“Were a good teacher,” Hoffman said. Splotches of red had bloomed on his cheeks. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt. When I found out you were in AA I was willing to give you a chance.”
“Who the hell told you I was in AA?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me. What matters is two months ago I found you stumbling around in the copy room with liquor on your breath. What matters is you came in late today with a hangover. I can’t let this go on any longer.”
“I can’t believe this. I’ve never had a drink at work. That day in the copy room I fell because I tripped over a box of paper. If there was any liquor on my breath, it was from the night before. And today I threw up because I caught a twenty-four hour bug from my girlfriend. You’re making excuses, Ron. What’s the real reason you’re firing me?”
“That is the real reason. If the school committee catches wind that you’re an alcoholic, they’re going to force me to fire you anyway. Nobody wants their kid alone in a room with a drunk. I’m sorry if that sounds blunt, but it’s the truth. I’m looking out for you, Jay. I like you—I always have—but at the same time I have to do my job.”
Hoffman leaned forward. “No one outside of this room knows about this. What I suggest is you resign quietly. If you do that, I’ll put nothing of your problem in your employment file. I’m doing you a favor, Jay. A big one. You quit, get your act together, and you’ll find another job just like that. Because you are a great teacher.”
“It’s always about politics, isn’t it?” Jay stood up. “Thanks for nothing, Ron.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sunlight streamed through Sarah Connelly’s bedroom window, painting her butterfly bedspread in a patchwork of gold. Mr. Whiskers lay sprawled between her feet, purring so hard his body vibrated. Sarah stroked her cat’s fluffy head and stared into the woods where the wind blew the budding branches back and forth.
“When those grow into leaves, it will be summertime.”
“I know,” Jenny said. “I can’t wait.”
“Me neither,” Sarah said. “Then we can play by the stream all day.”
Mr. Whiskers rubbed his face against her knees, and Sarah giggled. “I wish I could stay home with you today.”
Mr. Whiskers rolled onto his back and licked a paw. “Why don’t you?” she imagined him saying. “You’re old enough to do what you want.”
Sarah folded her arms and stared at him. “You try telling that to my mother.”
Mr. Whiskers spread his toes and licked the spaces in between. “Your mother doesn’t understand cat language. She hasn’t the intelligence.”
A voice floated up from downstairs. “Sarah?”
Sarah glanced from Mr. Whiskers to Jenny and wrinkled her nose.
“Hurry down to breakfast, Honey. Your toast is getting cold.”
“I’ll be right there.” She grabbed her backpack off her desk and trudged downstairs to where Dad sat reading the paper.
“Hi, Honey. Ready for school?” He set down his coffee and adjusted his glasses.
Sarah plopped into a chair next to Dad and chewed a corner of toast, trying her best to look sad. “Can’t I stay home? Please? Just for today?”
“Oh no,” Mom said. “You’d better not start this up again.”
Dad smiled. “Sarah, you know Mommy and I have to go to work. We can’t leave you here alone.”
“But I won’t be alone. Jenny will be with me.”
Mom huffed and shook her head. “When are you going to outgrow Jenny? You’re nine years old, for God’s sake. She’s not real. Can’t you see that?”
“Margaret, leave her alone. You’re upsetting her.”
“Her? I’m upsetting her? I’m going to make an appointment with the doctor. This has gone on long enough.”
Dad took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
He always looks so old when he does that. Just like Grandpa when he was still alive.
“Why don’t we talk about this later,” he said. “I’ve got to get to the office.” He tapped Sarah on the shoulder. “Want a ride?”
***
Sarah sat with her hands in her lap and stared out the car window. She thought about asking Dad again if she could stay home from school, but then decided against it. Whenever she asked him for something, he always had to check with Mom first. And Mom never let her do anything.
A few minutes later, they arrived at Glenwood Elementary. Sarah stared at the school and frowned.
At least I didn’t have to take the bus.
