Chapter 1
The teacher’s phone stayed in her hand after she finished speaking.
She didn’t put it in her pocket or set it on the desk. She held it with both hands, the way I held my lunch tray when I was afraid I might drop something. Her short brown hair had fallen forward near her cheek. The pen was still between two fingers of her other hand.
The classroom had gone quiet around us.
Morning light lay across the floor in pale rectangles. I could hear the vent clicking above the whiteboard and the small scrape of a chair somewhere near the windows. Nobody was supposed to be watching, but I knew some of the children were. Their heads were turned just enough to pretend they weren’t.
My sleeve was still pushed down.
I pulled it over my forearm.
The teacher noticed, but she didn’t grab my hand. She only lowered herself into the chair beside me. Her knees made a soft sound against the desk.
“Emily,” she said, and then she stopped.
She had already said my name. She had already asked how I got those. She had already heard me say what happened at night. The words were still in the room, even though nobody repeated them.
I looked at the clock.
The red second hand moved toward pickup time.
My stepmom was supposed to come after school. She didn’t like waiting. If a teacher kept me late, she asked questions in the car with both hands tight on the steering wheel. Sometimes she asked the same question all the way home, as if the answer might change if she made me hear it enough.
The teacher followed my eyes to the clock.
“You’re not going to the pickup line right now,” she said.
My stomach tightened.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.” Her answer came quickly, but her face stayed careful. “You’re not in trouble.”
I didn’t believe that meant I was safe. Adults sometimes said the first part because the second part was harder.
She turned toward the class. “Everyone, take your reading folders to the library table. Mr. Lewis is waiting for you.”
The children moved slowly at first. A boy near the window looked at my arm before he left. I pressed my sleeve flat against my skin. The teacher waited until the door closed behind the last student.
Then she moved her chair a little farther away.
That small distance mattered. She wasn’t crowding me. She wasn’t trying to make me look at her.
“I called someone whose job is to help when a child might be in danger,” she said. “She may ask you questions. You can tell her if you need a break.”
I stared at the scratches in the desktop. There were three of them, parallel and white against the brown surface.
“Is she going to call my stepmom?”
“I don’t know what she’ll need to do.” The teacher’s voice became quieter. “But I’m going to tell her what I saw and what you told me. I won’t make up anything. I won’t leave you alone with someone you’re afraid of.”
The last sentence made my fingers curl under the desk.
I wanted to ask whether my stepmom already knew. I wanted to ask whether she could come into the classroom and take me by the wrist. Instead, I said, “She’ll say I’m lying.”
The teacher breathed in slowly.
“She may say many things,” she said. “That doesn’t change what you experienced.”
I didn’t know what experienced meant. It sounded like a word from a book, not something that happened to a person.
A car door slammed outside.
I flinched so hard my knee struck the underside of the desk.
The teacher looked toward the window, but she didn’t rush to check. She kept her hands where I could see them.
“Do you want the door open or closed?”
“Closed.”
She got up and closed it. The latch clicked. Then she returned to the chair, leaving space between us.
A woman arrived a few minutes later. She wore a dark coat and carried a thin folder. She didn’t introduce herself by stepping close. She stopped at the doorway and asked the teacher whether she could come in.
The teacher nodded.
“I’m with the county child safety office,” the woman said. “My name is Ms. Alvarez. I’m here because your teacher is worried about you.”
I looked at the telephone still on the desk.
Ms. Alvarez looked at it too. “I know this is frightening. I’m going to explain what happens next before I ask anything.”
The teacher’s eyes met mine. They were still shocked from before, but the shock had settled into something steadier.
Ms. Alvarez pulled a chair from the reading table and sat across from me, not beside me.
“You told your teacher you’re not allowed to sleep at night,” she said. “Do you want to tell me what you meant?”
My mouth went dry.
The clock kept moving.
May you like
I pulled the red sleeve over my hand and tried to decide whether telling the truth would make the afternoon worse than going home.
Then I looked at the teacher’s pen, still trapped between her fingers, and understood that the choice had already started.
