Charlie stared at the picture, blinking a few times as he did, the mottled shock of orange and blonde hair atop his head stiff like some candle flame molded to a singular, fuzzy brilliance for all time. “It’s a good picture.”
Mandy lowered the tablet so she could give her friend the evil eye.
“You draw lots of pictures, Mandy,” Charlie said. His voice was thin, airy, almost too soft on the ears, unsettling like the void left after sound has passed.
“This one is special,” Mandy said, sighing disapproval at her friend’s less than acceptable answer. “Now, come on; what do you think of it?”
Charlie gave the picture another look as Mandy held it up, not as high as before. Her eyes burned at him over the top. “I really like the rainbow. It looks real.”
Mandy spun the tablet back toward herself and placed it on her lap. Her white teeth glared with pleasure. “I think it’s the best rainbow I’ve ever drawn.”
Charlie nodded like a puppet might, all motion and nothing else.
“It’s my best,” Mandy said, gazing proudly at what she’d made.
“You have a whole drawer full of pictures,” Charlie said, just recounting a fact. She did have a drawer brimming with pictures. Probably every one she’d ever drawn. He’d seen it, right behind him in her dresser. “Why is this one special?”
Charlie’s question dampened the glee within her not a bit. She ran the tips of her fingers softly along the curve of the rainbow and announced, “Because it’s for my favorite teacher of all time.”
Charlie’s stale expression twitched at the top, one bushy eyebrow rising. “It’s for Miss Austin?”
“Yes,” Mandy confirmed, nodding. “She’s the best teacher ever. I’ll bet you’ve never had a teacher like her.”
The eyebrow settled back to its flat horizon over Charlie’s eye. “I thought you were mad at her.”
Strain crept into Mandy’s happy mask, chasing pleasantness away. As it scurried off, something quite different took its place.
“I could never be mad at her,” Mandy said, her voice flat like a taut wire, one pulled at each end by forces she did not understand. Would never understand. “She’s perfect.”
“But you said she was playing favorites,” Charlie reminded her. He couldn’t actually recall her saying that, but he knew that that was how his best friend felt.
“They think they’re the teacher’s pets,” Mandy mocked childishly, her voice bobbing through the accusation, her shoulders twisting haughtily along.
“Who?”
Mandy sneered, not looking at her picture now, nor at Charlie. Just looking, and seeing their faces. “Joey, and Jeff, and Michael, and Bryce, and PJ, and...” She saw the last face, the one that always looked a little like a lost fawn, all doe-eyed and sad. “...Elena.” A breath hissed slow through her nose, coming cold and leaving colder. “I don’t like Elena.”
“I thought you didn’t like any of them,” Charlie said.
“I don’t like her the most,” Mandy said. Her eyes compressed to slits as she thought of them. Of all the teacher’s little pets. “They all think they’re so good, that they’re so smart.” A bitter little grin began to twist her lips. “But they’re not as smart as me.”
Charlie puzzled at what his best friend had said. “Huh?”
Mandy’s eyes angled slowly to her friend. “I get all hundreds on my work. On all my class work, on all my homework, and on all my tests. I’ve never missed a single answer.”
Charlie agreed with a nod. “I believe you.”
“That makes me smarter than them.”
He nodded again.
Mandy looked away from Charlie, toward her window, the remnants of the snow melting rapidly on the sill. Beads of water were trickling down the pane, the morning light exploding from each of the watery pearls, throwing spikes of color in all directions. Like little bursts of rainbow, Mandy thought, smiling soft, smiling true. Smiling for herself.
“I’m a smart, pretty girl,” Mandy said aloud, then looked back to her best friend, his face dead except the eyes. “Smarter than the teacher’s pets.” A giggle built in her mouth behind her closed, simpering lips, a bit of it slipping out before Mandy put a few dainty fingers up to suppress it.
“What’s funny, Mandy?”
More of the giggle made its way out. She could hardly contain herself. “Nothing.”
“What?”
Mandy simply shook her head, but the giggle she’d tried to stifle had now built to a full fledged laugh that burst from her mouth like a cackling rocket, tossing her head back to the bed, racking her body with fits as she thought of how smart she was, and how stupid they were. The stupid teacher’s pets.
Laughter erupted again like a volcano blowing its top, and she rolled to one side, away from Charlie, clutching her stomach and sucking big gulps of air until the gleeful throe settled to a few residual giggles that bubbled occasionally free of her tenuous composure.
Charlie stared blandly at her back. “Mandy?”
“What?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the vibrant spokes of light on the window.
“It seems like a long time since I saw you last.”
Wind moved the streaks of melt along the pane, the rainbow sparkles dancing with the blow.
“Am I any different?” Mandy asked in response.
Charlie thought for a moment. “No. Not really.”
Mandy smiled at the sparkles. They would make a very pretty picture. “Then it can’t have been very long.”
* * *
The scream pierced the night, shrill and blood curdling as it raced through the upper floor of the Markworth house like a mad dog set free of its cage.
“AAAAAAAAAAHHH! AAAAAAAAHH!”
