Chapter Two Piper
Chapter Two
Piper
Piper Mondello entered the “Stinky Room” at the sprawling Hollin Terrace Elementary and Middle School complex, taking note of the exits, the windows on the north and south walls, and the extra-large purse belonging to a woman sitting in the first row.
Incendiary device? Grenades? Or just a metric ton of Target receipts and broken crayons?
Probably just crayons. But you never knew for sure. Piper sat in the empty seat behind the woman with the purse. Best to keep an eye on her.
Mr. Vex, principal and overlord of both the kindergarten through grade five elementary school and the grades six through eight middle school, stood beside a folding table at the front of the room, swiping on his iPad.
Young and nattily dressed, he referred to this space in all written and spoken communication as the Presidential Room.
But this name didn’t stick, probably because of the mysterious odor that sometimes permeated the area, which seemed to come from either a perpetually malfunctioning water heater or an unmentionable issue in the boys’ bathroom next door.
Piper wasn’t crazy about the smell, but she objected to holding PTA meetings here for different reasons.
The windows had no shades, and in the winter when it grew dark early, anyone could lurk outside and peep at the people seated within. The room had only one exit, and the long, narrow dimensions provided little space to maneuver if things went south.
Plus, all forty-five US presidents gazed down at her from the walls, and that didn’t help either.
She gazed back, wondering if Rutherford Hayes had been as difficult as he looked.
Chester A. Arthur must have been a stinker.
And Warren G. Harding allegedly had two mistresses.
Every protection agent’s worst nightmare.
Speaking of stinkers and nightmares, Mr. Vex, whom she suspected of having lofty ambitions, impatiently cleared his throat and glanced at his watch, a smug smile curving his mouth.
She’d already scheduled an appointment with Mr. Vex on Monday. But maybe she should accost him after today’s meeting. This issue couldn’t wait.
She rubbed her eyes, more exhausted now than she’d been after her three-mile predawn run.
She knew too much; that was the main problem. Too much about security threats, predators, criminals, bombs, online scams, human trafficking, pornography, weapons, violence, and the strange things people did with reptiles.
Everything will be fine.
She just needed to relax. That’s why they’d put her on administrative leave after the Incident. So she could relax.
Her fingers crushed the meeting agenda into a ball.
Stop it.
No. Wait. She wasn’t supposed to talk to herself using that kind of tone.
You are a beautiful woman of invincible strength. Calm your mind. Calm your body.
She silently repeated the words of her therapist.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Center yourself.
She inhaled and exhaled slowly, then uncrumpled the paper ball and attempted to iron out the wrinkles with her flattened hand.
See? Everything is fine.
But it wasn’t fine. Not even close. Once again, her mind went back to the message she’d found on her daughter’s iPad last night. She’d read it again this morning, right after her run, hoping it had been a bad dream, that it wasn’t real.
i want to do things to you
A wave of nausea had washed over her as she squinted down at the words. She’d read them over and over again, hoping the letters would somehow realign to reveal a less ominous meaning.
i want to do things to you
Her brain had screamed questions into the early-morning silence. Leaning against the kitchen island, she’d wiped the sweat from her eyes as she looked down at the iPad sitting on the quartz countertop. The girls were still asleep, her husband still out of town, the house dark and quiet.
As far as she could tell, the message had come from one of her daughter’s classmates, Alex Orlov, a boy known for causing trouble.
He’d sent the message two days ago. Her daughter hadn’t replied.
i want to do things to you
She and her husband had tried so hard to shelter the girls from things like this. No cell phones until Christmas of eighth grade. No social media accounts until high school. No Snapchat. No apps like Facetune to make them question the natural beauty of their own features.
You couldn’t be too careful as a parent. Her career as a Diplomatic Security agent protecting State Department personnel around the globe had taught her that danger lurks everywhere, especially if you’re female.
Her time detailed to the FBI, where she dealt with human trafficking, followed by her job focused on domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security all led to the same anxious conclusion: Bad guys were everywhere, doing bad things all the time, and you had to remain vigilant to protect those you loved from harm.
