Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

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 COMEat 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, and 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.