Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
"I'm going to need a Catholic priest to fix this mess."
The irritated voice came from Piper Lowery's left, from a technology staff member hunched over a laptop at the teacher's desk. Piper didn't know if he was talking to her or talking to himself, and she didn't know how to respond. She turned her head toward him and smiled politely.
"I don't know what he did to this thing," the tech guy said, meeting Piper's eyes and speaking quietly. "It looks like it's got every virus in the book, and others I've never seen before. Son of a gun really did a number on this machine."
He motioned toward Mr. Fisher, currently at the chalkboard, diagramming a sentence in front of a classroom of about twenty eighth graders. Above that sentence and to the right, in impeccable cursive, was October 12, 2000, and under that, a list of homework for the week. Piper and the tech guy-she never did catch his name; he'd already been in the classroom when Piper had arrived ten minutes prior-were sitting off to the side while Mr. Fisher taught the finer points of grammar to America's youth. Piper was due to present to the students on behalf of the Clover Creek Public Library any minute, but Mr. Fisher was on a roll and didn't appear to be stopping anytime soon.
Piper wished the man jabbing away at the computer keyboard would stop talking. She didn't know the first thing about computer viruses and felt it was extremely rude to carry on a conversation while class was in session. She'd sensed a few heads from the first row of students turn in their direction when the guy said son of a gun, and she didn't want to encourage him to keep going. For a moment, she considered shushing him. But she wasn't a teacher-only a guest from the library-and the man wasn't even a colleague. So, she just smiled again, with a bit of an Okay, are we done here? look added for good measure.
The tech guy closed the laptop dramatically and sighed. He scratched his unshaven face and adjusted his glasses.
"Tell Glen it might be a while before he sees this thing again, though I don't suspect he'll miss it. In fact, tell him to never touch another computer again. He's got the kiss of death." He ran his finger across his neck, simulating a throat slash. He laughed and winked at Piper before snatching the laptop and walking toward the classroom door. He about ran into Mr. Fisher on his way out, dodging the teacher at the last possible moment with an exaggerated skip of his feet.
Why are tech people always so weird? Piper thought.
She didn't think he was hitting on her with the wink, although being a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old woman in a small town, she wouldn't have been surprised if he was. It had happened before.
But this time? Nah.
The guy was just odd.
She thought back to the tech staff from her college days, and there was also something just a bit off about them. Not bad, just a tad askew. Lacking in the social skills department, mainly. The most normal tech guy she'd ever known was her older brother, Sam, who was a programmer at some software development company in Des Moines-she never could remember the name. Sam could watch an entire extra-innings baseball game with strangers at a sports bar, and no one found him unusual. Piper always thought he'd dodged a bullet.
She realized she was being judgy and tried to cool it.
Like I'm the master of charm all of a sudden? Who am I, Bob Barker?
"Ms. Lowery?"
The teacher's voice shook Piper from her thoughts. She quickly rose from her cracked plastic chair and smoothed out any creases in her long black skirt. Piper strode to the center of the classroom, her heels clacking on the tiled floor-she'd picked them up at a thrift store in Madison, and they still felt a little funny to her. Mr. Fisher crossed behind Piper, positioning himself behind his desk.
"You all remember Ms. Lowery from the public library?" Fisher announced to the class. The silver-haired, ponytailed instructor had the perfect teacher voice. Bassy and booming without trying too hard. This was Piper's third time visiting Fisher's class, and she was impressed every time he spoke. The man was a total pro.
"Please give her your undivided attention," he said, taking his seat.
Piper cleared her throat.
"Hi, everyone, it's so nice to see you all again," she said, really laying on the pleasantries. Her voice cracked on the word again, and she coughed into her closed fist. She wasn't used to public speaking. When she took the job at the public library, she hadn't expected to ever be in front of a large collection of people, doing the Gooooooood morning, Vietnam! thing. She thought she'd be doing peon tasks. Shelving books, inventory. Real wallflower stuff. But Piper quickly learned that being a peon-at least, at the Clover Creek Public Library in northern Wisconsin-meant public school outreach. Library card sign-ups, book donation drives, and, on this particular visit, the Spooktacular Scary Story Contest. It was an annual event, Piper had learned, and the library clerk who'd run it in past years had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Africa. Now it was Piper's gig.
"You might remember the last time I was here," she continued, finding her groove, "I let you all know about the scary story contest that the library is hosting this Halloween season. I'm hoping that some of you budding horror authors decided you're up for the challenge. Let's see those hands! Who decided to write a story for the contest?"
A few hands raised. Two. Five. Six.
Not bad, Piper thought.
Another hand slowly went up, from a girl tucked in the back-left corner of the classroom. Piper didn't remember her from her previous visit, and she immediately decided that she would have remembered her. For starters, in a sea of brown- and fair-haired children, the girl's short and curly red locks really stuck out. Piper's hair was reddish, too, of course. But she was more of a strawberry blonde. This kid's hair was very red, like a ripe tomato.
But it was more than just the mop that gave Piper pause.
It was the look on the girl's face. Her eyes. There was something about them. Corkscrew bangs nearly reached the girl's glasses, and behind those glasses, Piper detected fear.
The kid looks scared, Piper thought.
It made Piper glance over her shoulder, thinking a spider had dropped from the ceiling or a wasp had crashed the party.
