The number looked familiar in a vague sort of way, in the way names tended to blend together for me after too many deadlines in a row. But it was a local number, and I didn’t know many of those.
I pulled my cell from my purse and scrolled to the picture I’d taken at Break Mountain Inn. I zoomed in on the contact card—and the numbers matched. A lead. Something to grasp on to, to get the story moving.
I forwarded the entire bill to the email address on Kyle’s card and added a note: I think Emmy’s boyfriend, Jim, called from the highlighted number. It’s the number for Break Mountain Inn. Maybe they worked together there?
I almost dialed the number for the inn myself, had my finger over the call key of my phone, hovering, thinking. I could get the answer nice and quick. Ask for Jim, ask him about Emmy. But this wasn’t my job anymore, and Jim was too central to the case. I had to leave that first call to Kyle.
That was a move, too.
* * *
THE WHISPERS IN CLASS had started up again. The furtive glances in my direction. The shift in their approach. Izzy licked her lips when I asked them to face the board. Her hand went up. I ignored it. Someone giggled. If I hadn’t lost the class before, I certainly had now.
“Take out your homework,” I said. I scanned the room quickly for anyone who might give themselves away. Someone else preoccupied with the things only they knew, only they had seen.
I wondered if someone here knew her. Bethany Jarvitz was twenty-eight years old, had suffered a massive subdural hematoma, and was still listed in critical condition. She was an employee of the tech data center nearby, and her next of kin had not been located yet. I wondered if she’d met up with Davis Cobb in a bar, as I had. If he’d followed her home after she’d told him he had the wrong idea. If he was tired of wrong ideas and ready to act.
I asked the students to hold up their assignments so I could mark them as finished, even if they’d chosen not to sign their names.
Theo walked in five minutes late, as the homework assignments were being passed up the rows and then across until the final stack ended up with Molly Laughlin. Theo placed his paper on top and said, “Whoops, guess you’ll know which one is mine.”
“You’re late,” I said, sliding the anonymous pieces into my bag.
“I know. I was printing out the assignment in the library. Our printer wasn’t working.”
“Take your seat,” I said, but Theo had stopped in front of my desk, and everyone was watching.
He cocked his head to the side, smiled slowly. “Is that my third tardy?”
He knew it was, and so did I. “Not sure,” I said. If I said no, they would think I was cutting him a break. If I said yes, they’d know he was due for detention, which meant I’d have to stay for it, too. School policy was three tardies and then the student had to sit with you for the extra time after class, until teacher dismissal. “I’ll check later.”
I heard footsteps out in the hall growing closer, heard them pause outside my open door, and was glad for the distraction from the subject of detention—I really didn’t have the time to deal with a kid who had it in for me for no reason at all, on top of everything else. Theo went to his seat, but the smiles and whispers from the other students continued.
I turned and saw the reason: Assistant Principal Mitch Sheldon standing in the open doorway. He tipped his head toward the hall.
“Take out your journals,” I said as I moved to join him out in the hall. Somebody whistled as I shut the door behind me, and the steady hum of voices carried through the wooden door.
“I couldn’t stop it,” he said, leaning nearer to keep our voices from traveling.
“Stop what?”
“The rumors. Parents have been calling again, this time wondering about the relationship between you and Coach Cobb. Wondering if you knew he was married.”
I let out a laugh that resounded down the empty hall. I’d known the rumors would get out, but I hadn’t thought they’d be focused on me. As if I were the predator.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. He tried to speak again, but I raised my hand. “I’ve got to get to class.”
He put a hand on my upper arm and squeezed, lowered his voice even more. “We need to talk. It’s not just the rumors, Leah. It’s Davis Cobb.”
I pulled my arm back, aware of the eyes watching through the glass panel of the door, remembering what Kyle had seen in our previous exchanges. “What about Cobb?”
“He’s on leave, but without a charge, we can’t keep this up much longer.”
My mouth fell open, and I sucked in a cold breath. I hadn’t expected the tide to shift so quickly, but the student essays should’ve tipped me off. They were a window to the larger world, statements made over the dinner table, regurgitated onto the page. This was a town pro-Cobb from the ground up. I was the outsider.
Mitch stood a little too close. “Are you worried, Leah?”
I thought of what Kyle had said: that anyone could tell. I fumbled for the doorknob. “Thanks for letting me know,” I said. I slipped back inside the classroom, ignored the students who were grinning, or the girl now craning her neck to see if Assistant Principal Sheldon was still standing outside my room—and guessing at what that meant.
I wondered how hard he had tried to dispel the rumors. And then I wondered whether he was the source of the rumors. Or if that was just me expecting the worst out of everyone.
* * *
NONE OF US COME at journalism fresh, even if that’s what we tell ourselves. Everyone has an agenda, and we know it. We’ve all sat at the bar: liquor-fueled tangents on the injustice of it all, of what makes a story worthy; or the long-buried idealism rising back to the surface as our words and thoughts begin to slur. It’s a tie that binds, or so I’d thought. But there’s a line in the sand. And it’s hard to know where it is until you cross it.
