16

The next day, Rachel endured an exquisite period of suspense. Since she assumed Detective Smith would contact her when he arrived on campus, she stayed attuned to every call from the office and every sound in the corridors. By the time play practice ended and he still hadn’t come by, she assumed something must have come up to keep him away.

When she stopped by her classroom to drop off her script and pick up her bag, however, she spotted a manila file on the center of her desk with an intra-office memo stuck to the front, informing her that it had been left at the front office at 3:56. Peering inside, Rachel found a sheaf of printouts and a handwritten note.

Somewhat surprisingly, Detective Smith possessed a smooth, flowing cursive: I asked the head of our juvenile crimes unit to put this together. CC’d a copy to Y. Martinez in Administration as well. I hope you find some of it helpful. Keep me apprised. –Smith

~*~

While Rachel would never admit to enjoying her evening running sessions, she faithfully rushed home every night, dumped her books, strapped ankle and knee braces onto her right leg, and squeezed a jog in before the sun went down. It definitely wasn’t the running that she enjoyed. For one thing, she hated the monotony. Also, the pain. During every run, her right leg throbbed and her lungs burned. When she ran, however, all the worries of her day receded, blown straight out of her head by the soft evening breeze.

Soon this idyll would end. As opening night approached, play practices would begin running five days a week, meaning that there wouldn’t be a single day that she got home before seven or eight o’clock. Since Lynn had forbidden her from running in the dark, she’d have to take a training hiatus.

Meanwhile, Rachel kept her eyes open around the drama kids. Even with the insight garnered from the information the detective had dropped off, Rachel still hadn’t noticed anything awry. Although teens often suffered wild fluctuations of mood, sometimes by the hour, each member of the cast followed the same basic patterns they’d followed from the beginning. Alice guarded her thoughts and minded her own business, Chris fooled around—even climbing up into the rafters at one point in order to drop wood shavings down on the backstage cast in an attempt to convince them it was “snowing”—Jessica Potts stomped across the stage, flipping her hair and upstaging everyone, while Todd Perkins tripped over everything not nailed down—and some things that were.

“You’re not necessarily looking for differences in behavior,” Ann reminded Rachel one evening over the phone, “since whoever wrote this stuff would have been having these thoughts before you were aware of it, and therefore would have been showing signs before you started looking.”

“Signs that I’ve missed,” Rachel sighed. “Because I am the worst.”

“You’re not the worst. Only the worst at reading people.”

Fortunately, Rachel was not alone in her search. Given the enormity of the problem, Yolanda Martinez brought the entire faculty and staff into the loop, attempting to cast as wide a net as possible. Why she hadn’t done this earlier in the year, given the enormity of the issue, seemed boggling; but perhaps there was more to the art of administration than Rachel could fathom. The school guidance counselor called a meeting and passed out handouts of tips and conversation starters, and the staff was tasked with asking key students if they had heard or noticed anything. When Rachel attempted to hint to Chris that someone he knew could be suicidal, all he said was, “Yes, everybody who has lines to learn for the play.” So that was no help.

As relieved as Rachel was to know that she now shared the responsibility, she couldn’t help feeling that she still carried a greater burden. First, the most recent cries for help had been written in poetry—the language of her profession. Not only that, but the most pointed notes had been written on her watch. During this time of year, she spent more time with the cast and crew than anybody else on staff. For sheer amount of observation time, Rachel won out.

Therein lay the difficulty. She might see the cast more often, but if Rachel knew anything about herself, it was that her powers of observation were shaky.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have any, but that they always seemed to pick up on the wrong things, zooming in on little things that didn’t matter and blowing them out of proportion. Meanwhile, massively important details escaped her notice entirely, causing her to go on pointless tangential rampages while the main issues of life escaped her notice. She’d seen it happen last year in the case of Lee’s obviously emotionally meaningful gift giving—which she’d mistaken for the murderous advances of a serial killer—and she’d seen it again this year, when he had once again borne the brunt of her assumptions.

Rachel could no longer avoid the truth: she’d wronged him. Although he’d overreacted, she now understood why. Because of the way he’d been raised, he was easily stung. She should have been sensitive to that. Instead, she’d plunged in thoughtlessly and ruined their relationship. There didn’t seem to be a good way forward. No way but one, and Rachel didn’t know if she had it in her.

Besides, she had teaching and the play and a possibly suicidal teenager to deal with.

Lee could wait.

~*~

On the third Monday of October, it happened.

If Rachel hadn’t decided to take a more active role in observing the cast, it probably wouldn’t have happened. If she’d stayed in the second row with her megaphone, it probably wouldn’t have happened. If she hadn’t decided to set a chair down stage right where she could observe the action up close and likewise see partially backstage and keep her eye on the area where the graffiti had appeared, it probably wouldn’t have happened. If she were less clumsy and more agile, it probably wouldn’t have happened.

