Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

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 INeverything. 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.

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 pages 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.