She walked into Lucas’s class the next day and he forgot everything else.
Forgot about his whole family at the Monday morning breakfast table when it was usually only him, Laura, and Mom with her newspaper crossword puzzle set aside until after her kids went to school and Dad woke up, left for work.
The kitchen’s picture window framed the world outside where purple blooms swayed on the lilac hedge that made the border of their backyard. KRIP AM radio filled the kitchen with the Swap & Bulletin Board, hog ’n’ cattle reports, crop futures, and polka music Lucas hated—‘oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah.’
“Lucas,” said Dad, “if anybody asks you what’s going on, tell them nothing.”
“Tell them nothing about what?”
“Nothing about everything. Especially about Laura. And that car wreck.”
“Who’s going to ask me anything? I’m a kid.”
“Doesn’t matter who asks you. The point is, you don’t know anything.”
Laura stared past the five-years-younger brother who sat across from her.
“Is everything OK?” asked Lucas.
“You can say that,” Dad told him. “Sure, you can say everything is OK.”
But Lucas forgot about all that when she walked into his classroom.
Forgot about that and about arguing with Wayne and Kurt before school, three fifth graders huddled in the chaos of kids on a packed-sand playground.
“You’re so wrong, Lucas!” said Kurt. “The Blob is worse than The Thing! The Thing is like a man, so you can just hide from it until the Army gets there, but The Blob is huge and red and takes over everything!”
“Nu-unh!” argued Lucas about great movies. “Monsters who are like you are the worst. They know how to get you.”
He waved his arms Dah! The pink eraser flew out of his grip to crash in front of a pair of black-and-white sneakers worn by a boy named Marin.
First Bell rang.
Children stampeded toward the school doors.
Wayne didn’t move.
Kurt didn’t move.
Lucas didn’t move.
Marin stared at them. He was the same size as them. In 5A like them.
But Marin had just moved to Vernon.
They’d lived there forever. Been Cub Scouts. Didn’t join Boy Scouts—
—which was a relief for Lucas. There was something about the scoutmaster that made him feel… creeped.
The week they’d started fifth grade, Lucas, Kurt, and Wayne trudged to the National Rifle Association’s nighttime gun safety class at Knob Hill’s indoor shooting range. Lucas blinked as the safety instructor walked past dozens of sitting-on-the-floor elementary school kids with a rifle jauntily riding his hip. The death bore pointed to the dark night beyond that ceiling.
Loaded gun, thought Lucas. One look at Kurt and Wayne watching the instructor told Lucas they didn’t get it.
So when the preacher of gun safety “accidentally” pulled the trigger—
BANG!
—besides the startle and now safety-taught fear that whacked Lucas, he felt the joy of ‘I was right!’
I got it, he told himself. I saw what was there for real.
Now he saw a fellow fifth grader named Marin standing there staring back at him as he decided the fate of a lonely pink eraser on a packed-sand playground. Marin had jet-black hair. Skin the color of coffee with cream.
Four hard-beating-hearts, blue-jeaned boys stood on that sand playground.
Marin underhanded the eraser toward Lucas. Glided into the school.
Lucas bobbled the catch.
Bobbled it of course just as Anna, oh Anna, and Bobbi Jean flowed past.
“Phew!” said Wayne. “That was lucky. I didn’t know if he’d give it back.”
“Come on,” said Kurt. “We’ll be late.”
Wayne whispered as they ran inside: “You know Marin is a half-breed.”
Lucas only knew that he’d bungled a catch in front of Anna.
But he forgot about that.
Like he forgot about how as they hurried into their 5A classroom, Kurt said: “Why isn’t Ralph poking people this morning?”
Like he forgot about the Secret Magic Plan as he sat at his desk and bathed in the vision of Anna with her golden angel hair. She sat to his left, giggling with Bobbi Jean, who was whip skinny and had hair the color of mud.
The Secret Magic Plan.
All Lucas had to do was align the universe.
He fingered his math sheet. The turn-in box sat on the teacher’s desk. After the call for homework, kids would straggle to the box. When Anna rose, he’d race for one of two chances at eternity. He’d either slide his paper under or drop it on top of hers and thus create destiny. They’d be together. He couldn’t decide which move was better, but that became just another mystery he forgot when.
Final Bell clanged through the school.
Everyone in 5A shut up and sat still.
Except, of course, for Nick, whose right hand always twitched.
