The Fourth Child, Jessica Winter [fantasy novels to read txt] 📗

was the day Los Angeles went up in flames, and Janemissed that, too—didn’t even know about it until the fires were going out. She couldn’t keep count of all she’d missed, allshe’d never even looked at.

 

She wasn’t looking for him when she saw him. Jane was mingling with the other parents in the Bethune cafeteria after the premiere of the musical, waiting for their performers to straggle out. She held Lauren’s Bells bouquet, smiling and nodding vacantly. She exchanged excruciating hello, how are yous and aren’t our kids so greats with the Rosens, one eye tracking Mirela as she clambered onto a table, not knowing if the Rosens knew who she was—or rather,there was no way they didn’t know, yet they feigned as if they didn’t, and so Jane could, too. And then over Mamie Figueroa’sshoulder she saw him, emerging from the hallway that led out of the auditorium and into the front hall of Bethune, right infront of the cafeteria pit.

Her legs propelled her forward without her willing it. He was moving so fast toward the double front doors of the school,his eyebrows a dark slash, shoulders hunched. He was so young. He seemed younger than she had ever been. He was trying tobe furtive; his frustration, or his anger, begged attention, but his anger might intensify if he was given attention. Hismovements like Pat’s.

“Excuse me,” she said, placing one foot on the step, “are you—”

He glanced over but didn’t see her, moved past her, putting up an apologetic hand, a pained condescending smile.

She hopped up the steps out of the cafeteria pit and was standing almost in front of him, between him and the front doors.A hand on his sleeve. “Hi, I just wanted to—”

He stopped and gaped. “It’s you,” he said.

Jane smiled, puzzled. It was as if he were staring at his own face but not recognizing himself. Staring into the face of themoon.

“I don’t think we’ve met before,” Jane said. “I’m Lauren’s mom.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, taking her outstretched hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Lauren talks about you all the time,” she said.

Jane had never sensed before that a man was afraid of her, and it occurred to her to apologize before it occurred to her whyhe was afraid.

“Anyway, I’m sorry to keep you—or would you like to stay with us a bit?” she asked.

She could hear it in her voice that she knew. But he was the one who told her.

Mr. Smith looked at the flowers in the crook of her arm. “You haven’t seen the kids yet?” he asked.

“They’re coming out now,” Jane said, gesturing behind him to the first stream of performers skipping and singing as they approachedthe pit. He didn’t turn around to see them. Her hands felt gray and frozen, dead on the dying flowers. The chatter echoingoff the walls seemed both louder and more distant.

“I’m sorry, but I need to go,” he said.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You look sick.”

“I think I am, a bit, forgive me. I have to run—have a wonderful night.”

“You too,” she said, and he turned and pushed through the front doors of Bethune.

“Bye-bye,” she said, as she followed him outside. She watched him under the moonlight, walking toward the chain-link fence.The start of the same route Lauren took home. He bent down and eased his body through the hole in the fence, and the cornersof Jane’s lips recoiled in a rancid smile. It was about to hit her with the entirety of its force, she only had a few secondsleft before the impact, and she clenched her fists and closed her eyes and all she knew or felt was an incandescent contempt.

She picked up the flowers from where they’d fallen on the pavement and returned inside. She looked for Lauren. The noveltyof searching a crowd for a child who was not Mirela. Lauren was with her friends, standing notably close to Stitch, duckingher head, merry and diffident in her pink satin jacket. You would never know. Jane was propelled forward again, back downthe three steps into the cafeteria pit, racing toward Lauren, like she had left her on the stove, like she was chasing a girlwho was standing still, as rooted as a tree.

 

The rest of the performances of Grease were canceled. Assistant Principal Shaughnessy interviewed all the main characters. Stitch, Claire, Abby, and Andy each corroborated Lauren’s account of Mr. Smith grabbing Lauren and menacing her backstage. Each of them, plus Deepa, independently volunteered, without prompting, that they’d observed Mr. Smith behaving in an erratic way at the same rehearsal during which he said something about “a broken typewriter” or a “busted typewriter” or possibly “a busted computer,” which corroborated, if not proved, the contention that Lauren speaking the forbidden line was Mr. Smith’s mischievous idea, not Lauren’s, and therefore that she should not be suspended for it, that it was Mr. Smith who should face some kind of consequence. Each of these witnesses reiterated that Mr. Smith had been seen by several residents of Bethune’s surrounding neighborhood, including Lauren, holding down Lauren’s sister by force, requiring the intervention of the Town of Amherst police department, although that episode, which ended in Mr. Smith’s arrest and brief detention, was beyond Assistant Principal Shaughnessy’s jurisdiction.

Other evidence entered into the record. Claire described a straight-cut, brown corduroy jumper that came to her ankles, whichMr. Smith referred to as her “sexy Mormon skirt.” Abby stated that Mr. Smith often told her she “needed extra meat in hersandwich,” and once opined that her “saddle needed padding.” Deepa talked about hugs that lasted too long, about Mr. Smith’sself-imposed rule that he “never be the first to break a hug.” Rumors traveled, puddled, metastasized: marijuana and drinkingand mild sexual activity in Tedquarters. A whispering suggestion about some incident at teachers’ college—maybe this storydidn’t take shape because it wasn’t true, or because it was too scurrilous to be uttered. Somebody started referring to Mr.Smith as Ted Bundy, and that caught on, and then one day everyone seemed to have agreed