Light erupted, spilling from under the closed door to Tim and Willa Markworth’s bedroom. Feet stabbed into slippers, and those flopped fast across the floor. The door snapped inward, the glow burning into the hall, yellow and harsh.
“AAAAAAAHHH! AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAHHHHH!”
Tim Markworth dashed into the hall still tying his robe and raced to his daughter’s room. He could almost do so blindfolded now.
“AAAHH! AAAAHH! AAAAAAHHHHH!”
When he pushed Elena’s door in he found her sitting in bed, covers to her waist, teary eyes closed and gaping mouth spewing alarm so sharp it cut him each time he had to hear it. It cut his heart right from him.
“Baby. Baby. It’s okay.” He put a knee on Elena’s bed and a hand on each of her shoulders. His wife raced in and came to his side. To her daughter’s side.
“AAHH! AAHH! AAHH!” Elena cried in short puffs, spittle misting from her lips, as if she were trying to spit a caustic demon from within and it just wouldn’t go.
Or was it some demon wailing from deep inside?
“Baby,” Tim Markworth said again to his traumatized daughter.
“Mommy’s here,” Willa Markworth assured her little girl, sitting on the bed and pulling Elena close with a gentle arm. “It’s okay.”
“Ahhh,” Elena whimpered now, a weak, pitiful sound that was accompanied by deep, choppy gulps of air, wide lines of tears streaking her pale cheeks. “Ahh.”
“It’s okay,” Tim Markworth repeated, looking to his wife. Her eyes asked him silently if he really believed that everything was all right.
His head shook doubtfully as his little girl crumbled, still asleep, into his wife’s arms.
Nineteen
The day had seemed pretty normal, most everyone thought, until just after two o’clock when Miss Austin gave the class book work and secluded herself at her desk. Her pen tapped at her open roll book, at the same page for nearly an hour.
When the three o’clock bell rang she stopped and looked up at the class.
“There are two worksheets for the assignment tonight,” Mary said from her desk. As the students assigned to clean up returned to their seats she added, “Back and front both. Will the class council please see me before they leave.”
Th
e last request bore the marks of an afterthought. The speaker’s eyes flitted about casually, disinterested, and the voice hinted ever so mildly at annoyance. As if this wildly unimportant thing just had to be dealt with, a characterization only half wrong.
Chairs banged into desks and twenty pairs of feet paraded through room 18's door into the long shadows of the blustery afternoon. Elena Markworth was last to leave and glanced back from the stoop at her teacher and five classmates as the door swung shut.
The council came slowly to Mary’s desk and stood shoulder to shoulder before her, expressions mirrored, ten little eyes mining for information in the reluctant face.
“You wanted to see us,” Joey said, speaking for all. Eager feet stampeded past outside.
“Yes.” Mary closed her roll book and twisted the cap onto the pen in her hand, a red pen that she feigned fascination with for several very long seconds before dropping it into the Space Needle mug that held its black and blue brethren. “I need to talk to you all about...” She paused and folded her hands over her roll book, fingertips crawling nervously in place, a pain sparking behind her brow. Like an on-off switch tripped in a pitch black room, a stinging, almost blinding light coming on. A light that she had to look inward to see. A light that hurt. That hurt. A warning light.
But I have to...
A powerful light.
I have to do the right thing...
IF YOU WON’T PROTECT THEM...
...who will? Mary finished the growling question coming from the light this time.
But it was not a question.
Like the beam of a hot, burning lantern the brilliance swept across the backs of her eyes, coming, warning, coming, telling, coming...
...and then gone. Gone as if never there.
Her eyes came up and met theirs finally, one at a time.
Joey had that faint hint of worry in his gaze, so faint that it was almost lost in the misty green of his eyes. PJ’s distress hid behind a battered, defiant pride. Michael swallowed hard and seemed on the verge of flight, his feet shifting, hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans. Jeff met her review with a confidence that did not belong to one so young. A confidence ignorant of its sameness with arrogance. And Bryce. He fixed his glasses upward as she looked his way, eyes bugging behind the lenses. His appearance became that of a small, frightened animal caught in the glare of a truck’s growing headlights.
Lights...
So innocent they all were. But this simply had to be done. It simply had to.
“Everything is going to be all right,” Mary began. “You have to believe me about that. You have to trust me.”
Glances bounced among the council, then in near unison they nodded to their teacher.
Mary cleared her throat and straightened in her chair.
“Detective Ashe spoke with me a few evenings ago. He asked me to talk to you about what happened.”
Michael’s head tipped toward the floor.
“So,” Mary went on, “we need to discuss this.”
* * *
The marinara sauce bubbled at a fast simmer, spitting red drizzle over the lip of the pan. Dooley dumped a handful of sliced mushrooms in and stirred with a long wooden spoon, keeping his distance. His white shirt had survived thus far.
He dipped a finger quickly into the sauce and even more quickly pressed it into his mouth as just how hot the marinara was became painfully apparent. “Damn.”
When the phone rang he was sucking hard on the finger, cooling it and tasting his creation. Just about right, he decided, and turned the burner to low before answering. “Hello.”
“Detec... Dooley?”
