and curled up, dropping her head into her hands and allowing the tears that had been pricking at the back of her eyes since she’d first found the body to spill over.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but the tears weren’t cleansing. She felt just as sick when she forced herself up and into the bathroom to shower, but as soon as she’d stripped off her sweaty clothes she had to run to the toilet to retch.
Her hands shook on the tap as she started the water and she stood under the hot spray until it ran cold, trying to stop the tears that kept falling down her face, trying to forget the sight of that pale body tied so cruelly to the tree.
She had lied to the police when she said she didn’t know the girl. She knew her, there was no mistaking that red hair. It was the girl who’d been smoking on the steps when she came for the interview, the girl whose mother had been meeting with the headmistress.
Who could have done something like that? It was so strange, so cruel, the rope cutting so tightly into that pale skin. She pressed her hands against her closed eyes, trying to stem the tears, trying to push the vision away, but the girl’s pale body appeared over and over again in shocking detail, a slide show of images that began to merge with others until the sound of rushing water became instead a roar of flames and she saw the flickering of reddish orange before her eyes and she opened them with a gasp.
Panting, Lauren stared at the flow of water down her arms, turning her hands so it collected in her palms, where she could just barely see the etched spiderweb of white lines, like trace embroidery or the nearly invisible veins of a leaf.
She felt just as sick when she got out of the shower. She had less than an hour to get ready for class, less than an hour to forget what had happened and focus on teaching.
When she was dressed, with her hair curling in wet strands against her back, she padded into the small kitchen and made a cup of tea, unable to bear the thought of anything stronger.
She carried the cup into the living room and sank into the chair behind the small desk. Spread out on its surface were her lesson plans for the week, meticulous notes in neat, even printing.
Staring down at the page, she remembered the scrawl that had been Amanda’s handwriting, the large, loopy letters racing across hastily written pages. Laughing over silly notes. A lifetime ago.
She shook her head, trying to forget. Amanda was gone, the flat in London was gone, and Michael was gone. They were the past but the past didn’t want to let her go. And alone in the woods coming upon that body in the fog had brought it all rushing back. Amanda, she’d thought when she saw the girl. Amanda.
The sound of paper tearing brought her back. Lauren stared down at the meticulous notes now crumpled in her clenched hands. She dropped them, springing back from the desk.
What was she thinking? She couldn’t teach, she’d been stupid to apply for this job, stupid to leave the safety and anonymity of the city schools. How long before the police showed up asking more questions? They already seemed suspicious that she was running around campus so early in the morning. How long before one of them accused her of the murder of that poor girl?
The small stack of bills neatly arranged on the opposite corner of the desk caught her eye. All she could afford was the minimum payment and on some of them she hadn’t even been paying that.
Lauren sank back down at the desk and smoothed the crumpled pages with hands that trembled. She willed them to be steady. The important thing was not to panic. The police didn’t know her. No one knew her here. She needed this job and she needed to succeed at it. There was no going back.
Early American History was in the main building of the school, in one of the older classrooms. Taking a deep breath, Lauren pushed open the door and walked in. The hum of conversation ceased, just like that, and the sudden scrape of a chair’s legs against the linoleum floor was loud.
Walking briskly to the front desk, her heels clicking like little castanets on the floor, Lauren put her briefcase down and turned to face the class. Twenty girls stared back at her with frank curiosity, none of them looking especially friendly.
“Good morning,” Lauren’s voice sounded loud and falsely cheery in her own ears. She was unprepared for all the students to repeat her greeting in unison. She jumped and someone tittered.
Feeling her face flush, Lauren turned to the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk. It broke with a squeak as she drew a capital “L” and a muffled wave of laughter rolled behind her. She could feel the color in her face climbing her neck and ears and wished that she’d left her hair down instead of pinning it up so she looked more mature.
Scrawling her name quickly across the board she turned. “I’m Lauren Kavanaugh,” she announced, “your new history teacher. Let’s begin with the roll.”
She picked up the list that had been left in the center of the desk and read off the names, trying to still the shaking of her hands.
Each girl responded with “here,” some of them sounding bored, some of them cheerful, some like automata, as if they were just doing time. When she called out Nicole Morel there was silence and her eyes swept the classroom, looking and failing to find anyone responding to that name.
She’d reached Bonnie Wharton when the classroom door suddenly opened and a small girl with short dark hair slunk into the room, books clutched to her chest. “Sorry, Madame,” she said, with an accent. “I got lost.”
A few titters over this. Lauren frowned at the class then smiled at the girl. “No problem, it’s a big campus. I’m Ms. Kavanaugh and you are?”
“Nicole Morel.”
“Aah,” Lauren checked her name off. “Please take a seat, Ms. Morel.”
She looked back down at the roll and without thinking about it called out, “Morgan Wycoff.”
There was sharp intake of breath from a girl in the front row and someone else gasped. Lauren realized her mistake. So this was the girl. She hadn’t heard the last name before. She moved hastily to the next name.
“Rachel Yarrow.”
A plump, sleepy-looking girl raised a languid hand. “Here.”
When the list was done, Lauren turned immediately to her textbook. “We’ll begin with chapter one.”
By noon, with two classes under her belt, Lauren felt as if she’d been running a marathon. She paused at a drinking fountain on the way to the dining hall, stepping out of the waves of students flowing past and waiting behind a tiny freshman before hastily swallowing some water.
“You should bring a bottle to class with you.” The voice above her was cool.
She straightened and looked at a dark-haired man in a pinstripe suit grinning at her.
“Ryland Pierce,” he said, sticking out a hand. His nails were manicured. “And you must be Lauren Kavanaugh.”
“Must I?”
He laughed. “Well, you match the description I got from our dear headmistress. I’m St. Ursula’s guidance counselor and I’ve been sent in that capacity to guide you through the hazards of your first official school lunch in our dining hall.”
He