The story was mine, but I was too close to it. That’s what Noah had warned. “It’s taking you over,” he’d said as I’d paced my tiny apartment, working late into the night, circling around it at all times. Like he could see it creeping in and pulling me under.
“He did it, Noah. I know him. He did it,” I’d said.
He’d paused, fixed his cool gray eyes on mine, drummed his fingers. “That’s a big story. You need it to be airtight.” A criticism, a warning, a preemptive jab at my yet-to-be-proved shortcomings.
But isn’t that what we wanted, what we all admitted to, late at night over drinks at the bar: to shake the truth free. And here I was, finally, in a position to do it.
“Eventually, the truth will come out,” I’d said. “Someone will come forward if I push.” This was what I believed: that the truth would rise to the surface, like air bubbles in boiling water.
But Noah was already pulling away in the middle of the conversation. “And if they don’t?” He shook his head, his disapproval apparent in the lines around his mouth. “You’re not going to be a martyr, Leah. You’re going to be crucified.”
“That’s the very definition of a martyr, Noah.”
He’d brushed me off with a flick of the wrist, no longer interested in the playful semantics, the way we twisted words to fit an argument, the way we could file them into a point and attack.
“Do you want to be the news or report it?” he’d asked.
What I really wanted was to go back in time, back to the first time I’d heard his name from Paige’s mouth, and stop her. I met a guy. Aaron. We both showed up to office hours with the same test that we both failed. He noticed and said, “Don’t take my story. I call a death in the family.” She’d raised her fingers to her mouth, covering a smile, stifling a laugh.
Aaron had existed more in thought than in sight for me: Going to Aaron’s. Staying at Aaron’s. And then, when he was more firmly in our world, it was always in relation to Paige. Maybe this was where I first went wrong: seeing Aaron filtered through Paige.
This was the time around which Noah cut and run. You’re going to tank your career, a
nd for what? One dead ghost.
The breakup, at least, I should’ve been ready for. Maybe if I hadn’t been so deep in the story, I would’ve seen it coming. I could typically feel that moment when everything shifted, when the slide began, could identify the point from which there would be no recovery. Of course this would be that moment.
I had become too focused, too serious, too driven—all things I had always been, that he had neglected to see first. Both of us striving for something greater. For me, the truth. But for him, the bigger goal was his career.
Even before Noah, there had been a slew of men who, on the third or fourth or tenth or eleventh dates, had reached an inevitable breaking point. When something had happened, some crack, some slip, and the other Leah, the one underneath, the one who lived with Emmy for a summer—the one who was not as put together or as solid and unchanging—would become visible, and I’d see the twist in their faces, the confusion, the pieces being reassigned, recategorized. The gap would start to grow between us, and I’d see it coming. Sometimes, if I was feeling particularly masochistic, I’d cut it off right then, at the end of that date. But most of the time I’d let it slide, watch it happen, wait.
I couldn’t look away. As if I could pinpoint my own demise every time. As if I were someone else, looking in: There she is, Leah Stevens, not at all who they thought she would be. Notice him pulling back? Changing the topic? Looking over his shoulder? There was some pleasure, along with the defeat, because I could solve it.
But the story had stolen my focus, and everything that followed had been a blindside: the reason Noah dumped me, and my boss, Logan, fired me, and Paige took out that restraining order against me. All because they thought I had become obsessed—obsessed with him.
* * *
THE END-OF-CLASS BELL RANG, and I packed up my things. I wanted to read the essays, see if someone was trying to tell me something. See if there was anything to a rumor I could find some truth in.
Someone knocked on my open class door, and Theo waved a blue form in the doorway. “Hi,” he said. “Mr. Sheldon said I could do my detention today?” He raised his voice at the end, as if asking permission, but he was already hovering just inside. Mr. Sheldon had said he could, he was telling me. “I just want to get it over with,” he added.
And so did I. There were teachers in the hall, students talking, the doorway open. I looked at the clock. “Yes, come on in.”
He did, then lingered near my desk, shifted on his feet until I looked up. “Do you want me to do anything?” he asked. “Some teachers want you to clean the room.”
The idea of Theo Burton going through anything here made me uncomfortable. “Do you have any work to do?”
He held out a spiral notebook. “It’s for history, though.”
Kate Turner peeked in, saw I had a student, said, “I’ll catch you later,” and left.
And just like that, the hall was eerily quiet again. How quickly the building turned empty and stale.
“Just sit down,” I said.
I stared at the clock again. I hated this rule—they owed you time, when really, they were just stealing more of it.
Theo sat at his desk on the other side of the room, but his voice carried, felt too close. “Is it true what they say?” he asked. “About you and Coach Cobb?”
I considered ignoring him. Considered the consequence of silence. How a no comment could get twisted into a story instead. “I don’t know what they’re saying,” I said, “but I’m willing to bet that it’s not true.”
I didn’t look up from my computer screen when I said it, and he didn’t respond. But I could feel the charge in the air. Hear his pencil tapping against the desk, the slow rip of a sheet of paper. He balled it up, tossed it into the trash can. Something he wanted me to notice.
