Morgan wasn’t the only one who was excited for the weekend. At home, Bella had been talking about nothing but the birthday sleepover all week. If Bella felt any misgivings about having a sleepover with Anissa, she didn’t tell her parents about them, and she certainly never considered canceling her plans to come to the party. At the end of the day, she was Morgan’s best friend, and it was Morgan’s birthday.
To Bella’s surprise, Anissa took her aside shortly before the sleepover and said sorry “for all the times she had hit her in the past.” One of the many reasons Bella had considered Anissa so rude until then was that she felt Anissa never took responsibility for her actions. Anissa hit people and gave excuses like “I ate too much sugar,” or “I’m hungry,” or “I just needed to do something with my hands.” Bella was the kind of person who believed in taking responsibility for one’s actions. She also believed in giving second chances. Following Anissa’s apology, she wondered if maybe Anissa wasn’t so bad after all.
In Mrs. Weidenbaum’s “readers and writers” workshop, Morgan started laughing uncontrollably when the word “trust” was mentioned in a classroom discussion, as if trust were the funniest thing in the world. Mrs. Weidenbaum later told the police that she had felt confused by Morgan’s reaction, as trust was not a significant part of the story they were discussing, nor was it a funny word. She felt equally confused when Morgan proposed to give a speech about Adolf Hitler. Mrs. Weidenbaum had told the class to write speeches “about a person that was dead and should have been saved.” Morgan told Mrs. Weidenbaum that Hitler was “dead but should have been saved” because he was “a psychopath or schizophrenic.” (She defined both labels “perfectly,” Mrs. Weidenbaum later noted.) Mrs. Weidenbaum lectured Morgan on why Hitler “was not a positive figure.”
“I didn’t think you would let me do it anyways,” Morgan said.
She obediently switched her subject from Hitler to the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to venture into outer space. Like Morgan’s other teachers, Mrs. Weidenbaum felt reassured that Morgan was not defiant.
“She never questioned a rule,” Mrs. Weidenbaum would tell the police, adding “that in class they had a red, green, yellow card system,” a disciplinary method modeled on traffic lights, “and that Morgan had never gotten a card flipped.”
Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Weidenbaum noticed that Morgan was “getting out of control” during a classroom debate and that “some of her points were getting mean.” She decided not to let Morgan win the debate, even though, as Mrs. Weidenbaum later admitted, Morgan had been the best debater. As with the Hitler proposal, she never talked to Morgan about it.
“She was different. I know she is different,” Mrs. Weidenbaum said after Morgan’s arrest. “But I had a good connection with her, and I liked her.” Sadly, she added, “The opinion of Morgan has been tainted from what I know.”