20. Becca
20
BECCA
B ecca sat at her desk, looking out over her classroom.
Come on, she urged Nick inwardly. You can do it.
But the boy seemed to be staring into space, paying no attention to what was written on the board, or the piece of notebook paper on his desk.
She frowned, trying to work out what he was thinking. She’d had to move him, of course, so he wouldn’t be next to his brother anymore. But she still had this last week of school before the holidays to try to figure out what was going on. Since Cal was up front, she had put Nick at a middle seat in the back of the room, where she could keep a good eye on him because of the way she had placed the desks, and where no one could accuse him of looking at his brother’s paper.
Come on, Nick, just look at the board.
As if he had heard her, the boy did turn his attention to the board again. She watched him, holding her breath.
But a moment later, he rubbed his forehead and put his head down on his desk, completely giving up.
He wasn’t cheating, a little voice in the back of her head whispered again, in spite of all evidence.
She sighed, wanting to put her own head down on her desk. It was exhausting spending so much energy trying to prove Nick’s innocence when it seemed clear to everyone that he had been cheating. He wasn’t even defending himself.
You can’t give this all your bandwidth, she told herself. She knew that if she brought this back to Principal Chittenden it might seem like she was just trying to exonerate herself, but that wasn’t the case. She just hated to see Nick so crushed.
And the small, clear voice in the back of her head told her that the only reason he wasn’t trying now was that he felt like everyone had given up on him and assumed the worst.
Her timer went off, and the students who were still working on their papers came to the front to turn them in.
Nick got up too, slowly ambling toward her desk and arriving last. When she took his paper, which was empty of anything but his name, she thanked him, and he glanced up at her.
Nick’s expression left her shaken. His eyes were filled with unshed tears. He looked devastated, as if he truly didn’t want to disappoint her.
Why aren’t you trying? she wanted to scream the words.
“Tomorrow will be a better day,” she told him softly instead.
But he was already slouching back to his desk, looking much older than his seven years.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and saw that it was Cal turning in his seat, watching worriedly after his brother.
Please let me figure this out, she prayed. I can’t let these children down, I’m their teacher.
The rest of the day passed slowly. Becca spent her lunch break helping Aubrey Jensen retake a spelling quiz and go over what she had missed when she was absent the day before. Even though it was supposed to be her free time, Becca felt grateful to the little girl for getting her mind off the Lawrence boys for a few minutes, and letting her help in a way that was meaningful.
After the final bell rang and the children filed out, she gathered all the materials she would need for tomorrow’s lessons, as well as the papers she needed to grade from today, then headed for the hook where she hung her coat.
But she stopped short as a wave of certainty washed over her, clearing away all her other thoughts. There was one more thing left for her to do.
Becca moved back to her desk. Maybe she would feel foolish for it later and think she had thrown away an evening, but she grabbed the folder where she had stashed Nick and Cal’s math tests and went through the last week’s papers to grab every bit of their work since Nick had joined her class.
Maybe no one else believed it, but Becca was sure that something else was going on with Nicholas Lawrence. It was an itch in her brain that she just couldn’t scratch, like when she was reading a good mystery and she knew she had all the clues, but couldn’t see how they fit together yet. Becca might not be Sherlock Holmes, but she knew her way around a classroom.
She was going to get to the bottom of this once and for all, and she was going to do it tonight.