shoulder-to-shoulder—was empty, save for the
clusters of empty tables and chairs. At the far end, the end where Christy Bruter had fallen, someone had installed a bulletin
board. Across the top were construction paper cutout letters reading WE WILL REMEMBER , and the board was papered with notes, cards, ribbons, photos, banners, flowers. A couple girls—I couldn’t tell who from
this distance—were pinning a note and photograph to the bulletin board.
“We would have banned congregating in the Commons in the mornings if we’d had to,” Mrs. Tate said, as if she could tell what
I was thinking. “Just out of safety concerns. But it looks like nobody wants to hang out here anymore anyway. Now we only
use the Commons for lunch shifts.”
We walked straight through the Commons. I tried to ignore my imagination, which had my feet sliding in sticky blood across
the floor. I tried to focus on the sound of Mrs. Tate’s shoes clacking against the tile, trying to remind myself of all the
things about breathing and focusing that Dr. Hieler had spent so much time coaching me on. At the moment I couldn’t remember
a single one.
We passed through the doorway at the other end of the Commons, where the administration offices were. Technically, this was
the front of the building. More officers were searching backpacks and passing metal detector wands over kids’ clothes.
“All this security is going to make our mornings get off to a slow start, I’m afraid.” Mrs. Tate sighed. “But, of course,
this way we’ll all feel safer.”
She whisked me past the officers and into the administrative offices. The secretaries looked on with polite smiles, but didn’t
say a word. I kept my face tilted to the floor and followed Mrs. Tate into her office. I hoped she’d let me stay there a long
time.
Mrs. Tate’s office was the opposite of Dr. Hieler’s. Where Dr. Hieler’s was tidy and lined with rows and rows of reference
books, Mrs. Tate’s was a haphazard conglomeration of paperwork and educational tools, like it was part guidance office, part
supply closet. There were books stacked on just about every flat surface and photos of Mrs. Tate’s kids and dogs everywhere.
Most kids came to Mrs. Tate to either complain about a teacher or look through a college catalogue, and that was pretty much
it. If Mrs. Tate had gone to college hoping to counsel scads of troubled teenagers, she was probably pretty disappointed.
If there can be such a thing as disappointment about not having enough troubled people in your life.
She motioned for me to sit in a chair with a torn vinyl seat and she edged herself around a small file cabinet and sat in
the chair behind her desk, dwarfed by stacks of papers and Post-it notes in front of her. She leaned forward over the mess
and folded her hands right in the middle of an old fast food wrapper.
“I was watching for you this morning,” she said. “I’m glad you came back to school. Shows guts.”
“I’m giving it a try,” I mumbled, rubbing my thigh absently. “I can’t make any promises I’ll stay.”
Eighty-three and counting
, I repeated in my head.
“Well, I hope you do. You’re a good student,” she said. “Ah!” she yelped, holding up one finger. She leaned to the side and
pulled open a drawer of the file cabinet next to her desk. A framed photo of a black and white cat pawing at something wobbled
as the drawer moved and I imagined her, several times a day, having to right the photo after it fell. She pulled a brown file
folder out and opened it on the desk in front of her, leaving the file drawer hanging ajar. “That reminds me. College. Yes.
You were considering…” she flipped through a few pages, “… Kansas State, if I remember correctly.” She kept flipping, then
ran her finger down a page and said, “Yep. Right here. Kansas State and Northwest Missouri State.” She closed the folder and
smiled. “I got the program