Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern Page B

this is going to take on him. As far as anyone knows, he hasn’t spoken since the murder and has gone into a kind of regression.”
    Morgan nods. He can’t believe she’s telling him all this.
    â€œHere’s the thing, though. I called over to the elementary school and spoke to the guidance counselor about your idea. She wants to run it by some people, but she didn’t automatically say no. What she said was, it might actually be a decent idea. There’s more and more research these days that says as these kids get older, the best thing for them is not necessarily more one-on-one time with adults, but simply being with other kids. Especially kids who are willing to be patient with a conversation that might take extra time.” She reaches into her bag, pulls out a granola bar. “There’s this fascinating study, actually. We’ve always thought that the plasticity of children’s brains stops at a certain point. That with developmentally delayed children early intervention is everything—you try to cram as much in before they’re five or six years old, because after that there’s not too much you can do. The gains they might make are much slower, more incremental. Now there’s new research saying that the cusp of puberty is another opportunity—that the brain opens up again, grows more malleable, and certain strides can be made later as well.
    â€œThe point being that I’m going to argue for this. I think it’s something to try, at least. But we’d have to have some strict guidelines. This couldn’t be about spending time with the kid who saw the murder. You couldn’t go in there and ask him about it. Do you understand? That’s for the professionals to do. Okay, Morgan? Are you listening?”
    Yes, he nods, realizing as she says it, all the possibilities. At home he has started a list of possible suspects, including the school principal, Ms. Tesler, because she keeps sounding so defensive on the news. Last night, she said on TV, “There are one hundred and fifty elementary schools in this state without fences around them,” though the reporter hadn’t asked any question about fences. When Morgan tried to look up the fact, he found nothing on the Internet about elementary schools and fences and can only assume she is making up facts, which leads him to believe she might be a suspect.
    Also on his list is Mr. Herzog, the music teacher who asks people who can’t keep rhythm “to please not clap.” Mr. Herzog wears brown suits and brown shoes, and once he told them, “I play in a jazz band, but it doesn’t matter really, because nobody cares about jazz anymore,” which Morgan realizes now is an angry thing to say. Morgan remembers a time he saw Mr. Herzog in the hallway, pushing a rolling cart loaded with black instrument cases, with his head bent down so his glasses slipped off and got run over by the heavy, unstoppable cart. When he picked them up, they hung like a W in his hand. “Excuse me,” he said, squinting up the hall to Morgan. “But my worthless life just got worse, I’m afraid, and I need a bit of tape. Could you help me?” Morgan remembers all this, but never knew what to make of it before. Now he does. It means Mr. Herzog is sad and possibly mad about many things: jazz, glasses, students with no interest or talent. Maybe Amelia pushed him over the edge—blew chewing gum into a clarinet, made fun of his glasses, something.
    Morgan formulates a plan in his mind: if he can’t ask Adam about the murder directly, maybe he can make a list of names and work them, one by one, into their conversation.
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    Around school, June hears the stories that are springing up and taking on a life of their own—whispered at first and then spoken aloud, outside on the playground: He’s going to try again, maybe at Halloween. He wants the kid who saw him, but if he can’t get