ask her to confirm. If you don’t hear from me otherwise, please plan to meet Marcia here at two forty-five.” I opened my mouth to ask what had happened to Emily, but he gestured to my desk with his coffee mug. “That is all.” My eyes drifted to TJ as I returned to my table. He looked lost in his own thoughts, absently massaging his leg brace while his partner worked double time to set up their lab.
Across the aisle, our classmates whispered to each other as they worked, casting him sidelong sympathetic looks. Emily’s name carried across the room in hushed, worried tones. “Hey,” I whispered to Anh. She was labeling glass vials with indelible marker and my eyes watered from the fumes. “Heard anything about what happened to Emily Reinnert on Friday?” Anh’s concentration was focused on the lab. She didn’t look up as she set the vials carefully into a rack. “People were talking about it on the bus this morning,” she said absently,
her voice more than a whisper. “They said she disappeared after the soccer game at North Hampton. She went into the school to use the bathroom and never came back.” TJ’s chair screeched, attracting everyone’s attention. His sweaty brow was furrowed, and I couldn’t tell if he was angry or if he was going to be sick. He snatched the hall pass off a hook by the door as he limped from the room.
Anh and I looked guiltily at each other. I donned my goggles and rubber apron, determined to forget about it and get back to work, but the whispers around the room were persistent, and I was having a hard time concentrating.
“Did they find her?” I finally asked.
Anh shrugged. “Yeah. Sounds like it was a team prank that went a little too far. The custodian found her naked and unconscious in the gym under the bleachers. People say it was roofies.” Anh shook her head and capped her marker. “Sick. They painted her.”
I scrunched up my face. “What do you mean, they painted her? Like Picasso-painted her?”
Anh rolled her eyes. “Nothing quite so sophisticated. This is the soccer team we’re talking about. Think paint by numbers.” She poured a solution into the vials, recording their
reactions. “They literally painted her. They drew the number ten in permanent marker on her arm and then painted the rest of her body in those creepy oil paints people put all over their faces during the games.”