I stepped out into the hall as he stood; I kept my hand on the door. He waited beside me in the empty hall as I locked the door, acting like we would be leaving together.
There were cameras, I reminded myself. It was what we told the students, at least, and I hoped it was true.
He took a step toward the lobby, and I had to follow. Surely there would be people in the office. I took out my cell, scrolled through the call log, walked with purpose, not paying any attention to the boy beside me.
I paused at the back entrance to the office, which cut through the lobby, and where only faculty were permitted. This entrance needed a key, as opposed to the glass doors facing the front. I felt Theo behind me as I took out my key. “See you tomorrow, Theo,” I said, effectively sending him on his way. He walked down the hall, farther away.
And then I heard him in the echo, as the door was swinging open. “Bye, Leah,” he called.
I pretended I hadn’t heard.
Safely inside, I rested my back against the closed door, heard Mitch on the phone in his office to my right. I stood outside his door for a moment so he’d see me. When his gaze lifted to the doorway, I gestured to indicate that I was leaving. He drew his eyebrows together, probably wondering why I was telling him. What I meant by it. He raised a finger, asking me to wait.
When he finished the call, he leaned back in his seat. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. Hey, did you tell Theo Burton he could do detention with me today?”
His chair shifted back and forth. “What? Oh yeah, he asked if he could do it today because he wouldn’t have a ride the rest of the week. I said as long as it was okay with you.” He looked me over. “Was that not okay?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s fine. I was just confused. Wasn’t expecting him, that’s all.”
He nodded, looked back down at his desk. “Give me a sec, I’ll walk out with you.”
“Sure,” I said, leaning against the wall outside his office, feeling an immense relief.
When we walked out to the parking lot, Theo Burton was sitting on the stone bench out front, as if he were waiting for a ride. As if he were waiting. “Bye, Mr. Sheldon. Ms. Stevens.”
Mitch raised his hand at Theo. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Burton. And do your best to be on time.” And then he grinned, like it was all a joke.
I let Mitch walk me to my car. “Want to grab a bite?” he asked. I wasn’t surprised when he casually broached it.
I pictured myself on the edge of the lake, blood seeping into the dirt around me. Imagined Kyle telling the other police officers, Lived all alone, wasn’t from here—and I said, “Not right now, Mitch. Not with everything.”
“Okay, Leah,” he said, taking a step back, and I got in the car. “Another time, then.” He waved once more as the engine to my car turned over.
I saw the shape of Theo Burton in the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting mine, not looking away.
I shifted the car into drive and kept my hands steady on the wheel, convincing myself not to look back.
* * *
I SAW IT IN everything. The threat and menace. The potential for violence. Maybe I’m biased, or practiced in it.
But maybe, I sometimes worried, it’s not really there.
Maybe it’s just the lens, just the filter, when really everything is normal and fine, and the boy is just a boy who was late for school, waiting for a ride home; and Emmy is somewhere with her boyfriend, forgetting to call; and I am starting life anew, and this is just what it’s like in that slow transition when you’re becoming someone else.
CHAPTER 13
I was itching to get to the essays I’d assigned. I’d been home barely five minutes before I had the pages spread out on the kitchen table, the gnome holding down the pile. I’d opened the window over the sink to let the air circulate, to get rid of the empty-house feel, and the pages fluttered in the breeze.
Theo’s paper was on top of the pile. I knew this from when he came in late, though he hadn’t bothered to include his name.
When the coach is arrested for assault. When your teacher is called down to the office and you can tell she’s scared.
When you wonder why she’s scared.
This is why I propose the following safety measure for our school: that our teachers are treated the same as we are. They should be subject to random searches, and there should be a way for us to look into their lives, as they can do to us. They have our addresses, our phone numbers, our parents’ names, our dates of birth, our Social Security numbers. There’s an imbalance of power and they know it.
I almost spit out my drink on the vinyl kitchen table. It was ridiculous. It was persuasive. It was also true. But it lost its bite coming from Theo Burton. I wondered if this was all a result of manifested boredom—this need to get under my skin—or if it ran deeper.
The rest of the papers were full of ideas that were akin to functioning in a state of fear. Proposed safety measures like two monitors at each bathroom, or that student cell phones be allowed to remain on, or that they escort each other in pairs, like in kindergarten, to bathrooms and cars and the front office. Cameras in the classrooms. In the halls. In the bathrooms.
They threw around terms like accountability and privacy and remote classes. I heard echoes of their parents in their words. There were no extra notes slipped in. There was nothing about any rumors, and nothing to build on from IT WASN’T COBB.
I had been wrong. There was absolutely nothing in these pages for me. Nothing but kids phoning in an assignment. I had expected too much. As if, buried in the sea of faces, there might be someone just like me—someone who knew where the truth could be found, if only they reached the right person.
The note about Cobb probably had been from Theo, as a joke, to shake me. Just like the newest assignment from Theo, an assignment that I had given them all carte blanche on and allowed to be anonymous.
From Mitch’s warning, I knew this Davis Cobb thing was going to swing back around unless something changed with Bethany Jarvitz. I’d heard nothing more about her—not from the police, or the students, or the teachers. It was beginning to feel like she was a ghost already. Who, even if she woke, might not remember or be trusted to remember.
I just wanted it all to go away. And the only person I’d feel comfortable talking it all through with was gone.
The space Emmy had occupied only grew more insistent, demanding my attention. I’d taken to sleeping in her bed out of habit. I’d taken to trying on her clothes and looking in the mirror, to remember. Sliding John Hickelman’s watch on and off my wrist. Sitting cross-legged in the dirt, staring off into the forest. Wondering what she was really looking at or for.
Shh, she’d said.
Be quiet.
As if I might spook it. Or as if something had spooked her instead.
* * *