Chapter 1 Nicola
THREE MONTHS LATER
MURDERER.
It’s scribbled across one of my paintings in thick, black marker. Permanent marker. I stand in front of my classroom bulletin board, staring at that word, reading it over and over until it fissures into nothing more than a series of lines and curves.
The painting is of a rickety dock extending into Ellicott Creek.
Algae clumps around the posts, the tall grasses on the banks sticking out like paintbrush bristles.
My dad used to take me fishing there when I was little.
He’d pull his bucket hat down over my forehead until I could barely see out from under the fraying brim, and we’d eat peanut-butter-and-potato-chip sandwiches while we waited for a nibble on the line.
MURDERER.
I rip the painting off the bulletin board and shred it into tiny pieces—until there’s no more dock and no more creek, and no more murderers. Then I toss them into the nearest trash can and tuck the remaining pieces of art into my cardboard box.
I scan the classroom, debating what else to take.
Every set of brushes, every tube of paint was paid for out of my own pocket.
That’s how it always goes in underfunded school districts.
I should strip the cabinets; I don’t owe my administration anything.
But then I think of the students, of myself at their age—feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere, not even in my own body, which outgrew four pairs of khakis in a single school year—and I remove one set of markers from a drawer.
These were expensive, professional-grade.
If my life’s going to be nothing but free time for the foreseeable future, I might as well get some drawing done.
I’m about to close the drawer when I hear the shuffle of footsteps behind me.
“Ms. Fischer?”
One of my students, a third grader named Ava, stands in the doorway, a braided pigtail hanging over each of her shoulders. The ends are stiff from being sucked on all day. “Are you leaving?”
I walk around my desk and lean against the edge. “Yes.”
“Will you be back next year?”
“I don’t think so.”
“My mom says if you come back next year, I have to go to another school.”
I’m not surprised. Last week, someone accidentally CC’ed all the teachers on a PTA email chain about my “continued employment at our school.” Devon Brewster’s mother called me a “distraction”; Kamryn Geary’s claimed her daughter felt “threatened.” More than forty messages followed with various complaints: I’d invaded their children’s personal space, raised my voice without cause, was overly critical of their work, created an “unsafe environment for learning.”
The worst part was that even after fifteen years of teaching—after running after-school programs without pay, coordinating field trips, and setting up gallery shows—I still found myself mentally replaying every lesson from the past month, searching for signs that I’d been the bad teacher they all said I was.
Ava seesaws the joint in our wooden manikin’s elbow up and down. “Art class is my favorite. I don’t want you to leave.”
“I’m sure your new teacher will be just as good,” I say, but deep down, I hope their new teacher is a screw-up who sends half the students home with acrylic paint all over their clothes.
“I don’t think anyone could be as good as you.”
The space behind my eyes grows warm, a surefire sign I’m about to start crying.
That’s what matters. Not what parents say, not what the administration says.
Parents see me for—what?—three minutes at pickup?
Ava spends a hundred and fifty minutes with me each week.
We’ve painted watercolor landscapes on paper plates, sculpted papier-maché birds out of soupy newspaper.
We’ve practiced drawing in one-point perspective, and then reversed that perspective because there’s always more than one way of looking at things.
Ava doesn’t know anything about what happened with my father. All she knows is that I care about her. I hold out the set of markers I’d been about to take home. “Here.” I shake it, and the plastic barrels rattle against the cardboard. “For your drawings.”
She tentatively steps forward and takes them. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”
Ava grins at me. She’s missing one of her front teeth; I remember her trying to give a closed-mouth smile on school picture day, just like her mom had instructed.
“Thanks, Ms. Fischer,” she says before sprinting out of the classroom, the untied laces of her sneakers skipping against the floor.
I press my thumb and index finger against the bony ridges of my nose and take a deep breath. Wait until you’re outside. Wait until you’re in your car, and no one can see. I pick up the cardboard box, balancing it on my hip, and flip off the overhead fluorescent lights.
It’s the last period of the day, and the hallways are empty.
My sneakers squeak against the vinyl floors as I make my way toward the foyer.
The door to Ms. Landry’s classroom has been left open.
“—heard the PTA refused to release the funds for the new playground equipment unless they agreed to do something.”