She hated the bus even more than she hated school. Susie Jenkins was always calling her Snake Girl and saying that she had no friends. Some of the boys teased her too, boys like Bobby Peterman and Joey Cobb. They called her Snake Girl because she used to have a bad lisp. Two years of speech therapy had cured her of the lisp…but boys like Bobby Peterman and Joey Cobb never forget.
They’d hiss at her the whole bus ride. Sometimes, they’d shoot spitballs into her hair or throw paper airplanes at the back of her head. She tried to ignore them, tried not to cry, but it wasn’t easy. And if she did cry, the teasing got worse.
“Come on, Hon. Give me a kiss good-bye.”
Sarah frowned and glanced over her shoulder. When the coast was clear, she leaned in and pecked Dad on the cheek.
“Have a good day,” he said.
“You too.” She climbed out of the car and watched it pull away, then walked to the school with her head down. She hadn’t even reached the first step when she heard Bobby Peterman’s cackly voice crying out for the whole world to hear.
“Aw, isn’t that cute? Giving Daddy a kiss bye-bye.” He clutched his stomach and laughed, his freckly face scrunching up.
A group of third graders stopped to look at her. They started laughing too, and Sarah felt her face burn. Third graders! She fought against the stinging in her eyes and turned to use the door at the west wing.
“Where you running to, Snake Girl? Going home to kiss Mommy?”
Sarah realized then that she was running, but she didn’t care. She had to get away from them. She just had to. The stairway leading up to the west wing was deserted, and Sarah allowed herself a sigh of relief. “I hate them.”
“So do I,” Jenny said. “They’re just plain mean.”
Sarah was about to say something more, but then three kids she didn’t know passed by, and she kept quiet. She continued walking with her head down, following the trail of gray and green diamonds on the floor tiles. Kids laughed and shouted as they pushed through the corridor, the roar of their voices mingling with the sound of locker doors slamming shut.
A group of fifth grade boys suddenly ran past her, tossing a baseball hat back and forth, keeping it away from the red-faced boy trailing after. “Hat head! Hat head! Billy’s got a hat head!”
Sarah watched them melt into the crowd and disappear. She didn’t know the boy whose hat had been stolen, but she hoped he would get it back.
Why weren’t there ever any teachers around when you needed them?
Her locker was next to the boy’s bathroom. She never bothered to memorize the number—all she had to do was look for the words ‘Snake Girl’ scribbled across the top in black marker. Bob the Janitor had quit cleaning it a long time ago, since the words had a funny way of reappearing the next day.
Sarah glanced at her Disney Princesses watch and shrugged off her backpack. She had to hurry to make it to class on time. She tossed her lunch into her locker, slammed the door, and headed into the classroom.
Most of the kids were already seated, and she had to pass them to get to her desk, all the while looking down and pretending not to hear them hissing and whispering, “Snake Girl”.
She sank into her seat and felt heat blooming on her cheeks. I wish they’d let me stay home. They don’t know what it’s like here.
She turned toward the window and stared at the giant oak looming over the playground. A robin flew around the budding branches, chirping and singing.
That’s wh
at it’s like to be free. No one telling you where to go or what to do.
A book slammed against a desk.
Sarah whirled around to see Mrs. Melvich frowning at her students.
“Good morning, class,” Mrs. Melvich said, the tone of her voice suggesting that it was anything but.
The class mumbled something in return, and Sarah glanced around to make sure no one had caught her flinching.
“All right, settle down and be quiet for the morning announcements.”
Bobby Peterman muttered something under his breath, but shut up when Mrs. Melvich glared at him. Sarah allowed herself a secret smile. Mrs. Melvich never took crap from anyone—not even from Bobby Peterman.
Mrs. Melvich was in the middle of telling Mikey O’Donnell to stop making faces at the other kids when the intercom cut in with a crackle of static. Everyone turned toward the dented metal speaker as Mr. Vincent began the morning announcements in the bored and toneless voice that every kid in Glenwood Elementary had imitated at one time or another.
