voices around us continued telling more than I hoped Havermeyer was hearing.
“I heard Mr. Reyes and that girl from art upstairs . . .”
“His head was blown off, did you see?”
“I heard they—like three times a week in the morning—did she say the door was locked?”
“I heard it was a suicide pact, like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Romeo and Juliet took poison!”
“Not both!”
81
A HOLE IN JUAN
“Okay, but they didn’t blow each other up!”
“That was then. This is now. He’s secretly married and she—”
“Besides, where is she? You made that up!”
Words reached me in idea fragments and layers, speculation, gossip, and illogical “facts” about what had just happened. But
“where is she” registered clearly.
The students were still standing back from the door, so the headmaster and I seemed to be on a small island, surrounded by agitated natives.
“Did the police say what caused the explosion?” he asked me.
Why hadn’t he asked them? “They didn’t say to me. One did say it seemed accidental, which I’d assume, too.” I shrugged.
“Horrible, but these things happen in chemistry labs.”
“Not in my school,” he said emphatically. I remembered at least two other explosions, though nobody had been hurt in them.
“Is he going to die ?” a sobbing tenth grader asked the headmaster.
Havermeyer had no choice but to actually interact with a student. He turned his back to me, and blustered about probabilities and possibilities and waiting and seeing, and I was no longer the center of his attention.
I didn’t know if the paramedics or police searched the room, or the back room, the place Reyes thought nobody entered without his permission. They weren’t looking for a second person, after all, unless it was another casualty, who would be near to the explosion site. How thoroughly had they searched?
My mind leapfrogged across a dozen horrifying scenarios about what might be behind the half-open door.
“Students,” Havermeyer said, “we can but pray for Mr.
Reyes’s welfare, but in the interim, it’s time to return to your—”
Feeling guilty although I couldn’t see what rules I was breaking—there was no crime scene tape, no warnings, no posted signs—I ducked into the lab, glass crunching under my shoes. I stepped to the side, and twisted my ankle on what turned out to GILLIAN ROBERTS
82
be Juan Reyes’s briefcase. It, too, was sprinkled with glass, as if he’d inadvertently flung it away when the explosion startled him.
I lifted it up and shook it to clean it off.
The abandoned, scuffed briefcase, its leather cut where I pulled out a particularly large shard, its insides scarred by yesterday’s acid attack, brought me close to tears. It was so unlike that fastidious man’s painstaking care of his possessions and appearance that it underlined the severity of what had happened.
Shards and fragments seemed everywhere; under my feet, and beside me, on the white counter next to a sink. I couldn’t see what had exploded or where it had been. I also saw dark stains I did not want to think about, and when I turned, I saw Tisha Banks, the student teacher. She huddled in the corner, her face down on her knees, trying to become invisible, and now she looked up with fear and shock on her tear-stained face.
“We weren’t doing anything, ” she wailed as soon as she saw me. “And then boom! His head—his face! Blood all—” She seemed on the brink of losing all control. “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .
I didn’t do anything!”
I knelt beside her. Her raincoat, buttoned up to her neck, was bloodstained. She had socks on, no shoes, and I noticed flecks of blood on their white surfaces. “Nobody thinks you did.
Nobody even knows you’re in here. I was worried about you, about whether you were hurt.”
“If nobody knows I’m here, how did you?” she whispered.
Honesty seemed the only relief for the awkwardness of the situation. “Tisha, some people
“I heard Mr. Reyes and that girl from art upstairs . . .”
“His head was blown off, did you see?”
“I heard they—like three times a week in the morning—did she say the door was locked?”
“I heard it was a suicide pact, like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Romeo and Juliet took poison!”
“Not both!”
81
A HOLE IN JUAN
“Okay, but they didn’t blow each other up!”
“That was then. This is now. He’s secretly married and she—”
“Besides, where is she? You made that up!”
Words reached me in idea fragments and layers, speculation, gossip, and illogical “facts” about what had just happened. But
“where is she” registered clearly.
The students were still standing back from the door, so the headmaster and I seemed to be on a small island, surrounded by agitated natives.
“Did the police say what caused the explosion?” he asked me.
Why hadn’t he asked them? “They didn’t say to me. One did say it seemed accidental, which I’d assume, too.” I shrugged.
“Horrible, but these things happen in chemistry labs.”
“Not in my school,” he said emphatically. I remembered at least two other explosions, though nobody had been hurt in them.
“Is he going to die ?” a sobbing tenth grader asked the headmaster.
Havermeyer had no choice but to actually interact with a student. He turned his back to me, and blustered about probabilities and possibilities and waiting and seeing, and I was no longer the center of his attention.
I didn’t know if the paramedics or police searched the room, or the back room, the place Reyes thought nobody entered without his permission. They weren’t looking for a second person, after all, unless it was another casualty, who would be near to the explosion site. How thoroughly had they searched?
My mind leapfrogged across a dozen horrifying scenarios about what might be behind the half-open door.
“Students,” Havermeyer said, “we can but pray for Mr.
Reyes’s welfare, but in the interim, it’s time to return to your—”
Feeling guilty although I couldn’t see what rules I was breaking—there was no crime scene tape, no warnings, no posted signs—I ducked into the lab, glass crunching under my shoes. I stepped to the side, and twisted my ankle on what turned out to GILLIAN ROBERTS
82
be Juan Reyes’s briefcase. It, too, was sprinkled with glass, as if he’d inadvertently flung it away when the explosion startled him.
I lifted it up and shook it to clean it off.
The abandoned, scuffed briefcase, its leather cut where I pulled out a particularly large shard, its insides scarred by yesterday’s acid attack, brought me close to tears. It was so unlike that fastidious man’s painstaking care of his possessions and appearance that it underlined the severity of what had happened.
Shards and fragments seemed everywhere; under my feet, and beside me, on the white counter next to a sink. I couldn’t see what had exploded or where it had been. I also saw dark stains I did not want to think about, and when I turned, I saw Tisha Banks, the student teacher. She huddled in the corner, her face down on her knees, trying to become invisible, and now she looked up with fear and shock on her tear-stained face.
“We weren’t doing anything, ” she wailed as soon as she saw me. “And then boom! His head—his face! Blood all—” She seemed on the brink of losing all control. “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .
I didn’t do anything!”
I knelt beside her. Her raincoat, buttoned up to her neck, was bloodstained. She had socks on, no shoes, and I noticed flecks of blood on their white surfaces. “Nobody thinks you did.
Nobody even knows you’re in here. I was worried about you, about whether you were hurt.”
“If nobody knows I’m here, how did you?” she whispered.
Honesty seemed the only relief for the awkwardness of the situation. “Tisha, some people
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