And Ralph, who’d poked nobody yet and now shifted around in his desk.
Lucas let no one see him watch Anna out of the corners of his eyes.
Principal Olsen exploded into the classroom.
Lucas tensed. Please please please don’t see me!
Then he saw who followed Principal Olsen and forgot everything else.
“Sit up straight!” bellowed Mr. Olsen. “Pay attention! You! Nick Harris! If you can’t keep your hand still, we’ll nail it to the desk!
“No more easy street!” Principal Olsen slashed his forefinger across the fifth grade faces. “Mrs. Bemiller’s hip broke and you thought you were going to get the rest of the year with substitutes. But I got you a real teacher. You jump when she says jump or you’ll come down the office and jump for me.”
A sucking wind pulled the breath out of every kid.
Principal Olsen said: “This is your new teacher, Miss Jordan Smith.”
The song of her name: “Miss Jordan Smith.” Miss: she wasn’t married. Soft sunlight waves lit her midnight hair. Her violet eyes were wide and bright. Those lips curled in a slow smile. She evoked The Secret Of The Truck Shop but Lucas banished such thoughts. A noble warmth filled him.
Jordan Smith, thought Lucas. You have a black piano.
Her voice was husky, magnetic.
“Thank you, Principal Olsen. We appreciate you taking time out of your busy day.” She stepped past him toward the class. “Now it’s up to me to—”
“Nope!” said Principal Olsen. “I’m not the kind of skipper who’d leave you high and dry on your first day with this bunch. I set up a lesson to start you off.”
“Is that necessary? You are the principal, but this is my class now.”
“No bother. You can just sit over there.” He pointed to the windowsill.
“I can just…” She made a smile for Principal Olsen. “Sit… over… there.”
The second hand swept the clock above the classroom door.
“Well,” she said, “guess we better get you going so you can be gone.”
Lucas saw the principal blink.
“Just give me a moment to take my place,” said Miss Jordan Smith.
But instead of sitting over there on the windowsill, she marched to the back of the room and wedged herself into an empty desk just like all the kids.
“We’re ready, Mr. Olsen,” she said from behind the students. “Please begin.”
He marched to the blackboard. “Listen up, people! This is how life is.”
The principal jerked down a roll-up map.
That flattened vision of the world faced 1959’s fifth grade students.
Lucas knew the shapes of America and Canada. Of desert Mexico south of the Alamo. The squiggle of green was always England. The big hook was the lions/gorillas/elephants of Africa. “Unexplored Territory” labeled a patch of Africa’s map the size of Kansas, while across the blue ocean were more jungles in South America where escaped Nazis hid and blowgun darts tipped with curare puff-thwack-“Aah!” made you dead. Yellow deserts with oil and Arabs on camels. Then there were the they’ll-be-frozen-forever snow-white Arctics.
Red shaded a third of the world map.
“There’s us and there’s them,” said Principal Olsen.
Asia, thought Lucas. Russia. China. The east end of Europe.
“Communism!” snapped Mr. Olsen. “They’re dying to take over the world. Put us men in prison camps. Take your moms and you girls and—We won’t get into that. They’ll make you work for no money. Tell you who to marry. Not let you worship Jesus like Americans are supposed to. Not let you say what you think. Try anything and they’ll put you up against a brick wall and rat-a-tat-tat.”
He punched the map.
“This world is like a prison. Places like Hungary where they threw rocks at Russian tanks. West Berlin where Miss Smith taught the kids of our soldiers. Everything Red is run by the big boss in the principal’s office called Moscow.
“That’s how it is,” he said as he assumed the Navy’s command pose. “So be glad you’re an American and not trapped in a place that’s run like the Reds.”
The red second hand made a full circle around the black-numbered clock.
From the back of the classroom came her voice: “Truly amazing.”
“Thank you, Miss Smith.”
“Oh yes.” She walked to the front of the classroom. “I think we all learned something. In fact, you’ve given us a lot to work on.”
“Teaching is what you’re here for.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is. And you’re welcome to stay and learn.”
Before he could respond, she added: “Perhaps, though, first could you please do us a favor? I don’t know how to open the window and it’s stuffy in here.”
Like a man should, he opened the stiff metal window. Turned from that…
… and realized he was over there.
Miss Jordan Smith stood in front of her class. Cool air flowed over them.
“Hey, kids,” she said. “When you look at this map, what do you see?”