Ms. Landry—Jenny—sits at her desk in the corner. Across from her in the metal student desks are two of our coworkers, Mrs. Walsh and Ms. Camus. I hover in the doorway, out of their direct sightline.
“Can you blame them?” Mrs. Walsh gestures at the cracked-open blinds, the news vans already congregating just beyond the wire fences. “How are our students supposed to learn with that outside our windows?”
I knock on the doorframe. Three sets of eyes slowly turn to meet mine. Mrs. Walsh’s mouth tics down at the corners, but other than that, their faces remain impassive.
“Sorry, I was just heading out”—I readjust the cardboard box in my arms—“and wanted to say goodbye.”
Mrs. Walsh fiddles with her bracelets; Ms. Camus looks down at her phone.
“Take care of yourself,” Jenny says. We were both hired at the beginning of last year and quickly bonded during the district-wide training sessions that all new employees were required to attend, the ones where you write your reason for teaching on a Post-it note and stick it on the cafeteria wall.
Fresh out of graduate school, she was nervous about managing her classroom, so I volunteered to spend my free periods sitting at her back table, handling any discipline problems that arose.
Every Friday, we’d order a pitcher of room-temperature lager at Barry’s and toast to being one week closer to summer.
I wait for her to say something else, invite me out for a farewell drink maybe, but instead, she picks up her purple felt-tip pen and starts marking quizzes.
I search for something to break down the wall between myself and them, but no matter what I come up with, it won’t change the fact that those news vans are parked outside because of me.
“Well,” I say, “have a good rest of the school year.”
No one looks up as I leave. I get a few steps down the hall before I hear from inside the classroom, “Can you believe her?” Mrs. Walsh. My sneakers seem to stick to the floor as they continue talking.
“It’s her last day—” Jenny starts, but the other two aren’t having it.
“Thank god for that,” Mrs. Walsh says.
“Are you watching the show?” Ms. Camus has dropped her volume, but her words can still be heard up and down the hallway. “She knew what her father was doing. That last girl—what was her name?”
“Claire.”
“Claire. She befriended her, lured her back to their house, and then—” A sharp knock makes me jump—Ms. Camus’s knuckles against the desk. My cardboard box clatters.
Someone makes a shushing sound. “Did you hear that?” Jenny whispers. “Is she still out there? Should we check?”
“Please.” Mrs. Walsh. “She knows what everyone thinks of her.”
“Maybe we should be more careful.” Ms. Camus. “She has the staff directory. She knows where we live.”
Silence falls over the classroom. And then, all of them burst into laughter. They’re like girls at a slumber party—holding flashlights under their chins and swapping stories about boogeymen that hide at the back of the closet. Except, in this case, I’m the boogeyman.
Claire.
I slam my shoulder against the front door and step out into the summer heat.
The shouting begins the moment the reporters realize it’s me.
The week To Catch a Killer, the true crime show responsible for my dad’s arrest, premiered, news vans clogged up half the school parking lot.
Parents draped jackets over their children’s heads as they hurried them through the front doors.
It took the police showing up, court order in hand, before they finally moved behind the wire fences.
Digging around in my pockets, I find my keys and press the unlock button.
My car beep-beeps from the front of the parking lot.
I slide the cardboard box into the trunk before slipping in behind the steering wheel.
If I leave now, the news vans will follow me, like floats in a homecoming parade.
But if I wait the half hour until dismissal, I might be able to lose them in traffic.
Minutes tick by as the pickup line grows longer and longer, and with every car that pulls in front of the school, something builds deep in my chest. It feels like more and more sets of eyes are turned in my direction.
I squeeze my own shut, but the moment I do, Mrs. Walsh’s words reverberate through my mind: “She knows what everyone thinks of her.”
That I was the bait. They found a family photo tucked under the sun visor in my dad’s pickup truck.
I imagine him flashing it to a girl walking along the side of the road.
“I have a daughter about your age. Wouldn’t want her walking home in this weather.
” He thumbs the heater up a few notches.
“Get in and warm up. We’ll have you home in no time.
” He smiles at her, eyes crinkling at the corners, and pulls the latch, swinging the door wide.