“Just in case you need moral support.” The woman winked as she handed Amy the receipt, along with a pamphlet of local knitting meetups. “There’s a good one for beginners at the library. It’s a great place to learn some more advanced stitches and get involved in community projects.”
Amy thanked the friendly saleswoman and exited the store, bundles of yarn and a new pair of knitting needles tucked under her arm, feeling as if she’d just excavated a long-buried part of herself.
It had been years since she’d knitted anything. Not since she was a child and her grandma had taught her the basic garter stitch, her knotty fingers guiding the needles, steady and sure. She’d found comfort in knitting back then, making blanket after blanket for her dolls and too-short scarves for herself, proudly displaying the results to her soft-spoken grandma whenever she visited. The repetitive motion of the stitching had been a sort of meditation, a way to block out the nightly alcohol-induced shouting between her parents and her mother’s sobs that always followed. Knitting was predictable in a way her father wasn’t.
She shook away the painful memory and resumed her path toward the coffee shop. The rain had tapered off and her boots skipped across the sidewalk a little more lightly than they had only a few minutes earlier. She envisioned the hat she’d knit for Phoebe. There was time to finish it before winter. Maybe she’d even knit a second one for Simone and encourage Phoebe to give it to her as a peace offering. It could be the first step toward restoring their friendship before another hurtful note landed in the mailbox.
Five
Jane
“Clean up your workstations, people.” I inhaled the stinging odor of sulfates and peroxides before gulping the last dregs of coffee from my mug. Five minutes until I’d officially survived Monday morning. “Test tubes should be rinsed out in the sink before you put them away.”
Students shuffled around me, shoving past each other and positioning themselves for a quick escape. At the sound of the bell, they filtered through the narrow door, like pressured gas diffusing from a vessel. Alone in relative silence, I rinsed out my mug, my stomach complaining of hunger. From the hallway, Elena closed the door to her classroom. Her colorful silhouette rushed past my doorway in a blur. I hadn’t seen her since Friday, and whether my last glimpse of her had been at school or on the nature trails, I still wasn’t sure.
Following a minute behind her, I entered the teachers’ lounge where tiny particles of dust floated in a ray of sunlight beaming through the window. Elena had already found a spot at our usual table. A half-dozen other teachers who preferred the lounge to the cafeteria bustled around, opening containers and microwaving frozen lunches.
“Morning,” I said, clutching my insulated lunch bag containing Chinese leftovers and a mandarin orange.
“Hi.”
I sat across from her, opening a white carton of veggie fried rice. A forgotten newspaper lay folded on the table between us.
Elena shook her head, her eyelids lowering. “Sorry about Friday. I got caught up with some personal stuff.”
“No worries.”
“Did you guys go without me?”
“No. We decided to reschedule. This Friday, if you can make it.”
“Okay. Good.” She peeled the lid off a fruit salad. “I hope I didn’t mess up your Friday night.”
“No chance of that. I ended up walking my dog on the river trail. The weather was perfect.”
Elena had been about to take a sip from her reusable water bottle, but she lowered it back onto the table. “It was so nice on Friday and Saturday.”
I waited for her to say something about also being on the river trail on Friday, but she only took a bite of her sandwich and glanced out the window. I stirred my rice, realizing how silly I was to think she’d taken an unauthorized, off-campus nature walk with a student.
“I saw you talking with Rowan after school. Everything okay there?”
“Oh, yeah. I asked him to stay late. He seems to be one of those kids who is falling through the cracks.”
“Yep. He’s a loner. Real quiet. Word is he got kicked out of private school a couple of years ago for fighting.” I lowered my voice and stretched toward her. “He wore a shirt with a picture of a machine gun on it to school last year. And, of course, you know about the watch list, at least according to the email that we weren’t supposed to see.”
Elena dipped her chin, her mouth downturned. “Yeah, I saw that stupid email. I hate that there’s a list. It’s so Orwellian.”
“A little unfair maybe, but I’d rather deal with an Orwellian list than a pissed-off kid showing up to school with a gun.”
Elena leaned back, blinking. “Of course. I just thought if I connected with Rowan over something that he’s good at, maybe we can prevent the whole gun thing from ever happening.”
I nodded. “Your logic is solid.”
“I’m starting a poetry club. Rowan told me he writes poetry in his free time. He showed me some of his work. It’s dark but actually really good.”
A piece of fried broccoli stuck in my throat, but I choked it down. “You have to get Albright’s approval for after-school clubs. Talk to Jefferson first.”
Elena peered into her lunch bag. “There’s nothing to approve yet. Besides, who can argue against poetry? It’s therapeutic. It’s exactly what Rowan needs. Poetry makes the private world public, as Allen Ginsberg once said.”
I nodded like I knew the reference.
“Anyway, the first meeting isn’t until next Tuesday.”
“No sense wasting time,” I said, my voice laced with sarcasm.
For as artsy-fartsy as Elena was, she got things done. She didn’t sit on the sidelines and complain. I admired that about her, even though it wasn’t clear whether her unapproved poetry club was a viable solution to the nation’s epidemic of school shootings.
I slid the abandoned newspaper toward me, cringing at the headline. The Silver Slasher Strikes Again. “Oh, no,” I said, eyes scanning the article. Over the past two months, there’d been a series of sexual assaults against college students on the nearby university campus, each one escalating in violence. People referred to the perpetrator as The Silver Slasher because of the shiny silver blade he held to his victims’ necks as he assaulted them, as well as his trademark move of stealing a piece of jewelry from each victim. This time, the victim was a nineteen-year-old woman walking home from a fraternity party.
Elena’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Why can’t they catch this guy? It’s so sad that women can’t even feel safe to walk alone at night.”
“He’s a real sicko. It says he stole this woman’s silver bracelet before he ran off.”
“The perp is probably some entitled frat boy.”
“That’s what I thought, too, but all of the women have described him as over thirty. I guess none of them really saw his face.”
The door burst open and Nick sauntered through with a crumpled brown bag in hand. He greeted the PE teacher and then headed toward us. “Hello, ladies. Mind if I join you?”
“Please.” Elena motioned toward an empty chair next to hers.