Sarah was decidedly non-athletic. She was a short, slightly plump, seventeen-year-old senior, with unfashionably waist-length dull brown hair and an unfashionably curvy figure. Sarah wore glasses, though behind them were large blue eyes. She proudly flew the flag for the nerd camp. Sarah was very aware she was possibly the smartest student – maybe the smartest person, teachers included – at Travis High. But that didn’t mean she was happy.
Sarah’s brain was not on Coach Halsey’s mind as he noted the girl’s slow progress to her desk. While he taught the mostly bored first-period students about the Reign of Terror, he was trying to recall how many times he’d seen Sarah with bruises. When the bell rang at the end of the period, he stopped her as she made her way to the door. “Sarah, hold up,” he said, his voice neither quiet nor loud.
Sarah paused, her eyes cast down. “Yessir?”
“Your leg?” the coach asked. He was a man of few words.
Sarah shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “I fell on the stairs,” she said.
In the ensuing silence, Sarah’s shoulders stiffened. Finally, her gaze met Coach Halsey’s. He saw that her eyes were filled with rage. He hadn’t expected that. It interested him. He sat down so he wouldn’t be looming over the girl. He thought it might put her at ease. Halsey was well aware he made some people nervous.
Mostly, he was fine with that.
“You’re going to take the SAT again in three weeks?” Halsey asked, after a glance at the calendar.
“Yessir,” she said. “At least, I… I plan on doing that.”
He didn’t ask what might stop her.
“Just two points away from a school record,” the coach observed. “We’re proud of you. The honor you’re bringing the school.”
She smiled quite genuinely. “That’s really nice of you, Coach. Thanks. ’Scuse me, I’m late.” And then she scuttled – well, limped as quickly as she could – to her next class. Halsey noticed that Brian Vaughan was waiting to walk with her. Brian was tall, gawky, and had hair like a bird’s nest. He was a good kid. Brian ran track—not with distinction, but with reliability. Halsey, who was excellent at sizing people up, thought Brian would have a pleasant life unless something crazy happened to him. Halsey knew more than anyone at Travis High suspected (anyone except the principal, Anne DeWitt) about the terrible things that could happen to people. He’d had a previous career that would make parents blanch if they discovered it.
Though he didn’t often spend time in the teachers’ lounge, Halsey got a cup of coffee there at lunchtime. Sarah’s limp was the main topic of discussion that day, though everyone was being carefully oblique. Coach Halsey didn’t join in the talk, but he listened intently.
“James seems okay,” said the older mathematics teacher, very cautiously. “Moody, sure, but healthy.” Sarah’s brother was younger than her by two years, but he was tall and strong and an athlete.
Reading between the lines, Halsey interpreted that to mean that James had no appearance of being abused. Though all the faculty members knew that an abusive parent sometimes picked one child to be the punching bag, James’s well-being made it a bit more plausible that Sarah was genuinely accident-prone.
“James doesn’t seem very happy,” Coach Redding said. James played football for Redding.
“James is a teenager,” the younger biology teacher said. He was the most cynical person on the faculty. “Teenagers are unhappy by definition.”
“That’s simply not true,” the calculus teacher said, giving the biology teacher an unfriendly look. She rose to get some more coffee. “They’re as happy as they’re allowed to be.”
“I asked Sarah about her home life,” said the school nurse, and there was a silence in the lounge. “She came to me because her arm was hurting. She said she’d fallen. But there was a mark on her upper arm, looked a lot like a grip mark.”
The faculty members present all stared at the nurse, a middle-aged woman with a sweet face and a practical air about her. “And she said?” asked the older math teacher.
“She said everything was fine at home,” the nurse said, and shrugged. “She said that her father grabbed her to keep her from falling off the front porch. What are you gonna do?”
There was a moment of silence. If Sarah would not confide in someone as trusted as the nurse, she would not confide in anyone, was the unspoken consensus. And if her brother James wanted to report what was happening to his sister – if anything was – he’d had plenty of opportunity. It was not a clear-cut situation. The previous principal, the one before Anne DeWitt, had made an accusation of abuse that had proved to be false, and they were all gun-shy as a result.
After the last bell of the day, Coach Halsey went to the principal’s office. He was glad to see that the secretary had already left, because he wanted to talk to Anne DeWitt without Christy’s sharp ears listening. He knocked on the doorframe of the inner office. Anne looked up from the pile of paperwork on her desk.
“More to fill out?”
“The government,” she said tersely. Anne was in her thirties, young for a high school principal. She was lean and muscular and quietly attractive. When she’d been hired as assistant to the previous principal, the school board had been impressed not only with her steady and serious demeanor, but her glowing recommendations. Also, they’d figured that her status as a childless widow meant she would be free to put in long hours. When Principal Delia Snyder had committed suicide (a shocking and tragic loss), Anne had been a shoo-in to fill the post. The school board had no idea what a total package they were getting. Under another name, Anne DeWitt had trained government operatives at a secret camp. She had trained them to survive in extreme conditions. Naturally, a few students had failed her class by dying; Anne had made a few enemies during her service. Her new name, background, and occupation were fabrications she would maintain the rest of her life—a kind of severance package.
Holt Halsey, who’d graduated from a similar class, waited quietly while Anne took care of a few more forms. When she looked up and stacked the papers neatly, signaling she was ready to talk, Holt said, “We have a problem.”
“Penny Carson?”
“No… wait, the Spanish teacher? What’s she up to?”
“I saw her coming out of a liquor store in Candle Springs. Why go to a liquor store in another town unless you’re buying a lot more than you should be consuming?” They both understood that the issue was not Penny Carson’s morals. The issue was the potential scandal and bad publicity for Travis High School if a teacher was discovered to be an alcoholic.
“So you might have to have a talk with her.”
“Not on the basis of one out-of-town trip to a liquor store,” Anne said briskly. “But I’m going to keep an eye on her.”
Halsey nodded, accepting Anne’s judgment. She’d been trained to evaluate hazardous situations, and she was usually very accurate. “Sarah Toth was limping today,” he said without preamble. “She’s getting beaten at home, but she won’t talk about it. This is not the first time she’s come to school with perceptible physical issues. And the SATs are in three weeks. I’ve never met her parents. Have you?”
“JimBee and Lizzy.” Anne leaned back in her office chair. “Yes, I’ve had the pleasure.” She crossed her legs, and Holt enjoyed the view.
“Seriously, JimBee?” he asked.
Anne shrugged. “His real name is Jim initial B period Toth. When he was in elementary school, someone thought it was cute to call him JimBee.”
“And he’s let people keep it up.”
Anne spread her hands in a “what can you do?” gesture. “I’ve been concerned about Sarah’s home life since last year,” she said. Sarah had first taken the SAT in her junior year, and her score had attracted a great deal of attention. “I’d hoped the situation would improve over the summer. I helped Sarah apply for computer camp, which meant four weeks away from home for her, but whoever’s hurting her just can’t stop. I guess it’s time to start the ball rolling.” She smiled at Holt. “Not a baseball reference. I’ll give the Toths a call.”