Unspeakable Things(6)

After she twisted the bread bag closed, she walked around to kiss Dad. I could smell him from where I was standing: sour liquor, hairy morning breath, sweat. Gross. And what was the big whoop suddenly about going into the basement?

Sephie grabbed my hand and pulled me outside.





CHAPTER 3

Besides teaching English, Mom was the cross-country coach in the fall and the yearbook adviser starting in December, and she coached speech in the spring. You had to sign up for everything that first year or they wouldn’t grant you tenure, she’d said. All I knew was that I loved being at Kimball High School with her, even if it was only for ten minutes.

She was royalty because she was faculty, and Sephie and me got to be part of that. It didn’t matter that Mom’s hair and clothes were out of date. People expected that from a teacher. All that counted was that she was smart. And good at her job. I could tell it by the way people treated her.

“Good morning, Mrs. McDowell!” the early-bird students chirped at Mom.

She smiled back. We were heading to the office, me and Sephie strutting alongside her. She’d said we could stay in the car, but no way. I didn’t even care how ridiculous my hair looked.

When we reached the office, Betty the secretary was already at her post. She was one of those friendly, gossipy women who wore scratchy-looking pants that rode too high. Her face lit up when we walked in.

“Love your hair, Cassie!” she told me before I was even fully through the door.

I stroked my head. I’d pet a poodle once. It got off better than me. But maybe my hair had relaxed some on the drive over? That sure would make school a lot less stressful. “Thank you.”

“And Sephie, that blue eye shadow looks very pretty on you!”

Sephie glowed.

This was the best place. Everything was so normal here, like a TV show.

“Looks like it’ll be a hot one,” Betty said, tipping her head toward the window as she handed over some paperwork.

Mom smiled. “But it’s only another week until summer vacation. We can put up with anything for a week.”

Betty nodded. “It was nice of you to come to school so early, Peg. You know you’re the best teacher here, don’t you?”

I knew it.

“You’re too kind.” Mom scratched her name on the form she’d been handed. When she was finished, she tapped her mouth with the pen, studying the paper for a moment longer than I would have expected. “I’ve got to run the girls to school, but I’ll be back by seven thirty if there’s follow-up on this.”

“Your work ethic is something else.” Betty beamed; then that smile melted away like plastic in a campfire as her eyes cut to me and Sephie. “You girls attend Lilydale, don’t you?”

We nodded, still puffy with pride. My hair was nice, Sephie’s face was pretty, Mom’s work ethic was something else. We waited for the next nice thing Betty was going to tell us, but she looked so uncomfortable all of a sudden.

“What is it?” Mom asked, handing over the paperwork. “Are you all right?”

Betty tossed another worried look at me and Sephie, then smiled tightly and shook her head. “I’m fine. You girls have a good day at school.”

Betty tried swallowing, but her spit seemed to have gone sideways.

Mom caught it. “Something’s wrong.”

Did Betty flinch? “It’s just . . . the rumors.”

Mom’s eyebrows tried to meet in the middle. “What rumors?”

Betty glanced at me and Sephie again. She clearly didn’t want to say anything in front of us, but Mom was having none of it.

“I don’t keep secrets from my girls,” Mom said.

Betty drew in a rough breath. “A boy was raped in Lilydale this past weekend.” She said it all as one word:

aboywasrapedinlilydalethispastweekend

Once I was able to parse out the words, it still didn’t make sense. Boys didn’t get raped. Raping was for girls. Unless maybe there was something to those alien-abduction stories? I stared at Mom, confused.

She appeared to be transforming into stone from the bottom up, though, so she was no help.

“Who was the boy?” Sephie asked.

The clipped whompwhompwhomp sound of a helicopter flying overhead made us all jerk our attention to the window. Dad always said helicopters were bad luck. The way Betty was behaving, she seemed to agree.

Betty cleared her throat, ignoring Sephie’s question. She leaned toward Mom, her voice low. “People are saying that it was a gang of men from Minneapolis who did it.”

My pulse tripped. Gang. A morning breeze blew through the window, riffling the papers stacked on the radiator. The air smelled thick and cabbagey, like slow-cooker skunk. Mom still hadn’t moved.

Betty spoke up again, even though no one had responded to her last comment. “They think the Minneapolis gang was spying on boys, hunting them, picking out the easiest one to attack.”

She took a moment, fanning her face. “I’m not here to feed the rumor mill, though. It gets plenty of gas on its own. I just wanted you to know, so you could keep your own kids safe.”

I didn’t know if she meant me and Sephie or Mom’s students. Probably both.

“It only happened in Lilydale?” Mom asked. Her voice sounded froggy.

Betty sideways-eyed me and Sephie again. “So far.”