He laughed, a snaky little hiss of a noise. “Wow, that’s lame. We did that in, like, second grade.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, my mind trying to race ahead, to make sense of it.
“And it wasn’t fair. Some people had, like, really simple families.”
The secretary marched back into the room and past us looking triumphant. Someone equally tiresome would be here soon to there-there me out of the building.
The poor kid. Living not with his own parents but his uncle. And what a jerk I’d been, to judge his family. “Joshua’s family tree was too simple,” I said finally, knowing I was admitting to the very thing I had denied when Joshua suggested it. “Where’s the library?”
He shrugged toward the door the secretary had come through. “Down there, on the right. But it’s closed. It’s lunch.”
Lunch. Hadn’t Joe said something about lunch monitoring? With the librarian?
“Where’s the cafeteria?”
“Follow the smell. And the noise.”
“The whole place smells like cabbage to me. Why aren’t you eating?”
He shrugged and turned his head away.
“Did you spend all your money on spray paint? Is that the kind of sick you are?” I remembered the sad gray house where the Ranseys lived and, from my own family history, the shame of reduced-price lunch, or of not having even that much. Like a sign hanging from my neck: special case. The last year of school I’d hidden out behind a bank of lockers during lunch, munching from a box of generic-brand saltines with Theresa, who started bringing things from home to share.
I opened my wallet, found a five, and held it out to Steve.
He made the snaky sound again, but it wasn’t a laugh. “I’m not going to take your money.”
“Why not? If I’m giving it to you.”
He shrugged. I missed Joshua so much, my chest hurt. “What does Joshua eat for lunch?”
He sat silently for so long that I thought he might have decided against another word. His boots shuffled on the floor. The secretary coughed to remind us she was nearby.
“French fries. He has them, like, every day.”
I nodded. “You’d tell me if you knew. Where he was?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you seen your aunt yet?”
He shook his head slowly.
“Can I buy you some French fries?”
“OK.”
He let the money be placed into his hand and hastened away. I stood, gave the secretary a look, and followed the smell and the noise before someone came along and told me I couldn’t.
I FOLLOWED THE low buzz of voices until the sound grew into an unrestrained roar, meeting only a few students on the way. No one gave me more than an eyes-quickly-away glance. Down a long hallway, past rooms with small windows cut into them so that I could see they were dark, past framed photos of sports teams, the athletes with knobby knees, and portraits of proud and baby-faced class valedictorians, past a trophy case that was hopeful in its near emptiness.
A great blaring bell rang overhead, and students flooded around the corner and past me, around me, until I was an island in a fierce current of elbows and backpacks. I stepped back into the lee of the trophy case and waited, looking back when the students noticed me and stared. I didn’t recognize any of the kids, but at last came Joe Jeffries’s perfectly styled hair.
“Ms. Winger, what—? Is there news?”
I appreciated that we had returned to formality. “No, I need to talk to the librarian. You said she talked to you. About Joshua.”
“The sheriff’s already been all over—”
“I know, I know. I’m just trying to work out this one loose thread about the history project.”
He looked at me with a grim mouth. I could see how I must look to him. I was a sad and desperate sack of a woman who was about to waste a lot of time when I should be at home. Resting and waiting.
“Look, I know. But I have to do something.”
He sighed and watched the last of the students disappearing down the hallway. “Did you check in with the front desk?”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve gone a bit renegade. Don’t make me go talk to that secretary again.”
“This way.” He took off, leaving me to follow. We passed the portraits again, the wide, unsuspecting eyes of so much youth. Past the classrooms, their doors now propped open and the bustle of the students starting to fade as they settled at their desks. Before we reached the front office and watchdog secretary, Joe turned and led us down a narrower hallway. Another turn and I was rewarded with a long stretch of windows that revealed shelves of books.
“I don’t know what you’re going to find out,” he said over his shoulder in a library-appropriate voice.
The library was high ceilinged and cold. I followed Joe across a wide expanse of tables and study carrels, some of them manned by kids in headphones or thumbing at their phones. They all had phones. Now I saw how odd it was that Joshua didn’t.
The librarian stood behind the desk, smiling expectantly. She was wan, her cheekbones sharp in her long face. Her hair, curling and long, had been twisted up and into a sloppy bun.
“Milah,” Joe said.
Before he could continue, I put out my hand. “I’m Joshua Winger’s mother.”
The woman reached into the handshake but ended up holding my hand. “Oh,” she said, covering her mouth with her other hand. “Has anything happened?”
Waiting for the worst. Both of them. Joe with his concern and now this skinny librarian and her surprise—everyone was just waiting to hear Madame Zonda–inspired news.
Joe moved us over to an empty table away from the students. “No news. Ms. Winger just has some questions for you.”
“For me?”
I sat across from her. She seemed sincere, not at all like she’d been asked to placate a disturbed woman. “Joshua was working on a project during library time?”
“He certainly was. He seemed very engaged.”
“But it wasn’t for class.”
“Well. I don’t know,” she said. “The students do all sorts of research. Unless they’re making a mess or getting too loud, we don’t ask too many questions.”
“No, I’m telling you,” I said. “It wasn’t for class. I’ve gone over it with—” I glanced at Joe. Better not to mention Steve as a source. “I’ve gone over it a couple of different ways, but whatever he was doing was personal.”
The buzzer sounded again. All the students would be back in place now. All the students except mine.
“Some of them research their favorite baseball teams during library,” Joe said. “Or their favorite supermodels or . . . we have a lot of websites blocked.”
“So library time is all about the internet?” I asked.
“Most of them have access at home, so many will research in the books or use the time to write their papers or do their homework,” the librarian said. “Or ask questions of us. It’s really just study hall.”
Joshua didn’t have access at home. At home, the internet was for work. My work. “Was Joshua using the web for his project?”
“Some. I helped him a bit.”