After rambling on about Spirit Day and the importance of turning in field trip consent forms, Mr. Vincent led the school in the pledge of allegiance. Bobby Peterman and Joey Cobb cracked up behind her like they always did during the pledge, switching the word flag with fag. They were such mean jerks, but for some reason the other kids liked them. It didn’t make any sense.
Mr. Vincent cleared his throat. “As you know, Ryan Brakowski has been missing for over a week now. I’d like you all to pray that he returns home safely.”
Sarah stole a glance at the empty desk in the back row and wondered where Ryan could be. He was probably dead. That’s what most of the kids thought, and for once she agreed with them. The grownups thought he was lost in Washaka Woods, but kids like Sarah knew better. The woods were pretty big, but if you walked ten miles in any direction you would come to a town. All of the grownups thought that kids were too stupid to realize this, that Ryan wandered in and got lost, walking around in circles so that he never got out.
She lowered her head. Ryan was dead. She just hoped he hadn’t died in any of the ways the other kids had suggested.
When the announcements ended, Mrs. Melvich ordered them to take out their grammar books and turn to page 175. Sarah frowned and reached into the back of her desk. Grammar was the worst. There were too many rules, and that made it boring.
The lesson dragged on forever. She knew it better than most of the other kids, so she didn’t need to listen much. She sat quietly at her desk and doodled in her notebook, glancing up every so often to show Mrs. Melvich that she was paying attention.
She scribbled a picture of two girls wading in a stream and thought about what Mom had said earlier. When are you going to outgrow Jenny? She’s not real.
Sarah sighed and drew frowns on the girls’ faces. In a way, she could understand why Mom was so mad—she was worried that her daughter might be crazy.
But Sarah wasn’t ready to give in to her just yet. Jenny had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. Jenny was her first friend, her only friend. Why should she have to lose her just because she wasn’t real? What was so bad about pretending, anyway? Wasn’t a pretend friend better than no friend at all?
That’s what Mom didn’t understand. She didn’t have any imagination. Not like Sarah who could imagine things so vividly that it was like watching them come to life on a movie screen.
She hunched over her notebook and sketched a kitten sniffing a daisy. She chewed her pencil and studied what she’d drawn. She supposed she could admit to Mom that Jenny wasn’t real, but, of course, then she’d have to explain that the reason she clung to Jenny was because she couldn’t make any real friends. Mom could probably handle that, but Sarah didn’t think she could handle it, herself. Thinking something was one thing. Saying it out loud was another. When you said something out loud, it made it real. Made it forever.
If she admitted to Mom that Jenny wasn’t real, it would never be the same again. Once she admitted it out loud, Jenny would just fade away, and for the first time in her life she really would be all alone.
When the lesson ended, Mrs. Melvich switched to science. And then that was over too, the lunch bell ringing so suddenly that Sarah jerked in her seat and smacked her knees against the underside of her desk. The kids around her giggled, and she saw Joey Cobb stick out his tongue and hiss.
Sarah found a place on the wall to stare at until the other kids had packed up and left the room. When the last kid disappeared from view, she tucked her books into the back of her desk and headed out of the classroom.
A sea of bodies crammed the halls, moving as one toward the cafeteria. Sarah grabbed her lunch bag from her locker and followed the crowd. After buying chocolate milk, she found an empty table near the back and took a seat. She unwrapped a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate in silence.
Overhead, a fluorescent light flickered. Sarah stared at the interplay of darkness and light on the table, her eyes studying the shadows as they swelled and contorted like monsters taking form out of the dark.
And an instant later, they were monsters.
Three of them rose up from the table, their bulging bodies oozing a tar-like goo as their eyes darted left and right in search of prey. They leaped to the floor, claws clicking against tile as they crept toward where Joey and Bobby sat eating their lunches.
