Ms. Hempel said of course.
“I wanted to speak with you about the assignment.”
Would she find it deceitful, and dishonest, as Mrs. Woo did? Or maybe, like Mrs. Galvani, she had telephoned all the relatives, even the ones in California, to tell them the wonderful news. It was unlikely, though, that she loved the assignment, thought it original and brilliant and bold. Only Mr. Radinsky seemed to feel that way.
What Ms. Bean wanted her to know was that she felt the assignment to be unkind. Or maybe not unkind. Maybe just unfair. Because she had been waiting a long time for someone else to finally notice what she had always known about Will. And then to discover that it was an assignment, merely.
The disappointment was terrible—could she understand that?
MR. DUNNE, HER COLLEGE COUNSELOR, was the one who first noticed the discrepancy. Impressive scores, mediocre grades. A specialist was consulted, a series of tests administered, and a medication prescribed. The bitter pills, her father used to call them. The prescription made her hands shake a little, but that wore off after a while. And then: a shy, newfound composure. Her mother entrusted her with the holiday newsletter. She wrote film reviews for the university paper. She had a nice way with words, a neat way of telling a story.
To her ears, though, her stories sounded smushed, as if they had been sat upon by accident. None of the interesting parts survived. Yes, her father flashed the headlights, and yes, she waved at him before she stepped inside. Those details were resilient. Not these: how she waved glamorously, and smiled radiantly, how the headlights heralded the arrival of a star. How her shadow, projected onto the snow, looked huge.
“That was beautiful,” her aunt said to her when she returned to her pew. “I can see Oscar doing just that—making sure you got in safely.”
Beautiful was not what she intended. Her story was not about safety and concern and anxious attentions. It was a tale of danger, intrigue; a story from the days before her medicine, the days of their collusion, when they communicated in code—click, click—as true accomplices do. When they were still plotting to prove everyone woefully mistaken. This was the story she wanted to tell. Then how did something altogether different emerge? Something she didn’t even recognize as her own. Even her father—her coconspirator, her fan—had been changed into someone she didn’t quite know. A kind and shadowy figure, sitting in the car. Benevolent. Thoughtful. Considerate of others.
Sandman
IT WAS THE ANNUAL ALL-SCHOOL Safety Assembly. The police officer looked short and lonely in the middle of the stage as he reeled off the possible threats: flashers in raincoats; razor blades in apples; strangers in cars.
Ms. Hempel wanted to raise her hand. Wasn’t he forgetting something? He hadn’t even mentioned the predators she dreaded most. And wasn’t it all supposed to sound more cautionary, more scary?
The grisly details that the officer omitted, Ms. Hempel’s imagination generously supplied. The black and shining van, the malevolent clowns, their wigs in sherbet colors. The dim interior, the stains on the carpet. Doors that shut with a rattling slam.
Ms. Hempel clenched her muscles. Terror flowered darkly inside her.
In the very back row of the auditorium, the eighth grade sat and squirmed. Zander, upon completing a drum solo, crashed an invisible cymbal. Elias drew a picture of a small, slouching boy on the back of Julianne’s binder. Jonathan, with the toe of his sneaker, battered the chair of the seventh grader sitting in front of him. Here they were, arrayed before her: restless, oblivious, vulnerable, all of them.
“Come on, guys.” Mr. Peele, microphone in hand, glowered at the eighth grade. “This is serious.”
An assertion that prompted the entire back row to explode into laughter. The eighth graders were banished to their homerooms. As they exited the auditorium, banging into everything they touched, Mr. Peele, his palm clamped over the microphone, instructed the homeroom teachers to finish off the job. “And don’t forget to remind them about Safe Haven,” he said, but the homeroom teachers were already walking out the door, rolling their eyes at each other. They had inherited yet another mess, like the teaching of sex education, the chaperoning of Trip Days, the organizing of canned-food drives and danceathons.
Ms. Hempel’s class, jostling their way back into the homeroom, looked decidedly pleased with themselves. “We’re missing French!” Sasha announced. Victoriously, they slammed their backpacks down onto the desk-chairs. “How many more periods until lunch?” Geoffrey asked.
They had no idea of the danger. “Don’t you realize,” Ms. Hempel cried, shutting the door behind her, “all the terrible things that could happen to you?”
The class regarded her coolly. The whole assembly, they explained, was not for their benefit. They weren’t small or cute enough anymore. They were too wised-up. “Want some candy, little girl?” Elias said in a cooing voice. Who would fall for such a stupid trick? Probably even the fifth and sixth graders knew better.
“I mean,” Sasha said, “we’re not exactly the ones to worry about.”
“I know!” A chorus of agreement. And then, the cherished complaint: no one seemed to have noticed the fact that they were, virtually, in high school and thus fully capable of handling their own affairs.
“Haven’t you heard,” persisted Ms. Hempel, “about the clowns? Who kidnap you? Who drive around in vans!”
“Oh, Ms. Hempel,” Julianne sighed. “We’re fine. Really.”
“Can you imagine,” Sasha asked, “a clown taking off with Jonathan Hamish?”
The class turned and looked at Jonathan, who had peeled the sole off his sneaker and was now trying to insert it down the back of Theo’s shirt. The logic went: in the unlikely chance that Jonathan could be swayed by the promise of bottle rockets and lured into the back of a dark and fusty van, he would exhaust the clowns before anything creepy might happen. The kids chuckled at the thought: the clowns slumped over, wigs askew, wearing the same dazed, disbelieving expression they sometimes saw on the