And now in spite of all her precautions, her just-turned-thirteen-year-old daughter was getting messages on her school-issued iPad from a sick boy who wanted to do things to her.
Not with her. To her. That one word made all the difference in the world.
She’d heard about this boy. He’d been kicked out of at least two private schools, and now he’d ended up at Hollin Terrace, the local public school.
She knew she should muster some compassion for this child, but instead she felt a blind rage. She wanted to drive over to his house and lock him in a closet until her daughter turned sixty.
Or she wanted to call her friend Caleb on the SWAT team, dispatch him to the boy’s house, and have him carried away in handcuffs.
But she no longer had that power or any power at all. And rightly so. Because of the Incident. An epic, front-page-of-The-Washington-Post, Saturday-Night-Live-parody-level incident.
She’d assessed a threat. And she’d been wrong. Epically, spectacularly wrong.
She’d been placed on administrative leave, pending an investigation, and would likely be fired at the end of it.
In the meantime, she was required by the Office of Employee Assistance to attend weekly sessions with a therapist to deal with the anxiety that had allegedly led her to make such a catastrophically bad call.
She was quite possibly the only person in America who had a federally mandated therapist.
Her fingers curled into a fist. And what if she was wrong now?
Maybe this boy wanted to take her daughter to a movie. To mini golf. To Chipotle for a burrito. Maybe he really did want to do things with her, not to her. Maybe it was a typo.
But the sick feeling inside her gut told her she couldn’t dismiss this.
When the squeaking floorboards overhead had signaled that the girls had begun to stir, she’d headed upstairs and knocked softly on her oldest daughter’s bedroom door.
No answer.
She opened the door a crack. Dark silence. She entered and turned on the bedside lamp.
Caitlin threw an arm over her eyes. “Already?”
Piper smiled and pushed the wild tangles from her daughter’s face. Her beautiful face.
Piper was attractive. Pretty enough for all practical purposes. But her oldest daughter was stunning. Not pretty. Not cute. But full-on, no-exaggeration beautiful.
So beautiful that people stared in restaurants and the grocery store. Caitlin had just started seventh grade, but she’d skipped the awkward stage, going from adorable child to gorgeous teenage girl.
And every time someone turned to stare, especially if they were male, Piper found herself wishing her daughter were plain. Unremarkable. Average. Safe.
She gazed down at her daughter’s full lips and long lashes. Should she bring it up now? Or wait?
She couldn’t wait.
“Can I talk to you about something?”
Her daughter croaked out a groan. “Seriously, Mom? It’s like four o’clock in the morning.”
“No. It’s 7:00 a.m., and you have to get up for school.”
“Ugh.” A dramatic sigh emanated from under the pillow she’d pulled over her head. “What is it?”
“This.” Her mom opened the iPad and showed her the text.
Her daughter scrambled into a sitting position, outrage emanating from every limb. “You’re reading my texts?”
“I’m not reading your texts. But maybe I should be. Your sister told me about it.”
Caitlin’s mouth curled into a scowl. “That little snitch.”
“She’s not a snitch.” When had her daughter started talking like a prison inmate? “She’s worried about you. And so am I.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d make it, like, a federal case.”
Piper ignored the eye roll. “It’s a very weird text, don’t you think?”
Her daughter rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Yeah,” she finally conceded. “He creeps me out.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us?” Piper tried and failed to keep a note of reproach from her voice.
“Because I knew you’d go all, like, DEFCON five or something,” Caitlin said. “And you’d talk to the principal and get him expelled, and then everyone would hate me cause he’s like, you know, popular.”
Piper forced herself to stay calm. To pretend that her daughter was just like any other witness she’d ever interviewed in the course of an investigation. “Has he done this before?”
“No. I mean, he hasn’t texted me before but . . .”
Goose bumps rose on her skin. “But what?”
“Well, he says things sometimes . . . like . . .” Her daughter looked down and lowered her voice. “Like sex things.”
Bile rose in Piper’s throat, and she swallowed, hard. “What kinds of sex things?”