Lucas squinted as hard as he could.
“It looks like one big thing, but you see all these lines called ‘borders.’ When you cross over those lines, those borders, you’re someplace else. When you cross a border, it feels the same as where you were and completely different, both at the same time. Sometimes you don’t know when you’ve stepped over the line until suddenly whoops—there you are. Some borders are OK to cross. Some mean there are different rules. And crossing some can be dangerous.
“We all come from inside the borders of one place out into a big world. And Mr. Olsen over there will tell you this is true: you can’t know where you are if you don’t know what else is out there.”
Mr. Olsen over there wanted to say something but he’d lost his tongue.
“So let’s figure this out,” said Miss Smith. “We’ll make teams. Everybody on a team will help on a big report about a foreign place. What’s it like to live there? Was it a colony like us before our revolution? Did Hitler occupy it? Did they have no borders like Montana did when it belonged to the Indians?”
“Miss Smith! Miss Smith!” Of course, it was Eileen waving her hand, then bursting out with: “That doesn’t count because we got rid of all the Indians.”
“Not quite,” said Marin.
The room stopped breathing. Frank Stiff Arm became a rock in his seat. Faye Inman made herself so still no wind could shake her black hair. Bobby Dupree and Penny Miller burned in their forever tans. Lucas saw twenty-one milk-skinned kids struggling to find a safe place to point their eyes.
Me, too, he thought. Me, too.
A dragon cloud from Mr. Olsen snaked across the room to Marin.
Miss Smith sent Marin a smile. “Great point. And we’re glad about that.”
She’s right, thought Lucas.
And Marin was right to say un-un to Eileen.
“We’ll have four kids to a team,” she said. “Start choosing up during recess, then tomorrow, I’ll assign people who still can’t make up their minds. We’ll—”
The Recess Bell rang.
Scrambling fifth graders swept Lucas into their evacuation.
He glimpsed Miss Smith smiling beside her new desk.
Saw Mr. Olsen sitting over there, glaring like something was off.
Lucas caught up with Kurt and Wayne on the packed-sand playground.
“We gotta choose a fourth for that project,” said Kurt as they passed first graders spinning on the merry-go-round. “Or she’ll stick us with somebody.”
Lucas said: “How about Marin?”
His friends stared at him.
“He’s smart,” said Lucas. “I saw him at the library.”
Wayne said: “Marin is… He probably wouldn’t do any of the work.”
“Will so,” said Lucas. “ ’Sides, the only one else who’d be good is Bobbi Jean.”
“Forget it!” snapped Wayne. “We can’t have a girl!”
Kurt shrugged. “Bobbi Jean’s probably already with Anna.”
“Who cares about them?” fibbed Lucas. “We have to pick him while we can.”
“Then you do it,” said Wayne. “And I don’t want to end up doing his share.”
“You won’t,” said Kurt. “But he’s right, Lucas. You gotta be the one to ask.”
Lucas found Marin flying high through the cool air on a swing.
You see me, thought Lucas. Please stop.
The other boy whipped past him as far as the swing’s chains allowed. Higher and higher, until the only thing left to do was let go. Let the rush suck him out of the swing’s seat. Power back, woosh forward… Let go. Fly free into blue sky.
Marin—
—quit pumping. Flowed out of the swing to face Lucas.
“I was thinking,” said Lucas. “Me, Kurt, Wayne. Would you be on our team?”
“You want me? For that project she gave us?”
Lucas nodded.
“YOU!”
Principal Olsen’s yell blasted the two boys. They whirled. Saw him so close his spit spray hit them. “Marin! You might have other people fooled, but I know a troublemaker when I see one! And, mister, I got my eye on you!”
Rocks crunched under Mr. Olsen’s black shoes as he charged away.
“You still want me on your team?” whispered Marin.
Lucas nodded.
Marin walked away.
Kurt and Wayne met Lucas in the middle of the playground.
“What happened?” asked Kurt.
“Beats me,” answered Lucas.
Bobbi Jean ran up to them. She pointed toward the brown brick fortress a long block away. “Hey, Lucas! Is that your dad’s car over at the high school?”
Squinting, Lucas couldn’t be sure, but Bobbi Jean would know Dad’s company car, a black station wagon with white letters: MARSHALL TRUCKING.
“What’s he doing there?” she asked.
“I don’t know anything! I mean… It’s… It’s OK. He’s doing nothing.”
