“Teeth are not for biting.” Miss Ollie’s voice seesaws as she crouches down to eye level with Zeke Tolbert, a chunky biracial boy with a tight fade and striking, crystal-blue eyes. “You know better.”
“I didn’t do anything,” says Noelle as she plucks her giant pink bow from the floor and clips it back in her curly blond hair. “I told Zeke he better stop it. Also I need a Band-Aid.” She holds up her fingers, which are red from being squished.
“Bodhi wouldn’t share his bus and he’s gotten a super long turn. Like, super long.” George Hall, who is always dressed like a tiny golfer, limps to retrieve his lost club loafer.
Rhea feels an earthquake coming on. Her hands tremble as she pulls her son from her body to examine him. A ring of puncture wounds where Bodhi’s neck meets the curve of his shoulder leaks an angry shade of red, leaving behind a Rorschach test of spots on her linen tunic.
“Oh-kaaaay” is all Miss Ollie manages for a handful of seconds. “That’s—okay. We’ll—everyone’s okay.”
Rhea glares over the top of her son’s head. “I’m sorry, what now?” She feels the heat in her hands first, that sensation of warmth spreading through her veins, shooting up toward her head. Her voice trembles; the sight of her son, her sweet, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly baby boy oozing blood from an attack in his own classroom makes her feel as though she’s been sliced open herself. She’s waiting for Miss Teacher-of-the-Year over here to show the same degree of horror she’d reserved for Rhea’s cauliflower just two minutes earlier, but look who’s all laissez-faire now. Maybe she deserves to get bitten, see how “okay” she feels about it then.
“It’s definitely not okay. Okay?”
The teacher stares, open-mouthed. Some of the other children have already resumed playing with blocks and plastic food items and pretend cash registers. George tries to pull a picture book off the overstuffed Read-with-Me shelf and the books that fall off make the sound of dead birds slapping the ground. Miss Ollie’s eyes dart over then back. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s been getting into them.” She takes Zeke’s hand in her own.
“What’s been getting into them? Like this has happened before? Like this is a normal occurrence?”
“No.” Miss Ollie swallows. “It’s not that— I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss incidents involving any of the other children. But I take it very seriously. We’re working through it. Rhea, I understand you’re upset. I’m upset, too. These are like my children.”
“Yeah?” Rhea says. “Except that’s the difference, isn’t it? They’re not.”
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, BODHI ANDERSON
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: Do you know what detectives do, Bodhi?
BODHI ANDERSON: Beep when there’s smoke in the kitchen.
DET. BRIGHT: Beep when there’s sm— Oh, no, those are detectors. I’m a detective. I solve mysteries. Mysteries are stories we don’t know the ending to yet.
BODHI ANDERSON: I don’t want to be that. I want to be a teacher and a veterinarian.
DET. BRIGHT: Sounds like you’re going to be pretty busy. Do you think for today, though, you could help me solve a mystery?
BODHI ANDERSON: What’s the other choice?
DET. BRIGHT: What do you mean?
BODHI ANDERSON: Do you want to color for five extra minutes or would you like to hear the end of this story? Like that.
DET. BRIGHT: Oh, um, you can help me solve a mystery or you can answer some questions. Which one do you want to do?
BODHI ANDERSON: I’ll do the mystery.
DET. BRIGHT: Okay, Bodhi. Can you tell me whether anyone was in your class that day that wasn’t usually in your class?
BODHI ANDERSON: No.
DET. BRIGHT: Even for a second.
BODHI ANDERSON: I guess one person.
DET. BRIGHT: Who was that, Bodhi?
BODHI ANDERSON: Just my mommy.
TWO
“She did seem like she felt really bad about it,” says Darby Morton, who had returned to drop off Lola’s forgotten water bottle—there has been a lot of drama around that water bottle—and had therefore witnessed the immediate aftermath in Miss Ollie’s classroom. Darby has one of those pleasantly round faces with bright skin that makes her nearly impossible to get irritated with, which, in itself, can be a bit irritating, Mary Beth finds, if she’s being honest. “She went pale,” Darby relates, dramatically. “Like a ghost.”
“I don’t care how she feels. It shouldn’t have happened,” Rhea shoots back. There is a lovely tattoo of a hummingbird just below Rhea’s collarbone that Mary Beth finds oddly uplifting at a time like this, which one might not expect to be her official opinion on the matter, but there it is.
The thing about Rhea is that she is granola, which is the polite term Mary Beth’s mother would have used for hippie, and Mary Beth hoped that the mere proximity of fresh-pressed juices and ancient grain bowls at this aggressively healthy café where the three mothers have agreed to meet would have helped to ease her off the ledge.
“Right.” Mary Beth sets down her tea. “Of course. But she’s a fantastic teacher. I think we can all agree, we’re lucky to have her.”
Rhea makes a noise that suggests they cannot all agree.
Mary Beth has yet to remove the large, buglike sunglasses from her face as she sips hot tea while nursing the tail end of a forty-eight-hour migraine. A nasty one, too.
The headaches started sometime after her last pregnancy, though one has nothing to do with the other, according to doctors. After one of her episodes, she invariably craves carbs, ideally in the form of french fries. She imagines the look on the waitress’s face if she were to try ordering some, just for kicks. Perhaps it will be similar to the look she gives when Mary Beth vomits all over this gluten-free menu.
She really does try not to take Rhea’s perspective personally, but if Rhea only fully grasped the number of envelopes Mary Beth stuffed, the scope of fundraising meetings she attended, the Edible Arrangements she delivered just to ensure that the three of them had first pick of teachers this year of all years—the fours.
Less discerning mothers might have been put off by the fact that this is Miss Ollie’s first year teaching at Little, but not Mary Beth. Her résumé alone separated her head and shoulders above the rest. But also, it’s more than that. Miss Ollie seems to prefer the children, teaching them knock-knock jokes, crawling through chair tunnels on the floor, never getting sucked into adult conversation with parents. She’s like magic.
“The dads definitely agree with you on that front. Fantastic is absolutely one of the words they’d used to describe her, I think,” says Darby.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mary Beth lifts her sunglasses to wipe the beads of sweat copulating on the bridge of her nose.
“Oh, come on. All the moms are talking about it. The dads are ogling Miss Ollie. Asher’s dad told his brother—you know, Asher’s uncle—and now that uncle volunteered to pick Asher up from school just to catch a peek for himself. Katia probably doesn’t mind the extra help, though.”