Little Pretty Things by Lori Rader-Day Page B

do next. Well, he had decided. He wanted out of it.
    As he drove me home, he kept glancing at the photo in my hands. “It bothers me,” he said. He seemed relieved to leave me on the curb in front of my house.
    I’d stowed the perfume bottle in my bathroom among my other things, but not in the secret space, where it would’ve probably spilled. I didn’t want to waste a drop. The key card to Maddy’s room, too, seemed special. After thinking about it, I slipped the card under a patch of loose wallpaper next to my bed and glued it down with clear nail polish. I imagined the card as a time capsule. Thirty years from now maybe someone else would live here, and they would pull down the flowered paper, horrified that anyone would have such taste, only to find a tiny mystery. Where would I be?
    I hated to think that I might still be here, but I had no better plans.
    Putting these things away, I was satisfied. But the real prize of the night was the photo. I couldn’t put it away. I couldn’t get enough of my own glowing skin, my own radiant smile. All these years I’d remembered the disappointment of second place, but Maddy’s gift to me was a reminder that second place had come with rewards, too.
    “Juliet,” my mom said against the crack of my bedroom door, sounding tired. “It’s the school.”
    I threw the covers over the photo. I hadn’t had the heart to wake my mother the night before and let her know about Maddy. I couldn’t bear to hear what she would say, or wouldn’t say.
    “Thanks, Mom,” I said, waiting until I was sure she was gone before I picked up my bedroom extension. It had been a long time since I’d been called to substitute teach.
    “Good morning, Juliet.” The clipped voice of the school secretary put me right back in the principal’s office. Mrs. Haggerty, stationed at the helm of Midway High as long as anyone remembered, ran the school with an iron fist. Having to see the principal for some indiscretion wasn’t much of a punishment if you’d already survived Mrs. Haggerty’s displeasure.
    She didn’t wait for me to greet her. “We could use you in phys ed today,” she said. “Coach Fitzgerald called in sick—bereft, I’d say. So sorry to hear about Madeleine, of course. I can’t imagine you feel any better about the situation, but he requested you specifically. What do you think?”
    The scrap of paper with the numbers from the Mid-Night Bible had fallen from my nightstand. I picked it up, thinking that the last thing I wanted to do today was to stand around a steamy gym while hormone-charged teenagers preened and flirted without breaking a sweat. Fitz got to be bereft, while Coach could barely pull himself upright, and I . . . but I needed the money. My car had nearly reached its last mile. I lived so lean, and yet so many decisions I made in my life came down to this one fact: I needed the money.
    I also needed a ride. “I’ll be there. Thanks, Mrs. Haggerty.”
    I tapped the hang-up button and sorted through my options. “What you’re looking for,” the paper in my hand said. I’d assumed it had something to do with the Bible it had come from, but now I saw it was probably a phone number. I dialed it. The line rang and rang. I didn’t know what I expected to happen, but I found myself hoping that Maddy would answer the phone. Maddy, alive, and this would all be a big misunderstanding.
    No one picked up. Finally I hung up and dialed instead for what I was really looking for: emergency carpool.

    “I’m glad he asked for you,” Coach said when he pulled into the driveway. He’d stopped for coffee and picked up one for me, with milk and one sugar, just how I liked it. I sipped at the cup and leaned against the buttery leather seats of his car, feeling cradled and cared for in a way I hadn’t in a while. “When one of us is gone, they usually call in that insurance salesman who never finished his master’s thesis. We end up sending him out to the track to avoid