Caitlin blushed to the roots of her blond hair. “I don’t want to repeat them . . . they’re sick.”
“Okay.” She’d circle back to that when her daughter felt more comfortable. “How often does he say these things?”
“Like . . . I don’t know . . . once a week maybe . . . in the hallway. Or standing in line in the cafeteria.”
“Does anyone else hear him say these things?” Piper asked. A witness always bolstered any claim.
“No.” Caitlin’s fingers twisted the pale-pink sheets as she spoke. “He just, like, whispers them really low and fast, then walks away.”
Piper reached out and smoothed her daughter’s hair before asking one final question. For now. “Are you afraid of him?”
Caitlin looked at her for a long moment. Then her eyes filled with tears as she nodded.
She pulled her daughter into a hug as her heart shattered into a million pieces.
Piper could send a bullet into the center of the smallest circle on the paper target at the gun range.
She’d taught self-defense classes. She traveled all over the world protecting diplomats from harm.
Yet her own daughter went to school every day feeling unsafe.
“Okay.” She took a shaky breath and gave her daughter a reassuring squeeze. “That’s all I need to know. For now.”
They sat like that for a minute or more. Her daughter had gone limp, melting into Piper’s arms as she stroked her hair, as though she were a little girl again, instead of a young woman dealing with all the fears that came with being female.
“What are you going to do, Mom?”
“I’m going to request a meeting with the principal.”
“Mommm . . .” Caitlin’s voice held a note of warning.
Piper held up her hand. “I’m just going to ask them to speak with . . .”
“Alex,” her daughter supplied.
“Right. Alex. And they’ll tell him to stop sending texts and saying creepy things. They’ll tell him to stay away from you.”
“That’s all?” Caitlin’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to, like, throw him into juvie or something?”
I would if I could, Piper thought.
“That’s all.” Piper crossed her heart. “I promise.”
“Do you really have to do this?”
“Do you want him to stop saying these things and sending you inappropriate texts?” Piper asked.
Caitlin gave her mom a duh look. “Of course I do.”
“Then I have to talk to the principal. Because Alex won’t stop on his own.” And if he thinks no one is watching, it will get worse.
Unfortunately, she knew this from experience.
“Okay.” Caitlin nodded slowly. “But Mom . . . you need to know that . . . this is like . . . this is just what school is like now. Some girls get . . . videos . . . from boys.”
“What kinds of videos?”
“Like, sick videos they make at home . . . in their bedrooms.”
Her mother sighed, wishing she could unknow so many of the things she knew. “This is not normal, Caitlin. It’s not acceptable. You should not be threatened and harassed at school. You have a right to feel safe. All girls have a right to feel safe.”
She could feel herself launching into lecture mode and steered herself back to the matter at hand. “Write down the things he says. I’ll call the principal today and quietly put an end to this, okay?”
Caitlin crumpled into her mother’s arms again as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just . . . I don’t want it to become this big thing where everybody knows and I’m like, the bad guy for telling on him.”
“I understand,” Piper said. “We’ll handle it quietly, and we’ll make it stop. Okay?”
Her daughter had given her a weak smile as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Okay.”
The sharp rap of the gavel startled Piper, thrusting her back into the Stinky Room as the PTA meeting started.
“Thank you all for coming today.” The PTA president, resplendent in head-to-toe athleisure wear, gave a queenly smile to all the mothers in the room.
Yes. Mothers, Piper noted. They wrote the bills up for debate on the House and Senate floors, negotiated trade agreements, and were members of the Council on Foreign Relations, but somehow they were still the only members of their two-parent households who attended PTA meetings.
Even this one, the inaugural meeting at the start of the school year, scheduled for maximum inconvenience in the middle of a workday.
Piper’s gaze wandered from the woman holding the gavel to the principal, who sat beside her.
His complacent smile triggered another flash of anger, and she sat up a little straighter. She would not wait until Monday. She’d accost him today, as soon as the meeting ended.
Her daughter’s safety depended on it.