But no, nothing.
Piper turned back to the class, and she quickly recovered from her momentary loss of composure. She scanned the room. None of the other students had odd looks on their faces. No fear in their eyes. Whatever the red-haired kid had seen, the others hadn't. Or maybe the kid had just imagined something.
"Okay, great," Piper said haltingly. "I'll come around and collect them, and if any of you still want to participate, then yes, there is still time. Drop them off at the library by Monday, and you'll be entered to win some amazing prizes!"
God, I really am Bob Barker, she thought.
Piper walked up and down the rows, collecting the stories from the eager handful of writers. She caught snippets of conversations as she moved through the classroom, overhearing two boys enthusiastically sharing their AOL usernames with those around them-so loudly that most heads turned in their direction and Mr. Fisher had to tell the boys to quiet down. When Piper reached the girl with the red hair, she took a closer look into her eyes. They seemed calmer now, less fearful, albeit meek and timid. Piper was struck by an immediate urge to help the kid, like she'd stumbled across an injured puppy on the side of the road. How she would help this kid, she hadn't the first clue, but the feeling stuck.
The girl handed over three handwritten and stapled looseleaf papers to Piper. "Mr. Fisher told me about the contest yesterday," she said shyly. "I wanted to enter."
Piper took the papers and thanked her. The girl said no more, merely looking to her right, at a woman in jeans and a gray, baggy sweater, sitting perpendicular to the front-facing student desks, nose buried in a novel. She looked to be in her late forties, with slightly unkempt, frizzy hair. Piper guessed she was a classroom learning aide.
The woman did not look up from her book.
...
Piper stuck around for a bit and chatted with Fisher, returning to the cracked blue chair near the teacher’s desk. A classical playlist drifted from a boom box on a bookshelf-Piper thought it was Beethoven, but she wasn’t sure. She remembered a few of her old teachers playing music in class, and she’d always dug the vibe. Fisher’s students were busy working on a language arts assignment-Piper didn’t catch what it was exactly. Some worked in pairs; others worked solo. She heard the words verb and conjunction thrown around, so she figured it was an extension activity from Fisher’s sentence-diagramming lesson. The students appeared focused, and the hum of learning permeated the space along with the classical tunes. The red-haired kid worked alone, sometimes turning to the woman in the gray sweater and softly asking questions.
"She moved here last week," Fisher said from the seat at his desk, his voice not rising above the music and chatter in the classroom. "Interesting kid."
Piper felt embarrassed. "I didn't mean to watch her. I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's our job to watch the students. Well, not your job, but you know what I mean."
Piper smiled. She enjoyed hearing Fisher speak. While she had a tendency to sputter when she talked, Fisher's words always seemed deliberately chosen, delivered at a pace that both kids and adults could process. Never too fast, never too slow.
"Her name is Avery Wallace," he continued, "but she never introduced herself. The kid's barely spoken a word since she got here. I know her name because it showed up on my attendance report, oh, last Thursday, and because I had a nice, long conversation with the principal about her this past Monday."
Piper felt a bit unprofessional getting into personal details in front of the students and scanned the room. The students worked and conversed. Fisher's voice remained low, and no one seemed to be paying attention to them. Still, Piper stood and turned her back to the class, subtly blocking Fisher from view, just in case. "Is everything okay?" she asked.
"That remains to be seen. You've probably noticed she's a little quiet and withdrawn, but that's certainly no cause for alarm. I've had plenty of shy students over the years. They're often my most thoughtful students, some of my best achievers. But Avery-I'm concerned because . . . well, there are a few reasons, actually."
"What's that?"
Fisher leaned forward and nodded over Piper's shoulder toward Avery and the woman. "For starters, her classroom learning aide is her mother."
"Is that normal?"
"Haven't seen it in my thirty years of teaching, to be frank. The mother insisted. Demanded, actually. That's what I spoke with the principal about on Monday. The school wasn't looking for trouble and just rolled over. She's not even on the payroll. Still processing, is what they told me, but I'm not even sure she's going to be an official hire."
"She's volunteering?"
Fisher chuckled. "That's one way of putting it. Don't let that little secret get out, otherwise I might have a few more parents itching to shadow their kids all day long, and they might use-oh, what's her name again-Susan as their example." He pointed his index finger down toward the desk and twirled it around a few times, making circles in the air. "Helicopter parents. But this one takes the cake. I haven't seen her leave the poor kid's side once. She even escorts her to the restroom."
"Seriously?"
"Every time."
Fisher turned to grab a stack of papers, and Piper returned to the cracked blue chair, her gaze drifting in the direction of the pair. Avery worked silently, eyes downcast at a worksheet on her desk, pencil moving quickly over the page. Susan had returned to her novel. To their left, two boys joked and giggled, sometimes looking toward Avery. One of the boys-a scraggly-looking kid in a Green Bay Packers pullover sweatshirt, the one who had been loudly sharing his AOL username earlier-dramatically inched his chair farther away from Avery, putting his hands on his cheeks and making an exaggerated scared face, like he was a villager encountering a monster in an old black-and-white horror movie. The incident was over almost as quickly as it had begun, and the boys turned back to their worksheets.
But Piper had seen everything, picking up on the behavior immediately.
Bullying.
