“Octopus what?” Mary Beth clicks open an X-Acto knife.
“She wants to learn about octopi—what? She’s very into marine life. I thought it was good. What’s yours?”
“Noelle’s doing a storm in a glass. It’s just a small demonstration, nothing fancy.”
Darby shrugs because, in her opinion, storm in a glass doesn’t sound any better or worse than octopus. It does, however, sound less native to a four-year-old. “Hey, why aren’t Lola and Noelle sitting together, do you think?” Darby asks.
The one positive is that Lola was thrilled to see Darby in the classroom. It was like being a celebrity, for both mother and daughter. All of Lola’s classmates shouted things like, “Lola, your mommy is here!” and “Where’s my mommy? Is she coming?” And Lola wanted to hold her mother’s hand and show her activity centers all the way up until it was time for everyone to take their seats for craft time.
“Hm. Not sure,” Mary Beth says distractedly.
“I keep wondering what that meeting would have been about,” Darby says. “So strange. I think it’s going to bug me forever. Like an unfinished sneeze.”
“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
So has Darby, but no use. It was one of the only things she could think about, in fact. Why didn’t Miss Ollie show up to their meeting? Was she already dead by then? Did something come up and she changed course to deal with something or someone somewhere she shouldn’t have been?
There are extra security features in place. Parents and staff wear badges. Kids have wristbands. The parents are paying for an off-duty officer to stand outside the building during school hours. But the parents are talking. What if the killer has a badge? Darby shudders at the thought, at what it could mean.
So far none of the children have come forward with any new revelation. The image of tiny footprints in blood feels more and more like a product of the rumor mill than genuine news.
“Do you have any idea, though?” Darby asks about the meeting.
“Not really.”
Darby watches her friend. “Miss Ollie didn’t give you any kind of hint when you picked up Noelle?”
“No.” Mary Beth looks up from the cartons and out the window. It’s a nice view over the garden from here. Beyond it, the iron-cross steeple of the church’s independent chapel cuts into the sky.
“What came up?” Darby asks without agenda. Or without much of one. “I mean, why’d you have to cancel?”
Again, Darby pictures her feet on the cream-colored sidewalk, her winding path through the campus, through the church building, faster and faster she went until she had nearly broken into a run. By the time she returned to the classroom, sweating and disoriented, there was no adult present, just a lingering scent of something that Darby remembered distinctly smelling like eucalyptus.
“I had a doctor’s appointment I forgot about,” says Mary Beth. “And my head, you know, not cooperating.”
“Oh,” Darby says. Though Mary Beth keeps a calendar. A pretty, floral day planner. Not just the impersonal one on her iPhone. “Is everything okay?”
Mary Beth sighs, as though for the first time ever Darby has finally succeeded in cracking her nice-lady exterior, as though Darby has annoyed her. “Everything’s the same,” she says.
Darby bites her tongue for a full five seconds, but it’s no use, she has more to say, Darby always has more to say. She’s what’s referred to as a verbal processor. A therapist once told her, so she knows it’s true. “It just, it makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Do you think she’d still be alive?”
Mary Beth fiddles with getting the X-Acto knife through a pulpy section of the carton. “I don’t know. I can’t think that way.” Her eyes glisten.
Fantastic. She’s upset Mary Beth. She’s a monster. Because Mary Beth actually is this nice, deep down, underneath it all. Darby has run tests.
“You know, I think I’ll go ask the girls why they’re not sitting together,” offers Darby.
Technically speaking, she’s abandoning Zeke, but his sloth truly is beyond all hope. “It’s kind of fun being part of the class,” she says as she makes her way over to Lola when, out of the blue—
“SHIT!”
Darby stiffens and a mere foot away Mrs. Tokem snaps to attention. The fact that Mary Beth was the one to utter—no—shout an obscenity seems to have short-circuited the hardwiring in Darby’s brain.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Darby can’t take one more bad thing.
“Shit,” Asher parrots, followed by a few of the other boys in class. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“That’s not a kind—” Mrs. Tokem scolds.
Mary Beth holds up her trembling hands. She’s cradling her right with her left, thumb pressed into the webbing of her opposite. Two thick streams of blood dribble out over her nail and slide down her wrist.
Darby’s molars press hard together. “You poor thing.”
Mary Beth’s nose wrinkles as she squeezes her eyes shut. “Is it bad?” she asks, turning her chin. “I can’t look.”
The whole scene unfolds in the most eerie silence save for the sound of Mary Beth sucking in air through her teeth like a beached fish. Darby won’t know how to describe it when she tries telling Griff later this evening—Creepy, menacing, my actual spine tingled. Absolutely one of those had-to-be-there situations.
Mary Beth seems to be exhibiting a gravitational pull on the children, so drawn are they, these small bodies, to her. Bex wears light-up sneakers that blink purple with each step; the peach fuzz around Asher’s lips glistens with fresh saliva; Zeke squirms.
Darby clocks the moment Mary Beth opens her eyes enough to register what’s happening before her. She pulls her elbows in, making her body into a tight package.
When Darby pushes inelegantly through to her dear friend, she takes her hands in hers, cupping the pulsating wound, and glances out at the gathered children. Their pupils are their own black holes. Lola’s breaths are shallow. Noelle’s nostrils flare.
“Class—it’s just a little boo-boo.” Mrs. Tokem’s voice strains. “Ms. Darby and Ms. Mary Beth have it under control. They are grown-ups.”
Darby surveys the kids—the straight edges of their Chiclet teeth—and tries to remember how many baby teeth are in a child’s mouth. Eighteen? Twenty? Now, there would be a useful science fair project. Multiply by ten. Two hundred little teeth.
She puts her arm around Mary Beth’s shoulder. “I think we better get you out of here,” she murmurs into her ear.
Mrs. Tokem taps shoulders and brusquely demands kids return to their seats or else lose Privileges.
Mary Beth nods once. Brushstrokes of artificial blush stand out on her blanched cheeks.
“We’ll just pop out,” Darby says, already hightailing with Mary Beth to the door amidst at least one or two howls of protest from the class.
In the hallway outside the room, the air feels at least three degrees cooler.
“Shhhh, it’s okay.” Darby hasn’t had a look at the hand yet, but chances are it will be okay. Between the two of them, it’s rare for Darby to be the one in charge. Once at a gymnastics birthday party, Lola threw up in Darby’s lap and Mary Beth jumped into action. She threw away Darby’s cell phone case and went to fetch paper towels from the bathroom before Darby even came out of shock. But this time, Darby’s pleased to find she’s rising to the occasion. She leads Mary Beth down the hall and tests a knob. It gives.