Megan MIRANDA: The Perfect Stranger

It wasn’t just the teachers.

The entire school was buzzing. It carried from the halls, rolled in with the students, grew louder and more urgent as they twisted in their seats. A hand over a mouth, Oh my God . A gasp, a head whipping from one person to the next. They were surely talking about the woman found down by the lake.

So it would be one of those days. Impossible to get first period in order.

The school would get like this sometimes, with the buzzing, but it was like listening to a conversation in an unknown language. The gossip written in secret shorthand, a scrawl I’d long since forgotten.

I’d begun to think the disconnect stemmed from more than just age. That they were a species in transition: coming in as kids, voices breaking, angles sharpening, and leaving as something different altogether. Curves and muscle and the unfamiliar force behind both; the other parts of them desperately trying to play catch-up.

Behave, we’d tell them. And they’d sit at their desks, hunkered down and waiting, a toe from somewhere in the room tapping against the floor in a manic rhythm. They’d bolt from their seats at the end-of-class bell and dash for the door, taking off as if the wild had called to them, the room reeking of mint and musk long after they were gone.

I didn’t understand how anyone truly expected me to accomplish anything here, except in appearances. This was nothing but a temporary holding cell.

Had I been like this once upon a time? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t really remember. Even back then, I think I had narrowed my sights on a goal and homed in.

The bell rang for the start of class, but the buzzing continued.

I pulled the stack of graded reading responses from my bag, and I heard it–

Arrested.

My stomach clenched. The word razor-sharp, a constant threat. Always there, the slimmest possibility: my ex, Noah, warning me to be careful with that article – I thought that was exactly what I was doing, I truly did.

Back when I was in college, I remembered a professor’s eyes fixing on mine in the middle of his lecture, as if he could sense something in me even then, as he explained that in journalism, a lie becomes libel.

But it was more than that, truly. More than just a legal term, in journalism, the lie is a breach of the holiest commandment.

Get out now, my boss had said. And hope the story dies.

I’d done just that – putting an entire mountain range between us in the process. But in the information age, distance meant nothing. I’d thought I’d escaped it, but maybe I hadn’t.

No. I was being irrational. A woman had been found beaten just a few hours earlier; that’s what this was about.

I weaved between desks, placing their essays facedown in front of them. Leaning closer, straining for information. An old habit.

Connor Evans’s big wide eyes were fixed on me, and my shoulders tensed. Someone in this room?

I took a tally of the class – who was missing? JT, but JT was never on time.

But there, an empty seat, third row, desk beside the window: Theo Burton.

He’d turned in his journal a few weeks earlier with a new free-write that made my skin crawl – but it was fiction, and I’d said anything . Still, he wrote with an authority and confidence greater than his imagination. Too close to something real. I closed my eyes, his words dancing across my mind:

The boy sees her and he knows what she has done.

The boy imagines twisted limbs and the color red.

If Theo had done something, if that entry had been a warning – God, the liability.

I could come up with a story for myself, a cover: I didn’t read it closely. It was a participation grade. I didn’t know.

But then Theo Burton walked through the door, and the tension drained from my shoulders. On the way to his desk, he stood in front of the class for a beat. “The cops are crawling the front office,” he said, like he was in charge. His collar popped up, his shoes unscuffed. Too civilized, Theo Burton in real life.

If this were my second-period class, they’d tell me what had happened, unprompted. They were all freshmen and treated me like a confidante. Third period would welcome any excuse to veer off-topic, so I could ask them without feeling at a disadvantage. But my first period had decided at the start of the year to rebel, and I’d never recovered. If I thought they were either bright enough or organized enough, I would’ve given them credit for planning it together. A coordinated attack.

But the mistake had been of my own making, as was the story of my current life. My first day of teaching, I’d introduced myself and told them I had just moved from Boston. I thought kids in a place like this – living in a town on the downswing suddenly given a jolt of new life – might be impressed. I thought I had them all figured out.

A girl in the back row had yawned, so I’d added, I worked as a journalist, thinking that might lend some authority. And that girl who’d been yawning, her head snapped up, and she grinned like a cat with a canary dangling between her front teeth. Her name, I soon learned, was Izzy Marone, and she said, “Is this your first year teaching?”

I had been here three minutes and I’d already made a mistake. There was no reason for them to think I was a new teacher at thirty. That I was starting my life over, having failed at the first half.

There were four ninety-minute blocks in the school day, but first period still felt twice as long as the rest.

Izzy Marone was currently holding court around her desk, chairs pulled closer, boys leaning nearer. Theo Burton reached across the gap and placed his fingers on the ridge of her cheekbone, speaking directly into her ear. Her face was grave.

I decided to try for Molly Laughlin, who was on the outskirts, both physically and metaphorically, hoping everyone else was too wrapped up in the whispers to notice. “What happened?” I asked. I prided myself on finding sources and getting them to talk, and she was an easy pick. I think I got her with the shock of it – that I’d asked her outright.

She opened her mouth as my class speaker crackled on.

“Ms. Stevens?” The assistant principal’s voice silenced the room.

“Yes, Mr. Sheldon?” I responded.

It had taken me a few weeks to catch on to this quirk, that teachers spoke to each other like this, whether it was over speakers where students could hear or out in the halls, alone. I couldn’t get used to adults going by last names like this, all antiquated formality.

“You’re needed for a moment in the office.” Mitch Sheldon’s voice echoed through the room.

I became aware of the stillness and the silence behind me, the twenty-four pairs of ears, listening, wanting.

The police were in the office, and they needed me.

I raised my hand to my mouth, was surprised to notice my fingers were trembling. I went for my purse in the locked desk drawer at the side of the room, taking my time. Realizing they all knew something I didn’t.

The lock stuck twice before the drawer slid open.

Izzy turned to me, frowned at my shaking hands. “You heard?” she asked.

“Heard what?” I said.

For all the pretense of gravity she was trying to interject, it was obvious from the quirk of her lips that she was about to take great pleasure in telling me this. As if she knew I had no idea. I steeled myself once more.

“Coach Cobb was just arrested for assault,” she said.

Oh. Shit.

She got me.

Davis Cobb was the reason I’d begun leaving my phone on silent at night. I ignored his calls every time they came through – always after eleven P.M., always after I assumed he’d been down at the bar and was walking back home. Always the same thing, anyway.