“This is a warning,” I continue.
Zoey stares back, her expression unchanging. It’s the same stare she gave me when we met, the same stare Brian gave me half of my childhood. Like she’s trying to figure me out. Decide if I’m what she expected. She knows it’s her turn to draw a weapon, and she’s choosing which one it should be. Then, finally, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Mayfair. I’ll watch what I say in your class.”
“Thank you,” I say. She’s clearly smart, albeit a brat. Those are the students who secretly search for common ground. They want to connect but don’t know how. I smile. “So, where are you from? Tell me about your last school.”
“I’m from Florida,” she says.
Saliva stalls in my throat. There’s not a big gap between Florida and Tennessee, but Victory Hills is so small, I don’t encounter people from the area often. And when I do, I always experience the familiar pang of anxiety. Like Brian is closer than I think.
She continues, “But I’ve been all over. Most recently, Virginia.”
“You move around a lot?” I ask, wanting to know more.
“My mom isn’t really one to stay in one place, you know?”
“I see,” I say, hesitantly. “That can be exciting, I guess. I’m sure you’ve been exposed to a lot of different cultures.”
“Trust me, my mom’s not moving around for my benefit. But I did luck out this time around. My last school was really shitty.” She stops, holds up her hands. My eyes take in her chipped purple polish. “Excuse me, crummy. My last school was really crummy. I’ll work on the language, Mrs. Mayfair.”
She waits for my reaction. She has dark, blank eyes and a subtle smile. I wonder how to address her second slur within five minutes. None of the other students heard, so I let it slide.
“Clearly you’re well read,” I say. “Your last school couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Oh, I didn’t read ‘A Rose for Emily’ at my last school,” she says, strumming her fingers over her notebook. “I read it for fun.”
“I see.” It’s hard to picture this teenager with her tight jeans and potty-mouth reading Faulkner for pleasure in between moves. “Go ahead and join the group in the back.”
She stands and picks a seat next to Ben. She shakes his hand. She nods at Adam and Darcy, her other group members, like she already knows them. Within minutes, she blends in. But I still find her peculiar.
Three
Now
I usually get home by four o’clock. Danny’s clinic stays open later, so it’s closer to six before he arrives. By the time he walks in the door, dinner is nearly ready. Tonight’s menu consists of steak and asparagus covered in a Parmesan cream sauce. I enjoy cooking and get extra practice during the summer months.
He walks in the kitchen, takes off his coat and hugs me from behind while I tend the stove.
“Smells great,” he says, digging his chin into my neck. I pull back, and stare at him. Even though he’s worked over twelve hours, his gray eyes are still kind. His dark hair is combed neatly to the side, and you’d never guess by looking at his starched clothes he’s spent the day poking and prodding all types of sick people. We kiss.
“Thank you,” I say, turning my attention back to the stove. “How was work?”
“Busy. People are starting to travel and picking up all sorts of nasty viruses.” He sits on a barstool and slumps forward, the first sign that he’s tired.
“Yuck.” Between his job and my constant exposure to germy teenagers, it’s a wonder we’re not forever sick. Danny is a general practitioner at a family practice. Womb to tomb, they say. He sees patients of all ages for a variety of causes. Occasionally, he rotates on-call hours at the local hospital.
Everyone looks at Danny and thinks he’s a catch because he’s a doctor, and he is. But that’s not what I love about him. Danny and I grew up together. He knew me before, and he knew me after, and he knew Brian in between. We reconnected when Danny was in medical school. There was an immediate comfort in knowing I wouldn’t have to explain what happened. He already knew.
We discuss our individual days over dinner. Nothing heavy, just enjoyable conversation. We share a bottle of wine, which leads to him carrying me upstairs. We slowly and predictably ease into sex. He strips my blouse and slacks, lays me gently on the bed. He glides into me, methodically pushing into my core. When he finishes, we kiss a bit more, until the wine in our blood makes us giggle.
“Do you know what weeks you’ll have off for summer?” I ask, mentally Pinteresting all the activities I’d like to accomplish.
“I should by the end of the month,” he says, rubbing his finger across my thigh.
“I want to go somewhere big this year,” I tell him, hoping he’ll agree.
“Europe, big?”
“Why not?”
We toured Italy and France for our honeymoon. Since then, we’ve mostly stayed stateside, making a commitment to put more money toward his medical school loans than stamping our passports.
“Well, you are receiving tenure this year. This can be our way to celebrate. Start planning,” he says. “When I have dates, we’ll book.”
Danny knows me so well. Strategizing an itinerary is half the fun of traveling. He also knows I need to keep moving. I need to keep experiencing. I need to replace the bad memories with good ones.
“Knock, knock,” I say, leaning my head inside the doorway of the guidance wing.
Pam spins around in her chair and flaps her hand for me to come inside.
“Hey, Dell,” she says. Her navy suit is professional, but she’s already kicked off her shoes for the day. Her bare feet dangle above the ground. “I’ve not seen you since before break.”
“Is this a good time?” I ask.
She smiles, her fuchsia lips popping in contrast to her dark skin. Her braids are neatly pinned to the top of her head. “Fourth block is always a good time.”
