THEY CALL ME IN FOR MY STUDENT INTERVIEW AT THE start of sixth period. The brief exemption from class is a blessing. Our AP Latin teacher has contracted a nasty cold, and those of us in the front row keep getting subjected to her sneezes. I’m determined to dawdle all the way to the guidance center and back. Aimless wandering is a definite improvement on the phlegm war zone.
On the way there, I peruse the student-government campaign posters adorning walls and lockers, some taped to the banisters in the stairwell. Most are for the overzealous freshman presidential candidates, of which there are eight. The juniors only have three, one of whom is Juniper. I wonder how she can focus on extracurriculars, but if posters indicate anything, she’s set to win: her advertisements are the only ones that look vaguely official. Olivia’s blare out from the cinder blocks, so brightly colored that my eyes cry out in protest. And Matt Jackson’s, God help us, have the sentence YOUR VOTE MATTERS! written in Comic Sans.
I push through a set of double doors, crossing from the new wing to the old wing. No more plate glass and constant brightness. Here, high windows cast narrow, dramatic shafts of light onto dark, pitted floors. I knock my plastic hall pass against the padlocks on the lockers, making them swing. Getting assigned a locker on this side of the school is a bad draw—they’re so spacious that people get stuffed into them, à la every high school movie made before 2000. For somebody my size, it wouldn’t even be uncomfortable. I could set up a nice little table in there and finally have a peaceful spot to read.
I trot down to the first floor and enter the guidance center’s tiny cluster of offices. My mother, the head of the office, sits at the front desk beneath a poster of a motivational kitten. HANG IN THERE! it says. The kitten dangles from a tree branch, looking as if its life is in peril.
“Hi, dear,” Mom says. “Time for your interview?”
“Yeah.” I peer around the corner at the closed doors. “Are you really doing this for twelve hundred students?”
“With the eight of us, it goes faster than you’d think.” My mom hands me a slip of paper with my name at the top. “Give this to Ms. Conrad when she calls you in, would you?”
I perch on a padded bench between two other kids, trying not to fidget, counting squares of carpet to relax myself. Maybe I should talk. Juniper will take the fall for her poor decision-making, and the sense of irresolution will clear from my head. My part will be done.
“Valentine Simmons,” calls a voice from the depths of the guidance center. I head for the last door on the left, passing the most recent interviewee, a small, nervous-looking girl. I close the door gently and sit across from Ms. Conrad, a tubby woman with dreadlocks thicker than my fingers.
She smiles as I hand her the slip. “Thanks, Valentine. You’re Sarah’s son, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good genes,” she says, smoothing out the slip. She clicks a pink pen. “So, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and if you’ll answer them to the best of your ability, that’d be great. First: have you heard any theories who the participants in the rumored illicit teacher-student relationship might be?”
I frown. “You’re asking me to tell you rumors? You realize how unreliable the high school rumor mill is, right?”
Ms. Conrad sighs. “Work with me here, kid.”
“Well,” I say, “I heard something about Dr. Meyers, but I don’t at all believe it.”
“Hmm.” She scribbles Dr. Meyers’s last name. “And how about the student?”
Juniper’s name trembles at the tip of my tongue. I swallow, look down at my lap, and keep it back. “Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
I look up at Ms. Conrad. Her brown eyes dig into mine, and I force myself to hold them. “Nothing at all,” I repeat, not even blinking.
BURKE AND I PULL UP AT MY HOUSE ON MONDAY afternoon as my mom heads out the door for a dental appointment. She flaps a hand at me and says, “Don’t let Russell eat any snacks, or he won’t eat dinner. Y cierra la puerta—it was cracked open yesterday and so cold when I got home.” She gives Burke the usual pained smile she saves for him, because, like everyone at school, she thinks his clothes are ridiculous, and today he’s wearing leather pants that show every contour of his leg muscles, as well as something hairy and alpaca-looking draped over his shoulders.