Rachel fell offstage.

While jumping from her chair to dart forward and harangue Chris about his incorrect stage movements—movements that blocked Alice from the audience at a critical moment—she bumped into Todd Perkins, who had stepped sideways at just the wrong moment. She reeled back to avoid knocking him down completely and stumbled sideways. For a second, she thought she’d caught herself, but her much-maligned right ankle betrayed her, giving out and tipping her sideways toward the edge of the stage.

Rachel tipped over as if in slow motion, unable to stop herself, yet finding sufficient time on the way down to glimpse the horrified faces of the cast. It almost would have been funny if she hadn’t been so hideously embarrassed—and hurt.

Really hurt.

Chris tossed aside his cane and vaulted offstage, landing beside her in a crouch, a teenage superhero in a stick-on mustache.

“I’m OK,” Rachel panted. “Just let me lie here for a minute and see if any body parts have fallen off.”

“Everything looks like it’s still attached.” Chris gazed down at her without a hint of irony.

Even through the haze of pain, it felt odd to see him so serious. She tried to laugh, but it ended in a painful cough. She looked up to find the rest of the cast hovering at the edge of the stage, peering down in horrified stillness. Somewhat horrorstruck herself, she pressed her palms against the floor and groaned involuntarily as she pushed herself upward.

Chris reached out to steady her.

She rolled sideways from her hip to her butt and sat all the way up, thankful that she’d worn pants today instead of a skirt. Thank God for small mercies. Flashing her students—even inadvertently—wasn’t something she’d ever live down.

“Are you all right?” Shayla held her hair in her hands and tugged hard at the handfuls. Alice stood a little apart, giving Rachel a look of deep concern while beside her, Jessica Potts examined her fingernails. Todd Perkins, having the wisdom to look sheepish, slithered off the stage and hunkered beside Rachel.

“Miss Cooper,” he gulped, looking as if he might cry, “I’m really sorry—”

Rachel waved him aside. She leaned back against her palms and rotated her head to see if her neck still worked. From knee to hip to shoulder, her entire right half pulsed with pain. Her right ankle, which she’d twisted in the early sideways stumbling hop, still seemed serviceable. She lifted a trembling hand to her temple as a dull ache set in behind her eyes. Had she hit her head on the way down? She couldn’t seem to recall. She took a deep breath and then brought a hand to her chest, concerned with the sharpness radiating outward from her sternum.

“Do you want to get up?” Chris asked.

Rachel nodded. Chris and Todd grasped her elbows and lifted. As she came off the floor, pushing up with her left leg while sticking the right one out in front, she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest that almost sent her sideways. If not for the boys bracing her, she didn’t know what would have happened. They leveraged her backward toward the first row of seats and lowered her to a chair. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing evenly.

Then she heard the rhythmic clicking of heels coming down the center aisle, and she opened her eyes to behold the approach of Sharon Day. Alice walked quietly beside her.

Rachel hadn’t even noticed Alice leave, but given her state, this didn’t seem surprising.

“Todd, run to see if the office ladies are still here,” said Miss Day. “Ask them to let you into the cafeteria to get some ice.”

“No,” said Rachel. “Don’t worry about it, Todd. I’m fine.”

Todd paused, an internal battle waging. “Um.”

“Continue with rehearsal,” Rachel wheezed, making a rolling motion in the air with a hand. “We only have twenty minutes left.”

“Ten,” Jessica said. “You were on the floor for a while.”

Shayla elbowed Jessica. The two exchanged dirty looks.

Sharon Day said nothing. She sat next to Rachel, staring at her with big, round eyes, gripping her phone in her small hands.

Practice came to a ragged end. Fortunately, the kids were all picked up right on time.

Rachel’s head pounded. Her right side throbbed. The stabbing pain in her torso continued. For perhaps the first time ever, she felt relieved to have Sharon Day beside her.

The relief didn’t last. She was in the middle of asking Sharon if she wouldn’t mind running back to her classroom to get her purse when Sharon interrupted. “Hold on. He’s here—” Then she abandoned Rachel and scurried up the aisle like a nervous child.

Rachel wanted to call a question at Sharon’s retreating form, but even the thought of yelling made her head hurt. She fought a panicked suspicion that Sharon might return with Ian Smith, but fortunately, that was impossible. Sharon didn’t know Detective Smith. At least, not that Rachel was aware of. Given the general ridiculousness of things in her life, though, it paid to expect the unexpected.

Sharon Day didn’t return with Ian Smith.

She returned with Lee.