“High school’s a funny place to do nothing,” said Bobbi Jean.
The ringing bell killed recess and they all ran inside.
“So,” said Miss Smith as they sat in their desks, “do we have any teams?”
Of course Eileen’s hand shot up: three not-as-bossy girls on her team.
“Miss Smith?”
“Yes, Marin?”
“I’m with Lucas Ross. And those guys there: Kurt, Wayne.”
Lucas flew home for lunch past the high school doors that teenagers slammed out of as the noon whistle blew. He ran the whole six blocks home. On the way to the back door, Lucas turned between his house and the Dentons’—
—spotted Mr. Denton, a squat man scrunched beside a tree in his own yard, peering toward the north end of town with binoculars.
“Hey, Mr. Denton!”
He whirled to the neighbor boy. Binoculars tucked behind his back.
“What are you doing?” asked Lucas as he ran to join the gruff old man.
“Ah… Nothing, I—”
“What are you looking at with those binoculars? Can I see?”
“No!”
Lucas peered where the binoculars had pointed: north over Main Street, past the railroad tracks, past the houses there to the hills at the city limits.
Denton said: “I was looking at birds. Go eat lunch. Nothing’s going on here.”
Nothing’s going on everywhere, thought Lucas. As his fingers touched the back door to his house, Lucas remembered Mrs. Sweeny’s sour-breath hiss:
‘Your uncle the Eye-talian Papist and that evil red house on the north hill.’
He squinted toward the north side. A new box-like house was there, he knew that, but all he could see was its reddish blur. No uncle. And no evil.
Lucas ran into the kitchen. Saw his whole family already home for lunch, sitting around the table with tuna fish sandwiches and milk.
Shouted: “I got the greatest new teacher!”
“That’s nice,” said Mom as Lucas sat in his place.
“Hey, Dad: How come you were at the high school?”
Dad used that voice: “Do you remember what we talked about?”
“Yeah, I know nothing, but you were there. I saw the car at recess.”
“Lucas,” said Dad, “some things have to stay in the family.”
“I’m in the family,” said Lucas.
“But you’re not—”
“Old enough. When will I be ‘old enough’?”
“This is all we can tell you,” said Dad. “There was a car wreck. Earl Klise died. Hal Hemmer didn’t. Laura’s on the line because of something she did. Now she’s doing the right thing. She’s helping the sheriff and county attorney. We’re still figuring out what that means.”
“I think—”
“We doesn’t mean you, Lucas,” said Dad. “And there’s one rule everybody agrees on besides you saying nothing: Laura can’t talk about it at all. She has to be able to swear to that in a court of law.”
“Hand on the Bible,” said Lucas.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Dad.
“What about the Honor Society?”
Laura said: “He knows about that. Yesterday, riding around… He knows.”
“The Honor Society,” said Dad. “This morning I pointed out to the high school that the county attorney says Laura can’t tell anything to anybody. Otherwise the law might get screwed up. Lots of rumors, but since nobody can tell the Honor Society anything, there’s nothing the Honor Society can do.”
“Not yet,” sighed Laura. “But—”
“I’m too tired for more buts,” said Dad. “What with this and that wedding.”
“We should leave that alone,” said Mom. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“They wake up,” said Dad.
“Mr. Denton watches birds,” said Lucas.
“What?” said Mom.
“Next door. Mr. Denton. He watches birds. With binoculars.”
Dad said: “The only thing Denton ever used for birds is his shotgun.”
“Well, he’s watching the north side for them now.”
Lucas couldn’t translate the glance his parents gave each other.
Mom said: “If you’ve finished your sandwich, go back to school.”
Lucas stood. “Her name is Miss Jordan Smith.”
And that afternoon she turned 5A inside out and upside down with a multiplication game where each student whirled to face the desk behind him, shouted out the name of the kid they saw and threw him or her a what times what equals what. They answered, whirled to do the same to the kid behind him, all around the room, faster and faster, louder and laughing and cheering—
The door flew open.
Mr. Olsen loomed in that passageway to the rest of the world.
“Isn’t it great!” said Miss Smith. “Your kids will be math champions!”
She gave her boss an innocent smile.
Mr. Olsen blinked.
Then called out to the hall: “Get in here!”
A dusty-haired girl shuffled in. Kept her eyes pointed down.
“You got a new classmate.” Mr. Olsen stepped into 5A. Gestured for the new girl to step beside him and she did.
