Cutting Teeth(79)

“They’re only doing the kids with the syndrome,” Robin explains, glancing around the other worried faces.

“But that’s—that’s—” Rhea searches.

Nearby, Asher’s dad removes his cupped hand from around his cell. “Completely legit,” he says. “I’m on my phone with my criminal defense attorney buddy.” Robin nods at this, as though they’ve all been waiting for him to report back. “Apparently they can do it. The more invasive the search, the more justification the police need to have—so that’s why they’re not doing everybody, see, they’re tailoring it. But—yeah?” He waits to listen to advice from his friend before returning his focus to the moms. “It’s a big misconception. They can search backpacks, cubbies, anything. The school has no duty. The kids can even answer questions without a parent present. He says they probably already have done all of that and we’re just now hearing about it.”

To Rhea’s relief, Darby gets momentarily roped into another group’s tittering. Mary Beth hooks her hand around the back of her neck and stretches it, looking up at the ceiling. “So now we’re trying to figure out what to do. Because we don’t want to make things worse,” Mary Beth says.

Rhea’s mind feels like an object spinning so fast that it doesn’t appear to be moving at all. She’s suspended in motion, unable to break loose of her spiral. She’s made no progress by the time she feels Darby’s reentry—Get over it, Rhea tells herself silently, she knows she should get over it, but while Rhea has a lot of strengths, that isn’t one of them.

“I feel like I’m not doing the best job crisis managing right now,” Darby says diffidently. “But I’m sorry. It’s very hard to form a plan when I have no idea what the hell’s going on.” Her voice rises. “We don’t know what they already have—Robin over there swears the children did artwork in which they did footprints using finger paint and now where are those pictures? Where are they?” Darby looks like a mother who’s lost sight of her child in the mall. It’s this reaction, this appalled, panicky, how-is-this-happening-to-me knee jerk that kicks Rhea out of orbit, plummeting her back down to Earth, because in the entirety of their four-year friendship, which may, after all this, in fact be its entirety, Rhea can’t think of a time she’s seen Darby take anything so seriously.

Asher’s dad hangs up the phone. “We need to be strategic. What are our options and how will it look if we don’t cooperate?”

“So. I don’t understand,” Rhea says. “What’s this mean? This means that our kids are—our kids are officially, like, suspects? What about Griff?” The thought just springs out. It’s not premeditated, not like murder.

“What about him?” Darby spins on her.

Rhea shrugs it off. “I don’t know. He had beef with Miss Ollie, that’s all I’m saying.”

“You had beef with Miss Ollie,” says Darby, her neck turning a deep shade of garnet.

“It’s different,” Rhea replies, and it is, in some way she can’t fully articulate that probably has a lot to do with the fact that she’s a woman and women don’t slice off a lady’s fingers and let her bleed to death. Women aren’t violent.

Except that’s not true. Because Rhea apparently is.

Watching her two friends bicker, Mary Beth looks like she’s developed a very painful cavity. “Let’s stop and show each other some grace. Please,” she begs.

Darby and Rhea both look like they’re fresh out of grace.

Asher’s father clears his throat. “We don’t know if the kids are suspects or if one specific kid is a suspect or what.”

Rhea’s mind is in free fall and she’s starting to think somebody cut the bungee. They’re taking the kids’ footprints. They tried to get a DNA sample—oh god, that sample belonged to Bodhi. The realization smacks her with such force she feels unsteady on her feet. Rhea, for better or worse, has been here, seen that. She’s done the whole arrest thing. And if anyone’s naive enough to think cops will ask questions first and make decisions later, they better think twice. The thought of Bodhi mixed up in all this, the chances of that on the rise.

Screw deep breaths. Rhea is not okay.

“Not all the kids anyway,” adds Maggie’s mom, Roxy, who has clearly been listening in. “Remember! Only the biters!”

“But Bodhi isn’t,” Rhea blurts.

“Isn’t what?” Mary Beth asks. “What are you talking about?”

“Excuse me. Excuse me.” Rhea begins pushing through the parents. For starters, Rhea has lost her mind. And when you lose something, what’s the one thing you’re supposed to do? Go back and find out where you last had it. Only problem is Rhea has no idea when or where that was. Did she have it when Bodhi told her over Chick-fil-A this morning how he’d been defiling the school? Did she have it when she talked to those two officers in her house? Did she have it when she went on air and gave an interview implying she had Bodhi’s syndrome under control? Did she have it when she tried to get Miss Ollie fired?

Wherever it is, wherever she lost it, it’s long gone by now.

“Bodhi, Bodhi, get out of this line.” She is through those doors so fast that sorry Mrs. Tokem can’t stop her. Rhea hooks her hands under Bodhi’s armpits and lifts him onto her hip.