She read to the end and looked up. Steven reached across the table to retrieve the two folders from in front of Teresa and Dov and pushed them over to her. As she opened the first, Teresa stood.
'Does anyone else want something to drink?' she asked in a taut voice. Dov did, Steven did not, and Ana thanked her and said no. Teresa took her time in the lounge, and returned with two glasses of iced tea as Ana was nearing the end of the third and last file. They waited until Ana closed that one, which like the second had concerned a young boy with few offenses but those serious and escalating, who had a family but one that was broken and itself marked by legal wrongdoings. Gabe Martinez, the boy of the second folder, had dropped out of school in Tucson, and the third boy, Mark Gill, was in the process of flunking out in the border town of Nogales.
'Which of the three?' Steven asked.
Ana had been a teacher long enough to know a test when she heard one.
'Well, it sort of depends on what you want,' she replied immediately, although keeping her voice casual, even diffident. 'If your goal is to get a bad kid off the streets for a while, then by all means take Gabe or Mark and do society a favor. On the other hand, if you're looking for a bright boy who's acting out an impossible home situation and might respond to a positive environment, whose troublemaking has been spontaneous and emotional rather than premeditated and self-serving, then I'd say grab Edgardo. He's even bright enough to keep up in school despite his brushes with the law.'
'He's not bright enough to avoid being caught,' Dov pointed out.
'Some kids find the structured setting of being in custody a nice change compared to their home life,' Ana suggested mildly, and stood up. By the smug expression on Steven's face she seemed to have passed his test, and nothing would now be gained by outstaying what small welcome she'd been given. On the contrary, enigmatic statements and tantalizing glimpses of Ana Wakefield's abilities were precisely the effect she was striving for. A game, yes, but one she had to win.
Chapter Sixteen
From:
Subject: Homecoming
August whatever, 1995 (That's still the year, isn't it??)
Dearest Tonio, just a short one to let you and Maria know I'm out and okay, as okay as I ever am at this stage. I'm off to the boys in Virginia for a couple of weeks for debriefing (which always makes me think of male strippers, most inappropriately) so let Eliot know he needs to stay on for a bit longer. I don't know if I'll then be directly home or if I'll go somewhere for a few days to let my nerves jangle—Glen says they have a safe house somewhere in Wisconsin that's not being used, but I'm torn between peace and quiet (God, communes can be noisy) and putting my head down and getting back to work to take my mind off everything. I'll let you know. It'ss probably a good thing I don't have any decisions to make for a while, since the choice between tea and coffee reduces me to tears. Poor Glen.
Anyway, I will be back in time to open up shop, so don't let anyone cancel my classes like they did last time. I'll send you confirmation of the reading list for the bookstore, when I can concentrate on it, and if you'd get in touch with those three people whose names I left with you, and tell then I'll definitely want them each for a guest lecture or two.
Tell Maria hello. Give her my love, tell her I look forward to many long sessions.
The children are the worst, walking away from them and not knowing if I should be doing anything else for them. I hear their voices in my sleep, over the sound of the water when I take a shower, when the kettle is coming to a boil. Absolute silence is tolerable, or noises loud enough to drown out anything in the back of my ears, but in between is difficult. Funny—you'd think I'd be grateful for the absence of children's racket, the arguments and continuous uproar, but I suppose one gets used to things. God, I hope they will be all right.
Enough. I'll let you know when I'm home.
—Anne
Letter via e-mail from Anne Waverly to Antony Makepeace, August 25, 1995
The drive to the Heard Museum in downtown Phoenix took a little over three hours, so the bus carrying twenty-nine students and the twelve adults necessary to keep them in line left at seven in the morning. This would be the first time some of the students had been off the compound in months, and excitement was high. The adults, scattered throughout the bus, were kept busy asking them to sit down, changing seat partners who in some way or another rubbed on each other, and deflecting teenage misbehaviors.
Ana was sitting toward the rear of the bus, looking four rows forward at the back of Jason Delgado, who, along with about half of the other eighth graders, had been included in this high school outing. He was rigid, staring out the window and radiating animosity, and the source of his discomfort was not difficult to determine: It was seated right beside him.
The boy in the aisle seat was an overweight blond boy with bad skin and a worse attitude. Bryan was two years older than Jason, looked younger, and resented the fact—and Jason—mightily. Ana already knew him as a troublemaker, although the school avoided that judgmental term, and she could see that he was deliberately provoking Jason with regular excursions of elbow and shoulder into the younger boy's space and the odd muttered phrase, inaudible in the next row over the noise of the bus but causing Jason to stiffen further.
After an hour and a half, the bus stopped to allow the cramped passengers to stretch and use the toilets. Ana walked her way over to the two teachers sitting in Jason's section, one of whom was Dov Levinski, and suggested that either he or Bryan be moved.
'We can't, sorry,' said Dov.
'Why not? Just trade seats with somebody—Bryan gets along okay with Marcos; put him there.'
'Bryan and Jason have to sit together,' he said. 'Steven's orders.'
'Steven? But that's—' Ana caught herself before she committed the offense of criticizing Steven, and changed it to 'He must not be aware of the problems between the two boys.'
'He knows,' Dov said curtly, and moved away to suggest that two girls might not want to squirt each other from the drinking fountain.
Strange, Ana thought. Why would Steven force two boys who hate each other to sit together? And particularly when one of them was a boy in whom he had expressed an interest?
They got through the rest of the trip without a scuffle and were met at the museum by three strong and determined-looking docents, who divided them up into groups with the big, scar-faced wood worker and shop teacher David Carteret in charge of the first group, Dov Levinski the second, and Teresa Montoya the third. As they went inside, Ana glanced at the map in her hands, looking for the location of the public telephones, and found one under some stairs near a rest room on the other side of the courtyard. It was very exposed, but she needed only two minutes to make the call. There didn't seem to be much choice but to leave her group when everyone was safely in the depths of the museum and make an emergency bathroom break, hiding her diary and a brief note for Glen somewhere—in the towel dispenser perhaps, or the toilet seat cover case—and make the call. No time to find a photocopy machine; Glen would have to arrange the journal's return somehow.
Accordingly, halfway along the tour and deep in a lecture on Navajo building techniques, she sidled up to Dov and told him 'You guys'll have to watch the kids by yourselves for a couple of minutes. I have to go use the rest room.'
Dov looked annoyed. 'Can't you wait for twenty minutes?'
'I don't need to pee,' she whispered cheerfully. 'It's this menopause business; a person has really hard flows at the weirdest times.'
He turned scarlet and pulled away from her as if it might be contagious, and Ana strode off toward the ladies' room.
To her irritation, there were two women already in the rest room and another followed her in the door. Even worse, there was no seat cover dispenser in the stall she entered, and the toilet paper holder was too small for her diary. The women left, Ana flushed (Her period was quite regular, and not due for a week), and went out to see if