Raised her eyes.
“Her name is Donna Schultz,” said Mr. Olsen as he scanned the room.
He spotted Lucas. “Ross! Are you the last of the Rs?”
“Yes—” said Lucas, being absolutely sure to add: “—sir.”
“Are there any Ss?”
No was the answer born in silence to the front of the classroom.
“All you kids behind Ross, change your seats one further back. New girl—”
Miss Smith interrupted: “Donna Schultz.”
“—take the desk behind the Ross kid there. What are you all waiting for?”
Lucas was torn between watching his classmates last-named T through Z rearrange their daily lives and staring at the new girl in school.
She sat in the desk behind Lucas. Only had a notebook and one pencil.
“Oh,” said Principal Olsen. “I forgot. Come up here, Donna.”
His eyes pulled the new girl to the front of the classroom.
“Good,” he said. “Now turn around and walk back.”
Her right shoulder moved up and down with each clumpy step.
Donna was beside Lucas when Principal Olsen proclaimed:
“See, class? That’s how somebody who’s had polio walks. That’s why all of you who whined about those vaccination shots we lined up for in the gym should be thanking your lucky stars for American science.”
The desk behind him thudded into Lucas’s back as Donna collapsed into her assigned place. He heard her sob once. Sob twice. Strangle all other sobs.
Mr. Olsen turned to face a stunned Miss Smith. “They’re all yours.”
He slammed 5A’s door shut behind him.
Miss Smith took in a deep breath and let it out.
Picked up the class’s three schoolbooks.
Faced her students with a soft smile.
“It’s almost time to go,” she said. “You’ve all been checking the clock. But here, now, we got some time just to ourselves.
“Before you go home,” she said as she walked up and down the aisles, “I want you all to start thinking on something I’d like you to do for me.”
She paused at Nick’s desk to slip a pencil into his skittering hand and slide a sheet of paper under that so he could see what he’d scribble. And if he could see more of what he was doing, maybe he could do something better.
“What I need you to do,” she said, walking on, “is give me a project next Monday that tells me about you. I already know your names. Heck, if we shout them out anymore, we’ll all get in big trouble!”
Somebody snickered.
And like that, relief eased the room.
Eileen waved her hand. “What do you mean: something about us?”
“That’s what you’ll show me,” said the teacher. “Could be a letter introducing yourself. Could be a poem. A story about where you went with your family. A drawing you do. Could be a pretend story you make up. I don’t know—and you’ll find out. The only way you can get it wrong is not to do it at all.
“Isn’t this what school’s for? Finding out about you and the world? We’ve got all these ideas we wrote on the blackboard this morning about the world and questions to think about for your group report. You all have your notes on that.”
Lucas glanced at Kurt. Got the nod.
“But what I need to know is not what’s written on the blackboard or in books. I need to know about you. You’re the only one who can give that to me.”
The clock said Not Yet, so she let them copy more from the blackboard while she walked the aisles between the rows of their desks. She stopped next to Ralph, who hadn’t poked or shoved or twisted an arm of anyone all day.
“Hey, Ralph,” she said. “You’ve been all tense in your desk since I got here.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Miss Smith!” said Ralph. “Honest!”
She stood waiting beside the desk of the class bully.
“I just, um, hurt my back,” said Ralph.
“Let’s send you to the school nurse.”
“No! Don’t do that! I’m OK, honest! Please—Am I in trouble? Not for this!”
“Naw.” She gently pulled Ralph’s collar away from his spine and looked.
That quick hiss of sucked-in air wasn’t Ralph, thought Lucas. Was her.
And then she was standing right behind Lucas.
“I’m glad you showed up,” Miss Smith told the new girl. “Now I’m not the only S in the room.
“These are for you,” said Miss Smith as she put the three textbooks on the desk beside the staring-straight-ahead Donna. “Same as everybody else.”
Now she’s standing right beside me! Lucas sat straight and tall.
The sway of her black hair electrified past his face as she stared bent down to look at the empty page in his notebook. She said nothing. Walked away.
Dismissal Bell clanged.
Lucas turned to smile Hi! to the new Donna. He’d figured out exactly what to say to her so she’d feel at home: “My grandmother had polio, too!”
Donna’s face looked like a bull about to charge. “I’m not your anything.”
Miss Smith’s voice rang out above the din of fifth graders headed home:
“Lucas Ross: sit back down. Please stay after class.”
