Julie waited for Val to tell her what had happened, though she’d already figured part of it out. The video was everywhere online: teacher in narwhal costume loses her cool at a recruiter. The student who had posted the video hadn’t been Val’s, Julie guessed, since they hadn’t named her in the video description. One tried in the comments section, but spelled her name wrong. It probably helped, too, that Val was practically the only person left in the world with no social media presence, so nobody could find her to tag her.
It was possible Val didn’t know the video had been uploaded, but the fact she hadn’t mentioned the incident to Julie meant either it hadn’t been as big a commotion as the clip implied, or it had shaken her so much she couldn’t find a way to talk about it yet. If that were the case, she would be running. Before school, after school. She’d be running to cope, to give herself a release valve. And yet her shoes stood by the door every morning, and she was spending twice as much time as usual on her geography lesson plans.
Val usually left for work an hour before Julie. She was more of a morning person in any case, but it always worked out well to have one spouse showered and ready while the other dragged herself out of bed. It also meant that on the occasions when Julie opened the fridge and discovered Val’s lunch still standing beside hers, she dropped it off at the school.
There was a whole procedure for dropping off stray lunches, for teachers and students alike, implemented when the school was evacuated and a bomb squad called in over a bag lunch a parent had innocently left for his son. Now you had to be rung into the building, then into the office, where the lunch recipient would be called to meet you for a person-to-person exchange.
Julie’s name was permanently on the entry list, so she only had to flash her ID and smile for the camera in order to be let in. She went straight to the office, per protocol; the easier thing would be to go directly to the gym, but the last thing she wanted was to instigate a lockdown.
“Hi, Julie,” said Dinah Magness, the receptionist. “What can I do for you?”
“Val forgot her lunch. I’m dropping it off.” She waved the purple lunch bag.
Dinah frowned. She looked uncomfortable. “You know Val’s not here this week, right?”
Julie didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like looking foolish. She slapped her forehead. “How could I forget? Everything’s so hectic these days. Sorry to bother you!”
One of the great things about a Pilot: you could pay attention to the person with whom you were conversing and also catch the reactions of anyone else in your line of sight. There were two others in the room, the principal’s assistant and a vice principal, both of whom she caught staring. She kept herself from glancing back as she left the office; she didn’t want to see them snickering or talking about her.
She made it all the way back to the car before she let herself think about what she’d been told. “Val’s not here this week” could mean any number of things, and she’d pretended she knew, saved face, which meant she’d failed to get any real information. Maybe there was a training or a meet off campus that she’d forgotten about? Unlikely. More likely that she’d been put on some kind of probation: benched, or penalty-boxed, or whatever sports metaphor worked for this situation.
The next question—where Val actually was if she wasn’t at school—Julie suspected she knew the answer to. If she wasn’t running before or after school, she must be running during. Val was lacing her shoes in some park or neighborhood and running the whole day away. It was as good a reaction as any, except that she’d flat-out denied it. That was the likely truth Julie was left holding, alongside a purple lunch bag full of—she checked—two packets of that disgusting runner’s gel, two protein bars, and a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich. Her wife had chosen to pretend to go to her job every day rather than admit what had happened. It was a lie, or a lie of omission, and they weren’t supposed to do that to each other, at least not on things that mattered.
And now she had to get to work, too. Staff meeting this morning, all hands on deck, which would provide ample time to think about how to broach the subject with Val while Evan talked at them for an hour.
• • •
Julie left work early with some files she could work on remotely; she wanted to beat Val to the house. Sophie had asked if she could have dinner at her friend Gabe’s, which Julie had maybe said yes to a little too readily, but it made what Julie wanted to do easier.
She set the table with their good plates, on each of which she carefully arranged one protein bar, half a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, and an artful drizzle of chartreuse energy gel. It was the most elegantly composed plate she’d ever created, even if it lacked some important food groups. She lit candles and ironed the napkins. What wine paired with peanut butter? The Internet said Lambrusco, which she’d never heard of, so she went for a cabernet they’d had in the cupboard for a while.
Val returned at exactly the time she usually came home from coaching.
“Hi!” she called. It wasn’t unusual for Julie to bring work home in the afternoon in order to be there when Sophie got in. Julie heard a bag drop to the ground, then shoes being tossed toward the shoe pile.
“How was your—crap.” Val’s response to the table was everything Julie had hoped for, so she didn’t respond. The white-tablecloth, bag-lunch spread said that Julie knew what
