“So what happened?”
Caroline took a deep breath, and then another. “He was one of my students. He was failing. Not just my class. All his classes.” I can’t do this, she thought, looking toward the clock on the wall, silently appealing to the bell to ring and rescue her. But it was only five minutes after ten. There were fifteen minutes left before the period ended. “He had a history of depression. I tried to help him, but…”
“How’d he do it?”
“He hanged himself.”
The muttering got louder, spilling from one mouth to the next like a series of collapsing dominoes.
“Gross,” Stephanie whispered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Vicki said.
“You’re a great teacher,” Daphne added. “If you couldn’t help him, no one could.”
Caroline’s eyes filled with tears.
“It’s not fair they blamed you,” Joey Prescott said.
Caroline sank into the chair behind her desk, her body limp with gratitude, her heart full of love for these children who’d somehow managed to survive into their teens relatively unscathed. For all their bravado, they were still na?ve enough to believe that life was supposed to be fair.
—
“Okay, so in one basket we have four heads of cauliflower and five heads of lettuce costing eight forty, and in the other we have six heads of cauliflower and two heads of lettuce costing eight twenty, and our problem is to determine the price of one head of cauliflower and one head of lettuce. What do we do first?”
“Buy hot dogs,” someone shouted out.
“Let x represent the cost of one head of cauliflower,” Caroline said, ignoring the interruption and scribbling the information on the chalkboard. If it’s a quarter to two in the afternoon and there are five more minutes till the end of class and two more classes till the end of the day…
“And let y represent the cost of one head of lettuce,” Jason Campbell volunteered.
“Very good. Thank you, Jason.”
The wall phone behind her desk rang, signaling a call from the office. Caroline excused herself to answer it.
“Did you hear—Joey Prescott asked her about that kid who killed himself?” someone whispered as she was turning her back.
“You’re shitting me. What did she say?”
Caroline ignored the voices and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said the voice on the other end. “You have an emergency call.”
Caroline hung up the phone. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, leaving the room without explanation.
“Where’s she going?”
“Maybe someone else offed himself.”
She hurried down the long, stale-smelling corridor toward the main office, running through a list of potential emergencies, some far-fetched, others all too possible: Michelle had been arrested again, this time for driving drunk on the freeway; Caroline’s mother had suffered a stroke; her brother had been shot by one of his gambling buddies when he couldn’t make good on a bet; another of her students had indeed “offed” himself.
The secretary was waiting, an anxious look on her hawklike face when Caroline burst into the office. Caroline took the phone from the woman’s outstretched hand. “She wouldn’t give me her name,” she said as Caroline lifted the phone to her ear.
If Michelle is five feet nine inches tall, weighs one hundred and eight pounds, drinks five times the amount of what she eats, has four unpaid parking tickets and one arrest for driving under the influence, how many more chances does she get to screw up her life?
“Hello?”
“It’s Lili.”
The room lurched to one side. The soft buzz of the overhead recessed lighting grew loud and insistent, like a nest of angry bees. “How did you find me?”
“I looked up where you work on the Web.”
“It’s on the Web?” Caroline looked toward the secretary, who was pretending to be reading something on her computer. How much of her life was out there for others to casually peruse? Was there anything left that was hers and hers alone?
“Is it all right that I called there? I was afraid to phone your house again.”
“I’m sorry about what happened.”
“It’s okay. That was Michelle, right? I understand why she’d be upset.”
“Do you remember her?” Can you tell me something, anything, about her that nobody else in the world would know but you and me, something that isn’t on the Internet, something that would prove conclusively…?
“No. I wish I could say I did, but…”
“She thinks you’re a fraud,” Caroline said quietly.
“I’d probably think so, too, if I were in her shoes.”
“So, what happens now? Were you really serious about coming to San Diego?”
There was a brief pause, a sharp intake of breath. “What choice do I have?”
Was the girl for real or was Michelle right? Caroline felt a sinking sensation in her gut, remembering Michelle’s predictions. “And I suppose you want me to send you money…”
“No. I already told you, I don’t want your money.”