Mistake! All the kids knew that was a mistake as they scrambled to get out of there. His friends stared at him: Kurt and Wayne, Anna and Bobbi Jean. Marin. Lucas was one of the good kids! Him staying after school had to be a mistake!
He faced Miss Smith from his desk at the back of the empty classroom.
She stood leaning back against her desk at the front of the room.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’ve had a heck of a day.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I think I’m going to like it here. What do you think?”
“I… I hope so.”
“Me, too. I noticed something, and I wonder if you’d do me a favor.”
Hard as he could, Lucas nodded.
“Sitting right where you are, would you read me what’s on the blackboard?”
“Wha-what?”
“Just up there behind me. All the instructions I wrote up there for your team project. I noticed you weren’t taking any notes and kept squinting.”
“Kurt’s on my team. He takes notes for the project so I don’t have to.”
“What about when you’re not on a team?”
“Mostly I get it when I read the books, but I can always call him. Or Wayne. Once I called Bobbi Jean, but please don’t tell anybody I did: she’s a girl.”
“I keep secrets, Lucas. Apparently, so do you. Please read what’s on the blackboard.”
Heart pounding. Eyes squinting. Promising anything to God if…
The blackboard stayed a blur.
“Come sit in the front row,” she said. “Bring your notebook.”
Took him a decade to walk to the front and sit in a strange desk.
“Now can you read it for me?”
“Imagine how people live. What they do for work. Are they like us? What’s it like to be a kid there? Do they have dogs? What—”
“That’s fine, Lucas.” Miss Smith moved behind her desk. “While you copy all that, I’ll write a note to your parents to get your eyes checked for glasses.”
“Oh please no, Miss Smith! Glasses will ruin my whole life!”
“What?”
KNOCK-KNOCK—on her open door.
“Am I intruding?” said the man silhouetted by afternoon sunlight.
He’s just a sixth grade teacher, thought Lucas. He’s tall. No glasses.
“I’m Neal Dylan,” he said to Lucas’s teacher. “Just down the hall from you.”
So stay there! thought Lucas. Go away. I’m here.
“I’m the new kid in school. Jordan Smith.”
Mr. Dylan said: “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you earlier. There’s something I had to work on, a car accident.”
“This weekend. Two high school kids. What do you have to do with that?”
“Somebody has to help.”
Don’t lose this chance to change her mind! thought Lucas. But he’d copied everything from the blackboard. You can stay as long as they see you keeping busy. Start the special homework! Write her…
Write her a cool story! Like the ones that keep waking up in your head.
“What are you going to do?” she asked the man in the room.
The breeze from the window Principal Olsen opened stirred her black hair.
The hero of the story will be a soldier, thought Lucas. And he’ll be stationed in West Berlin. And he’ll rescue an American woman teacher from the Reds.
“About the accident,” she said. “What’s going to happen?”
“We’re trying to work it so nobody gets hurt even more.”
Neal Dylan glanced at the Ross boy in a desk scribbling in his notebook. “Did Mr. Olsen… share his theories on education with you?”
“You could say that,” she said.
Realization hit Lucas: If she reads about a soldier and West Berlin and a teacher, she’ll think—That’s what she’ll think and don’t let her know that!
“I don’t want to say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong place,” said Miss Jordan Smith.
They swung their eyes to Lucas.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” said Mr. Neal Dylan.
I don’t need to worry about him, thought Lucas. He’s married.
“Something came up in class today,” she said. “Actually, a couple things happened that just… I don’t know how the system here in Vernon works, but…”
“We could grab some coffee,” said the man who spent his days down the hall from her. “Maybe I could help you figure out what to do. When you’re done here.”
Lucas felt their glare. But he could trick them into letting him—
Wait! The story could be about a spy!
“That would be great,” Miss Smith told Mr. Dylan.
Then she said: “I’ve finished your note, Lucas.”
And the spy meets a woman who might be a killer but is really cool and has hair the color of a raven!
Miss Smith told her colleague: “If I can help you, I will. With the accident.”
Mr. Dylan nodded to her as Lucas closed his notebook.
“How is this town?” she asked her colleague as Lucas packed up.
“I grew up here,” he said. “Didn’t mean to come back, but… things happen.
“How is this town?” he said. “Terrible. Wonderful.”
“So it’s like everywhere else.”
Lucas watched her lasso the moment with her smile.