I love having fourth block planning. I’m able to teach my classes with limited interruption. By 2 p.m., I’m done for the day. I use that time to grade papers so by the time I exit the school building, I don’t have to think about this place.
“I do love having afternoon planning. It would be nice to keep it in the fall,” I say, smiling. Pam has many tasks at school, and one of them includes creating the schedule.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, twirling a pen in her hand. “But I’m sure that’s not why you stopped by.”
“No,” I say, filling one of the empty seats that line the far wall in her office. “I wanted to ask you about a new student.”
“Zoey Peterson?”
“Have others talked to you about her?”
“No, but she’s the only enrollee we’ve had since February. Is she giving you trouble?”
“Not really. She’s only been in class two days.” There’s no use in revisiting the exchange I had with Zoey yesterday. It was annoying, but not concerning. Today, she arrived on time and spent most of the period talking with her classmates. I was surprised by how quickly she seemed to be making friends. “I was just wondering what her story is given how late in the year it is for a transfer.”
“Gotcha.” She spins to her right and starts clacking her computer keyboard. “Let’s see. Her last school was in Virginia. She’d been there since the beginning of her junior year.”
“Where was she before that?” I ask, surprised.
“She was enrolled at a Kentucky high school as a freshman and sophomore. Looking at her transcript, there’s a lot of moving going around.”
“Yeah, that’s what she said,” I say, trying to conjure an image of what her home situation might be like. “Did you meet the parents?”
“Yes,” Pam says, tensing her lips into a straight line. “Only the mother is in the picture. She looks a little bit rough.”
It’s impossible to not make assumptions about people, even in our profession. Victory Hills High School is a public school, although our prominent location makes it feel private.
Most of our parents are the wealthy, PTA type. They want to be involved and want everyone to notice their involvement. Few students have troubled home lives. Of course, I know more than most that looks can be deceiving. My parents had nice jobs and lived in an upscale neighborhood, but they still raised a psychopath.
“Well, Zoey is very smart,” I say. I don’t want to appear as though I’m bashing the girl already.
“Her test scores are high. She could have been in an Honors group, but she insisted on being in a standard English class.” She turns away from the computer and tilts her head. “Maybe she likes being the smartest kid in the room?”
“I definitely sense that,” I say, rolling my eyes. As a guidance counselor, Pam deals with all sorts of situations. She has a better understanding of the student body than I do. She knows the attitudes students can display, especially on their first day after an inconvenient move.
“It’s a shame she moves around so much,” she says. “Imagine what a mind like that could do with stability.”
“How old was she when the family left Florida?”
“Florida.” She turns back to her computer and strokes the mouse. “I’m seeing Kentucky and Virginia. Florida isn’t on the list.”
“Maybe I misunderstood,” I say. But I know I didn’t. When someone mentions Florida, it stings. Her comment seemed intentional, like she wanted to upset me. “I thought she said she was from there.”
Pam shrugs and shakes her head. “It’s sad, really, what some of these kids go through. No sense of a normal childhood.”
We chat a bit longer, but certain words from the conversation stick out in my mind. Normal and childhood and Florida. Pam, like everyone else I’ve met in my five years of working here, cannot possibly understand how normal means absolutely nothing. The most abnormal person could be living under their noses and they’d never know it.
Four
Now
I placed some stew in the slow cooker before I left for school this morning. It’s ready by the time I arrive home, so I toast bread in the oven and the meal is set.
“Everything all right with you?” Danny asks.
“Yeah. Why?” I’m sitting at the table, swirling my meal with a spoon.
“You’ve barely talked since I got home.”
“Sorry.” I straighten my posture, trying to literally shake off whatever icky feeling is bothering me.
“Have you started planning the trip?”
“Trip?”
“Europe,” he reminds me. “We talked about it last night.”
“Of course. Yeah. I’ve been looking around.” That’s a lie. I spent my planning period talking to Pam about Zoey. I didn’t even google potential destinations. “Where do you think we should go?” I ask. “You know I’ve been dying to return to Paris.”
“Let’s look into Spain, too,” Danny says. “This guy I knew in med school went last summer and he posted all these amazing pictures.”
“Spain.” I nod without looking at him. “Yep, sounds nice.”
“Dell, tell me what’s going on,” he says, standing. He walks toward me and kisses my cheek. “I can tell something is on your mind, and if it’s not Europe, it must be big.”
“It’s nothing big,” I say, taking the napkin from my lap and hitting him with it. “I got this new student. She got under my skin yesterday.” Although it’s more than that. I’ve been thinking about Zoey ever since I realized she lied about Florida. I can’t figure out why she’d say that, unless she knew it would bother me.
“What did she do?” he asks with a laugh, returning to his seat to finish his meal. I never let students get under my skin, and even when they dance on my nerves, I don’t tell Danny about it. My problems at Victory Hills never leave campus.
“Well, first she went off about this Faulkner story in front of the class.” I stop talking because I know Danny is already lost. He’s easily one of the smartest people I know, but our intellectual interests occupy opposite sectors of our brains. He cares about Southern Gothic literature about as much as I do about trending probiotics. “She used the word fuck in class.”
