“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.
“Ma’am, it’s a simple footprint. We’re getting them for all of the children,” says the forensic podiatrist, whose mannerisms and golf-ready haircut suggest that he’s the equivalent of an accountant in the world of cool CSI jobs.
“No. You’re not, actually.” She draws herself up to her full height and tries to pay no mind to the many eyes now looking on. Rhea’s heart is trying to escape from her chest. “Bodhi isn’t a biter, okay? So, this—” She gestures widely. “—isn’t applicable to him. He shouldn’t be in the pool of suspects.”
“What do you mean he’s not a biter?” Darby calls from outside the door.
Rhea’s upper lip is sweating. Bodhi’s small for his age, but at four and a half, he’s still getting heavy. “I mean, he’s not interested. He’s never bitten me or craved blood or wanted any part of it.”
“You went on national television.” Robin summarizes the obvious.
“Yeah, I did. Because y’all asked me to. And I never confirmed or denied that he had it. I never specifically did,” Rhea replies.
“I think you know what you led people to believe.” Robin is backed up by many, many grumblings of assent. “You told everyone to be empathetic and available and—”
“Okay. Then I led them to believe wrong.”
“Wow.” Asher’s dad says wow exactly the way she’d expect Asher’s dad to say wow. “And why should we believe you now?”
There’s probably a whole lot of psychological shit—okay, bad word choice—that she’s going to have to unpack in order to sort through why her son’s been defecating all over school, and chances are some of that baggage is going to belong to her. Maybe her son’s dead teacher did know something about something after all. But one thing Rhea doesn’t have wrong is that she loves Bodhi. And she’s not going to permanently screw him up. Not for the world.
She looks frantically around, feeling trapped.
“I’m sorry.” Robin doesn’t sound even a little bit sorry. “You want us to just take your word for this?” Rhea doesn’t need anyone to translate: The currency exchange rate between her word and theirs isn’t favorable.
She slides Bodhi off her hip, onto the ground. A shiny pair of grown-up scissors sits in a cup too high for the children to reach. Rhea crosses the room and flips the scissors open to as close to 180 degrees as she can manage. Nobody stops her and she might think about that for a minute later, might wonder if, were it one of the other mothers, like Darby or Mary Beth, would they have all rushed to scream No! Either way, once she’s begun the gesture, with no objections, she has little choice but to go through with it.
The blades are a cloudy gray color and not that sharp. It takes four times, sawing over the same spot on her arm, before she gets a solid trickle of blood—bright and red enough that she can make a presentation of it. She knows better than to baby the arm, although it does sting. She brings it over to Bodhi. “Here. I got this for you.” She crouches down beside him. His chin jerks in the opposite direction. “Bodhi,” she says, loudly enough so that the gawking parents can hear. “Take a drink. It’s okay. I’m saying it’s okay.”
Bodhi sticks out his tongue. “Disgusting!” He sounds like such a little kid. “Blech! Get it away, Mommy!”
“Are you thirsty?” She tries again patiently. There was some small risk that Bodhi would have changed his mind, but no, he’s still her Bodhi. She doesn’t recognize the shift in the room’s chemistry, spreading out like a gas leak between the children. There are no carbon monoxide alarms for this sort of thing, no warning bells, and Rhea has been so divorced from the reality of the situation for so long that maybe the most genuine evidence that Bodhi has never exhibited any sign of being a biter is the way her back stays turned from the side of the classroom where the forensic podiatrist continues to ask children to step on clear, sticky sheets, one by one by one.
“So what?” Robin presses. “You’re in the habit of acting like an expert about things you know nothing about? I think that really says something about you and your brand, Rhea.”
Rhea opens her mouth to respond and thinks for an insane second, Did I scream? before she realizes the actual scream has come from just behind her in the moment before she is toppled to the ground by the force of tiny, insistent hands where the aroma of sweet, hot breath fills her nostrils and a knee with a tattered Star Wars Band-Aid clocks her hard in the eye.
THIRTY-THREE
Darby’s phone buzzes.
“My buddy got a tip from one of his courthouse friends. The judge issued a search warrant for your house,” Asher’s father, Bill Brazle, informs her.