I packed up my bag a few minutes early, but he didn’t move. I cleared my throat, and he finally looked up.
“Time to go,” I said.
“Can I just . . .” He gestured toward his notebook, implied he was in the middle of something.
I shook my head. “I have to be somewhere. Let’s go.”
I stepped out into the hall as he stood; I kept my hand on the door. He waited beside me in the empty hall as I locked the door, acting like we would be leaving together.
There were cameras, I reminded myself. It was what we told the students, at least, and I hoped it was true.
He took a step toward the lobby, and I had to follow. Surely there would be people in the office. I took out my cell, scrolled through the call log, walked with purpose, not paying any attention to the boy beside me.
I paused at the back entrance to the office, which cut through the lobby, and where only faculty were permitted. This entrance needed a key, as opposed to the glass doors facing the front. I felt Theo behind me as I took out my key. “See you tomorrow, Theo,” I said, effectively sending him on his way. He walked down the hall, farther away.
And then I heard him in the echo, as the door was swinging open. “Bye, Leah,” he called.
I pretended I hadn’t heard.
Safely inside, I rested my back against the closed door, heard Mitch on the phone in his office to my right. I stood outside his door for a moment so he’d see me. When his gaze lifted to the doorway, I gestured to indicate that I was leaving. He drew his eyebrows together, probably wondering why I was telling him. What I meant by it. He raised a finger, asking me to wait.
When he finished the call, he leaned back in his seat. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Nothing. Hey, did you tell Theo Burton he could do detention with me today?”
His chair shifted back and forth. “What? Oh yeah, he asked if he could do it today because he wouldn’t have a ride the rest of the week. I said as long as it was okay with you.” He looked me over. “Was that not okay?”
I shook my head. “No, that’s fine. I was just confused. Wasn’t expecting him, that’s all.”
He nodded, looked back down at his desk. “Give me a sec, I’ll walk out with you.”
“Sure,” I said, leaning against the wall outside his office, feeling an immense relief.
When we walked out to the parking lot, Theo Burton was sitting on the stone bench out front, as if he were waiting for a ride. As if he were waiting. “Bye, Mr. Sheldon. Ms. Stevens.”
Mitch raised his hand at Theo. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Burton. And do your best to be on time.” And then he grinned, like it was all a joke.
I let Mitch walk me to my car. “Want to grab a bite?” he asked. I wasn’t surprised when he casually broached it.
I pictured myself on the edge of the lake, blood seeping into the dirt around me. Imagined Kyle telling the other police officers, Lived all alone, wasn’t from here—and I said, “Not right now, Mitch. Not with everything.”
“Okay, Leah,” he said, taking a step back, and I got in the car. “Another time, then.” He waved once more as the engine to my car turned over.
I saw the shape of Theo Burton in the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting mine, not looking away.
I shifted the car into drive and kept my hands steady on the wheel, convincing myself not to look back.
* * *
I SAW IT IN everything. The threat and menace. The potential for violence. Maybe I’m biased, or practiced in it.
But maybe, I sometimes worried, it’s not really there.
Maybe it’s just the lens, just the filter, when really everything is normal and fine, and the boy is just a boy who was late for school, waiting for a ride home; and Emmy is somewhere with her boyfriend, forgetting to call; and I am starting life anew, and this is just what it’s like in that slow transition when you’re becoming someone else.
CHAPTER 13
I was itching to get to the essays I’d assigned. I’d been home barely five minutes before I had the pages spread out on the kitchen table, the gnome holding down the pile. I’d opened the window over the sink to let the air circulate, to get rid of the empty-house feel, and the pa
ges fluttered in the breeze.
Theo’s paper was on top of the pile. I knew this from when he came in late, though he hadn’t bothered to include his name.
When the coach is arrested for assault. When your teacher is called down to the office and you can tell she’s scared.
When you wonder why she’s scared.
This is why I propose the following safety measure for our school: that our teachers are treated the same as we are. They should be subject to random searches, and there should be a way for us to look into their lives, as they can do to us. They have our addresses, our phone numbers, our parents’ names, our dates of birth, our Social Security numbers. There’s an imbalance of power and they know it.
I almost spit out my drink on the vinyl kitchen table. It was ridiculous. It was persuasive. It was also true. But it lost its bite coming from Theo Burton. I wondered if this was all a result of manifested boredom—this need to get under my skin—or if it ran deeper.
The rest of the papers were full of ideas that were akin to functioning in a state of fear. Proposed safety measures like two monitors at each bathroom, or that student cell phones be allowed to remain on, or that they escort each other in pairs, like in kindergarten, to bathrooms and cars and the front office. Cameras in the classrooms. In the halls. In the bathrooms.
They threw around terms like accountability and privacy and remote classes. I heard echoes of their parents in their words. There were no extra notes slipped in. There was nothing about any rumors, and nothing to build on from IT WASN’T COBB.
I had been wrong. There was absolutely nothing in these pages for me. Nothing but kids phoning in an assignment. I had expected too much. As if, buried in the sea of faces, there might be someone just like me—someone who knew where the truth could be found, if only they reached the right person.
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