Bobby laughed with his mouth full—globs of tuna glistened against the pink of his gums. Joey laughed too, slapping the table with an open palm, making a carton of milk jump.
The monsters attacked.
They ripped Joey and Bobby from their seats and hoisted them into the air, holding them up for everyone to see.
Everyone in the cafeteria watched. They knew Joey and Bobby deserved to be punished.
The boys squealed like babies when the monsters popped them into their jaws like popcorn and swallowed them whole.
It got real quiet for a moment, and some kid muttered from behind her, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” After that, all the kids went back to talking about what they wanted to play at recess.
Sarah sipped the last of her chocolate milk. Next time, she would make the boys beg for their lives first.
The bell signaled the end of lunch.
Sarah rose to her feet.
Recess. The worst time of day.
A handful of teachers’ aides couldn’t really police three hundred kids running around like lunatics. Nowhere was safe. Not the blacktop, not the ball field. Her only chance was to stay near one of the aides, but even that didn’t guarantee safety. As soon as the aide turned to yell at someone, she would be left open to anyone who felt like picking on her.
And that’s exactly what happened today. One of the aides ran across the field to break up a fight and left Sarah standing alone on the blacktop. When Sarah turned to find another aide, she found Susie Jenkins and Bobby Peterman standing right next to her.
Susie wrinkled her nose and glanced at Bobby. “I can’t believe how ugly she is.”
Bobby nodded, a grin spreading across his face. “She’s an only child, you know. Her parents stopped having babies when they saw how ugly she was.”
Sarah felt her lower lip quiver. “Leave me alone.”
Susie nudged Bobby in the arm. “Look! The Snake Girl’s going to cry.”
Sarah inched backward. Where was the teacher’s aide?
“Fraidy cat!” Bobby shouted, leaping toward her.
Sarah jumped back. She tripped over a loose kickball and went down hard, her head striking the blacktop with a thud. Tears streamed from her eyes, and through a liquid blur she could see Susie and Bobby backing away. One of them muttered something about blood.
A teacher’s aide reached her a few moments later and carried her into the school. As they passed through the halls, Sarah could see drops of blood spattering the floor, more of it hitting the tiles every second. She thought about asking the aide how bad it was, but she choked back the words, afraid that it
might need stitches.
The nurse saw them coming before they were through the door. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and instructed the aide to set Sarah down on the table. The aide lowered Sarah onto a sheet of tissue paper that bunched and crinkled beneath her.
Sarah glanced up at the nurse, worried by the look she saw on the woman’s face. As the nurse spread apart her hair, Sarah drew a shaky breath. “Does it… need stitches?”
The nurse patted her head with a strip of gauze, pressed down hard, and pulled it away. “I don’t think so. It’s just a small cut. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
“But no stitches?”
“No stitches.” She took Sarah’s hand and placed it over the gauze. “Keep pressure on that. It’ll stop the bleeding.” She walked around to the other side of the desk and picked up the phone. “Now, who would you like me to call?”
CHAPTER THREE
Footfalls pounded the pavement. Pebbles ground beneath racing feet.
Tim Hanson ran as fast as he could, gulping the air in great, heaving gasps. Rivulets of blood trickled into his eyes and obscured his vision. He did his best to blink it away, focusing his gaze on the street ahead. Looking for a way out of this mess.
The sun sank behind the trees in the center of town, the last slivers of daylight fanning across the steeple of an old church. Shadows appeared on the street behind him, inching forward and gaining. He could hear them now, muttering threats between winded breaths.
“Make you pay ...”
“Teach you ...”
“… who’s boss ...”
Tim willed his legs to move faster, to pump harder, but he might as well have told himself to sprout wings and fly. Randy and his goons were going to catch him, and when they did they’d be certain to finish the beating they so generously began.
Tim could normally summon up enough speed to escape a situation such as this, but a healthy kick to the balls tended to slow him down.
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