Danny laughs, and I reluctantly join in. Disrespectful behavior takes on a different context outside of the classroom.
“She’s a kid,” he says. “You don’t usually let that kind of thing bother you.”
“There was something about the way she acted, though.” I could tell Danny wasn’t convinced, so I continued. “She said she was from Florida.”
“Okay,” he says, shifting in his seat. He immediately recognizes my discomfort. “You can’t fault the kid for that.”
Victory Hills is a good nine hours away from our former hometown. I wish we could have settled somewhere outside of the south entirely; it would have put my past further behind me. But Danny was hired to work in Victory Hills, so that’s where we ended up.
“I rarely run into people from there, and when I do, they don’t creep me out the way she does.” I swallow a spoonful of stew. “So, during my planning period today, I talked to Pam. Turns out the girl isn’t from Florida at all.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“She lied to me,” I say, more troubled by Zoey’s fib than if she’d actually been from there. “It’s like she said that to annoy me.”
“Okay, wait a minute.” He pinches the bridge of his nose while he thinks. “There’s no way she could know about your brother—”
“I know that,” I interrupt. I’m not trying to make my exchange with Zoey about Brian, and yet Brian has this way of hovering over events in my life. As far as I know, no one in Victory Hills knows about my past. Detectives were helpful in keeping my name out of the media, and I’ve since taken Danny’s surname. Thankfully, Brian’s crimes happened before social media took over, otherwise I’d have no chance of hiding. And yet I can’t help wondering if Zoey knows something and that’s why she behaved the way she did. “But still. It’s weird, isn’t it? She acts out on the first day, brings up my trigger state and then it turns out she’s not even from there?”
“I agree.” He rests his chin on his hand, staring ahead. Danny has as many memories as I do, and Florida has no doubt resurrected them. He clears his throat before re-entering the conversation. “It sounds to me like a kid messing with her teacher on the first day. She had no way of knowing you had a connection to Florida.”
“You’re right,” I say, feeling foolish that I let the interaction bother me as much as it has.
“When do you see Dr. Walters again?”
Dr. Walters is the only other Victory Hills resident who knows about my childhood. Ever since Brian did what he did, I knew therapy would be a lifelong commitment. I used to visit counselors more frequently. Now I visit Dr. Walters twice a month, as a precautionary measure.
“I go tomorrow.”
“Maybe you can talk with her about it.” He tenses his jaw, immediately regretting his wording. Danny knows I don’t want to feel like there’s something wrong with me just because there was something wrong with Brian. At the same time, we all left the situation with scars. Danny has a therapist, too.
“Yeah, I will,” I say, forcing a smile. I have no intention of mentioning Zoey to Dr. Walters, but I want Danny to know he didn’t offend me by suggesting it. “I’m just ready for the semester to be over. I’m not bouncing back from break like I normally do.”
“You teachers are so spoiled. You only work nine months out of the year, and yet you’re always counting the days until your next vacation.”
“Yeah, well.” I stand and walk toward him at the other end of the table. “At least you’ll be enjoying this one with me.” I lean forward, and we kiss.
Five
Now
Normally, I’m an exceptional planner, but occasionally I make mistakes. I had to cancel my appointment with Dr. Walters, realizing I had previously signed up for gate duty on the same afternoon. She didn’t mind, agreeing to meet next Tuesday.
Our staff isn’t very big. There
are about sixty teachers, but a long list of scheduled sports events. We divvy them up, taking turns selling tickets at the gate. Tonight, I’m selling admission to the track and field meet.
The first twenty minutes is always immensely boring. After that, parents start trudging in more consistently. Some are strangers, some I’ve met before because I’ve had their children in class. Our locker rooms are indoors, so it’s several minutes before the team takes the field, their coach behind them.
“Afternoon, Della,” says Coach Gabe, walking toward my table. He hands over paperwork for me to give the referees when they arrive.
“Good luck,” I say.
“We’re probably going to need it,” he says, under his breath. “This isn’t a big rivalry, but they’ve got some good athletes. Our kids will enjoy the practice, if nothing else.”
“I’ll watch what I can,” I say, not sure what else to offer. I don’t know much about sports. Track, especially, has always struck me as odd. It’s a team sport, with each event racking up a certain set of points, but most achievements are individual. There must be a level of ego involved. Be the fastest. Be the best. Win the race.
“After about an hour, you can head out,” Gabe says. “Everyone who is coming should be here by then.”
On the field, I recognize several current and former students. They’re wearing the same royal blue tops, with gold stripes on the sides. Darcy is in the grass sinking into a lunge position. Because the team is co-ed, Adam is nearby, leaning against the gate and gripping his toes. Zoey approaches him, her raven hair dancing in the subtle breeze.
“Is that Zoey Peterson on the field?”
“Yeah,” Gabe says, lifting his chin. “I wasn’t keen on adding another member to the team this late in the year, but Principal Bowles asked me to make an exception. I’m glad I did. She practiced with us the week of spring break. The girl is fast as hell.”
What I Know: An utterly compelling psychological thriller full of suspense Page 2