He turned away from the stove and put a hand behind his neck. It pinched at muscles suddenly, instantaneously turned to granite. “Mary. Hi.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Dooley said, puffing with a huge breath. “I’m okay. I was just making myself some dinner.”
“What’s on the menu?”
“Pasta with a marinara sauce. I threw some mushrooms and olives in.”
“It sounds tasty. Are you eating alone?”
Dooley pulled a narrow fistful of dried linguine from a tall jar and slid it into a pot of frothing water. “Yeah.”
“You probably have an actual dining room,” Mary joked.
“And not a piano in the whole house,” Dooley answered. He pulled the long cord across the kitchen and leaned against the oven. It warmed his back while his garlic bread heated. “Did you get a chance to—”
“I wanted to thank you again for staying Friday night,” Mary said in an evasive spurt. “You got more than you bargained for. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve had a rough couple of weeks. A bad dream isn’t anything out of the ordinary.”
“Still...”
“Still, nothing. All right?”
After a second Mary said, “You’re a good person.”
“Well...”
“And, in answer to the question I know you’re politely refraining from asking, yes. I talked to them. All but Elena.”
“Why not her?”
“Because she’s very fragile right now. I couldn’t question her. The others are good enough for now.”
“And they said?”
“They asked if they could think about. I told them that I had to give you an answer tomorrow.”
“So they said they’d think about it,” Dooley observed. “Interesting, Mary. Don’t you think?”
“Stop.”
“For a bunch of kids that had nothing to do with Guy’s death, that is telling in itself.”
Mary was quiet for a second. A tea kettle started to whistle in the background. “I did what you asked. Don’t ask me to judge them like you are.”
Dooley listened to the kettle quiet beyond Mary’s breathing. “You’re right.”
“They said they’d talk to me after school tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to have them thinking that I’m eagerly running right to you to rat on them. Come by my place later. We’ll talk then. You can help me pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters.”
“The inevitable can’t be delayed,” Dooley observed soberly.
“If it’s inevitable it will happen anyway.”
Foamy water crept to the top of the pasta pot and curled over the sides, hissing as it trickled onto the burner. Dooley stuck a spoon in and stirred it to a more mellow boil. “What time?”
“About six?”
Dooley nodded at the stove, marinara spitting and the water billowing steam. “Okay.” Behind, the doorbell chimed. Dooley held the phone between his ear and shoulder and dumped the pasta into a colander in the sink. “Someone’s at the door. I’ve gotta go.”
“Tomorrow at six.”
“Yeah.” He set the empty pot aside and moved the faucet over the colander, turning on the cold water to rinse the noodles and stop the cooking process. “Mary?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. I know it was hard to do what you did.”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she told him, her voice softened with a deep, true sadness. “Goodnight.”
“Bye.”
Dooley hung up the phone as the bell chimed again. He left the marinara simmering and went to answer it.
The silhouette on the inlaid glass gave away his visitor even before he’d opened the door.
“Hi,” Karen said, that curious look on her face that Dooley had never been quite able to pin down. Smile? Apology? Pity?
“Karen.”
She wore a long black coat, and from beneath it she artfully withdrew a bottle. “A ninety-two Crescent Valley pinot.” One corner of her mouth tweaked sourly. “It was wasted on the lamb.”
“Not good, eh?”
“You know how they say rattlesnake tastes like chicken?”
“They say everything tastes like chicken,” Dooley half corrected his ex.
“This la
mb tasted like rattlesnake.”
Dooley chuckled lightly.
“The wine was the high point of the evening,” Karen revealed. She held the bottle out and Dooley took it. “I keep my promises.”
“I take it then you didn’t get lucky?” Dooley asked, veiling his odd pleasure in the obvious better than he’d expected he could.
“He was as dry as the lamb. Letterman started and I got these terrible cramps.” Her face contorted expertly and she pressed hard toward her ovaries. “Thank God he didn’t know my cycle.”
“And you women call it a curse.”
“Hey, I’ll take what I can get from it, baby.” She leaned to one side and peered past Dooley. “You have water running.”
“Just cooling down some linguine.”
Her eyebrows rose ever so innocently. “Linguine?”
Dooley smiled, his head shaking minutely. “I hope your cramp act wasn’t as thin as this.”
“Smells good,” Karen commented, her nose twitching.
“Hey,” Dooley began, his arms crossing and his face alight as if some brilliant idea had just come to him. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
Karen took off her coat, handed it to her ex, and pushed past. “Took you long enough.”
Dooley closed the door as she went to the kitchen and leaned over the marinara, testing its scent up close. From the front room he watched her, and she smiled back at him as she took an extra plate from the cupboard.
His head was filled with musings. Why was she here? Why now, after a less than perfect- yes! -date? The questions inherent in the expression she fancied had followed her into the house. The house they had once shared.
But another musing held equal with those initiated by his ex-wife’s surprise arrival, this one anchored not here, but to the east in a handful of homes in a quiet little town where all was apparently not so perfect as the inhabitants would have liked to believe. In the rooms of five children. In their heads, behind the lying innocence of their eyes.
What were they thinking about, Dooley wondered, now that he had taken their ally and made her his.
* * *
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