“Good morning, Richard,” a voice speaks behind me.
I spin around too fast.
Condrey steps back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you…”
“No, sorry, my fault.” How can I play this off? “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Everything all right?”
“Just fine.” I never envied Condrey’s job. Always juggling the expectations of the progressive parental pack, keeping the school’s numbers up to maintain its reformist status. She serves so many masters. The board of education. The parents.
Others.
“Can I talk to you for a quick sec?” she asks.
Mr. Dunstan lowers his newspaper long enough to clock Condrey and me, then quickly lifts the paper back up to continue humming. What’s that song? It’s really nagging at me now.
“I just wanted to check in. See how everything went last night.” She leans in and whispers, “With Sandy’s mom?”
I can’t meet Condrey’s eyes. I glance off to the side.
Miss Castevet is staring straight at me now. Something has snapped her back into focus.
“Miss Levin called my office a couple of times,” Condrey says. “She won’t leave a message. I haven’t had a chance to call her back, but she’s clearly wound up about something.”
Just tell her…
This is my chance. I can tell Condrey everything. She’s opened the door for me.
Tell her!
Mr. Dustan’s humming has intensified. It’s like he’s conducting a fucking one-man symphony. The drone is so loud, it’s all I can hear. How can Condrey stand it?
“I’m talking to all her teachers,” she says. “Just in case they’ve noticed anything.”
“Anything,” I echo. If I were a bit more shrewd, I would have picked up the context without her having to spell it out. But I’m far too tired for that now. Too numb.
“Have you seen any signs of trouble?” she asks, rather diplomatically.
I focus on Miss Castevet. She hasn’t blinked. Her eyes sharpen themselves against me. I notice the corner of her mouth lift into the slightest smirk. She’s grinning at me.
I can tell Condrey is losing her patience. “Have you?”
Mr. Dunstan’s song drills into my head. The drone of bees. A whole hive. I can see them pushing against the insides of his cheeks, his face bulging, pulsing, alive with writhing insects, his mouth full of them, struggling to break free, break free and sing, sing, sing their song for all to hear.
“I haven’t.”
“Nothing?” Condrey sounds doubtful. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.” I turn to the coffeepot. I open the cabinet above the sink and grab a mug, any mug. This one reads: don’t talk to me until this mug is empty.
“Miss Levin has been a handful all year,” Condrey says behind my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m dealing with her.”
I turn toward her. There must be a puzzled look on my face because she winks right at me, as if to suggest that we’re in this together. Or is it something else?
Why would Condrey wink at me? Why is she smiling like that? “It would help if you could keep an eye on Sandy for me. Make sure she’s okay. We need to stay on top of this.”
“Of course,” I say, pouring coffee.
“Has Sandy…talked to you at all? Said anything that might lead you to believe there’s something going on at home? Anything?”
This coffee is going to eat a hole through my intestinal lining. I can already taste the acid building up in my stomach. But I have to occupy my hands with something. Focus on something, anything, other than this conversation. Other than Miss Castevet—her eyes following me across the room. Other than Mr. Dunstan’s insectal sonata. I have to keep myself from humming along. It’s in me now. I can’t get the ear-worm out of my head.
“She hasn’t said anything to me,” I say, just to fill the air with the sound of my voice and block out everything else. I pull the half-gallon cardboard carton of milk from the fridge. There’s a black-and-white photograph of a face on the carton’s side. A boy smiles back at me. His pixelated face is blurry due to a misprint, his features smeared away from where they’re supposed to be.
have you seen this child?
It’s Eli. His face is on the carton. The milk slips out of my fingers. Condrey and I both leap back as it crashes to the floor.
Mr. Dunstan finally—finally—stops humming as he lowers the newspaper. The room sounds so quiet now. The silence is worse. It’s somehow even louder now than when he was chanting. He was chanting, wasn’t he?
Condrey says something, but I can’t hear anything other than the reverberations from Mr. Dunstan’s song. I thought he stopped. Did he pick up the chant again, or is it in my head?
The song. What is that song?
Milk gushes over the floor, pulsing out from the carton. I lean over to pick it up and then turn back to the other teachers in the lounge. “Which one of you did this?”
Miss Castanet doesn’t say a word. Dunstan shakes his head a bit too quickly.
“Richard?” Condrey asks. “Are you okay?”
I have to pinch my eyes shut for a moment, squeezing them tight before opening them again and discovering the face of another child, some other boy, not Elijah, smiling at me.
I nod to Condrey. Even approximate something like a smile. All good.
“Just let me know if anything comes up.” Condrey keeps at me. She’s choosing to pretend nothing happened. “If we miss something, we could really be in trouble.”
Dunstan’s humming again. I almost yell at him to shut up shut the fuck up but I have to keep it together.
The song. Now I remember where I heard it. I knew I recognized it. It’s from the made-for-TV movie, during the opening credits sequence.
I leave the spilled milk behind and rush out of the teachers’ lounge and into the hall.
“Richard—” someone calls out.
Get to class, I think. Just get to class. I’ll be safe there. In my room. I pull out my keys, rattling in my hand as I fumble through them before finding the right
